Apple Wins Patent Ruling As Jury Finds Samsung Infringes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/apple-wins-patent-ruling-as-jury-finds-samsung-infringes/ <comment><USER2> This is both unsurprising and somewhat meaningless as there will be an appeals process that will last for months and possibly years.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that Samsung made their products to look like Apple products. They changed their icon styles and other UI elements away from Android standards to match the Apple style.

Some of the things Apple invented and patented on like pinch to zoom and so on Samsung used or copied via Android and or their own UI skin on top of Android.

You just have to look at Windows Phone 7 or Windows 8 or Web OS or Blackberry to realize that you don't have to copy Apple to make a good or great smartphone. Samsung is much closer with the Galaxy S3, too bad they are still cranking out iPad clones with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the like.

<comment><USER3> Apple has done a good job of persuading people that this case was about protecting innovation and about Samsung's specific alleged infringements of their patents. But this is nothing more than a smoke screen for their ongoing proxy war on Android.

They've refused to compete with Android on price, features, and form factors and the market has punished them for it. Expect more attacks on Android seeking ridiculous damages for non-essential details of mobile UI design.

However, I strongly suspect Apple is going to regret these tactics in the long run. Once the tiger is out of the cage there's no telling who he will bite.

<comment><USER4> Apart from the specifics of this or any other court case involving Apple attacking Samsung, I find the desire to defend Samsung odd. Obviously they copied Apple as much as they felt they could get away with. They did this because it was a very conservative way to make a lot of money.

This isn't an admirable strategy. It's annoying. It's precisely the strategy that major movie studios use to give us one boring, risk-free "blockbuster" after another. The other day I read a history of the making of White Men Can't Jump:

[http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8266665/an-oral- history-...](http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8266665/an-oral-history-ron- shelton-basketball-comedy-white-men-jump)

The head of Fox at the time, Joe Roth, mentions, "That movie wouldn't get made today. Us moviemaking guys, the studios, have less courage to make a movie like that today with the kind of racial, sexual overtones." It's sad. I would appreciate a big budget movie studio that did not consistently churn out the safest derivative crap they can.

I do appreciate that there's one consumer electronics company that attempts and succeeds at novel, high risk products. Of course, there's a good chance that risk taking spark died recently, but I have appreciated its presence until now.

Maybe patents are bad, but I don't think is a case where that stance holds much emotional appeal other than to those who like to see Apple lose. Most people think Samsung clearly did something shady here and deserves to be punished.

<comment><USER3> I don't have any particular loyalty to Samsung but these cases set a chilling precedent for the platform that looks likely to dominate the computing industry for at least the next decade. There's much more at stake here than a few billion dollars and a few icons and scrolling techniques.

If this continues we're going to spend the next decade tiptoeing around every trivial implementation detail of mobile UI instead of boldly exploring new ideas. Apple's successful use of the broken patent system sends exactly the wrong signal.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, its going to set innovating in the mobile space back even farther. While Apple outlines every decision meticulously for planned obsolescence, Google and others take a more throw something out there, see if it works and run with it approach. With both strongly competing it pushes the entire industry forward faster.

<comment><USER6> It's easy to argue that they aren't competing. Apple innovates in their sphere of innovation, their competitors copy them and produce cheap knock-offs attempting to cash in Apple's R&D.

It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other companies just copy them and try to win on price.

It would be competition if Google tried to out-do Apple, but they don't.

Samsung doesn't compete with Apple either. They are more similar to counterfeiters who sell black-market Oakley, Nike, and Prada stuff in alleyways.

Competition would be if Samsung improves on Apple's designs to create something superior.

<comment><USER7> > Samsung doesn't compete with Apple either. They are more similar to > counterfeiters who sell black-market Oakley, Nike, and Prada stuff in > alleyways.

My goodness. Samsung designs may imitate Apple's to some debatable extent, but they're not labeling their products with an Apple logo. The way I see it, TV makers imitate each others' designs and features all the time, and so do car makers and fridge makers.

> It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other > companies just copy them and try to win on price.

Your generalisation is extreme. Surely Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, etc. do innovate (with reference to their legacy in the wider field of electronics)?

And they are _certainly_ competing. The very definition of competition is to sell a product that is a _close substitute_ for another. Your assertion seems to make innovation the only thing that matters for competition, which it isn't.

Society would be better off generally if competition (of all forms) increased in more markets.

<comment><USER8> > > It's not competition when one company does ALL the innovation and other > companies just copy them and try to win on price.

Zipcar. I just paid $137.39 for an Audi Q5. Audi can't do that. Price is usually the result of innovation, the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise we'd wouldn't be driving cars or, hopefully soon, flying into space. If anyone offers an iPhone 5 cheaper than Apple I'm sold! Better yet, make a phone better than the iPhone AND sell it cheaper!

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between charging a lower price because you have innovated, and charging a lower price because someone else paid for your R&D.

Samsung is able to charge less money because they didn't have to pay for R&D, market testing, etc. They just copied a successful product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was shocked to learn this case is basically being decided by people who have no idea what they are really deciding on.

Here is the jury according to techcrunch

1\. An electrical engineer 2\. A homemaker 3\. A construction worker 4\. A young unemployed man who likes video games 5\. An insurance agent 6\. An ex- Navy avionics technician 7\. A store operations manager for a cycling retailer 8\. A project manager for wireless carrier AT&T 9\. A benefits and payroll manager who works with startups

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/21/apple-samsung/>

Only in America?? And how many of those people are biased because they just love Steve Jobs and Apple products. I know for sure, my mom loves her Mac and she wouldn't think twice who is right and who is wrong in this case.

<comment><USER10> You seem to vastly underestimate the intelligence of the average person, and you fail to realize how serious people take jury duty once they have been picked.

It is important to realize that a jury trial is a seminar for the jury. It is given by two opposing sides to a disinterested party tasked to make a decision. If either side fails to inform the jury of the enormity or ramifications of their decision, it is the fault of that side.

<comment><USER11> And how serious the lawyers are with jury selection. Each side does a lot of scrutiny to get a sense of biases and ability to grasp the subject.

It's easy to complain about the verdict, but taking pot-shots at the jury is so cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good result.

Samsung copies for a living like many companies. Much of the copying is legal. Sometimes they push it too far. One smoking gun in this case was the Google told Samsung to change their designs. They didn't. They reaped the benefits in terms of higher sales and now they can reap the bad side of that too.

On net it has still been profitable from Samsung. Samsung lost but it hasn't been shut down or anything. In fact Apple is paying Nokia much more then Samsung will end up paying Apple. People crying that the sky is falling have missed this reality.

No damages for the overbroad ipad design patent. This seems like a good result as much of the complaining seemed to be about the "rectangle patent" people thought Apple had. I think the EU Registered Design for the iPad is much more specific and more in line with what people think of as trade dress. Samsung didn't really make any money in the tablet arena anyway.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the mindset of companies in the eastern hemisphere. I feel like the majority of companies in china / korea thrive by copying other successful company products to survive. It's more blatant in china, but it still happens in korea / japan. I feel like there must be some underlying cultural thing that promotes this kind of behavior -- nobody feels like they're doing the wrong thing.

<comment><USER12> People that pirate Gucci bags or Rolex watches know there's a law against it but there's lot of rules we take for granted. People that buy the stuff know too.

Do we stop watching a YT clip that we know is actual copyright infringement? I'll venture that most of us don't. I suppose most of us rationalize our behavior by saying the laws are excessive. I imagine the people who buy and sell pirate goods do something similar.

While copying electronics is more common in Asia it's not like Japan or China or Korea don't innovate or that the West isn't similarly full of copycats (look at the Samwer brothers or the generic products in your supermarket).

And that also misses the point that Samsung and other copyists do a lot of good for consumers by copying innovations, pushing prices down. In some industries the people that actually innovate do need some protections so that they can keep making those investments. Much like in actual piracy there's a risk reward element to copying as a business model and I'm sure that's all part of the calculus that Samsung does with their products. Like the factory that breaks environmental or labor laws -- they pay up sometimes but in the end they do it because they still come out ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If Lucy Koh is so intent on protecting the singularity of one corporate interest over what is so obviously good for the general public, she should _not_ be a Federal District Judge. She should still be in private practice.

We need Federal District Judges who are willing to work for the good of consumers, which involves protecting a market where competition can thrive.

Consumers benefit when there is more than one separate branch iterating outward and improving something very basic. A lightweight touchscreen rectangle is about as basic as it gets.

If Apple was a tire company, Lucy Koh just gave it the unearned "right" to patent every kind of tire tread imaginable.

[EDIT] -- Yes, I realize the decision was made by a jury. Firstly: The original case presented to her was a puff of smoke which should never have gone to trial in the first place. Secondly: Fast-tracking this case helped Apple (which had pre-prepared its mountain of baloney paperwork) and very much hurt Samsung (which understandably probably didn't have enough time to scramble and dispute every instance of baloney in the mountain of paperwork). Thirdly: Koh diallowed a key testimony: [http://www.droiddog.com/android- blog/2012/08/judge-lucy-koh-...](http://www.droiddog.com/android- blog/2012/08/judge-lucy-koh-bans-key-samsung-designer-from-testifying-in- apple-vs-samsung-case/) which would have helped the jury make a more informed decision.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that this is the judges fault. The law (at least to some degree) dictates the decision. If that decision is not good for the general public, then it is the law that needs change. (And we all agree that it does.)

<comment><USER5> she did make many decisions through out the trial as to what was admissible and not admissible , so she did effect the outcome.

<comment><USER16> By that argument, Samsung's lawyers are more at fault by not following the predefined rules for submitting evidence. In this case, the judge setup the rules, and it was up to the parties to play by them.

<comment><USER5> its hard to follow the rules when the judge defines them as they go along. If you followed it, sometimes decisions are left ad hoc up to the judge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The big winner, apart from Apple, is Microsoft. If you're a hardware manufacturer, your choices are

1\. You go with Android and have both Apple and Microsoft come after you.

2\. You go with Windows Phone.

I suspect the Windows Phone team is breaking open some champagne now.

<comment><USER18> No, you can also make an Android phone. You just need to avoid infringing these specific patents either by removing functionality or implementing it in another way.

This lawsuit did not find that "Android" helplessly infringes Apple patents in all cases. Just that the combination of Android, Samsung's software modifications to Android, and Samsung hardware, together infringed several very specific Apple patents.

<comment><USER19> I haven't been following this closely, but if I understand correctly, the jury found against Samsung on the Nexus S. That is a Google phone built straight from Android and with no specific Samsung code at the UI level.

(Don't think a disclaimer is necessary in this case, but I used to work at Google. Not on Android.)

<comment><USER20> That is correct. The case is much more nuanced than suggested. This case was Samsung and Google by proxy vs Apple

<comment><USER21> The case was only against the Nexus S 4G - the Sprint version - which hasn't been updated to Android 4.1. The AT&T version was not part of the case. Android 4.1 removed infringing features.

<comment><USER22> I hope that's true, do you have a source? It would be a nice silver lining if this ruling resulted in manufacturers sticking closer to stock Android and moving to the latest versions more quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So lets look at some of the infringing patents that the news articles are quoting...

381 patent: "rubber band" effect where a page "bounces" when a user scrolls to the bottom

I personally had written JS bounce-back product picture slide-shows for a shopping cart in 2003/2004 using the horrible browser APIs of that era...wish I had patented that..1 billion..yum. I am quite certain hundreds of people have coded bounce-back animations before even iPhone 1.0.

915 patent: Pinch to Zoom. Isn't this the natural translation of how one drags handlebars in opposite directions in order to zoom-in ? I am quite certain there would be prior art by a lot of CAD software.

163 patent: "Double tap to enlarge/zoom". _facepalm_. Just about everyone does this on the PC using a mouse. How can one even file a patent for this ?

D '305 patent: "Grid of rounded square icons" -> The joke of the decade. What has every desktop OS being doing since the 90s ???

This is extremely upsetting. Is this what civilization is coming to ? If things continue this way, the working population of the world will be employed as patent lawyers squabbling all the time in courts.

<comment><USER24> You realize there is more to a patent claim than the heading?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From: <http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/>

"No across the board. Not a single [patent] proven invalid by Samsung."

that's big.

edit: "Damages from Apple to Samsung: zero." (edit2: oops, dumb typo)

<comment><USER26> .. pile of poop?

I haven't followed the case closely and leaving aside whether or not Samsung copied from Apple, we just all lost.

Were there not a few prior art arguments and all that? Samsung couldn't invalidate any of those?!

This is depressing.

<comment><USER25> Despite being an AAPL shareholder, I agree 100%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You know those 45% of HN readers that use a Mac?

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4422121>

Time to start voting with your $$ against AAPL. They are part of the problem, not part of the innovation.

<comment><USER28> I try to do this, just because I viscerally dislike Apple specifically and the increasing hegemony of corporations over individuals in general, but it is really hard to stick with because Apple simply makes the best fucking products.

I bought a Galaxy Nexus, and it's a lot better than previous Android phones, but it just sucks too much to rely on so I carry two phones. I bought a Nexus 7, which I actually like more than the current iPad, but that is mostly form- factor thing; a 7-inch iPad would relegate the Nexus 7 to the shelf.

So I can decide to use these slightly shittier devices and 'punish' Apple, but it doesn't feel worthwhile, because in doing so I also have to punish _myself_ , and Apple isn't the actual underlying problem.

In this case, it is the dysfunctional patent system. In another recent case where Apple was the villian, the issue was the diminishment of the rights of individual citizens in favor of protecting the interests of multinational corporations: when Apple actively lobbied to make jailbreaking illegal.

That was a case where the actual underlying system was resolved in favor of the good guys (per my worldview, and that of most HN readers I presume). The law of the land was changed, and the problem was solved/averted.

Fixing the patent system seems like a herculean task, probably much harder than protecting our legal right to crack shitty DRM and usage restrictions on devices we own, but I think it is still the right place to focus. Apple may be the latest Oracle/SCO/AssholeCorp, but as long as the underlying legal system is completely fucked, even if Apple disappeared there would just be another corporation that came along and started doing the same shit.

<comment><USER29> Essentially, the problem is with the government, not Apple. I don't dislike Apple for what they are doing; they are doing what any self-interested company would do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> American patent system is weird. Why is it fair for someone to patent "what" you do, what should be fair to patent is "how" you make this thing viable (e.g. the algorithms used, or something like that)?

As long as you don't use the mechanisms of your competition, you should be allowed to mimic the features present on other competitors' devices.

Considering this, it seems clear that Samsung would lose the dispute anyway.

<comment><USER31> > you should be allowed to mimic the features present on other competitors' > devices.

To play the devil's advocate (as someone who hasn't taken a position on this ruling, but hates software patents in general):

Why? Apple appears to have spent a lot of time and effort on small details. Why does Samsung get to just copy that with far less time and effort invested? With design, the "how" is a crapton of iteration and careful thought. There may or may not be prior art in a lot of these examples (don't know enough to say), but where there isn't, why does Samsung automatically get to copy it for free? If these things are so obvious and trivial, why weren't they doing them before?

<comment><USER30> I agree that Apple should be able to protect what is looks like, not what it works like.

Sure this is a point of view (after all, the american patent system didn't come up out of nowhere). I believe that if you let people to patent things like 2-click buy, finger gestures, and stuff like that, you just close the door for competition. You effectively prohibit people of making things like that, because even though you come up with a completely different mechanism to provide the same interactive interface, you have to pay for an abstract idea.

Maybe Samsung should be able to copy it (the concept) for free because that is what is called competition. In an ideal scenario, to stay ahead in competition you should continuously come up with new and better ideas. If you competitors suck so badly that they must copy you everytime, you'll stay ahead anyway.

<comment><USER32> Copying is competition in the same way that, if you want to attract your friend's girlfriend, you should buy copies of your friend's entire wardrobe and dress like your friend, talk like your friend, and walk like your friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "It works like magic...far more accurate than any interface ever shipped... multi-finger gestures, and boy have we patented it!" Steve Jobs in 2007[1]

1\. <https://twitter.com/tconrad/status/239136435603652609>

</comment><comment><USER34> This isn't right.... This is a terrible day for fair competition.

<comment><USER35> Are you saying that Patents prevent fair competition? Isn't that the point of patents?

<comment><USER36> >Are you saying that Patents prevent fair competition?

Absolutely and unquestionably. I've seem them more used recently to bully and to harass by companies who'd rather litigate than innovate.

<comment><USER37> Well the point of the patent is that you can sue people who infringe on it. Why can't someone do both? Apple clearly has done both here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> No matter how you cut it, this whole trial was a loss for technology.

</comment><comment><USER39> So basically this means that if you are an independent developer and make an app that displays a graph your finger could edit you have to pay Apple for Twenty years!!

So this means that appart from the 30% cut of the Apple store, most of your profits go to Apple or MS who are going to dedicate the money to buy more monopolies(patents).

Or alternatively the US system(where nobody works anymore, you could only survive in finance, marketing, law or politics) collapses from within and some other country take its place.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interestingly, TechCrunch ([http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/hang-on-a-minute- jurors-awa...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/hang-on-a-minute-jurors- awarded-apple-damages-without-finding-infringements/)) reports that some of the damages awarded to Apple were awarded without finding any patent infringements. In other words, the jury's report was quite a bit sloppy (maybe rushed?). Anyway, undoubtedly this will all be appealed, and the case could turn any direction.

A personal question - what is the double tap to zoom patent all about? It hardly seems to me, personally that that should be patentable. Just as there's no way, Google should be able to patent something like 'double-click to zoom' on Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER41> This would have been a great case for Jury Nullification and send a message about software patent laws.

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

<comment><USER42> Yeah, that would have been pretty interesting. I don't know that most of the people on that jury had a strong opinion on the problems with our software patent laws though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What a joke! The jury rushed through this so quickly and uncaringly that there are glaring errors in their verdict. Look at the edit at the bottom of the article:

[http://briefmobile.com/jury-comes-to-verdict-in-apple-vs- sam...](http://briefmobile.com/jury-comes-to-verdict-in-apple-vs- samsung?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+briefmobile+%28BriefMobile%29&utm_content=FaceBook)

<comment><USER6> welcome to the legal system. every verdict is rife with errors, committed by judges, lawyers, juries, police, everyone

<comment><USER44> Is your code bug-free? Pot. Kettle. Black.

<comment><USER6> Of course not. I accept and expect an infallible reality, it is the commenter I responded to who is shocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> That's what you get from having lay people (with no training in either software development, UI design, etc) making decisions like this.

These patents are quite obviously ridiculous.

381 patent: "rubber band" effect 915 patent: Pinch to Zoom 163 patent: "Double tap to enlarge/zoom" D '305 patent: "Grid of rounded square icons"

 _This_ is supposed to be what sets off iPhones from competition?!

W.T.F.? How did we get to this?

I can see Dr. Evil saying "One Biiiillion Dollars".

<comment><USER24> This kind of comment is what you get when you have non-lawyers try to interpret patent litigation...

<comment><USER45> Nice. Maybe you want to read this: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120824175815101>

<comment><USER24> It's just a summary of the jury's verdict. It doesn't discuss the merits of the claims at all.

<comment><USER45> Sigh... Did you read all the way to "Update 3".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> damages: 1.051 billion dollars. WOW.

<http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/>

<comment><USER46> And yet, that's essentially a rounding error on Apple's bank account balance...

<comment><USER25> Totally, but not for Samsung. That's almost 10% of their net profit last year.

This is going to scare the shit out of every Android handset maker out there.

<comment><USER47> Which in my opinion is a good thing. Everyone should think twice before blatantly imitating the result of other people's investments and hard work.

Edit: the downvotes do not surprise me. HN has a very anti-Apple slant.

<comment><USER48> If you think your downvotes are due to an anti-apple bias, you might want to reword your banal dismissal into meaningful critique of the situation. If HN has a bias, it's towards Apple (which is completely understandable given the state of mobile adoption by startups).

<comment><USER47> Banal dismissal? Excuse me? How else would you describe what Samsung did, if not as "imitation"? Their own product engineers recommended shamelessly _copying_ Aplle's design to make Samsung phones look identical.

<comment><USER48> My earlier suggestion upthread explained in 4 words: _more light, less heat_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Today Apple went down in history as the biggest patent-troll of all time, stiffling innovation and competition like nobody has ever done before.

If you are a software-developer you should recognize the fundamental threat which Apple represents to your profession.

Boycott Apple if you want to be able to stay in business in the long term future. Throw away your Macbooks, iPhones and iPads. Ditch your iTunes and iTunes account. Get rid of everything Apple. All of it.

Be vocal about your code of ethical software conduct and how that prohibits involving anything made by Apple into anything you ever do.

</comment><comment><USER50> Double tap to zoom, now, that's real innovation!

<comment><USER51> Apple is now officially "innovating" in the same way Microsoft was "innovating" in the 90s...which is to say almost not at all.

<comment><USER52> Which makes me wonder.. does anyone currently hold or has, at any point in the history of personal computers, held a patent for a double-click of the mouse to activate or execute programs? The double tap to zoom seems very analogous to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Judge rules Samsung owes Apple roughly one 'Instagram' in damages.

<comment><USER54> Which is decimal dust to Apple, less so to Samsung. The real value to Apple here is that Samsung was found to be infringing. That's going to mean a much tougher row for Samsung to hoe, even as the appeal is almost certainly being filed as we speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're a startup and even if you're philosophically opposed to software patents, think about hiring a good IP law firm and filing for your core IP. What these trials and massive licensing deals are showing that patents could make a world of difference to your options as a tech company.

<comment><USER54> I've been kicking around a business idea related to patent licensing for small companies -- acting as a market maker for companies to offer their patents for license for a fixed price and term. I'm no great fan of the way the IP laws work in the US, but I don't perceive much real noise for change from the people who have the ability to do so, so might as well provide a sane service to minimize the chances of some poor dumb bastard getting sued out of her shorts for unknowingly infringing on some dumb-ass software patent. This decision is mostly just ammo for the pro- side of my brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm confused. How can it be that Apple supposedly infringes _none_ of Samsung's patents?

<comment><USER56> I'm not sure if that was decided. The jury decided the patents were exhausted because Apple's suppliers had already been licensed. (Qualcomm I think).

It is the general case that you can't demand two licenses for the same patent in the same product. If the 3G chip has a license then so does the phone it is built into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> If nothing else, the fallout will be interesting to watch. The tablets didn't infringe though. Found that an interesting bit, just the phones.

<comment><USER58> Yeah, although the Samsung tablets did got banned in EU by a German court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I don't give two fucks about TouchWiz specific-stuff (in fact, this might encourage Android OEMs to stick with stock Android), but what impact will this have on stock Android? It would really suck to have to depend on 3rd party ROMs for things like pinch to zoom and tap to zoom because Google was forced to remove it from Android.

</comment><comment><USER60> From now on we should call rotary dial phones the new Apple free smartphones.

</comment><comment><USER61> goodbye innovation

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder if this will actually end up hurting Apple's bottom line in the end. Samsung is one of Apples largest hardware providers and one of the few that can produce screens of sufficient resolution for Apple's retina displays. Wouldn't be surprised if Samsung recoups their loses just by raising their hardware prices.

<comment><USER63> If Samsung tried to raise prices for components, Apple would just buy those components somewhere else, causing Samsung's revenue to tank. Just look at what happened to PortalPlayer.

<comment><USER62> Samsung is the only producer of screens that can meet the quality and quantity requirements of apple. I remember hearing they even had problems keeping up with the demand. I seriously doubt Apple could come up with another supplier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> How does the verdict affect Samsung's ability to sell additional phones in the future?

<comment><USER43> "Import ban and threat of further litigation, what's that???"

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> and the end of Apple begins....

</comment><comment><USER66> Samsung and Apple fandom aside, patenting a smartphone UI is patently absurd.

</comment><comment><USER67> It feels good when the judgments reflect what is a common sense to a reasonable person. Glad the common sense prevailed here. It was obvious that the android devices were copied from iPhones.

<comment><USER68> I think that's what's so frustrating to me as an engineer. Samsung's technology patents were clearly violated, but did not win in court. Why? Perhaps because they aren't common sense. They are complex and intricate. THAT is what patents should be about. Not common sense.

<comment><USER69> This is my understanding of events:

Samsung had a contract with Qualcomm that said they wouldn't sue Qualcomm or, critically, any of its customers over use of the 3G patents. Apple bought chips from Qualcomm.

Samsung wanted ammunition to countersue Apple over its patent claims, so they rescinded the contract with Qualcomm. Apple then approached Samsung offering to pay a fair and reasonable amount for a license. Samsung thought they should pay much more. Apple disagreed and continued to use the chips, which was their sole violation as far as I can tell.

The Dutch ruling basically forced Samsung to accept fair and reasonable licensing fees from Apple, and the US court today said Samsung was infringing on many of Apple's design patents.

If I'm wrong, please correct where I'm wrong, but I don't understand how you are letting Samsung off the hook. Design patents are not necessarily common sense, just as hardware design is not necessarily "complex and intricate" to someone familiar with hardware design.

Patents don't need to be complex and intricate. They simply need to be non- obvious, useful, original, and not on the list of things that aren't patentable (music, literature, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> In the 1990's it was copyright. Now its patent. What next?

All Apple does is whine. Even when they are winning.

Their internal memo/public statement goes so far as to say "it's not about patents and money". Yes, I do believe you Mr. Cook. It's about a bunch of morally inept emotionally underdeveloped overgrown children.

Apple is above "copying". Went they want to cut corners (pun intended) and get to market quickly, they _steal_.

Welcome to the IT industry.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a service for cross-checking genetic match? - <AUTHOR> While reading this article [1] (HN at [2]) I realised that there might be a space for a service (startup?) which would accept genetic material from its users, and then run genetic match searches comparing it to other users. E.g. if both Paul and someone from his actual family (from the article) were users, the service could alert them of the match. Any ideas if something like that already exists?

    [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44242626
    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17354337
 <comment><USER2> 23andMe.com already does that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you saying they're automatically comparing the genetic data of all the members and notify you if they find a match?

<comment><USER2> Yes. I occasionally get notifications of new members whose DNA markers indicate that we may be related. There's even a direct estimation of the degree of relation (second or third cousins mainly, in my case).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, didn't know that!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124705801

<comment><USER2> Freedom to schedule work around life instead of life around work is literally the #1 benefit I'm looking forward to from self-employment. No more showing up for 14 hours just to be seen at the office for the right 14 hours, huzzah.

<comment><USER3> I guess it depends on your exact plan, but I think a lot of people think that and then find out self-employment is more like finding _any_ life because of how much time you have to put into it.

<comment><USER4> Naw, it's all about method. You have to get _fast_ at doing different things, especially "non-billable" things that don't cause revenue.

Many people are just crappy at maintaining self control, so throw hours at problems they don't need to. Little companies doing accrual based account then putting a high value employee on bookeeping, spending too much type discussing (or if it is just 1 guy, too much time thinking about it) what to do rather than doing it, spending too much time on clients who aren't high enough probability to land are three errors I see over and over in small companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I personally use a pretty similar (though less formalized) approach at prgmr.com, more out of laziness and cheapness than anything else. 1. I don't want to pay for an office, and 2. people will work for less money if you let them work whenever. (and you can often get a good deal hiring people who get fired from regular jobs for not showing up on time.)

The thing in my case is that support stuff needs to be answered. Most people are cool waiting 12 hours for non-urgent stuff, so that's fine. Then the monitoring system needs to page, which it doesn't right now, which is a pretty big hole,but one that should be able to be solved automatically.

</comment><comment><USER6> So how do vacations work? Can you still get that week off where no results are expected from you? Or would bosses presume with all this flextime you are already on vacation? "Sure you can go on vacation, just make sure you make those calls and send out the emails"

</comment><comment><USER7> From my personal experience, being self-employed definitely makes you feel more productive. No more wasting time on obviously useless or invented tasks just to justify your presence in the office. Also, being a designer, I don't have to look for a creativity switch anymore that should function from 9 to 5. Sorry, my mom made me really creative and productive from 10pm on.

<comment><USER8> Yea. I'm productive from about 7am (first coffee) to, say, 12pm, and then not until the evening. Working according to your own rhythm makes things so much more fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _So where did this radical work system come from? It was created by two human resource workers who became frustrated that the daily grind wasn't only constraining, it was also inefficient._

Some good points, but I don't really think they invented the non-traditional work system, but this article sure makes it sound that way.

<comment><USER9> They're the first that I heard actually formalize it. It was several years ago. While I'm sure that it's been done for decades (if not longer) you still have to give them credit for recognizing it as a great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This reminds me of a book I've been meaning to read for over 10 years: [http://www.amazon.com/Leveraging-People-Profit-Hard- Manageme...](http://www.amazon.com/Leveraging-People-Profit-Hard- Management/dp/0750699612)

<comment><USER10> Sounds like you'll still be meaning to read it in another 10 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Likely. Too busy working. ;-)

<comment><USER10> That's ok :) My reading wishlist grows a lot faster than I read books, so unless that changes, I'll clearly never be able to read all the books I want to. Just the way things are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to work as a freelance journalist, and did find a couple of downsides to working from home.

1) It's easy to procrastinate, so it's bad if you're not disciplined. 2) Your 'office' is always a few feet away, so it's bad if you're a workaholic.

There is something nice about clocking out, going home, and forgetting about work for a while, instead of sitting at dinner thinking "I've really got to do X."

But if you're disciplined and balanced, yes, it can be great.

<comment><USER12> I am fortunate enough to have an employer and a manager who allow me to work from home. This used to be an infrequent option but became a necessity when I lost access to a car. (The office is a 45-minute drive away.) Even with having to get three children ready for school, helping with homework, preparing dinner and doing other household chores, I have never been more productive.

I start my day early and sometimes end it fairly late, but as earlier noted, with balance and discipline it can be extremely rewarding for both you and your employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I like the 9-5 daily regiment. I guess it doesn't have to be a specific time frame, as long as I can block off 8-10 hours per day and do my work only during that time. Another important thing for me is to separate my work environment from my home as much as possible. Judging by the other comments on here, maybe I'm becoming a minority.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lately this topic gets repeated and I picked up this phrase which I like "Control your own schedule while paying all the bills is a pretty good life"

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how firing's like under such a system. Do they do performance reviews once every two weeks, or something like that?

<comment><USER16> Why should it matter? People in normal workplaces can screw around for months before they get fired. Physical workplaces are good for identifying the workers who do nothing, but not the workers who do nothing useful.

<comment><USER15> Good point, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Flexible time is what is so great about academia. If only the university bureaucrats also worked on flexible time.</comment>


Build your own Mint - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yyx990803/build-your-own-mint <comment><USER2> > Credentials are stored in lib/credentials.json. This is checked into the > repo, so USE A PRIVATE REPO.

It's called a "private" repo, not a "secure" repo.

The point of a private repo is to give you control over your collaborators. It is not to provide information security. To my knowledge, Github makes no special promises about the security of private repos. The data is not encrypted on disk at Github, and Github staff can access the content of your repo.

I WOULD NOT UPLOAD SECRETS INTO A GITHUB PRIVATE REPO.

<comment><USER3> I've heard this before from people but I can help but think, "companies are paying GitHub to store code which in itself is often very valuable IP that needs to be protected". Are we sure GitHub doesn't have any promises to the protection of private repos? Obviously anything could happen and it's best to encrypt secrets and such... but if it's true that GitHub is not very serious about protecting the contents of private repos seems off to me. Any links to anything regarding their stance on this?

<comment><USER2> There's a big difference between proprietary code and secrets. If you get my proprietary code you will be able to understand and copy how my application works, but (if I've coded it well) you won't be able to compromise a running instance. This is why open-source software is not necessarily less secure than closed-source software.

But if you get my secrets, you can most likely own that instance.

And I think it's worth pointing out that companies who are serious about the trade secrecy of their code tend to host their own repos. I don't think you'll find critical source code from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. sitting in private repos on Github.com.

I've been using Github private repos at work since 2013. As I said, I've not seen anything from Github that says that private repos are secure enough to upload secrets. For example, this document does not distinguish between public and private repos:

[https://help.github.com/articles/removing-sensitive-data- fro...](https://help.github.com/articles/removing-sensitive-data-from-a- repository/)

I use private repos to interact with contractors. Just because I grant a contractor access to collaborate on a private repo, that doesn't mean I want them to have my api keys, passwords, etc.

I use private repos because I want a cheap and easy way to host git repos, but I don't want to bother with the public. I don't want to create the false impression that I'm open to pull requests or forking my code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth noting here (though many people have in different ways already) that the reason you should not put credentials in any git repo (private or public) is that inevitably when you share repos with third party services (A CI for instance) you are also giving them credentials as a result and exposing one more vulnerability in the case that they get hacked or otherwise don't store things in an encrypted manner.

Because Github makes it so easy to give developers read access to repos this happens more often that you would realize, and having your most sensitive credentials (banking username and password) exposed in a repo to several different vendors is NEVER a good practice.

It's fine if you're going to use this but at least properly encrypt the secrets, or add your creds in a different file and gitignore it at the least if you're too lazy to use something like vault, credstash etc.

The reality is you're only as strong as your weakest link and there is just no use in having your weakest link be a relative unknown

Source: I built a Plaid competitor once upon a time (that obviously did not work out as well for me as it did for them) and I am currently building a bank, so I know a few things about security and vulnerabilities

<comment><USER5> >currently building a bank

I'm curious about this. I assume you are building banking software? Like a full stack?

<comment><USER4> haha boy is it a long story ... but yes both banking software and buying part of an actual bank so we can build a full-stack bank for the next 100 years

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Have you done any write-ups or have any more information out there? As a developer with a degree in finance, this kind of stuff interests me.

<comment><USER4> We don't have a ton out there because we're still mostly pre-investment, but we have about 9k people signed up for the landing page we built - [https://launch.trycrux.com](https://launch.trycrux.com) and we should be able to start opening real accounts in the next few weeks

<comment> semi-extrinsic Can I just ask: what you're doing sounds essentially like stuff that's better for the customer but costing you more money (or earning less income) than traditional banks. What's the plan to offset that loss?

Robinhood of course comes to mind, and then deposit insurance ofc pops up as well. Whats your plan on that?

Are you doing debit and credit cards only for the launch? Do you already have open credit lines for interbank loans, or will you need to limit credit issued based on deposits made or other assets? When you're pre-investment, how do you even have enough assets to meet liquidity requirements? What are the toughest requirements and the biggest bottlenecks before you guys can start opening accounts?

In general, you guys should have an FAQ page full of info. And you should probably do an AMA somewhere, I'm sure many people would find the experience of trying to start a bank pretty fascinating.

<comment><USER4> Wow these are awesome questions.

tbh I just did not think people would find these kinds of things as interesting as I do. I would love to start an AMA for this and go through it if people want me to do that I'm happy to try to make it happen, not sure if there's usually a formal process for setting them up on HN?

I'll do my best to address those brief questions here though. You're right that at the outset it looks like we're doing things that are better for the customer but the overall goal is to actually properly align ourselves with the customer, for instance one of the things we plan to do is pay a higher interest rate if you save a higher percentage of your income. Thus incentivizing users to have better financial habits and as a result become the exact type of borrower we would like to lend to.

The no credit apps thing is actually very simple, it just means we're using a soft pull rather than a hard pull and we still know your credit history so we're not doing anything blind.

The assets and pre-investment question is another good one. We've actually entered into an agreement to become a minority shareholder in a bank that has been in existence since 1921, as they grow (as a result of the things we're building) we intend to keep buying more shares of the underlying Bank Holding Company and to eventually become a BHC ourselves. This means the bank has the capital requirements in the short term and we are just a minority shareholder that happens to build software for the bank!

It's a structure we arrived at after looking at a ton of options and deciding this was the best possible way to test buying a bank without outlaying all the capital on the frontend.

as for the insurance etc. That is relatively explainable as a result of the above. This is an established bank that has been in existence for a very long time, we're just building software we believe will help it grow while being able to share in the upside as an actual shareholder rather than the mis- aligned incentives you see with most of the challenger "banks" in the US since they only make money from interchange.

We are in no way incentivized for our customers to spend money since our number 1 task is to grow overall assets at the bank level.

We're basically ready to start opening accounts, we should have the core ready to go for friends and family around Jan 15 and then from there we will start onboarding the ~9k signups we have as well.

The main hold up has been that Mastercard has a moratorium on new products over the holiday season so we have not been able to issue cards just yet, but we've also been building the app, getting the core provider setup etc. (We actually got a new routing number issued for the bank and a brand new core provider)

Again, if there's a sanctioned way to do an AMA or something similar I'm happy to set it up with @dang or whoever is necessary and walk through this in more detail if its interesting to folks?

EDIT: One other important piece ... we think we may actually have some paid features eventually, things like Metal cards, Free international ATMs etc. that would mean people using us more like a subscription service in some ways. For instance I would gladly pay a monthly fee to be able to have my bank become my financial conduit meaning that they would handle finding the best prices on loans, cars, houses etc. without me having to fill out an application (because they already know the answers) and I think others might be willing to pay for that as well

<comment><USER6> Show HN posts are often great AMAs on HN. Maybe push a Show HN post with your landing page?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Credentials are stored in lib /credentials.json. This is checked into the > repo, so USE A PRIVATE REPO. Do not use a public fork and accidentally push > your tokens to it! I will not take responsibility for any potential leak of > sensitive information._

It seems like using your CI provider to manage the credentials would be significantly more safe than checking them into even a private repository. For instance, there are several services that will scan or otherwise access your private repos for some purpose or another, and you wouldn't want to accidentally connect them while this is also in the mix.

A pre build step that templates the credentials into a file would be pretty easy to set up in most CI systems I've used, but I have no experience in CircleCI. (maybe 10 minutes of tinkering but that's it)

Finally I should note, I am not advising anyone to store their financial credentials with any third party. But if you've already made up your mind to do so, at least consider one that's meant to handle secrets in a secure manner.

<comment><USER8> It looks like the credentials in credentials.json are your Plaid access key/secret/etc, not your bank account username/password. If an attacker gets them, they'd have read-only access to your bank account until you rotate your Plaid creds, but they wouldn't be able to do anything as simple as logging into your bank account and transferring all your money out.

EDIT: It's actually worse than that, see comment from erichurkman below.

<comment><USER9> Careful, because Plaid also gives you access to your account's routing and account numbers [0]. I'm not sure if the way this library works gives access to those, but with a routing & account number a thief _can_ write checks, debit your account, etc.

[0] [https://plaid.com/products/auth/](https://plaid.com/products/auth/)

<comment><USER10> Are routing and account numbers considered "secret"? Potentially any one of the handful of people I still write checks to could be unscrupulous and write checks, debit my account, etc., right?

<comment><USER9> Correct; that's why Knuth started issuing fake checks instead of real checks for people that found mistakes in his works: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check)

<comment><USER11> So he started committing a felony? That doesn't seem like a great idea, interstate bank fraud gets you investigated really quickly.

<comment><USER9> More background: [https://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html](https://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html)

Current account 'balances' for people he no longer wrote personal checks to: [https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html](https://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html)

<comment><USER11> I must be missing something but making fake checks, with fake banking information is a felony. What am I missing? The links don't explain how this criminal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Author here - this was just a weekend hack and didn't really expect it to show up here, but thanks for the security related feedback. The setup now uses environment variables.

<comment><USER13> Have you considered merging your functionality with a package like gnucash which works as an open source account/budget program for families/small businesses?

I think it would be a good match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or instead using spreadsheets just use a self-hosted free software that is dedicate to personal finance analytics [https://github.com/firefly- iii/firefly-iii](https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii)

<comment><USER15> I don't know why I never looked for something like this before, but thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you are using Google sheets to store your budget, checkout [https://byobudget.com](https://byobudget.com)

It lets you record purchases in your spreadsheet via SMS. I should be launching it in the next month or so. It's geared towards people who want just a little more realtime ability for their current budget without switching what they use. If all goes well, I'll be expanding to other integrations (private firefly III instances, YNAB, alternative input methods, etc).

Disclaimer: I'm the author.

Second disclaimer: Idea shamelessly stolen from a comment on here months ago about what one person does for themself.

Also, I'd be interested in finding a couple of beta testers.

Edit: Aslo, I'm sorry that it looks atrocious on mobile. Should load pretty quick though ...

<comment><USER17> this is neat! I was just thinking about something like this.

question for you... my credit card (Chase) lets me receive SMS/email immediately from them upon any purchase using the card, including the amount and the vendor. It's a very trivial and consistent text format, it would be super easy to parse.

Could your service learn this format and automatically populate the sheets from these messages? Maybe each user can have a dedicated secret email they can target (firstname.lastname@example.com) and they can configure their personal email to auto-forward those emails to your service?

Then, unlike with mint, which syncs occasionally, you would have always-up-to- date information, right from the source of truth.

<comment><USER16> That's a great idea! That definitely falls within the purview of my site. I'd like to add it at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not sure if it's the right place/occasion to ask...

I'd love a web application that gives me a one page financial dashboard with:

\- bank account balance

\- credit card balance. Due date

\- list of unusual transactions I should review

\- all my bills in one place, with amounts due and possibility to click through to see details

\- list of upcoming schedule payment (ie mortgage, gym membership, phone service) with alert/notification of one will bounce (ie: funds insufficient so I can transfer money to the right account)

\- upcoming financial obligations

Is there such a thing? Ideally self hosted.

<comment><USER19> If it's self hosted do you see it as being free software or you'd pay an upfront cost for a license? Would you use a hosted web application if none of your data was uploaded?

<comment><USER18> I'd rather pay a monthly fee for something I get value from daily. I would consider using a hosted service depending who the company is. I still don't fully trust Intuit with Mint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> FYI - author of this lib also wrote Vue.js.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you want more data that what you can probably get from Google Sheets easily, an alternative could be modifying this script to make it output a Beancount[0]-formatted ledger text file. The format is pretty readable plain- text (and so you could store it on Git to track changes easily) and you can generate nice reports out of it with the Beancount CLIs and a web interface with Fava[1]. Also adds another additional level of self-hosted :)

Also Beancount has some nice support for implementing importer scripts inside it if need be, although I haven't played with those yet.

[0] [http://furius.ca/beancount/](http://furius.ca/beancount/) [1] [https://beancount.github.io/fava/](https://beancount.github.io/fava/)

<comment><USER22> I highly recommend Beancount and Ledger-likes[0] too. Mint-style net-worth trackers have limited usefulness. Once you have visibility into your assets, you'll likely want to take more active management of them. Modelling that with spreadsheets is possible but can become complicated quickly and you'll likely end up re-inventing a lot of established accounting practices. A disclaimer: Ledger-like systems are described as whole "all bran" of personal finance - there's steep learning curve but once you get through that you'll have a powerful, life-long tool.

[0] [https://plaintextaccounting.org](https://plaintextaccounting.org)

<comment><USER23> Are you able to find book keepers and CPA's who can deal with this easily? How do you sync data with them and control access? I have a contractor that helps me with invoicing, a book keeper, a CPA, and a partner. Not sure how this would work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminder that Plaid doesn't know what their doing when it comes to security: [https://github.com/plaid/link/issues/68](https://github.com/plaid/link/issues/68)

<comment><USER25> This is a bit unfair, isn't it? Not in the sense that these practices arent awful and inexcusable from a security standpoint, but in the sense that plaid isn't doing anything that isn't standard practice in the finance industry. Every 3rd party tool that does something with your finances (mint, personal capital, ynab, and even online banks that pull info from other banks) require you to submit login credentials in this manner. The industry needs changing - and really some rather punitive regulation IMHO - but this isn't a Plaid specific problem per se.

<comment><USER26> The finance industry mainly uses OFX as the standard for online access to statements/transaction downloads (as does quicken, QuickBooks and gnucash...etc). Some banks do not support it and others go through aggregators to provide access.

You are doing people a huge disservice by identifying the companies you listed as "the finance industry". They are scraping data (in most cases against TOS) and exposing it as a paid API service.

It's a terrible state of affairs that easy access to ownership of this critical data is so hard to come by and has essentially forced people to give up their most valuable credentials to in a lot of cases unknown or untrustworthy parties.

At least mint has partnered with some banks that actually provide supported APIs for transaction data (Chase), but that is so far from the norm right now it makes me queasy.

<comment><USER25> Quicken asks me for my login credentials to my bank and in their policies, says they store my credentials in their infrastructure. How does QFX actually help here?

<comment><USER26> Again, it's dependent on your bank's support. OFX helps by not requiring remote storage of your online banking credentials.

Direct Connect - Your customer ID and password are not stored on Quicken servers. If you choose to use the Quicken Password Vault, we encrypt them on your computer's hard drive.

Express/Quicken Connect - Your login credentials are stored on Quicken-hosted servers. This makes updates faster for you.

[https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your- ba...](https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Note that asking people not to commit credentials.json doesn't work very well in practice:

[https://github.com/search?o=desc&q="credentials.json"&s=comm...](https://github.com/search?o=desc&q="credentials.json"&s=committer- date&type=Commits)

</comment><comment><USER28> I would recommend against letting Google know anything about your finances. Maybe try self-hosted solutions that are open source, like Firefly III.

[https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii](https://github.com/firefly- iii/firefly-iii)

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://gnucash.org/](https://gnucash.org/) is a mature project that allows you to manage expenses & assets, perform analytics, and doesn't require supplying personal information to third parties (plaid in this case)

<comment><USER30> I haven't managed to get gnucash to download transactions from my bank. Do you do that? Or do you just manually record everything?

<comment><USER31> Download an export and import it into gnucash. It remembers previously processed items. It's a manual process, but much easier to do a monthly export than record items one by one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you want to do this without giving your data to any third party (plaid will store your data) or you have 2FA enabled on your FI accounts, try this: [https://github.com/skhavari/cheddardog](https://github.com/skhavari/cheddardog).

It supports a few institutions. If you're a developer, its pretty easy to add more. It generates spending and balance reports, and pretty easy to slap an app (E2E encrypted of course) or local only web UI on top of it.

Enjoy

</comment><comment><USER33> And here I thought it would be about Linux Mint the distribution, or the Mint box the hardware. But it's about Mint the financial software.

<comment><USER34> Even worse, since it used "build" instead of "compile" I opened it expecting to find a story about pressing your own coins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> [http://www.gnucash.org](http://www.gnucash.org) Is pretty solid

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd be enormously hesitant in relying on a B2B product for such an important part of my life. Forget the security concerns, my concern is the company cutting off access for spurious reasons.

If they could sell me access at a price less than $500+ a month, I'd be more inclined to trust them.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a nice kickstart for something that has been on my todo list for a while.

Cashflow forecasting is important for my family budget and my small business. My cashflow fluctuates quite a bit. Some months I'll bring in 90k, some months nothing. I have really high expenses for such a small business because I travel and pay contractors.

So far I've been doing this by hand, and trying to use features in Xero, plus a few expensive tools online that integrate with Xero (which do not deserve a free advertisement so I won't name them). I finally figured out if I want cash flow forecasting done right for me I'm going to have to do it myself.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's interesting to me that the front end is using jQuery considering the author is the vuejs creator.

It looks interesting though, I have been meaning to make a little budgeting app for myself recently so this will be a good start at the least!

</comment><comment><USER38> This is great -- I'll be tying this in to my budget calendar spreadsheet that I've been using for the last few months to have a solid grasp of how purchases I make will impact me in the future; I have a template with some example usage of it available at [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12mkQzq22eM8HHdJVJ_Jm...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12mkQzq22eM8HHdJVJ_JmcvaRJlKf --f9oKKp1uEEYxo/edit?usp=sharing) if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER39> > You will first need to sign up for Plaid and apply for the development plan.

I guess I'm not the target audience. The only reason I would even consider building something like this is so that I'm in full control. I have no idea what Plaid is. All I know for sure is that I don't want to sign up for it and also introduce a major dependency. I don't understand what the advantage is over Mint. I get to do more work and not be in control. Usually you can only get one of those.

<comment><USER40> Plaid is an API for banks, basically: [https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com). It's pretty fantastic (especially compared to the way you used to have to go about it.)

As for advantages over Mint, I'm sure Mint has updated recently, but as of ~2 years ago, if you had a bank that didn't expose an API, Mint would take your credentials and more or less scrape the bank websites to get your information into their systems to do their voodoo magic to show you your stats. Plaid has done most of that legwork for you (interfacing with banks) and exposed the data via a nicer API, so you don't really have to worry about anything being wrong because of scraped data -- it's coming directly from the source.

That's my understanding, anyway.

As for how is _this_ better than Mint? No idea. It's just a demo that shows that you _could_ , if you wanted to. And Plaid is more or less the new standard for interacting with bank data, at least in the US.

</comment></comment><comment> dh-g I'm doing something similar to power an e-ink based display in my house. I see about 24 hours of delay on the transaction API using the free tier which is the only shortcoming of this approach. The Plaid API is very nice.

Does anyone know if the production (non-free) level reduces the delay?

<comment><USER8> In production, the delay I'd expect is about six hours, but for certain institutions it'll be much higher. Pending transaction support doesn't exist for all institutions, so in the worst case you could swipe your card on a Friday afternoon and not see it in Plaid until the transaction actually clears early Monday morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Regarding this part,

 _connect to your financial institutions to generate access tokens_

Are these generally offered across EU? I know I haven't found a way to get access for a couple of my local (EU-based) banks I checked with, but unsure about the rest of the continent.

<comment><USER42> Plaid is US only at the moment. The closest equivalent I've found in the EU are Token ([https://token.io](https://token.io)) and Teller ([https://teller.io](https://teller.io))

p.s. notably, the author of Build your own Mint project is also the creator of Vuejs

<comment><USER43> Plaid also supports Canadian institutions as of this year, with coverage continuing to expand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> If you are looking for a more "packaged" integration with Google Sheets, check out BudgetSheet: [https://www.budgetsheet.net](https://www.budgetsheet.net)

It is a Google Sheets Add-on found in the G Suite Marketplace.

Disclaimer: I am the author. It is currently under review by Google and awaiting publication. There is an email sign at the bottom of the page if you want to be notified at launch. :)

</comment><comment><USER45> > Credentials are stored in lib/credentials.json

Isn't best-practice these days to store these in the ENV?

<comment><USER46> Not sure why this is downvoted. Storing credentials should pretty much always be in the ENV and not in files that are checked into a repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> [https://www.tillerhq.com/](https://www.tillerhq.com/)

This is another service like this. I've been using them for around 6 months and haven't had any trouble with them.

</comment><comment><USER48> Was thinking of doing the same thing but without involving any third-party services and relying on good old-fashioned web scraping.

<comment><USER49> Who's going to write this hypothetical web scraper? And update it when the bank website changes? There's a reason the service costs money.

Is there reputable FOSS bank website scraper?

<comment><USER48> Me. That's the point: I just write the scrapers for the sites only I need, which isn't a lot. And if they change, I simply fix it. I'm willing to bet Mint and others have done exactly this (or are doing it now) as well.

<comment><USER50> Mint does this for some banks and uses proper APIs for others (Wealthsimple, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Do passwords get shared with Plaid?

<comment><USER52> Pretty sure they do, because AFAIK there's not much choice in the US. I think it's therefore forced to use screen scraping (or other APIs not intended for public consumption).

In line with the rest of the US's financial technology (EMV adoption, 3-D Secure) which is pretty immature, I don't think there's a concept of Open Banking enforced by regulators _. Hence, no OAuth based flow to use and no standardised transactions API.

_ Open Banking isn't ideal and has its own issues. It's not anywhere near as revolutionary as some 'thought leaders' make it out to be. But it's better than nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Tiller is a good alternative to mint to people who don't want to do all of this work.

</comment><comment><USER54> does google really need all your financial info too? could you not do this in [https://ethercalc.net/](https://ethercalc.net/) or even just a csv that you could import/export to a spreadsheet app of your choice?

the appeal of a personal mint is to not share all my financial info with third-party companies, not to keep from paying a few bucks for a useful service.

</comment><comment><USER55> My first thought, seeing the title: the Liberty Dollar.[0]

tl;dr - In the US, it's illegal to mint your own money.

0) [http://libertydollar.org/](http://libertydollar.org/)

</comment><comment><USER56> > Build you own Mint

> Fancy interface is out of scope for this demo.

OK.</comment>


Absolutely Epic 1974 Letter From Cleveland Browns to a Fan - <AUTHOR> http://m.clevescene.com/cleveland/blogs/Post?basename=absolutely-epic-1974-letter-from-cleveland-browns-to-a-fan&day=22&id=scene-and-heard&month=12&year=2010 <comment><USER2> The lawyer who sent that letter a. Got chewed out by the Browns owner for sending the missive, and b. has stated he was young and rash and regrets sending the response. However, the recipient of the response said he got a laugh out of it!

1\. [http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/browns.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/browns.asp)</comment>


A magic square filled with consecutive primes - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/09/02/a-magic-square-filled-with-consecutive-primes/ <comment><USER2> For reference, the 1988 Cray Super computer at "333 MegaFlops" put's it's performance somewhere in the range of last year's iPhone5 (depending on which sort of flop operation you are crunching). I actually think that speaks pretty highly for the Cray. In 1988, a CRAY supercomputer might have almost been enough to run iOS7. However battery life and pocketability would have been somewhat an issue. Also cost at ~10M $ 1988 dollars was pretty expensive, even though it DID come with some brightly colored casing options.

some iPhone5 MFLOP benchmarks: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the- iphone-5-review/5](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/5)

CRAY YP: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Y- MP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Y-MP)

<comment><USER3> That's 333 MFLOPS _per_ vector processor, so configured with 8 that'd put it significantly ahead of the phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't believe the article defines a magic square (nor was I aware). A magic square is a n by n grid of numbers where each individual row, column, and diagonal add up to the same value.

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

<comment><USER5> I recently posted a small example showing how to construct a magic square of odd degree using a surprisingly simple algorithm called De la Loubère (or sometimes also the Siamese method), with Python:

[http://cjauvin.blogspot.ca/2013/09/siamese- dream.html](http://cjauvin.blogspot.ca/2013/09/siamese-dream.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was intrigued by the nextprime() function and had to look it up.

It depends on an isprime() function that in turn relies on the Miller-Rabin test, discussed here: [http://primes.utm.edu/prove/prove2_3.html](http://primes.utm.edu/prove/prove2_3.html)

Interesting that it combines a number of weak, probabilistic tests into a strong test (for n < 1e16)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the $100 was enough to pay for the time on the Cray?</comment>


WebEngage is serving over 100 million widget requests per month - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webengage.com/2012/08/23/now-serving-over-100-million-webengage-widget-requests-per-month/

<comment><USER2>
        Cache-Control: private, max-age=600

With an explicit version number in the URL, there's little reason to have a 10 minute expiration period for a .js file. Why not save bandwidth and money (and improve performance to boot) with a more reasonable expires setting?

<comment> avlesh-singh This file integrates as a widget code on customer websites. We don't expect our customers to change this code often. However, we do continue to change the underlying code (to push updates, new releases etc). The idea is that visitors on our customer websites get the new code whenever it changes.

I do agree that the number (10mins) could be a bit scientific. But you get the idea as to why we kept it as such.

</comment></comment><comment> swatantra-kumar Use Entity Tags and Last-Modified Dates as far as possible for caching. other options may be Module mod_expires</comment>


Why everyone should write a framework and never use it - <AUTHOR> http://www.jaisenmathai.com/blog/2008/04/17/why-everyone-should-write-a-framework-and-never-use-it/ <comment><USER2> I've done the same. Written a framework, used it for one project, and went back to other frameworks because quite frankly the other frameworks were much more advanced and written by those more knowledgeable than I am. However, writing the framework was an excellent learning experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Creating your own framework (or your own programming language, or site that does a popular thing) lets you to appreciate, or no, solutions used by other people.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm writing a framework that I intend to use because I haven't found anything that quite suits me. I was feeling a little guilty about it, but not after reading this. Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Frameworks written for general use will always be overengineered yet clunky compared to what you could write for your own project, and here's why: if I'm writing a framework and it has a collection of foo, and I know I only ever add(foo), then I don't have to write a delete(foo) and a search(foo) and a count(foo), just the add function. You also don't have to test those other things, or put anything in your model to support them. Frameworks for general consumption, however, do have to have all that stuff because they don't know what subset you'll need. Now imagine that x100 for all the classes in the framework. Even if it doesn't increase the size of your executable, it still increases the _cognitive load_ in terms of having a full understanding of the source. It's the flip side of "not invented here" - i.e. writing your own is not automatically bad, just a trade-off.

</comment></comment><comment> meat-eater NIH is the mother of invention :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a framework and I am still using it, because it's more flexible and easier for me to extend than the other ones. That said, I think it was a waste of time from a business perspective. When you want to build a project, take something open source, rock-solid with a community behind it. You can focus on building your project and not fixing bugs in the underlying layer.

Before writing my framework, I had written another one and learned a lot. The second time around, I've made something really powerful and cool, and it really helps me. But it's still not as thoroughly unit-tested and consistent as the ones built by a community. I'm just one guy.

By the way, in cae you want to see it: <http://code.google.com/p/pal- framework/> :) It's open source.</comment>


GitHub for Mac 1.2: Snow Octocat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1067-github-for-mac-1-2-snow-octocat

<comment><USER2> I used Github for Mac for quite a while, and just got fed up with stability recently and switched to SourceTree, but I've never looked back. ST does everything I could ever want, and does it extremely well. Not that there's no room in the world for another quality git client, but after using ST, Github for Mac at this point just sort of feels like "My First Git GUI".

<comment><USER3> That may be Github's intention - to build a simple interface that makes it extremely easy to get your feet wet with GIT. Several of the design decisions they've made - replacing pull and push commands with Sync, automatically stashing changes when switching branches - seem to aim for the simplest possible solution, at the expense of flexibility.

<comment> jim-greer I think they've done a great job on making it simple and approachable. I haven't had stability problems but it is a little sluggish on our medium-sized repo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> GitHub continues to impress — culture, team, and product. I've heard some criticism of their enterprise sales process but I'm a happy user of their personal edition (though I've somehow already used up my 20 slots for private repos, boo)

<comment><USER5> And, may I add, their support is great as well. I received great replies and feedback during the implementation of my app, shameless plug: <http://worqshop.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully GitHub for Windows follows shortly!

The latest I've seen them mention it is here, less than one month ago:

[https://groups.google.com/group/msysgit/browse_thread/thread...](https://groups.google.com/group/msysgit/browse_thread/thread/c344ce45c9cee824)

And their fork of msysgit mentions that its for "Github for Windows" in the description:

<https://github.com/github/windows-msysgit>

<comment><USER7> @haacked and @xpaulbettsx (recent-ish hires at GitHub) are working on it <http://herdingcode.com/?p=384>

<comment><USER8> That was a good podcast from an outsiders perspective. Did pick up Posh-git from there, which allows you to have the Git shell in Powershell with tab completion and some nice colors. Pretty good, except that it sometimes is slow, and Powershell doesn't seem to have command recall (up arrow scrolls, doesn't recall commands)

<comment><USER9> Pressing up arrow in Powershell cycles through the command history on every machine I've used it on (4 or 5). It sounds like there's something unusual with your system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The GitHub app never felt amazing before. I don't know if anyone else had the same experience I did, but it was forever doing weird things when redrawing the window. All gone.

I'm always surprised by how software can feel so, so much better with no new features but just a lot of effort under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER11> Only thing I'm missing now is a gitx-style history view. I want to see merges.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only useful thing Github for Mac offers to me is the "Clone in Mac" button in github.com. It somehow changed my workflow of viewing repos on Github. Now I just clone it in my mac and start poking around with the code.

Previous version of Github for Mac was driving me crazy.

I had this big and long unicode text file in one repository. It tried to show it in Changes view but failed. The app then went into "Not Responding" mode using 100% of CPU!

Force quitting it didn't help, because next time you opened the application same thing happened. The app opened with the same repo and changes page and went into "Not responding" mode AGAIN!

I ended up deleting the text file from the repon temporarily!!

Now with the new version the issue is fixed! I'm now happier. Thanks to the Github team.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Tests have proven that 1.2 is approximately 3.29 quadrillion times faster > than 1.1 and 4293% less likely to crash. It's science.

This sounds great!

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish they would make the "Scan for Repositories" easier to find. I didn't know this existed because it was hidden in settings; why can't it be as easy as "New Repository"?

</comment><comment><USER15> I really want to use GitHub for mac, but in my experience using it in conjunction with the command line doesn't work well. Just the other day I launched it to look at my diff before pushing, upon launch it complained about a non existent merge conflict, put me on master making me lose uncommitted changes, and resurrected some weird files out of nowhere into my working directory. I feel like every time I open it, it's a surprise.

<comment><USER16> That's why I wrote Legit :)

<http://kennethreitz.com/legit-the-sexy-git-cli.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now some love for us Linux guys and I would be so happy.

<comment><USER18> _Now some love for us Linux guys and I would be so happy._

git-cola! It's developed on Linux and written with power-users in mind. That's why it has vim-style navigation (j/k keys for moving up/down lists) and lots of other niceties.

It's PyQt so it runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

<comment><USER17> I just found tig, which is even better than any graphical client.

tig: <http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I so want to love GitHub for mac, but after trying to get it to work for two hours today, I'm a bit sore. Such elementary are mistakes in the app— panes not opening, branch popover not responding to clicks, an inexplicable inability of publishing locally created branches to server that it gives out a bad taste. Time to spend some time learning the command line interface, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have used github for Mac from day one for cloning and viewing changes. Crashing was never a problem and the "clone in Mac" feature is very handy. I use it primarily as a library tool for all the local repos. When working on one of the projects, I use the cli git tools.

</comment><comment><USER21> Still waiting for them to add the ability to view and manage issues for repos!

</comment><comment><USER22> I lost a lot of credibility with a client by recommending that they use github for mac. The app hangs regularly, stashes changes without telling the user. I will take another look at this revision.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey, a friend and I were talking about this yesterday. Do a lot of people use Github for Mac? Are there any download / usage statistics?

<comment><USER4> The Mac client has been useful keeping slightly-less-technical team members up to date on our codebase (git on the CLI has a few too many sharp edges for some)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sadly, until someone comes out with a gui that supports git flow, I am going to continue using the command line.

</comment><comment><USER25> The blog post almost sounds like a pun at Apple.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why not call it Octolion?</comment>


Ask YC: How do I admin my own (windows) server? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking into getting a dedicated server to host a number of asp.net based web apps that I have.
I have no experience with running my own server and I'm wondering if there is any online resource that you recommend so that I can learn everything I need to do to admin my own Windows 2008 dedicated server.
I would be running SQL server on the same server as well.
I've searched, but couldn't find guides for windows. Only for *nix based servers. <comment><USER2> > I've searched, but couldn't find guides for windows. Only for *nix based > servers.

Maybe that's a hint?:-)

</comment><comment><USER3> What often is the case is that your hosting provider will open up Remote Desktop for you to your server (in hardware/software firewall, whatever you have). Then you install the remote administration application of your choice, and if you'd like - close up the RDP port (I do).

Some hosting providers like SoftLayer give you a Private Net, so you can VPN into the Private Net and RDP from there (without opening up the port to the public facing IP). This makes sense if you have an office, or a # of employees.

A cheap and easy solution is Hamachi (which creates a VPN between machines). You install Hamachi on your server and your trusted machines (your desktop, whatever else) and now you can RDP using the Hamachi IP.

You can allow allow file & printer services in Windows Firewall for your Hamachi or hosting provider supplied network, and get to your files that way (easier than FTP).

LogMeIn is nice too, but you lose all the other things you can do with a real virtual network. I used to use Radmin (radmin.com), which was nice - but I prefer the virtual networks approach.

</comment><comment><USER4> I doubt you'll find a complete guide for all the stuff you're looking for. I just google the individual questions. It's pretty much how I learn everything.

Or try <http://www.experts-exchange.com/> I've never signed up for this but I see them come up a lot in search results.

<comment><USER5> Experts Exchange is notorious for being a bait-and-switch website. They cram organic search with their results, then force you to sign up for an account before you can view the answers.

For a while there was a hack where you could piece together your answers by browsing the source (they just had some JS to hide it unless regisered). Now I think they browser-agent sniff to get their content indexed by google but put it behind a paywall for humans.

Bottom line: they're they crappy version of a site like StackOverflow.com. Check out SO, before experts-exchange.

Also of some amusement is that their website was (for a while) expertsexchange.com, without the hyphen (get it -- ExpertSexChange.com ;) ).</comment></comment>


There are indications that Google is changing their PageRank... - <AUTHOR> http://www.kottke.org/remainder/07/10/14355.html <comment><USER2> I thinks is good news overall (then again I don't run Engadget). It's also interesting to see that people using TextLinkAdds are loosing Google traffic, leading them to remove the TextLinkAds. I've always been annoyed by those but it seems that a move like this could lead to a lawsuit.</comment>


deleted - <AUTHOR> https://reddit.com/r/the_donald <comment><USER2> discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20287129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20287129)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll delete. I gave a quick search but nothing popped.</comment></comment>


Machine Learning Trends from NIPS 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/machinelearning/archive/2014/12/16/machine-learning-trends-from-nips-2014.aspx

<comment><USER2> "Progress in deep learning since 2011 has been amazingly rapid. For example, on a benchmark of recognizing objects in images, the error rate has decreased 40% relative, per year. Deep learning has also become more broadly applicable than just classifying images."

I don't remember any field progressing as quickly as this is.</comment>


Show HN: Free (great) startup ideas to do whatever you want with - <AUTHOR> https://rdea.co <comment><AUTHOR> Have startup ideas that you never plan on actually doing?

We'll be featuring guests that are happy to give their best ideas away for free.

One beautifully designed pitch deck in your inbox each week.</comment>


Database drivers in a commercial product - <AUTHOR> https://lauris.github.io/development/database-drivers-in-commercial-product/

<comment><USER2> problem solved by [https://www.jetbrains.com/dbe/](https://www.jetbrains.com/dbe/)</comment>


Greenland could become China's Arctic base (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46386867 <comment><USER2> [https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1T5191)

Found some news that China already withdrew its bid after US pressure

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a good tv series called Trapped that takes places in Iceland and they discuss selling a port or something to Chinese interests and there is a lot of mixed feelings about it. While Iceland is not Greenland I think it is possible that this theme in the tv series is echoing comparable anxieties in Iceland.

</comment><comment><USER4> 56,000 people living in Greenland times avg income 33,000 = 1.8 billion. Give each greenlander 100 years of income now (3.3 million each, total 180 billion) - who can resist. Throw in a couple of trillions to the chiefs - Saudis will turn green from envy. This could be deal of a century.

A bit of a hostile takeover with respect to Denmark, but still good deal for greenlanders.

<comment><USER5> While I would agree on the math and the incentives of your approach if it was pure business, that's very wrong to see it that way. You guys are talking about real people and their country.

Somehow makes me think about this tweet from The White House yesterday: [https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1162092856858808320](https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1162092856858808320)

No guys, Americans can't go anywhere and you are not welcome everywhere. It's about time to understand that.

<comment><USER6> Funny how he says Americans can go anywhere days after he pushed for some Americans to be barred from going to Israel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know. Maybe this article is biased: _China gets access to each country 's raw materials - minerals, metals, wood, fuel, foodstuffs. Still, this doesn't usually mean long-term jobs for local people. Large numbers of Chinese are usually brought in to do the work. Country after country has discovered that Chinese investment helps China's economy a great deal more than it helps them. And in some places - South Africa is one of them - there are complaints that China's involvement tends to bring greater corruption._

<comment><USER8> _Maybe this article is biased_

I read the passage you quoted carefully, and I don't see the bias. Each sentence has been the subject of media coverage for the last five years or so.

Is there a specific sentence, or word to which you object?

<comment><USER7> yeah. I wondered about the objectivity because it says "there are complaints that China's involvement tends to bring greater corruption" and because I looked in vain for any positive message about countries that have historically done deals with China. at least _some_ of these deals in _some_ of these countries must have been positive _somewhere_ , but this article does not give that view as much voice.

and, on the other side, where is the objectivity and criticism about the already present US military base? US bases are _notorious_ for polluting the land and water with toxic and hazardous substances. there's a long history of such problems on former US military bases, even those within the US. but this article does not mention it.

<comment><USER8> What you describe sounds beyond the scope of the article. This is a news article from a daily news operation, not an investigation.

It sounds like what you're looking for is long-form in-depth analysis. You're not going to get that from the news section of the BBC web site. That's not what it's for.

What you desire would be found in another part of the BBC, or a reputable magazine, or a book, or a documentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Greenland might be one of the more desirable landmasses 50-100 years from now. Strategically very important, and when it warms up more cities, economy and tourism will thrive as well.

<comment><USER3> I think it has a big lake in the middle of it that takes up a significant part of the land mass. IIRC it's a depression caused by the ice sheet pushing down on the land mass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> They should have a bidding war between China and Trump

<comment><USER10> I've long wondered what would be the outcome if the UK decided to auction off the Falkland Islands. Obviously Argentina would be an emotional bidder, perhaps paying far more than necessary or maybe not bidding at all, claiming it would legitimize what they see as an unlawful occupation.

Bolivia could use it as an opportunity to once again have a blue water navy. It otherwise wouldn't make sense for them but it's another case of national pride.

Or maybe China would want it to gain a foothold in the western hemisphere. Lots of possibilities.

<comment><USER11> A land locked nation and blue water navy ?! Navy is different from Blue Water Navy. One must understand there are barely 4 blue water navies in the world on a good day.

The distinction is important, here is a link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue- water_navy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-water_navy)

<comment><USER10> Based on the Wikipedia definitions, I'd change my post to Green Water Navy. Bolivia currently has a Brown Water Navy but once upon a time wasn't landlocked and had naval vessels out in the oceans. This would give them the opportunity to have that again. Of course they could simply port their ocean vessels in another country but this is pretty much all about pride rather than practicality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a TV series about Danish politics - Borgen. In one of the episodes they had to deal with chiefs from Greenland. The whole scene looked like negotiating with the union - tough, hostile and ready to accept large amounts of cash. I think Trump and Chinese are moving in the right direction, question is who will be first.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can't we find a more direct reason to rattle our sabers? This is literally on the other side of the globe from China, so it's a bit unseemly... Regardless, war media will need to update this project to eliminate "(2018)" disclaimer.

</comment><comment><USER13> What would be a fair price for Greenland?

I say at least $5 trillion, maybe even $10T.

As for the population, you can individually buy the vast majority of them off with $1 mil - $5 mil per person, so that a referendum passes.

<comment><USER14> This is the first time I've seen someone put forth a figure, what's the basis for these numbers?

<comment><USER13> It was priced in the past, but the numbers seem ridiculously low to me:

> _To recap, the estimated range is $200 million to $1.7 trillion, which as > suspected comes with cartoonishly large error bars._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/16/trump- wan...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/16/trump-wants-buy- greenland-how-much-would-it-cost/)

For once, it needs to be an attractive number for Denmark, more attractive than the unknown, but probably huge future value of such a big uninhabited place. $5T is about 12 years of Denmark GDP, and 10-20 times earnings is a good company acquisition price metric.

We are talking selling it forever. Just think how ridiculously cheap previous land purchases (Alaska, ...) now seem in hindsight.

Denmark is not really in the position to really use that place, even in the future. The only thing they can do with it is sell it, so the question becomes when and for how much.

<comment><USER15> > _" Denmark is not really in the position to really use that place, even in > the future. The only thing they can do with it is sell it, so the question > becomes when and for how much."_

Greenland is a dependent territory, but it is not part of Denmark. I invite you to review the right to self-determination as enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.

It would ultimately be up to the people of Greenland whether they want to "sell" their country. Not, according to the principles of the UN, something that Denmark could do unilaterally.

<comment><USER16> How's that right to self-determination working out for Scotland and Catalonia?

<comment><USER17> Well, Scotland did agree to remain part of the UK the last time they were asked.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The next big thing in the internet world? - <AUTHOR> What is predicted to be the next big thing in the internet world in the next 5 years? <comment><USER2> \- Virtual Reality \- Artificial Intelligence \- Machine Learning

</comment><comment><USER3> Blockchain!!!</comment>