List of stories set in a future now past - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_future_now_past <comment><USER3> There's an interesting sub-category here of works where the story's "future" is already behind the author's present - or even the story's present.

 _Tomorrow Town_ is one of the first sort; written in 2000, about a 1970s attempt to envision the world of 2000. (The visionaries, of course, get it utterly wrong.) _Pattern Recognition_ counts too; it got labeled post-modern because it was felt like SF futurism but was set in the very recent past. Alternate-history carried through the present doesn't all count, but something like _Fallout_ is very consciously about 'realizing' a 1950s view of the future.

 _The Gernsbeck Continuum_ is the best example I know of the second sort: it's the 1980 we imagined in the 1930s, experienced from the viewpoint of the real 1980. If I stretch the boundaries a bit, _Time Out of Joint_ might count too; a 1950s world, 50s futurism included, recreated by a moon-colonizing future society. This has to be a pretty small list, though, and I'd love more examples.

<comment><USER4> I believe what Fallout did is typically called retro-futurism. The term "post- modern" is already occupied and has a _very_ different meaning.

I don't think Pattern Recognition really counts. Precisely when it was set was mostly irrelevant to the story and the "futurism" of the novel is largely due to the style of writing of William Gibson. It could have been set in the present or near future and nothing would really change.

<comment><USER5> Fallout, or its predecessor Wasteland, was probably inspired in part by works like Canticle for Liebowitz, which were just normal (dystopian) futurism at the time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz)

I don't know what we do when a subgenre starts out as normal futurism, but hangs on to tropes long enough to age into retro futurism.

<comment><USER6> A lot of cyberpunk and space opera is like that, I think, particularly in art. Cyberpunk art is still enamored of '80s neon, fashion, the then-looming fear of Japan Inc., etc.

But Fallout is something different, because it embraced '50s retro-futurism from the beginning. (Though it got more obvious in the later games.)

<comment><USER3> > _A lot of cyberpunk and space opera is like that, I think, particularly in > art._

This is a really interesting observation, thank you.

If we use _Neuromancer_ a rough start date for cyberpunk, there was nothing 'alternate' about the whole "future of neon and kanji" style. And _Snow Crash_ made an effort to change with the times; the Japanese stylings get justified as a character thing instead of a cultural one and the psychedelic hacking gets replaced with a decent anticipation of Second Life. _The Diamond Age_ sticks with the Japanese emphasis, but brings in China and India as major powers, and updates the sci-fi focus to nanotech.

But somewhere along the line the strength of the aesthetic sort of overwhelms the attempt at futurism. Gibson came back to the near future and present, Stephenson went to the past, present, and then the far future. The last really future-facing cyberpunk novel I can remember reading was _Infoquake_ , and reviewers kept saying that was "practically cyberpunk" or "had elements of cyberpunk".

And then at the other end of things, _Altered Carbon_ has humans as an interstellar species, but still gives us a half-white, half-Japanese protagonist getting pushed around San Francisco by rich people. _Shadowrun_ goes all the way to magic spells and centaurs, but the videogames retain the rainy East Asian atmosphere. And _Big Hero 6_ proves it's an aesthetic you can export completely; it might be a PG superhero movie, but it's about a half- Japanese kid named Hiro having illegal robot fights in a neon-drenched "San Fransokyo".

I don't know enough to do the whole rundown, but I suspect you're right about space opera too: Star Trek and 2001 start off as a modern/futuristic vision, but endure as this weird near-googie style we recognize as its own entity.

I suppose some aesthetics are way more fun to look at than to actually live in - we keep them around for art's sake long after they fail to take root.

<comment><USER7> It seems to me that Stephenson just likes East Asia a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he lived there. E.g. Cryptonomicon has detailed geography and economics of the region in play, many of the other novels have events set in there―and in the pretty recent "Reamde" he again spends plenty of story time in Xiamen and some in Manila, even though the book is set in the present and there's little cyberpunkish about it.

I'm actually sort of learning from these books about the vibe of the region, some scraps of relevant history, and the area's economic relations with the US. Because otherwise it's mostly fantasy land to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I watched Bladerunner again recently (set Nov, 2019, so technically it doesn't belong on this list just yet). I've seen it dozens of times, but for the first time I was struck by the fact that the flying cars in it are still driven/flown by humans.

Then I couldn't think of any stories set in the future with self-driving cars, flying or otherwise. It's sort of ridiculous at this point to have a human pilot in any futuristic form of transportation, isn't it?

But I guess all those space battles would be pretty boring without humans to run the ships.

<comment><USER9> The Johnny Cabs in Total Recall spring to mind.

The Will Smith I, Robot had shifting between auto and self driving modes as a plot point too if I remember rightly.

It feels like there are some good stories to tell around them too. I'm personally jealous of the generation of students who will get to wake up with a hangover in a car half way across the country, heading towards somewhere that seemed like a great idea the night before.

<comment><USER8> That's right, I had forgotten. Interesting that two PkD-based movies (total recall and minority report pointed out in a sibling comment) have self-driving cars. It's been too long since I've read the stories to remember if that was the case in the books or not.

<comment><USER10> PKD stories and novels frequently feature autonomous or semi-autonomous machines. Joe Chip, in Ubik, is refused service by his apartment door, and later, an autonomous diner service, because he is broke. Also, Dick would use the early '90s as 'the future' pretty frequently.

<comment><USER11> It makes sense given that straddling the line between what is real and what is fake is perhaps _the_ most persistent theme in his works, and this persistent chipping away at the agency of humans by robots by bureaucratic enforcement of rules is also all over his works. Of course then with the regular nagging doubt about who are the humans and who are the robots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny how you can be right about future facts (world population) but wrong about the consequences.

 _Make Room! Make Room!_ [1966]

 _The world is overpopulated at 7 billion people, with 35 million people in New York City alone. The inspiration for the film Soylent Green (1973)._

Maybe not surprising, but worth noting anyway just how _pessimistic_ these stories are.

<comment><USER13> Try getting a publisher to accept a book about a future world that's somewhat cleaner and more convenient than today. I can't wait for the movie version.

<comment><USER14> Weeelllll... isn't that what the Culture series by Iain Banks was about - <USER2> vision of post-scarcity utopian future?

As for movie version, I'd wager Star Trek, at least up to Discovery, was similarly about a vision of a better society (to the point that, as I discussed with few of my friends and colleagues, for a lot of us it has subconsciously shaped our political thinking: "Is this law / action on the path to Star Trek future, or not":)

<comment><USER15> Love utopian stories. But I think they're much more difficult to write since they're fewer, or something.

Modern sci-fi is downright jaded. They don't bother to introduce technology half the time. It's jusr taken as a given that the guns shoot colored fireballs or death rays. All transportation just floats around, etc. and people mostly scrap by on whatever they can find and die often.

<comment><USER16> I think they're more difficult to write because they're more difficult to imagine, plausibly.

I can imagine a future with energy weapons and flying cars, but one in which corporations and governments don't leverage technology to oppress and enslave the masses, where the rich don't get richer and the poor don't die like dogs, just seems like propaganda.

<comment><USER15> Star Trek serialized it (seemingly) easily enough. They essentially got a new universe of problems to explore every episode with the context of the Federations technology and administration.

<comment><USER17> Star Trek's society never made much _sense_, though. If you exclude all the utopian speeches given by Picard, and just look at the interaction of the Federation and Starfleet, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a military dictatorship.

(Pet theory; the Federation is a Soviet-ish military command economy. The episodes we see are in-universe propaganda produced by the state. That's why everyone is so heroic, and why all of the rival civilisations are mostly one- dimensional stereotypes.)

I think Banks' Culture is a better example of a utopia played straight, but most of the action in those novels takes place largely outside the Culture.

<comment><USER16> >That's why everyone is so heroic, and why all of the rival civilisations are mostly one-dimensional stereotypes.

That is literally what they are, they're intended to act as mirrors to various aspects of humanity, or embody singular aspects of the plot of the week.

<comment><USER18> Shaka, when the walls fell.

<comment><USER16> Don't get me started on Darmok. I don't understand why that episode is so praised, it makes no sense.

How... _HOW_ do you have a technological, much less warp capable, civilization if you only speak in metaphor and allegory?

How do engineers get anything done? Do they write white papers in metaphors? Do the captains of their ships issue orders in metaphors?

Languages _don 't work like that._ They literally _can 't_ work like that.

It literally makes me... mildly annoyed.

<comment><USER18> The media, when Kanye tweeted.

<comment><USER15> It's also not like we're told the federation has had complete access to everything about the society. There could be more traditional stories shared with their children as a basis for the language, but unshared with the federation.

All language lives within a culture, and words only convey meaning through a mutually shared understanding. They've made allegories first class parts of language, the equivalent to our individual words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Escape from New York_ is a fun example. At the time the film was made (1981), the idea of New York turning into a lawless prison island by 1997 seemed almost vaguely possible, considering the out-of-control crime rates of the 70s and 80s and the derelict nature of many buildings in the city.

Today in 2019, the idea of turning Manhattan into a walled-off prison seems absurd, mostly because the buildings in the city are now worth millions (inflation-adjusted) more than they were in the 80s.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm always struck by the giant CRTs in futuristic 80's movies. Blade runner is one example where there are scenes with CRT screens that even look very blurry/dated compared to the screen I'm watching on.

Also, this is a recent one, but in Star Wars rogue one, I felt it was odd how they had what looked like an IT nightmare. Seriously, they had to physically fly to the base and deal with a robotic arm connecting hard drives (was it tape drives?). Sure they have humanoid robots that are way beyond any tech today, but their cloud storage was basically current and even old school tech. Why don't they have some tiny crystal that stores unlimited data or DNA storage in a small cylinder or something that you would expect in the future? To be fair it is a "long time ago in a galaxy far away" but still, are we technologically ahead of those death star builders in some way?

<comment><USER21> In Star Wars very few people know how to read, let alone read and write code.

This is a consequence of a world where technology advances faster than people are able to understand it, and abstractions build on top of abstractions to the point where everything just seems like magic and nobody needs to concern themselves with how things _actually_ work.

In fact, pretty much nobody writes code except droids. The droids are instructed on what to write by a programmer, who is usually some old gray wizard in a hooded robe that speaks about what needs to be created and how it should be done at a very high level, then the droids get to work. Nobody actually understands the code the droids produce, and trying to is mostly a waste of time since you can just tell a droid to rewrite it anyway. As a result, most UI is also built by droids. That's why it's more likely to resemble something like ncurses or maybe vim with a powerline plugin, rather than MacOS or Windows.

Because nobody actually understands technology, they tend to develop crude mental models about how things work, and you end up with people doing things the hard way just because they don't know there is any other way to do it. In fact, Star Wars probably wouldn't have even happened if the Empire had better IT security.

It's also likely that people in Star Wars don't understand the concept of one technology being more "advanced" than the other, as they have no skills to evaluate that. So you sometimes see better technology in older times and worse tech in newer times.

When you look at Star Wars this way, the world actually seems very futuristic, because it is the end result of thousands of generations of people who have come to accept technology as a magical black box where you simply give inputs and get outputs. We can even begin to see this effect in our own world today.

<comment><USER22> I think your first paragraph is an apt description of our world, starting from the early 20th century and onwards.

<comment><USER21> Especially the 21st century and onwards.

<comment><USER22> I'm not only talking about technology, but also critical infrastructure and transportation, both of which had breakthroughs in the 20th century with the development of cars and planes, as well as the development of AC transmission and the electric grid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's quite the potboiler, and the underlying disaster mechanism lacks credibility, but I am still fascinated by Charles Pellegrino's novel _Dust_ from 1998, which certainly qualifies for this list, although no exact year is given for the events taking place - but things are understood to be happening in a then near future. I guessed 2005 when I first read it in '99.

People carry multi-function pocket computers around, referred to as _pads_. A massive die-off of insects spells global disaster.

At the end, as breathtakingly wrong scenario, but who could have known: Manhattan more or less razed to the ground by a series of nuclear air-bursts, with the WTC Twin Towers nearly the only structures still standing.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I read Fahrenheit 451 in high school and then watched the movie. For a junior in high school thinking my whole life was ahead of me, thinking of a future like the one described in the book was kind of unsettling.

The fact the book got so many things right in 1953 is pretty eye opening:

 _Predicted regular use of earbud headphones,[2] interactive television, video wall screens, robotic bank tellers,[36] the demise of newspapers and the prevalent use of factoids.[37] Also had the Mechanical Hound[38] and technology for complete blood transfusions._

</comment><comment><USER24> Soon Bladerunner will be one of those movies. I rewatched it yesterday and was astonished to see that it plays in "November, 2019".

</comment><comment><USER25> It was quite fun watching the Back To The Future series with my kids, in the same year as the 'Future' of the second film.

<comment><USER26> Where's my hoverboard??

<comment><USER27> and one-size-really-does-fit-all clothes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A friend of mine has been re-reading SF books from his collection once we reach the year in which the book is set. This only works if a specific year is called out, of course. And I'm not sure what he does when a book takes place over a long stretch of time. But it seems like a clever way to revisit older SF novels.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Back to the Future Part II - Film - 1989 - Year set 2015

> Blade Runner - Film - 1982 - Year set 2019

We are living in the future that seemed to be so far away when I was a teenager ...

</comment><comment> ajay-d My favorite HN posts are these types of wikipedia articles

</comment><comment><USER30> Obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/1491/](https://xkcd.com/1491/)</comment>


Ask HN: Small startups how are you deploying and provisioning in AWS? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I'm trying to learn more about how small startups are using AWS. I'm particularly interested in:
What sort of software you are deploying and how you deploy it (chef, puppet, "by hand" or what not)?
How are you provisioning resources in AWS and what those resources are (terraform, cloud foundation, AWS UI)?
If you are using a language like Python or Ruby, how are you making sure your dependencies are correctly installed? How do you update them?
How large is your engineering team?
Do you have anyone who is responsible for maintaining your deployment and provisioning tools?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I am looking for a similar answer.

Right now I am using Digital Ocean, and doing everything in a semi-automated fashion.

I have started to look at AWS, but it will take me some time to get through the docs.</comment>


A eulogy for every product Google has killed (145 and counting) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90322103/a-eulogy-for-every-product-google-has-ruthlessly-killed-145-and-counting <comment><USER3> Wow, a lot of these are ridiculous or silly. I welcome corrections to my list. If you object and think it should be listed as Dead, that's fine, that's your opinion, and I respect it. To me, some of these are absurd to list as Dead. Here's my list:

Tez was rebranded, it didn't die.

Encrypted Search basically replaced unencrypted search.

Chromebook Pixel, yeah, now it's a Pixelbook.

Google Showtimes, yeah, now it's built in to search.

Google Nexus, yeah, now it's Pixel phones.

Nexus Player, yeah, now it's Chromecast / Android TV / Aria.

Google X, it was re-orged, and not consumer-facing anyway.

Picasa is kind of odd to complain about, because Google Photos is better in almost every way.

Google Play edition of Android phone, yeah, phone models go away all the time.

Google TV is kind of odd to complain about, because now there's Chromecast / Android TV, and Youtube TV.

Google Chrome Frame, we should celebrate IE dying.

Nexus Q, yeah, it's now Chromecast / Android TV.

Google Chart API is still running, unless I'm mistaken.

Google Video... Yeah, now it's YouTube. Why are we complaining about this?

Google Sky Map was donated and made open source, is now "Sky Map". This is a victory.

Noop Programming Language. Come on. It was literally two engineers. I'm all for holding Google accountable for killing things we love (Google Reader, chief among them), but this is ridiculous. It's also open source.

Google Dictionary, it's not folded in to Search.

Google Real-Time Search is basically folded in to Search, right?

Google Hotspot is now folded in to Maps, right?

Google Ride Finder is now folded in to Maps, right? At least Uber and Lyft are, right?

Grand Central is basically rebranded as Voice, right?

Google Page Creator is basically Google Sites, right?

Writely became Google Docs, right?

<comment><USER4> Great points, this list is ridonkulous.

Tech companies quit, rename, reorganize and merge products all the time. Is Google particularly worse than other tech firms?

I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all.

Media Center

Kinect

Zune

PlaysForSure DRM

Microsoft Money

Windows Home Server

Microsoft Kin Phone

Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia

Windows 10 Mobile

The Band

TechNet

Hotmail

Live Messenger

Live Mesh

Groove Music Pass

Android and iOS versions of Groove Music

Encarta

Windows Small Business Server

Flight Simulator

Microsoft Works

Microsoft FrontPage

Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, Windows CE for Automotive, Windows Automotive, and Windows Mobile for Automotive

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Direct link: [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER6> I feel like some of these are stretching it..

For example, it lists the Google Glass OS and Google Glass separately - <USER2> the latter is still an enterprise product.

Hardware models are listed (Nexus phones, Chromecast Audio, Chromebook Pixel)

<comment><AUTHOR> My 2013 Google Glass (consumer — not enterprise — version) still works perfectly: doesn't this mean Glass & Glass OS haven't been killed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Classic Google Sites will be discontinued in 2021: [https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/01/google-sites- im...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/01/google-sites-improvements- new-roadmap.html)

<comment><USER8> Who uses classic sites? It's more like a v1 to v2 forced upgrade than a shutdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Next up: Stadia.

<comment><USER10> I asked in the Stadia announcement thread "How many years until its canceled and our game libraries erased from all existence?" I got downvoted and someone likened my comment to making fun of the fat kid at the gym. I was like, when did this become hail corporate? Its not like Stadia is some type of new year's resolution, but then again, Google will probably drop it as quickly if it becomes unprofitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since my beloved Zeit has decided to go all Lambda, I need to move my hosting somewhere. It struck me that even though Google is a very big player here, I am worried that they might do something similar so I am much more inclined to look at AWS or Azure. This, I guess, is a price they are paying for this culture of exploration and pivots that I otherwise consider healthy in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER12> They've just recently announced Stadia, a streaming gaming platform. Industry veterans immediately gave the product a 2 year lifespan.

<comment><USER13> Quit the circlejerk.

Yeah, Google shuts off unpopular, unsuccesful projects. So what? Most of the ones listed are literally useless and/or outdated relics of the past which have been replaced by something better. Google is a business after all, not a charity. They don't want to maintain an useless project from 2005 written using who knows what technology stack.

If Stadia becomes mainstream and acquires a lot of users, they won't kill it off as it will be profitable. If it has an user count of 500 in two years, it will be gutted, why support an unprofitable product?

<comment><USER14> Google has purchased and killed off numerous profitable companies. They've killed off Hangouts, Allo, Gchat, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few wildly popular chat services only to replace them with inferior products. They've killed off Google Reader which someone built a clone of and appears to be making a profit. They killed off Google Fiber, Nexus, and Glass all solid hardware that many people are/were still using. The point is you can't trust Google to not just drop something at a moment's notice, even if it's older or profitable, try getting help from them as well good luck finding want kind of support unless you happen to know someone inside the company personally. As a business they are hard to work with and notoriously flaky, I'd always choose to go elsewhere now after years of being a Google advocate. They're even looking to replace Android so what can you trust from them?

<comment><USER15> Neither Nexus nor glass was killed.

Nexus became pixel. Glass never left beta and is still an enterprise product.

<comment><USER16> Nexus and Pixel are very different. They are both phones but the market and strategy is not the same.

<comment><USER15> In what way?

The major differences are that Google is more involved with pixel hardware design than nexus (probably a good thing), and that pixels are more expensive (which follows the market price for flagship phones).

They both fill the niche of first-party flagship devices with the "pure, as google intended" (or something) android experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think it's a bad thing for a company to try out new products and services to see what sticks, then kill off ones that aren't working, the alternative is to stagnate and slowly die out. It does sting as a consumer when something you use is killed off.

Some of these were killed off because the functionality was added to other products. I was an Inbox user until the app warned me it would be discontinued recently, but all the features were added to the Gmail app.

<comment><USER18> Except Inbox was so much better. Gmail is so heavy for what I want from email. Also, Inbox grouped emails related to a trip and showed a summary of the trip, from what I can see Gmail doesn't do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> At least it gives an opening to someone else to try to fill the need if it was useful.

<comment><USER20> > someone else to try to fill the need

There aren't many Google Products that I really missed (or even used) that are on that suspicious site[0] (and echoed by a news source w/o verification) except for _Reader_.

You are right: for _Reader_ , someone didn't just fill the need, many different someones filled that need. Honestly didn't miss a beat when Reader was shut down. The alternative, non-BigTech solutions, have been awesome.

[0] I say suspicious because the coder acknowledges that he created the site out of anger over _Inbox_. As a result, he has lost objectivity and it shows.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Up to 147 now

</comment><comment><USER21> don't really like when they kill good products, but was hoping dart will soon be on the list

<comment><USER22> I have never used dart, but always thought it looked interesting. Can I ask what you don't like about it?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which Lisp book should we publish first? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, I'm an editor of a Chinese press. For now, there's only 2 book about lisp in China: HtDP and SICP. But both of them are not really "lisp" book. Do you think it is necessary to publish a lisp book for students and programmers? If yes, which one should be first? PCL, ACL, OL or PAIP? Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'd say Practical Common Lisp. While I actually favour all of the other books myself, I think that PCL is the better bet for a publisher, concentrating as it does on themes more relevant to the average non-lisp programmer.

(I'd probably pick PAIP as the best of the lot, though)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those that don't know (probably smaller on here then elsewhere but still):

HtDP: How to Design Programs SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs PCL: Practical Common Lisp ACL: ASCII Common Lisp PAIP: Principles off Artificial Intelligence Programming OL: On Lisp

Personally I'd probably go for PCL because it's... practical.

OL is pretty awesome though, I wish someone would reprint it in English, I have a self printed copy but I'd very much like to own a proper one!

<comment><USER4> Do you mean ACL: ANSI Common Lisp and PAIP: Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming?

<comment><USER3> Whoops! I did. Both of them are on the shelf just above my computer so I've got no excuse!

Off topic: What happened to the edit link? I want to hide my mistakes! ;]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would _highly_ reccomend PAIP and OL (in that sequence). PAIP is fantastic in that it provides a 1000 pages of _elegant_ code which conveys the "lisp way" by a master of the langauge. OL is of course the macro book par excellence.

I wonder if there are any other books that show exemplary code in various languages which are not so much "Introduction to X" as "Here is how the masters of the language write code in language X and "think in" X . I know of "Lua Gems", "C interfaces and implementation" and "The Art Of Prolog" which fall into this category. Any others?

<comment><USER6> I think "Thinking Forth" fits in there as well.

<comment><USER5> ahh yes good choice! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Little Schemer: [http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P- Friedman/dp/02...](http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P- Friedman/dp/0262560992/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261839444&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi, I'd go with PCL it's a good practical introduction...

Off topic, but where in China are you based? If you're in Shanghai maybe we can meet up sometime, I always like meeting fellow HNers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi gommm, it's really nice of you. I'm living in Wuhan now, but since I go on errand a lot, maybe we can meet up in Shanghai someday.

<comment><USER8> Sure, when you come to Shanghai, send me an email :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since a lot of people think PCL is a good choice, what do you think the new book Lisp Outside the Box form Nick Levine, It's a practical introduction too.

<comment><USER9> Haven't read Levine's book, but from the chapter summaries I've seen, I'd say it's less general-purpose.

I like all the books you mentioned in your original post. OL is probably the best, but it doesn't make sense to read it first. I learned from both ACL and PCL and like ACL better because it's more systematic. But this seems to be a minority opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _On Lisp_ is unique. I wouldn't go with PAIP because AIMA has replaced it. But what's covered in _On Lisp_ isn't found anywhere else.

<comment><USER11> In what possible sense has AIMA replaced PAIP? PAIP is crammed to the gills with substantial pieces of Lisp code that do interesting and useful things; it focuses as much on the "programming" as on the "artificial intelligence" and has a lot specifically about Lisp. AIMA has code snippets but not much more, and actually they're generally (always? I forget) pseudocode, not actual code in Lisp or any other language.

AIMA is a fine book. PAIP is a fine book. I don't see how you could possibly use either of them to replace the other.

<comment><USER10> Well, Norvig recommends AIMA over PAIP now for machine learning. I guess if what you want is Common Lisp code, then your choice must be PAIP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Practical Common Lisp, or even better, Programming Clojure.</comment>


Government orders 10k ventilators from Dyson - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52043767 <comment><USER2> "Meanwhile, the consortium of medical, military and civil engineering companies - which includes Airbus, Meggit, GKN and others - is working to ramp up the production of an existing design."

This is such a relief!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Dyson has had hundreds of engineers working round the clock to design the ventilators from scratch."

It blows my mind. Everybody now, instead of cooperating, tries to design a perfect ventilator.

<comment><USER4> > instead of cooperating

Sometimes cooperation takes a whole more time than doing things by yourself if you know exactly what needs to be done. Adding more groups/interactions typically slow down delivery.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. As I understand it, Dyson's ventilators are ready for scaled production. Maybe they can begin to collaborate with others down the road, but time was essential, and they were clearly able to get these out without a lot of unnecessary phone tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The government turned down an offer from the EU because Europe which is a bit worrying.

There are plenty of medical equipment manufacturers in the UK who've made these exact products before, or very similar products, and who know the rules and regulations well. They've offered to help, but not heard anything back from the government.

[https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1242949236762738692](https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1242949236762738692)

These are the kinds of things that we will have to hold the government to account for at some point.

<comment><USER7> Dyson and others efforts are additional to the two ventilator manufacturers in the UK, who have already received orders for about as much as they can produce.

From the article: "...the government thinks it can procure a further 8,000 from existing domestic and international suppliers"

<comment><USER6> Yes, but those 8000 orders are piecemeal from any supplier that has any kind of stock, a few hundred here, a few dozen there. There's not a coordinated drive to support those manfs to increase their production.

As you say, the Dyson effort was a separate programme. Existing medical equipment manufacturers -companies that make medical equipment but not necessarily these ventilators at the moment- tried to apply to that separate scheme and they were ignored. The money went to Dyson or car makers. It's probably better to spend the money on companies that already make medical products and help them increase their capacity than it is to spend it on car makers and Dyson who'll need to re-tool their factories and re-train their staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm an intensivist and I really hope that ventilator won't be mounted on the bed like they show in the picture. That's a very bad idea, you need that space to access the patient.

<comment><USER9> One of the requirements reads:

"Ideally small and light enough to mount on patient bed and orientation independent functioning."

While floor mounted operation is the mandatory requirement, it seems that it's not always a bad idea to have it mounted on the bed.

<comment><USER8> It's normally mounted at the short ends. Not the sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Didn't Dyson move all his manufacturing to Singapore at the same time as loudly espousing Brexit?

Waiting for the v2 of the ventilator that has a ball attached, and costs an extra £100.

<comment><USER11> Whatever his views on Brexit (and I am Remainer), I think credit should be given to Dyson and his team - they are going to be manufactured in the UK and he is paying with his own money for 4000 of these ventilators to be donated to other countries:

[https://www.ft.com/content/4cc667f2-6ee2-11ea-89df-41bea0557...](https://www.ft.com/content/4cc667f2-6ee2-11ea-89df-41bea055720b)

<comment><USER12> Wow, I'm sure the millions of dollars he's gonna make from the 10k ventilators has no impact on his motivation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How hard are these things to build? It certainly looks like a complicated medical device, but is there a simpler DIY version that gets the job done?

<comment><USER9> Here is the very high level specification that the government has provided. It refers to various further specifications and regulations that the device must comply with in order to be accepted by medics.

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/874279/RMVS001_Rapidly_Manufactured_Ventilator_Specification__PDF.pdf)

You can see that the hardest part isn't so much the mechanics, but the parameters within which the device must operate, including safeguards on multiple conditions.

From a software point of view alone, I'm sure most of us here can appreciate the difficulty in producing this from scratch. e.g. "It must have 100% duty cycle for up to 14 days".

I suspect a huge challenge will be sourcing components, such as pressure sensors, that meet the required specifications. These seem likely to be specialised parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So are ventilators actually complicated and frequently modernized equipment or medical TI83s. I was reading one the largest expenditures of PPEs in China after they resolved the supply issue was adjusting ventilator settings. Seems like a wired or wireless interface would go a long way.

<comment><USER15> The ventilator settings they're referring to are basically 2 variables: The number of breaths per minute, and the volume of air pumped for each breath.

As the patient wakes up or goes to sleep etc you may need to adjust the ventilator again so that they're comfortable.

It's just a labour intensive job.

<comment><USER16> Could you have something like the pain medication button, where the pacient has an up/down button to tweak the settings?

<comment><USER17> No, not least because the patient is usually paralyzed so that they aren't fighting the ventilator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are there estimates for how many ventilators coutries are targeting?

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, at least the Dyson PR department is working hard. Shame their tech is shoddy at best.

</comment><comment><USER20> CoVent™

Excellent naming.

</comment><comment><USER21> withouth a meaningful time line, this is all noise.

its a totally new design, which means its going to have to be re-certified.

The UK has had 2 months head start, 1 month if you take italy as a warning, 2 if you treat the "YOLO LETS JUST LET IT BURN THROUGH THE POPULACE."as a starting point.</comment>


Ask HN: Client Secret at Android - <AUTHOR>

Hello Fellow Hackers,<p>For OAuth token from server for Mobile app, we need to pass Client Secret from Android (and iOS) app which can be compromised easily. I was wondering if you can share best practises to keep Client ID and Client Secret from getting exposed during reverse engg or decompilation.
Cheers, Raj <comment><USER2> If the secret is valuable, someone will get it out. If it isn't, nobody will look. It's probably enough to just xor the bytes with something to stop the secret from showing up in `strings`, but otherwise... it's client app. You can't control it.

(it's still going to be visible in captured traffic after stripping tls)</comment>


Wiltshire valley locals build their own mobile phone network - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/e2f50ee7-7fc6-4155-bfd4-fcc4b2314847 <comment><AUTHOR> There's more discussion, and a more detailed article, over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24111002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24111002)

<comment><USER2> Ok, we'll re-up that one instead of this one. (A mod had put this one in the second-chance pool, so it will got a random placement on HN's front page. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380) for explanation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> With the FCC 2.5 GHz Rural Tribal Window[1], I would expect a lot of the tribes (or their designated org) will be trying to put up their own data networks. Its nice to see others that have already succeeded, as it seems like a pain to get any information on what equipment is needed. [https://dlandroid.com/showbox-apk/](https://dlandroid.com/showbox-apk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://archive.is/72cwb](https://archive.is/72cwb)

</comment><comment><USER5> Non paywalled version [https://www.google.com/search?q=ue4+archviz&oq=ue4+ar&aqs=ch...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ue4+archviz&oq=ue4+ar&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l4.6337j0j7&client=ms- android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER6> Did you mean to post a link to a Google search?</comment></comment>


How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2014/01/29/lost-50000-twitter-username/#!tILD1 <comment><USER2> It sounds like you surrendered and gave up. Why would you do this?</comment>


Exposing Myself To Failure - <AUTHOR> http://mrmilksblog.tumblr.com/post/45793545224/exposing-myself-to-failure

<comment><USER2> _We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. -- Charles Kettering_

When hacking tech, this kind of failure analysis happens all the time. In fact, it's not even recognized as failure; it's all flow, most of the time anyway.

When going into business, when I build and they don't come -- that's different, right? Social rejection. A slap in the face. YOW!

Nothing to analyze.

Or is there?

Sometimes, a product launch fails because of a lack of awareness of how people actually buy things:

In [1], we read "The typical potential customer is full of doubt:

* They're unsure if they want what you're selling.

* They're unsure how it would help them.

* They're unsure if they should trust you, if you'll deliver.

* They're unsure if the price is reasonable.

* They're unsure if they should buy now or wait til later, when the need seems more pressing, or when they remember it again."

Faced with this reality, what hacks are possible?

[1] [http://unicornfree.com/2013/3-critical-non-obvious- ingredien...](http://unicornfree.com/2013/3-critical-non-obvious-ingredients- for-any-launch)

</comment><comment><USER3> I found out recently that this doesn't apply only to business ventures, but also personal projects. Free and open-source yet no one will find them unless I do the extra legwork.

I built a visual remote designer for the mobile app Unified Remote because I felt remotes should be designed visually rather than with XML (I also wanted to play with using KnockoutJS to generate XML.) No one seemed to care until I posted to the company's Facebook wall. I also emailed the company to let them know and they've since recommended it to people having trouble understanding the XML. I'm also telling you guys :) <http://remote-creator.appspot.com>

You have to put it out everywhere you can if you want it to succeed. I tried posting my Chrome extension for injecting reviews for doctors into insurance company pages on here and it immediately dropped out of site. It's more universally useful than my other projects: <http://github.com/csmatt/doctorratings> .

Don't give up!

</comment><comment><USER4> _The Now Habit_ , the book that was suggested with that "Procrastination is not Laziness" post last week goes very into depth about de-coupling one's self-worth and one's fear of rejection and criticism. I've started to read it, and I think that I can recommend it to anyone who's anxious about how they or how something they've made will be responded to.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the book recommendation. I went to buy it off of Amazon and got a reminder of just how screwed up the book publishing market is screwed up. The electronic version is almost $3.00 (22%) more than the paperback.

<comment><USER6> I haven't read the Now Habit yet, but another great read along those lines is The Antidote.</comment></comment></comment>


Regex to check for prime numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2007/03/18/a-regular-expression-to-check-for-prime-numbers/ <comment><USER2> This is clever and impressive.

For what it's worth, though, it is possible because most scripting languages make regular expressions more powerful by allowing you to match against previously captured values. As formally defined, regular expressions are not powerful enough to check whether an arbitrary number is prime.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing. IIRC, the language of prime numbers isn't context-free, either.

Though to be fair, since the universe is finite, no existing computer is powerful enough to check if an arbitrarily large number is prime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Site seems slow, here's a cached copy:

[http://18.104.22.168/search?q=cache:d_FZMU2REmIJ:www.noulaka...](http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:d_FZMU2REmIJ:www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2007/03/18/a-regular- expression-to-check-for-prime-numbers/+a-regular-expression-to-check-for- prime-numbers&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=us&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER4> Brute force but works. The real trick, for me at least, was to convert the number into a sequence of 1's. The rest was like an exercise in programming Turing machines (and a nice flashback into the freshman year of college).

</comment><comment><USER5> A unary non-prime is empty, or 1, or composed of a series of at least two repetitions of at least two 1s.

Cute.

</comment><comment><USER6> This has been mentioned here before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=230292>

If your browser has Java applet support, here you can watch the regex succeed (demonstrating a number is composite) or fail (prime):

49: [http://regex.powertoy.org/?pat=/^1%3F%24|^%2811+%3F%29\1+%24...](http://regex.powertoy.org/?pat=/^1%3F%24|^%2811+%3F%29\\1+%24/&syn=perlSyntax&anim=1&rep=&in=1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111)

47: [http://regex.powertoy.org/?pat=/^1%3F%24|^%2811+%3F%29\1+%24...](http://regex.powertoy.org/?pat=/^1%3F%24|^%2811+%3F%29\\1+%24/&syn=perlSyntax&anim=1&rep=&in=11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's a pretty old trick. I recall someone showing it off on #perl in about 1997.

<comment><USER8> Search for "Prime" on this insanely fun page, to see where it came from:

<http://www.cpan.org/misc/japh>

(Hmm... I'll use that as a fortune file. Just need to remove extra '%', if fortune barfs on them. Ah, haven't had fortune in my login since the 90s.)

<comment><USER7> Abigail! Bingo, that's who I recall posting it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google One – Expanded storage, access to experts and more - <AUTHOR> https://one.google.com/faq/plans-pricing <comment><USER2> Huh?

Are these the same "Google Experts" who make "$45.371.16" posting links on Google?

But seriously, what is it about big companies that entitles them to make landing pages that don't explain what it is they are selling at all?

"Google One offers a range of plans, so you can find one that works for you."

</comment><comment><USER3> What about customer service? Or is this another google tech archipelago?</comment>


The Bubble Question - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2014/03/the-bubble-question/ <comment><USER2> > It's hard to sustain a bubble for four years.

Says who? As Wilson observes, "Since the financial crisis of 2008, policy makers in the developed world have kept interest rates at or near zero. They have flooded the market with cheap money in an attempt to heal the wounds (losses) of the financial crisis and incent business owners to invest and grow their businesses." It's kind of amazing that he doesn't see how years of unprecedented coordinated central bank action could drive and sustain bubbles.

> It's been a good time to be in the VC and startup business and I think it > will continue to be as long as the global economy is weak and rates are low.

As an investor, there is no doubt that DFTF and BTFD has been very profitable, but the implication that a weak global economy and low interest rates is essentially responsible for sustaining the good times should be disturbing to anyone with exposure to the venture capital asset class given what it is supposed to represent.

Incidentally, I think it's somewhat amusing that VCs are asked the "Are we in a bubble question?" in the first place. When you ask market participants who can only play the market in one direction using a single asset class, you tend to get the least insightful answers in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, he didn't answer the question with a no. He described a situation that, to some readers, may be a yes. "It's hard to sustain a bubble for four years, but here we are," in essence. He explains that the demand for stock in certain companies is artificially high, driving up valuations by a multiple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, this chart focuses on tech but Robert Schiller also thinks the overall market is bubbly. I'm amazed that interest rates could have been held down so long and this is the real danger: how the heck can they ever normalize? If they do it will wreck havoc so the fed is trapped between the proverbial rock & hard thingy. Lo interest also hurts older people who rely on savings (But theyre not going to be here long anyhow...but Peter Schiff argues savings is the only real form of investment )

Bottom line is interest rates can only be held low because alternatives around the world don't exist. I'm also amazed how alot of people think the fed saved the economy & created more wealth : as Jim Rogers says they only know how to print).

Finally, I think the derivatives were around 600bill upto Lehman downfall. I was astonished to find that they're now a quadrillion! Buffet called derivatives financial weapons of mass destruction. I think this world might experience this interesting concept.

[http://www.pinnacledigest.com/blog/dscaroknight/chart- below-...](http://www.pinnacledigest.com/blog/dscaroknight/chart-below- illustrates-massive-tech-bubble-one-astounding-chart-created-sentiment)

<comment><USER5> > _If they do it will wreck havoc_

No they won't. Rates don't magically rise in a vacuum; rising rates coincide with improved economic conditions or rising inflation. Or, most likely, both.

The Fed Board of Governors, unanimously, predicts interest rates of ~4% beyond 2016[0]. They certainly are not infallible, but they have the tools and the mandate to get there. Do you claim the market isn't pricing this in already?

> _Lo interest also hurts older people who rely on savings_

If anyone is to blame for the financial wrongdoings and shenanigans of the past 20 years, it's these same old people. I'm not terribly sympathetic. Besides, no one has ever said you're entitled to a magic return on your cash for glorified mattress-stuffing (savings account). This is a capitalist society, put your capital to work.

> _I was astonished to find that they 're now a quadrillion!_

Notional value.

[0][http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcprojt...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcprojtabl20140319.pdf)

<comment><USER4> When the fed raised rates the last time ,stepwise & slowly it didn't work as planned and I think they're going tohave a helluva time normalizing. 2)Keeping savings is putting money to work . (sure I'd rather be a VC) I just believe Peter schiff on this.

That notional value didn't help AIG. The pt. Is that nothings changed in the financial system. 1 quad means things are riskier than ever.

<comment><USER5> > _When the fed raised rates the last time ,stepwise & slowly it didn't work > as planned_

You mean how when they raised rates in part to prick the housing bubble? How did it not work "as planned"? When the economy heats up and inflation is a risk, rates will rise. This is the business cycle.

> _I just believe Peter schiff on this._

Being as how he's been wrong on just about every public prediction he's made, and his hedge fund gets crushed both _during_ the crisis (which he "predicted") and since, I think you'd do better to expand the borders of your economic prognosticators.

<comment><USER4> Well my 1st expansion was looking at the bandwagon of ( Rogers, faber, schiff,...) I was about to invest at the peak of dot com but reading them kept me out Didn't buy during house bubble- I was wary of what this group was saying - but I couldn't convince my condo flipping acquaintances - my chicken little perception faded a bit. I do notice that it's very hard for analysts to be flexible , thus titles like perma bear/bull...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One interesting thing about the high valuations of tech startups now is where the money is coming from. It's not stock markets.

At or near the bottom (or is it top?) of this "bubble" funnel a lot of high valuation investments from "private" money acquisitions & other supposedly smart money, like the recent AirBnB investment. Were $10bn valuations possible without public markets before recently? Does that make us daffier if this _is_ a bubble? IE, is this proper risk capital that is less fragile and sensitive to death spirals?

Facebook has been aggressively scaling up (in my opinion successfully) their ad business since the IPO. Facebook has/had 2 big make-or-break risks: (1) losing popularity/users (2) failing to turn users/visits into into ad revenue. There was also some risk that in trying to fix #2, #1 would break.

Risk, reward, uncertainty. Nothing unusual here. Risk #1 is constant ambient risk. Risk #2 is/was more of a "what's under that rock" risk. The rock is being turned as we speak and so far the news has been good. FB value has roughly doubled in the last 9 months and IMO, that's the product of "information" about the viability of facebook as an advertising platform.

Here is the subtle point.^ They could have turned that rock just as eerily before IPO. They could have worked on the ad platform sooner or they could have delayed the IPO. I think that move was deliberate. Facebook chose to make that unavoidable, but timeable risky step after the IPO.

As an analogy, imagine a widget company. They get investment design & manufacture a warehouse full of widgets. Then they pause, take some more investment, don't spend it and go public before finding out if their widgets sell.

What role does this pre-IPO money play? FB didn't seem to need it to operate.

^I'm not sure about this. It's a speculation and I don't know or understand enough to be confident at all about it.

<comment><USER7> One of the later episodes of the a16z podcast featured Marc Andreessen and Benedict Evans. They were discussing technology valuations and made some good points. Though I disagreed with their "no bubble" consensus, they were right in mentioning the classic "Russian oil money" and "new players" argument. Previously, most tech investing was done by U.S. venture capitalists. (One of the reasons why non-U.S. start-ups find it hard to fund themselves.)

However with multi-billion dollar technology floats like Facebook taking place - many, many people are taking notice and bringing lots of money with them. This, obviously, increases demand which in-turn increases prices. That's all. If, or indeed when, the bubble pops and people realise that these businesses aren't worth the price paid, I suspect it won't lead to the type of crisis that occurred in 00/08 - just lots of rich people with less money.

<comment><USER8> "just lots of rich people with less money."

My original take on the "bubble" was somewhat in line with this. However, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to believe that this will "trickle down" in many ways. Fewer investments will lead to fewer jobs. In SV, this could lead to a cooling down (or worse) of the labor market. The established players (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc) will probably pull through alright, but the VC money will thin out. If I was a software engineer and I wanted to hedge my bets, I would probably try get a job at one of the bigger, more stable companies in the next year. If things do cool down, I imagine that programmer jobs and salaries will be the most noticeable side effect.

Of course I could be entirely wrong. It's possible that VC money makes up only a small fraction of the demand for software engineers. After all, almost every industry under the sun is shifting towards (or wants to shift towards) higher levels of automation and efficiency using computers and software.

<comment><USER7> You're absolutely right that "trickle down" occurs. Basic logic suggests that if lots of businesses have lots of funding, and that funding dries up, there will inevitably be job losses because they have to be funded from somewhere.

However, I wouldn't worry too much because technology is clearly the future and the need for technology professionals will continue to grow. These stupidly high valuations are for, I hope, decent businesses. By that virtue, they will get the funding they need - just not the scale that we have seen. Hence, I used "just lots of rich people will less money" because the people set to lose out are the huge investment vehicles who seem to be huddled around the Valley at present. The highly skilled engineers needn't worry because the likes of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Andreessen aren't going anywhere, and the average Joe Bloggs needn't worry because their pensions aren't at risk. The people who should worry are those who watched the Facebook float and said, "Shit, I need some of that action!"

As always, it's the stupid that lose out. Fortunately, the stupid ones aren't providing our mortgages or issuing our credit cards this time. (Namely, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America, et al.)

But, hey - I'm just a 24 year old CS grad come IT consultant, what do I know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I generally agree with fred that monetary policy is driving valuations. However, I think it's not quite as simple as he describes (although he may be intentionally simplifying for his audience).

It's true that financial assets compete with each other for investors. So when the Fed reduces the yield on Treasurys or MBS, the marginal investor will rotate to a riskier asset. This will create a chain reaction that eventually raises equity prices. However, it's not the case that earnings yield (Earnings/price or the inverse of P/E) is going to be equivalent to the interest rate on Treasurys (T-bills). Typically the way that investors think about it is earnings yield = Treasury rate + equity risk premium. So at an equity risk premium of 5%, even a Treasury rate of 0% would result in an earnings yield of 5% or P/E of 20, not infinity. This isn't too far from the market multiple of the S&P 500 right now. (The historical average ERP over the past century has been 4.2%.) So the market multiple implies that the overall market is not in a bubble, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility that some sectors are in a bubble.

The Fed's influence on the market goes beyond their impact on interest rates. One reason for the sharp rise in markets is that investors are fearful of inflation. Although CPI inflation has remained low, investors would rather hold scarce assets such as equities and real estate than a rapidly diminishing percentage of the money supply (i.e., cash) that results from money "printing". While money creation is nothing new, and in a sense, unconventional money creation is not that different than conventional easing, the sheer scale of our current monetary policy is unprecedented. This lack of precedent creates a high degree of uncertainty in the ultimate outcome.

The final reason for the strength of the markets is a widespread belief that the "Fed put" is back. It is almost universally believed that the Fed has taken on a third, unstated mandate of stable and rising equity markets, by easing and talking the market up when it declines. I don't know to what extent this is true, but the mere notion has created a hidden source of instability in the market by giving investors unusual confidence. While there is no reason to believe that markets will crash, it's also not out of the question.

The Fed has announced that it will "taper" QE purchases from $75 billion / month to $55 billion / month. At the current rate of taper, QE purchases could reach zero by the end of the year. One key question for investors is whether this may reverse any of the three dynamics listed above.

<comment><USER5> > _investors would rather hold scarce assets such as equities and real estate > than a rapidly diminishing percentage of the money supply (i.e., cash)_

Do you have any data to back this up? It is my understanding that the demand- for and holding-of cash (specifically the USD) reached epic proportions in 2008 (as happens during financial crises, hence the need to print) and remains very high.

<comment><USER10> At the same time as this tech boom, S&P 500 companies are (I'm told) busy borrowing fistfuls of money in order to pass it on to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. That seems to suggest that investors are happy to have cash right now; it also puts the complaints about excess or wastefulness against the current SV boom into some perspective ...

<comment><USER11> Isn't that borrowing more because of US tax policy causing vast amounts of money to just sit there in foreign bank accounts for those SV companies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty spot on. We in the SFBA don't think about rates much but in a past life it was all I did. The moment the markets price in a long term expectation of rates rising, a lot of the current behavior we are seeing (eye popping salaries/valuations/home prices/rents) will correct themselves. It won't mean the businesses are bad - just that they're priced less richly. Until then, they are making hay while the sun shines and they're probably wise to do so.

<comment><USER13> Aren't a lot of those levels "sticky"? I could certainly see _rate of increase_ going to zero very quickly, but actual decreases in salaries, leveraged assets like homes, etc. are a much bigger step.

<comment><USER14> I agree it's unusual that an employer will cut someone's salary - but there's another way to decrease average salaries.

If the cost of money rises, companies that are only viable while the cost of money is low go out of business, and their employees' salaries drop to zero.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely spot on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the most honest article that I've seen from a mainstream financial figure about why valuations are so high.

ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) means that money is near worthless to financial institutions that can run the carry trade on Treasuries, or other carry trades involving foreign exchange. VCs manage money for those guys, along with pensions and other enormous concentrations of capital.

What you want are equity stakes (control) of productive assets. The cash that you use for that is not that useful except to normal suckers like you and I who need to hand over a bunch of paper tickets every month to the landlord, the grocer, and the government. The guys who issue the tickets are generally above those concerns, but they still need to get a return on their capital.

I would rather own stock than a pile of green tickets. Stock is, again, just another kind of ticket, but they're more expensive tickets that grant you rights to a productive asset. It is a safe bet to dump your green tickets into speculation because, while the speculation may work out, you know for a fact that those tickets are going to depreciate.

You will not see interest rates go up if the Fed can help it, because to do so would provoke an immediate fiscal crisis. Bubbles result from rational allocations of funds based on a certain set of assumptions. It is a good assumption that the US government will not permit rates to rise as long as there is zero public appetite for a major reduction in government spending. Once that reality changes, the structures that rely upon that environmental state will either need to adapt or will fail.

Startup-land is a greenhouse arrangement that thrives so long as the temperature remains high. When the guy who owns the greenhouse cuts the power, most of those plants are gonna die. If you want to be resilient to that risk, you must leave the hothouse. However, the hothouse plants have a lot more access to capital in the near term, so it is rough to compete with them directly. That is the trouble with bubbles: you can't really escape their effects by being 'prudent,' because low interest rates make prudence imprudent.

In order to raise rates, the US would probably have to either confiscate a lot of assets (which would harm its international status as the cleanest dirty shirt), raise taxes, raise retirement ages, implement means testing on medicare + social security, and cut military pensions/VA expenses. There is no real solution that does not involve provoking some sort of major crisis, so it is much easier for everyone to keep the carnival going as long as possible until something snaps internationally. The federal government can't afford even a slight rise in rates without having an immediate cash flow crisis.

<comment><USER16> Can you offer a good book on that coherently explains US federal monetary policy? You have a good handle on what's going on. I still don't quite understand it.

<comment><USER4> Paul Volcker shines in secrets of the temple

<comment><USER17> Seconded. _Secrets of the Temple_ by Greider is pretty accessible (if biased, as they all are).

[http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Temple-Federal-Reserve- Country...](http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Temple-Federal-Reserve- Country/dp/0671675567)

Also, the EconTalk podcasts are awesome: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/money/](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/money/)

E.g.

\- David Laidler on Money ([http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_laidler_o.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_laidler_o.html))

\- Sumner on Money, Business Cycles, and Monetary Policy ([http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/03/sumner_on_money_1.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/03/sumner_on_money_1.html))

\- White on Hayek and Money ([http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/02/larry_white_on.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/02/larry_white_on.html))

\- etc.

<comment><USER18> I second the EconTalk podcasts. I've been listening to them for over 5 years. They are hour long interviews on a wide variety of subjects. The host, Russ Roberts, does a great job of letting the guest get his or her point across even when you suspect he disagrees. The tone is polite and non- confrontational. It is more about accurately presenting a position than debating, although there is some point/counter-point.

I cannot exaggerate how much I've learned from EconTalk. Plus, there's even an episode with Paul Graham about ycombinator and startups:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While it is certainly true that valuing a business with an ongoing (and somewhat predictable) revenue stream, the typical yield approach is earnings / purchase price, this is not as applicable in situations where there is either no revenue (such as in the case of Oculus Rift) or little predictable revenue (WhatsApp). What exactly is the yield rate on the Oculus Rift acquisition when earnings are near zero?

Much of the acquisition activity that is driving exits, which is in turn driving VC activity (exits motivate investment), is coming from land grabs in expectation of FUTURE potential significant markets. Facebook grabs OR because it believes that the $2B purchase price now will be far outweighed by the potential for VR in the future, same for WhatsApp.

It would be simplistic to say that valuations that drive acquisition activity comes simply from comparing yield levels.

That being said, where does Facebook get the money to make the acquisitions they do? From the public market. The public market is mostly driven not by individual investors, but by major market movers, which are few in number compared to the "retail" investor market, but significant in influence. And Goldman Sachs and the like might be motivated to keep pushing money into Facebook because the alternatives are weak, given the current low yield environment.

If yields improve, then GS and the other market movers might shift from equities to other asset classes (fixed income, equities, maybe even CDOs again), and then as the money stream starts to taper for folks like Facebook, their acquisition activity will slow, and then valuations will start to decrease, and then Venture Capital activities in those sectors will also dampen, because the exits will be seen as less lucrative.

It would seem to me that exit activity drives valuation more so than current yields, but current yields might impact the money flow that drives those acquisitions.

</comment><comment><USER20> > It's hard to sustain a bubble for four years.

I don't think so. The housing bubble that popped in 2008 lasted a lot longer than 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER21> _It's been a good time to be in the VC and startup business and I think it will continue to be as long as the global economy is weak and rates are low._

The discounting is what's propping up the market. It's a strange phenomenon in that the market is betting that earnings will hold or grow, but the economy will be weak enough to discount future cashflows at a low rate. This is why signs up recovery that suggest tightening cause the market to tank.

<comment><USER22> More on the discount rate here:

[http://www.propertymetrics.com/blog/2013/09/27/npv- discount-...](http://www.propertymetrics.com/blog/2013/09/27/npv-discount- rate/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cheap money (or, low rates with "safe" bond markets) + high growth tech = sky high valuations - got it, Fred.

Just, one more thing... how did he go from the 10% yield ($100M / 10M = 10% yield) to "if interest rates are 5% instead of 10%, then you would pay $200mm for the business ($10mm/$200mm = 5%)." Is he simply interchanging the word "yield" with "interest rates" or actually talking about the central bank?

<comment><USER23> (s/b 10M / 100M = 10%). He is interchanging the terms and he should have written things differently to avoid confusion. It s/b "yield = annual earnings/purchase price", not "interest rates = annual earnings/purchase price". (He does correct himself later in the paragraph.)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >They have flooded the market with cheap money in an attempt to heal the wounds (losses) of the financial crisis and incent business owners to invest and grow their businesses. That has not worked particularly well but it has worked a bit.

I would argue that it hasn't worked at all, given all the bad things that are yet to come from it.

<comment><USER25> "Bad things that are yet to come" aren't a given...

<comment><USER24> Well, yes they are. The can has been kicked down the road. Few things have actually been repaired. Printing and borrowing money only temporarily solves a current problem, and pushes other problems down the track.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The _really_ scary thing is that as rates are moved close to 0, inflation seems to slow down. This is true both in the US (almost 0 rates, low inflation) and in the EU (a bit higher rates, but almost 0 inflation in the last few months). If deflation kicks in, then this flood of free money will evaporate very quickly.

<comment><USER27> The Eurozone is looking at mild deflation, and it will do a lot of damage. Deflation in the US is nearly impossible, because the FED will just purchase assets until the problem of low inflation goes away.

Deflation in the Eurozone will be bad mainly because it will make the personal and public debts of the debtor nations unbearable. Not because "money will evaporate very quickly".

<comment><USER28> Deflation will be bad because nobody will by something today when they think it will be cheaper tomorrow.

<comment><USER24> This is standard excuse trotted out. Of course it is incomplete at best and grossly misleading at worst.

Deflation is the opposite of inflation. One is an increasing value of currency, and the other is a decreasing value of currency.

People deal with deflation every day - both in their own national economies and internationally - when your currency is rising (gaining value) why would you purchase something today when it is going to be worth more tomorrow? The answer is because the value of having the thing today is worth more than having the money tomorrow - which is how we base _all_ our purchasing decisions.

It's true that deflation will have effects that are not good - but mild deflation is no horrific thing. Most people have been told deflation is a scary monster in the same way that they have been told marijuana is a scary drug. There are circumstances and reasons when that is true, but it's not generally true and generally overblown. Both high deflation and high inflation are runinous to an economy, but mild deflation and mild inflation just produce different classes of winners - savers vs creditors.

<comment><USER14> What people actually mean when they say "buy something" is "invest in something".

When an investor chooses whether to invest in something, the question they ask themselves is "will this make more money than the best alternative investment on offer to me?"

When the value of currency is falling, it becomes relatively more appealing to invest in things that are not currency. For example, new machines for the local factory - those machines make widgets, and with 2% inflation those widgets are worth 2% more every year.

When the value of currency is rising, it becomes relatively more appealing to invest in things that are currency, like keeping my money in the bank. Glad I'm not one of those suckers who invested in the widget factory, because of the 2% deflation those widgets are worth 2% less every year.

Me, I think our economy would be better off with more invested in manufacturing and less in financial services.

<comment><USER5> > _because of the 2% deflation those widgets are worth 2% less every year._

Also, the value of your loan increases in real terms, as does the labour-share of input costs (because the workers aren't going to give back wage gains in times of deflation). Your return is hampered.

These are some of the problems with deflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This may sound subjective but at least in my opinion when the rate of IPOs starts to rapidly increase and the companies behind those IPOs don't really seem promising, then you begin to worry about a bubble. Back in the 90s it seemed like if your company wasn't going IPO something was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER30> > _It is the combination of these two factors, which are really just one > factor (cheap money /low rates), that is the root cause of the valuation > environment we are in. And the answer to when/if it will end comes down to > when/if the global economy starts growing more rapidly and sucking up the > excess liquidity and policy makers start tightening up the easy money > regime.

> I have no idea when and if that will happen._

Apparently, neither does anyone else, including the Fed itself who's been predicting a rise since 2010 or so: [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/04/forward%20guidance.JPG)

</comment><comment><USER31> This sounds like a perfectly reasonable take on the situation. As a general rule of thumb, expansionary monetary policies benefit smaller companies. Now that the fed will likely start tapering back some, I think we'll start seeing larger companies (Apple, Google, maybe Facebook) having good years.

There's one thing I can guarantee though: we are almost certainly in some kind of bubble. It may not be a tech bubble, but bubbles are just a fact of economic life.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nothing like some well argued logic with supporting numbers and formulas to ease the anxiety. Ahhhhh.

</comment><comment><USER33> "This is not the bubble you're looking for..."

"Move along..."

The VC can have a strong influence on the weak minded.

</comment><comment><USER34> VCs don't understand markets, and market guys don't understand VC. It's foolish for either to opine in the other's territory.</comment>


Show HN: Postcarder - Send a custom postcard to your reps, no stamps required - <AUTHOR> https://www.postcarder.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm launching my winter side project today, Postcarder.

Postcarder makes it easy for you to write your elected representatives in support of liberal causes. By combining a few APIs and an address book for Capitol Hill, my hope is that Postcarder will help more people be heard by their representatives.

If you're curious about Postcarder's story, head on over to the About page: [https://www.postcarder.us/about](https://www.postcarder.us/about)

And I'll be hanging here all day, so don't hesitate to drop me some questions.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and in case you're curious, the tech stack is Django + python-rq running with Kubernetes on Google Container Engine.</comment></comment>


Skype not working again..what's happening? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/an_update_on_todays_downt...](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/an_update_on_todays_downtime.html)

stopped me getting errors connecting, but it would be unusual if all my contacts are really offline

<https://twitter.com/#!/skype> now acknoledges an issue

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://twitter.com/#!/Skype/status/78054500161695745> "A small number of you may have problems signing in to Skype. We're investigating the cause, and hope to have more details to share soon."</comment>


UN ENVOY: Ebola Cases Doubling Every 3-4 Weeks - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_EBOLA_UN

<comment><USER2> I've been watching the numbers ever since the first reports started coming out. The doubling time has been remarkably constant at about 3 weeks (about the same as the maximum incubation period). In other words, there has been little to no effect on the doubling time by all those policies and procedures we have used to combat Ebola so far.</comment>


How much energy would the Death Star require to destroy Earth? - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5876473/how-much-energy-would-the-death-star-require-to-destroy-earth <comment><USER2> This has been done better elsewhere:

<http://qntm.org/destroy></comment>


With no trademark, Sriracha name is showing up everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sriracha-trademark-20150211-story.html#page=1 <comment><USER2> The "real deal" is TUONG OT SRIRACHA made by Huy Fong foods.

I have been a bit of a chili pepper, hot spice and hot sauce afficionado for a few decades. I grow many kinds of chilis in my garden and do lots of different things with them.

I remember seeing the Huy Fong Sriracha in a store about 10 years ago and thinking that it was unusually inexpensive given the s8ze of the bottle. Upon first use, I was surprised... almost floored. I remember thinking that this is the best chili sauce I have ever tasted.

I brought it to work, to family gatherings and gave away countless bottles. It seems like most people that like a hot spice tend to like the sauce.

I am of the opinion that lots of people know the Huy Fong botle, brand and taste. I liken it to Grey Poupon, one of the best mustards money can buy--ok Stadium Mustard is better IMO, but GP is still A+ material.

I have a feeling that Huy Fong has little to worry about. I have tried several competetors (one was3x the price) and they are all inferior.

<comment><USER3> I have to agree. It's a real disappointment to ask for "Sriracha Sauce" while travelling outside of North America, having the host say "yes, we have that", and then getting some watered down lukewarm sauce. (edit: to add to the comment below, this experience was at a seemingly authentic(ish) Thai restaurant in France with pictures of the king everywhere).

Huy Fong ought to brand their products like Pfizer is. (Though Pfizer is trying to sell brand over generics, which is ridiculous when it comes to medications).

<comment><USER4> > Though Pfizer is trying to sell brand over generics, which is ridiculous > when it comes to medications

I'm pretty sure Pfizer is thinking "Tylenol does it. Why can't Viagra?"

<comment><USER3> Tylenol (J&J) has the advantage of being able to create 3 dozen products with the same ingredients and get a piece of shelf space every time because inevitably someone is going to come in and ask for "the red Tylenol for back pain caplets".

I wonder how many different kinds of sildenafil citrate we can get up to: "For night time sex", "For day time sex", "lay back and relax sex", etc, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We spend enormous time protecting the word 'Tabasco' so that we don't have exactly this problem," Simmons said. "Why Mr. Tran did not do that, I don't know."

I think you just answered your own question, Mr. Simmons. Mr. Tran enjoys making delicious hot sauce, not spending his precious time running around suing people.

<comment><USER6> "Tran also said he was discouraged to seek a trademark because it would have been difficult getting one named after a real-life location...Unlike the name, Tran trademarked his rooster logo and distinctive bottle."

<comment><USER7> Tabasco is a state in Mexico, though; how were its trademark owners able to obtain the name?

<comment><USER8> Legally, it's due to context of use.

eg Microsoft doesn't own my ability to use the word windows as it pertains to the physical objects I look out of my house through. I can start a window company, and use the word windows accordingly. We have the clearest, best windows, of any window manufacturer.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for explaining that to me. To add to the confusion, tabasco is also a pepper cultivar named after the Mexican state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...the original spicy, sweet concoction — which was inspired by flavors from across Southeast Asia and named after a coastal city in Thailand."

No. His sauce is based on Thai Sriracha sauce (which is probably named after the Sriracha district in Thailand [1]). Trademarking the name would roughly be the equivalent of taking mustard to Thailand and trademarking "Mustard".

[1] [http://shesimmers.com/2010/03/homemade-sriracha-how-to- make-...](http://shesimmers.com/2010/03/homemade-sriracha-how-to-make- authentic.html)

<comment><USER10> Gosh, that'd be like trademarking a name based on a region of Mexico[1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabasco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabasco)

<comment><USER9> You missed the point. It's not that it's named after a location, it's that the name was already (in Thailand) a generic term for a sauce based on chili peppers and garlic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _He says it 's free advertising for a company that's never had a marketing budget. It's unclear whether he's losing out: Sales of the original Sriracha have grown from $60 million to $80 million in the last two years alone.

Tran is so proud of the condiment's popularity that he maintains a daily ritual of searching the Internet for the latest Sriracha spinoff._

I like this man.

</comment><comment><USER12> _> Unlike the name, Tran trademarked his rooster logo and distinctive bottle._

yes, the cock. this is the one that matters. create a market (well, sub- market, really) _from scratch_ , give away the name, and trademark the symbol that identifies your products as the original.

don't believe the aw shucks act for a minute, he's a killer businessman!

i went to school with some kids from his neighborhood - he runs in the same circles as the guy who started panda express.

<comment><USER13> Isn't it that older thai and asian brands are mostly image/icon (shark, dragon fly, squid ...) based anyway, since the adult illiteracy rate in the 1970s was still somewhere above 20% [1]. And that of older house wives, the assumed main target group of cooking ingredients was probably even higher. So it made little sense to go for a name only brand.

[1] [http://www.h.chiba-u.ac.jp/mkt/Philippines.pdf](http://www.h.chiba-u.ac.jp/mkt/Philippines.pdf)

[http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/brands.html](http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/brands.html)

<comment><USER12> i have no idea what the hell you're talking about. huy fong foods is an american brand, based in california, sold to a US market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would be completely blind to other hot sauces in this category, which is not really true of almost any other kind of hot sauce or product I can think of. I didn't even realize there were other people making "Sriracha" sauce.

I have some loyalty to Zaaschila salsa for my breakfast tacos, but nothing like my level of loyalty to Sriracha. I'd buy Cholula or some kind of habenero salsa or something, if the store didn't have Zaaschila. But, I would buy nothing to replace it if they didn't have Huy Fong chili sauces (I like their chili garlic sauce even more than the standard chili sauce for cooking).

This is a pretty interesting experiment in trademark choices. I'll be interested to see how it plays out. Certainly Sriracha growth has been spectacular, and they do have a trademark on the distinctive bottle and rooster (and many people call it "rooster sauce" or "cock sauce"), which is what I'm looking for when I walk down the grocery aisle.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is a great approach.

I always buy Huy Fong's one (and it is always available in most of the supermarkets where I live) anyway. The knockoffs just don't taste the same.

<comment><USER16> Accept no substitute for the rooster.

Same with Chili Garlic..

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> FWIW (anecdotal evidence to follow)- I've purchased other varieties of Sriracha sauce that were not the original Sriracha brand and they did not taste the same and they did not taste as good.

As long as the recipe is protected, Sriracha is largely untouchable. Folks will likely try other brands and then switch back when they're not satisfied. That and the fact that Sriracha isn't expensive make it tough competition for those trying to ride Huy Fong Foods' coattails.

Like others here, I'll compromise on Coke vs. Pepsi or Valentina/Cholula/Tabasco/etc. but I have not and will not compromise on the OG Sriracha.

<comment><USER13> The notion of Huy Fong Rooster being the original is also quite a stretch (that title woud arguably go to _Sriraja Panich_ ). It's just the brand of siracha that happens to be big in the US, other styles are different and most of the non-US ones are not even intendend to be copies of the Huy Fong variety. They have their own distinct tastes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does he not have legal grounds to sue for trademark infringement if he so desired? Just because it's not a registered trademark doesn't mean it's not a trademark. It's not like it's called "Hot Sauce (TM)" or something.

My mom regularly mistakes a nasty Texas Pete knockoff labeled Sriracha for the famous stuff.

<comment><USER19> Probably, but at this point he is at the Kleenex, Xerox, Google stage of brand name. He would do more harm then good if he pursued it.

<comment><USER20> The Google trademark lawyers would roll over in their crypt if they read your comment :).

<comment><USER18> Maybe if they saw blatant, copycat visuals (ehem, Bing), but not name-wise: I've never seen someone try to start a search engine called something like "The Better Google"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sriracha is one of the few generics that Trader Joes is terrible at.

<comment><USER22> I second that. It's weak.

<comment><USER2> Thirded. How could their tasters and product manager let it out of development and testing. Hmm... a software analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If he had spent his time vigorously defending the word Sriracha instead of making tasty sauce would there even be a Sriracha craze or would he have labored in obsucrity producing for a tiny lawyer-guarded market segment?

Sometimes you have to choose whether to be the captain of a dinghy or a deckhand on a battleship.

<comment><USER3> I guess the answer is that there's room for both. Just as some seek out mass- produced pop music, there's also a large segment of the population that seeks out the exact opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> this is all good and the guy has a commendable mindset, but really it's a bit naive no? Eventually this will hurt him. Because there will be so many alternatives, of same quality or not, that someone will ask him why they should buy his and he'll say it's the "Original". But without putting that on the bottle and a little TM business, he wont' have much to go on. Seeing the existence of Sriracha Heinz this week makes me think they will overpower him slowly and quietly.

Of course, if he's 70, maybe he'll be fine drifting into oblivion on his pile of money hehe

</comment><comment><USER25> isn't there a common-law trademark (from usage rather than filing) -

[http://www.google.hu/search?q=common- law+trademark](http://www.google.hu/search?q=common-law+trademark)

<comment><USER26> That's what I find strange about the article. They seem to imply that it is too late because he never filed for a trademark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No mention of the fact that Tran's sauce is an americanized knockoff (made with jalapeno peppers) of legitimate Sriracha sauce from Sri Racha, Thailand.

<comment><USER28> You can't "knock off" a cuisine concept, only a specific product.

Also, I'm kind of sick of the notion that any recipe invented in America must automatically be inferior to its foreign predecessor. It's ridiculous to care more about how "authentic" food is than about how it actually tastes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> there's still a registered trademark for the logo, which includes the word "SRIRACHA" in it.

[http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74021095&caseType=SERIAL_N...](http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74021095&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch)

</comment><comment><USER30> I find sriracha to be "meh." Cholula all day, all long

</comment><comment><USER31> I've grown tired of this obsession with Sriracha. Comments, articles, shirts, holloween costumes, overheard comments from people in restaurants, ...

<comment><USER32> that would be the definition of a 'fad' it's not the first, and it won't be the last

<comment><USER31> Yeah, but this has taken on some other unexplained level of weirdness.

<comment><USER33> How so? Fads generally involve some lowest common denominator form of a thing lots of people enjoy. Once the novelty wears off, reinventions (candied bacon, anyone?) become part of the fad's empire until it fizzles or reaches a background-level steady state.</comment></comment></comment></comment>