Disney Is Finally Getting That Apps Are the Future of TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/disney-is-finally-getting-that-apps-are-the-future-of-tv/ <comment><USER2> Why are apps the future of TV?

Why should TVs have a future?

Why develop another ecosystem just for an larger output device?

The TV—or I would rather call it 'large screen' will have a future as a dumb device which will be employed by other devices just for outputting content (best example is Chromecast). Yes, there still will be TV apps from manufacturers, from Apple and from whoever who needs to push new 'marktes' but they won't be able to build relevant ecosystems. The TV with its limited remote-control based UI patterns is too inflexible compared to a touch interface like that from a smartphone. So why not just let the smartphone be the TV's brain—and again we talk about Chromecast.

<comment><USER3> Having used my phone to control my TV, I _vastly_ prefer the small aluminium remote Apple shipped with the Apple TV. The new remote for the latest Apple TV is quite good too (though it's hard to tell which way around it should be by feel alone).

Unlike you, I _want_ a limited remote control based UI pattern for the TV. Complexity, location of my phone, and battery life are not things I'd like to worry about when I'm at home and want to navigate the TV. Nor do I want to be staring at a little screen to setup which content to play next.

From an interaction perspective, what I disliked in a smartphone-as-remote was the following:

* Not able to navigate by feel alone, in the dark

* Had to unlock phone to use it. Can't just pick it up and press a button without looking at the little screen

* Screen lights up and creates a distraction

* Battery life is measured in one or two days (and often, at night when you want to watch TV, is at its low point)

* Not good when you watch with a group of friends and like to navigate through shows, actors, directors on the big screen

* It just didn't feel good. I realise this is a vague point, but I didn't realise how much I valued the tactile sensation of a nice remote until its battery died and I was stuck with my phone for a while.

<comment><USER4> I got some issues with the new Apple Remote.

      * It's far too easy to come across the touch surface and fast forward.
      * Several times we've accidentally hit the search button
     (Siri is disabled in Sweden) causing it to jump out of whatever we're watching on

Netflix and go to the search view. * Needs better keyboard input.

I would prefer a circle and quick buttons for space/delete. Also would love previous search terms or a T9 interface for alphabet input.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I have that first issue exactly. While the touch pad is a fun addition, it's annoying when accidentally triggered. Might be good if they let you lock and unlock the remove by giving it a little shake.

I also accidentally hit the Siri button, but it's enabled here so it just triggers the Siri tutorial overlay. Which is less annoying than what you experience.

On keyboard input, that's probably the only place where a smartphone becomes valuable. The old Apple TV remote iOS app was good for entering usernames, passwords and search terms.

<comment><USER4> Actually that's not a stupid idea. Why can't I use my iPhone as keyboard input? We can already use the phone for other stuff.

Sounds like it's so obvious that Apple is probably planning it :)

<comment><USER5> The Roku remote app allows exactly that for their TV appliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best thing that could happen to the Apple TV was the small collapse in media stocks over the summer. That was a turning point for media companies to seriously consider new over the top services that bypass cable, until then they weren't terribly worried about cord cutters. Apple's leverage has gone up and just like with the music industry, they get to ride in as the white knight rather than being feared as a barbarian at the gate.

I should add that you shouldn't expect to save much money from this, you'll likely end up spending the same or more trying to recreate everything you watch (the savings will only be to someone who watches a very small amount of content). The economics of bundling are almost impossible to beat. The difference will be improvements in user experience and enabling new experiences entirely (see the QVC app).

This isn't necessarily bad for cable either, their content acquisition costs will go down and the ISP business will only grow.

<comment><USER7> It's looking bad for me. In Australia we've got Netflix (with 1/10th the content), Stan and Presto. It's quite likely that your three favourite shows could cost you three subscriptions (~30AUD) instead of one. Pay TV is slowly declining, but if you want sport in HD (and you do, the MPEG2 bitrate on FTA is terrible), it's $50/month on a 12 month contract.

If I have to buy an Apple TV for some things, an XBox One for others and an Amazon TV (if they ever release it) for Unnamed New Top Gear Show I'm just gonna give up and use my extra time to learn Haskell.

(I did try IPTV, but my downstream speed is 8 megabit on a good day and it wasn't enough).

<comment><USER8> Foxtel really has a very poor HD offering, I would say compared to Foxtel (Netflix/Stan/Presto) offers much more content and at better qualities. The major limiting factor is bandwidth, hopeful the NBN makes it more viable. I have the new apple TV and the app selection is much better, Netflix/Stan/(Presto not yet) all on once device with others sure to follow. Presto is garbage though the quality can barely be called SD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't happen soon enough. It's infinitely frustrating to load up a channel's Apple TV app, only to have to sign-in with my cable provider. I'll watch ads! I'd even pay a small subscription for certain channels. Just let me pick what show to watch and when. I feel like it's just these old media deals that are holding everything back.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't much care for Disney because of what they've done to Copyright laws.

</comment><comment><USER11> Since Disney owns ABC, and ABC is a co-owner of the Hulu web app for watching TV and movies, it seems to me that Disney already has positive experience in this space.

BTW, Hulu with no commercials for $12/month is really nice.</comment>


Core Memory: Photographs of Vintage Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html

<comment><USER2> That's it, I need to track down a Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer (or reasonable facsimile thereof).

 _"...she can program it to balance the family checkbook. 84A 10,600.00 complete with two week programming course..."_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316></comment>


Managing UI Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-complexity/ <comment><USER2> Interesting.

Few weeks ago a friend of mine showed me <http://www.bvckup.com>, which is basically a folder copier. Not terribly useful, but what did blow me away was its UI. It wasn't just too simple for a backup utility, it was humane and thoughtful. I emailed the guy my thumbs up and he replied saying that quite a few people expected the UI to be complex and assumed that a simple and obvious UI equated to a less functional software. He seemed to be completely perplexed by this.

Point being is that the UI complexity is actually _expected_ in some cases, because it's a de facto standard. Users may actually _want_ a bad UI, because that's what they are used to, and trying to offer them better alternatives may end up being an uphill battle.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps the potential users were curious what the features of the application _were_? When I clicked on the "features" item in the main menu on the above link, I got this slick-but-weird fade-in pop-up saying "work-in-progress". A valiant effort to substitute slickness for content but still ... how could he sell any users without a list features?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am severely, severely jealous of web developers because of how easy it is to test, measure, and iteratively improve this. Using your judgment is nice, using your data is muuuuuuch better.

I have one screen in my workflow which I realized was costing me 20% of trial users (thank you, Mixpanel). That was clearly unacceptable.

I redid it to introduce more complexity to the interface (it has the same number of total options as before PLUS a way to show/hide several of them) but hide most of it from novice users.

When I checked my stats for yesterday this morning, it looked like I was losing only 10% at that step now, not 20%. I have no idea whether that data is statistically significant, but just the fact that I'm even in a position to collect it, for practically free, amazes the desktop developer in me.

Now I just need to get my A/B testing framework working so that I can get automated statistical significance tests done on it, and then I can start doing that sort of iterative improvement on an industrial scale, rather than a series of ad hoc one-offs as I've been doing for a while.

<comment><USER5> Is there a way you can incorporate the A/B testing into an actual product?

You can release two pieces that are functionally equivalent but have a slightly different UI on it. If you send stats back to the server you can probably get a good amount of data.

<comment><USER4> You mean like downloadable software? I did it once.

There are many ways to distribute Java applications to customers. That probably bores you. To make a long story short, the tradeoff is usability versus download size.

I made two functionally identical (or so I thought -- long story) versions of BCC, and randomly redirected half of the people downloading from my site to one (1 MB, required JRE) and half to the other (10 MB, did not).

I was able to check which versions were causing sales by incorporating a URL parameter naming the version of the executable when people clicked from the nag prompts to the website. Set the version they're using in a cookie, associate it with a later purchase, blah blah bob's your uncle.

Early testing suggested that the larger one was statistically significantly more effective at producing sales, but this trend did not continue.

There are numerous downsides with this. It took a LOT of work to set up. I got to maintain two versions of the same executable, which introduced bugs (I'll spare you the details, aside from one: Vista). It cost me in support requests. I will be supporting those executables for years to come (trust me -- I still get people buying from software not on my website in 2+ years). Changing the A/B tests used takes a full release cycle.

On the web, these are all so easily surmountable it isn't even funny.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the elaborate explanation. Most things seem pretty easy at first glance until you sit down and try to do them.

I suppose you probably look forward to the day when most apps will be online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorta reminds me of tumblr I just start following called Abobe UI Gripes (much less educational): <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/></comment>


The Story of a Lucky Economist - <AUTHOR> http://allegedwisdom.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-story-of-lucky-economist.html <comment><USER2> This sort of occasional oversized impact is not limited to economics. Take bsdiff for example: I wrote it because I was a poor university student and wanted to make sure usage of FreeBSD Update didn't push me beyond my free bandwidth tier; making updates faster wasn't really a priority (the speedup from downloading binaries vs. recompiling dwarfed everything else) and I wasn't at all sure if anyone else would want to use bsdiff. It turns out that bsdiff has now saved _thousands of lifetimes_ of people waiting for software updates to download.

Even a small impact becomes huge if you scale it up to billions of users.

<comment><USER3> That is so cool! Thanks for bsdiff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth remembering the opposite of his example of "C" (the economist who pushed back against the water standards)..

The faceless bureaucrats in these positions have the ability to destroy livelihood, whole towns, and even industries with the stroke of a pen. And they suffer zero consequences as a result.

<comment><USER5> The stakes are rather high on both sides of this. The same chemist was responsible for both leaded petrol and CFCs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr).

Safety regulations can wipe out businesses. Not having (or following!) regulations can wipe out lives on an enourmous scale: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster)

The point is not to say "regulation good" or "regulation bad", but that these decisions are important and should be taken seriously with submissions from those involved as well as experts. The process has to be sound, and we need to de-partisanise it where possible.

<comment><USER2> For all the environmental damage they caused, I'm not convinced that CFCs were a net negative. We have better alternatives now, but the refrigerants R12 replaced at the time were really really nasty; how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to avoid damaging the ozone layer?

<comment><USER6> The question is how many lives were lost due to a damaged ozone layer? (increased risks of skin cancer, etc).

The point is that regulation is important. Whether you have good regulation, bad regulation or no regulation it has impact and the discussion is important.

<comment><USER2> Right. My point is just that people tend to condemn CFCs based on their costs while completely ignoring the benefits they brought at the time.

<comment><USER7> I mean every narrative about the invention of CFCs is basically found a great thing, didn't realize the great thing has downsides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > the 'PhD Economist' credential is a signal that you might be the kind of > person who can escape groupthink

I am open to this concept but I don't think I'm being cynical when I say that most people would surely think the opposite when they hear the expression PhD Economist.

<comment><USER9> > most people would surely think

An example of groupthink?

If you haven't studied economics in graduate school, you may not be aware that the field is very different than what is taught in traditional undergraduate economics classes. There are different branches, of course, but the field emphasizes modeling and acceptance of initially-unintuitive results based on careful analysis of system dynamics.

Many people can think through the second-order effects (and beyond) of some policy change. Economists are just one group that has been trained to do so.

<comment><USER10> Economics is a highly politicized "science" however. Desperate for their pet views self-validating their world dominance, endowed chairs, think tanks, consulting, and special access to finance deals fundamentally skew the practice of economics at an academic level, essentially bribing them into line with oligarchical capitalism / "Reaganomics".

Economists routinely are placed in politically powerful positions, invariably due in large part to their professed views on economics being in line with a dominant political (aka rich cabal or pro-industry) view of economics.

If economics was truly up to snuff, it would be at the forefront of guiding policy to resolve the existential threat our global scale environmental disruption poses to us as a species, which is a direct result of the imperfect economic systems of the world.

But the fundamental problems in economics remain:

\- if you can't measure it, it doesn't really exist to economics, especially to academics \- if it isn't going to run out in three months or kill you in three months, it doesn't matter and is ignored by economic study

Of course those two points are slight exaggerations, but if one views the long course of economic study, they become pretty apparent.

<comment><USER11> > If economics was truly up to snuff, it would be at the forefront of guiding > policy to resolve the existential threat our global scale environmental > disruption poses to us as a species, which is a direct result of the > imperfect economic systems of the world.

Economics can predict 'disaster' but does not have anything to say about whether or not disaster should be avoided.

To give an example closer to home, in W. Africa predominant economists believe (but do not publicly say) the AIDs crises is not a general threat to humanity. AIDs rates will increase until a peak point, then society will self-correct whether this is via enforced monogamy rituals, enhanced testing, stigmatisation of carriers, wide-spread STD protection, better medical care for carriers to prevent morality, or other methods is besides the point.

What method you _choose_ to promote is a political question, not an economic one. Just because something increases X in circumstance A, does not bear into question if circumstance A is really something you want even if X is "lower mortality rates".

Economists in international organisations learn this truth, and have to be extremely careful not to substitute their own personal bias, or the preferences of their society for that of their client. For a non-morbid example, working in the US an economists would be tasks to report on how to best expand the existing highway system. Taking a step back, and saying "we should all use bullet trains and live in dense cities", isn't going to be appreciated as the 'American Dream' is predicated on suburban living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good article about the costly unintended consequences of well- meaning regulations. The author seems to think, however, that this can be resolved by hiring more educated economists, but I seriously doubt it.

<comment><USER13> My takeaway from the article is that the author completely missed the point, which is that centralised bureaucracy and decision making can be very harmful.

Why are we reliant on an economist to pick up on this irrigation issue? You at least need people from industry to be consulted before regulations like this. Lucky that this particular person noticed the problem, but there probably shouldn't be a lawyer, a scientist and an economist making centralised farming regulations.

<comment><USER14> >Why are we reliant on an economist to pick up on this irrigation issue? You at least need people from industry to be consulted before regulations like this.

It's naive to think that effective, efficient regulation can happen without consulting the people actually affected. It's also naive to think those people should be the ones making regulations.

Even beyond the inherent problem with industries regulating themselves, they are just not capable of doing so in many cases, especially farming. What does a farmer know about public health, or water-borne pathogens, or heavy metals? Farmers know what makes plants grow or not. They don't know how those plants affect the people that eat them.

Plus, says who that irrigating with drinkable water is even a bad idea? It's the most accessible standard. Drinking water is everywhere. It's literally the most unscientific reasoning possible that manure is dirty, therefor water can be dirty too. Self righteous, pretentious stories like this are everywhere, where the clever, down to earth common guy stumps all the big brains. The fact is that the people who study the effects of an industry are in a far better position to assess regulation.

Yes- a producer will be able to say that a regulation may be burdensome. They will definitely not be the best person to know if it's warranted or not.

<comment><USER15> When irrigation water is put directly on produce that will soon be consumed raw, it will transmit pathogens and should be drinking-water standard. This was not disputed, and was in the final rule.

However, if the water will go through manure before being absorbed by the the plant's roots, it is very wasteful to first purify it to drinking-water standard. Drinking-quality water is not everywhere in the quantities needed for irrigation, it requires expensive filtration and processing. Everyone saw the logic of this when it was pointed out, nobody was 'stumped'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone go more into what is meant by framing and anchoring?

Is this like 'sandbagging?'

Does one fail on purpose to set a low standard so that they can have an easier time reaching a goal?

<comment><USER2> If you present people with several options, they'll be biased towards selecting options in the middle of the range. This is particularly relevant to SaaS startups and pricing plans; but in the article the author was using it to steer the decision maker towards the option he had already determined to be optimal.

<comment><USER15> The optimal cutoff would probably have been $20 million rather than the $10 million that was chosen, but that change would have been too much for a lot of people. If I had only presented options from $1M up to $20M, then the group probably would have chosen $5M no matter how much I argued for $20M. I had to put the $50M number in people's heads so $10M seemed less of a jump.

<comment><USER16> Ya that's kind of what it seems like you did... throwing a big number out on purpose so that $9M jump would be "rational." The math in my head says you could weight figures on estimated acceptance probability. By throwing out a low probability figure first before a relatively higher probability acceptance figure - versus just presenting them with a reasonably high probability figure - give a better result. It is almost like expected value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This guy seems obsessed with "impact". People such as this usually embellish what impact they have.

<comment><USER18> If he is embellishing, he is certainly doing it in an understated way by saying he's impacted/saved fewer than 1,000 lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> good post. add some stories about dealing with lobbyists as an economist, and the post will be even more interesting.

<comment><USER15> In most agencies, economists almost never interact with lobbyists. The lobbyists always aim at senior management, and almost all lobbying takes the form of 'We care about X and we want you to validate that by signalling that you also care about X' or 'We are presenting a credible threat to sue you if you do Y'. This is useful political and tactical information for management, but it does not affect the economic numbers at all. In theory a lobbyist could present useful information about a hard-to-research topic that informs our analysis, but I've never seen that happen.</comment></comment>


The Fossil distributed version control system - <AUTHOR> https://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki <comment><USER2> I wish there was some post in the same vein as "Repository Formats Matter" comparing Git and Fossil. I.e. not one that describes differences in incidental UI features and how they happen to be exposed to the user _now_ , but what the intrinsic differences are that make certain things intrinsically hard or impossible in one of the two systems.

That old post, by Keith Packard: [https://keithp.com/blogs/Repository_Formats_Matter/](https://keithp.com/blogs/Repository_Formats_Matter/)

I've read through the documentation on the Fossil file format: [https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/fileform...](https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/fileformat.wiki)

Maybe I'm just being dense, but e.g. in the case of the wiki which Fossil advertises as a core feature over Git, it's not clear to me how it wouldn't be implementable in a similar way in Git by some convention of creating commit objects & having some web UI that understands that convention, and if so the real differentiation is just in the porcelain part of the UI.

<comment><USER3> This may be helpful to you: [https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html](https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html), especially the links to other comparisons at the very bottom.

<comment><USER4> The examples he presents to compare the features of GitHub to Fossil, not git itself.

Fossil has a GUI built-in that makes visualizing the repo easy. There are tools for Git that provide similar functionality.

1\. "Git makes it difficult to find successors (descendents) of a check-in" \- Use a Git GUI like SourceTree and it's really damn easy to jump to a commit and review the entire graph up and down using links to jump to parent/child commits (even multiple parents for merges.

2\. "The mental model for Git is needlessly complex" \- Again, a Git GUI can make it really easy to keep track of "changed but not ready to commit, changed and ready to commit, local and remote branch"

3\. "Git does not track historical branch names" \- The example he provides here shows a visual graph in Fossil of the branch history. The exact same thing is available in Git via "git log --graph --all --decorate" or a GUI that shows the graph.

4\. "Git requires more administrative support" \- "apt install git" or "brew install git" or most systems come with it pre-installed. Windows is a bit more annoying.

5\. "Git provides a poor user experience" \- "Just memorize the shell commands". Again, there is tooling available for Git to remove this requirement.

It seems to me that his main complaint is that Git doesn't provide a GUI out of the box to make visualizing the repository easier. I get that, but there are enough tooling options available that it becomes a non-issue. SourceTree is a native app for Mac and Windows and there are various other GUIs even CLI GUIs for Git that users have a lot of flexibility. Fossil would seem to require them to use the GUI provided by Fossil whether they like it or not.

I'm not bashing on Fossil at all. I'm just saying that his arguments here show a lack of knowledge about the available tooling for Git and not fundamental advantages of Fossil over Git.

<comment><USER5> > 3\. "Git does not track historical branch names" \- The example he provides > here shows a visual graph in Fossil of the branch history. The exact same > thing is available in Git via "git log --graph --all --decorate" or a GUI > that shows the graph.

No, that Git command only shows current local and remote branch heads, not the branches to which a commit historically belonged. If you look at the link he posted, that git hub page provides that same info. AFAIK Git does not store this historical information. If you look at the example links he provides, in Fossil each commit has tags saying what branch(es?) it belonged to.

I do agree with the rest of your points. I use a combo of GUI for viewing current state and easily adding/removing file, I also use more complicated git commands when I need to do stuff that isn't easy in the GUI I use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not terribly difficult for me to track my issues, or a wiki, or even a static site alongside my source code just via plain text (and in fact I usually would prefer to). I can get the parent of a commit in Git, and if I can't remember the specific command I can just add an alias. Git's interface is hard to teach and unintuitive, but now that I know it, it'll be initially a net loss in productivity for me to learn _anything_ else even if it's way more intuitive.

I guess what I'm getting at is that even if Fossil is better than Git, the problems it's solving don't seem to be particularly urgent to solve. Less complexity is good, but it would need to be _considerably_ more elegant than Git to make me not want to use a VCS that's basically standard now.

I don't see anything in the FAQ, overview, or questions page where I'm thinking "Oh, this is something I _couldn 't_ do in basic Git." For a large organization I can see the benefits of simplifying, but as a developer I feel like I'm missing the hook.

Off the top of my head, Git improvements that I regularly do want:

\- Large file support and binary file support. LFS exists, but is clunky and annoying to work with.

\- Pushing/pulling directly to someone else's local repository (ie, if a remote goes down). This is always harder to do than I expect.

\- Better octopus merging; once commits in git have multiple parents, there are sometimes unexpected complications that can arise in future merges.

Does Fossil solve any of those problems?

<comment><USER7> Fossil does solve interesting problems, and has it's practical unique features for some use cases. And even if it didn't, having competition is nice, see clang vs. gcc.

I use org mode files for my issues and wiki-like features for my projects, and it works because my projects are very-small scaled. But having to commit issues and merge them can get boring very quickly. I haven't tried fossil, but if it has a nice quick UI for that, I might be interested.

WRT local push/pull, I don't have any problems with it in Mercurial (altho it's sth. I don't do often). What happens with git? WRT other problems, well, those are problems of all DVCSes and VCSes, so it's a bit too harsh to judge fossil by them, no?

Git command line is not inelegant, it's confusing, even at the basic level. An improvement on that is not only aesthetic. Magit is popular for a reason.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure that Fossil does solve some interesting problems, but I don't see anyone talking about them here or on the previous HN post. I've read through the most obvious user-facing parts of the documentation, and everything seems to be focused on integrated issues, which... I don't see as a problem, or the UI improvements.

Maybe I'm just blind. Does anyone have a link or would they be willing to do a writeup on what _fundamentally_ makes Fossil better than Git (ie. not just from a user interface point of view)?

> _Git command line is not inelegant, it 's confusing_

Agreed, but it's not _unusably_ bad. The question isn't whether or not Fossil can do better than Git's command line, it's whether it can do so much better that it's worth learning a new set of abstractions.

For new developers or large organizations, I can see it. But if I'm used to Git, and I can handle the bad command-line interface, why should I switch then?

Keep in mind that I'll still want to use Magit anyway, because the improvement of Magit is in no small part its Emacs integration. It kind of strikes me as a losing battle to ever market a VCS based on a GUI. When are you ever going to want to use a VCS without integrating it into your IDE? Even if Git's command- line interface was amazing, I would still want to be able to overlay `git- blame` directly onto my source.

<comment><USER7> Almost nothing is unusably bad. In VCS space, even SCCS is still better than nothing. CVS is still quite operable, OpenBSD is one of the finest codebases out there and it uses it. I actually agree you that Fossil is not a big improvement, and I guess I'll stick with Mercurial for quite a while for my stuff. But in our world of software improvements are almost always incremental, even when dubbed otherwise. I'm not trying to convince you that Fossil is an ideal tool to switch to, just that saying that it doesn't bring any improvements and then listing some problems common to other tools in the same space is a bit unfair.

<comment><USER8> Worst experiences for me have been Oracle Software Configuration Manager and IBM Clearcase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fossil has a debian repo, so for lazy debian users like me:

        sudo apt-get install fossil
        fossil init test
        fossil open test
        fossil ui

Then, as the command-line message says, you can navigate with your browser to [http://127.0.0.1:8080](http://127.0.0.1:8080) to try out the web UI.

</comment><comment><USER10> Git, to me, feels like a purposefully obfuscated tool. Using git is painful to me in two levels. First one is the actual pain in using the tool. Second one is the disturbing realization that this tool became the defacto standard for version control system, which indicates a systemic issue within the programming community, where something, despite its obvious flaws and availability of superior options, can end up winning over the competition...

<comment><USER11> Maybe you should acknowledge the fact that others may have different tastes than yours, instead of calling for "system issues" because you do not like the mainstream tool (which is perfectly fine, in itself).

<comment><USER10> So I not what you mean so that I can show will next or could be so.

Is it a matter of taste that the above sentence is well constructed or not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fossil also has version control for issues. That didn't become very popular in other applications. We're now thinking about having issues function like Google Docs. You only get linear history but you gain real-time collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER13> This was big on here last week, regarding why SQLite developers use Fossil not Git: [https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html](https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html)

<comment><USER14> Link to discussion from 3 days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16806114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16806114) (600 comments)

<comment><USER15> I was going to say, didn't we all just discuss this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a "fossilhub"?

I think that would be a good way to drive adoption.

<comment><USER17> [http://chiselapp.com/](http://chiselapp.com/)

<comment><USER18> Thank you. I was not aware of this. I plan to add them into searchcode once I figure out how to integrate with fossil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does Fossil's underlying storage / change tracking mechanism diff from that of Git, Mercurial, or Vault?

<comment><USER19> They use a SQLite database as their underlying storage. (It is written by the author of SQLite.)

<comment><USER20> Interesting; just like monotone. Which I think should have become the de facto standard instead of git.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone else see a fairly strong network effect with versioning software? Most TCL users seem to use fossil. Most web developers use git. A bunch of impressive, older software uses svc. Huh.

</comment><comment><USER22> Deleted.

<comment><USER23> As your sibling already replied, you'll likely find answers here:

[https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html](https://sqlite.org/whynotgit.html)

And HN discussion (with over 600 comments) here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16806114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16806114)

<comment><USER24> Almost all of these are quarrels with Git's UI/UX, not with its model of representing data. Tools like [https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/](https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/) combined with a git-flow workflow (or anything similar) solve practically all of the mentioned shortcomings.

<comment><USER25> that's OS X only

<comment><USER24> [https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis/](https://git-scm.com/downloads/guis/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the big things pushed with Fossil is that you get issues and a wiki built in, compared to Git, but when you consider it there's nothing preventing you from tracking issues and keeping wiki pages inside a Git repo as well. All that Fossil offers is some extra porcelain over its storage layer, which could be offered through extra tooling for Git as well.

<comment><USER27> > All that Fossil offers is some extra porcelain over its storage layer...

Well... the tickets are things that live in the repository like a commit, so can reference other entries, and are referenceable by other entries, in a first class way, so it's a "simple matter of programming" for git in the dismissive sense.

<comment><USER28> These features are possible right now on the backend of git to be implemented. There's nothing blocking git to add these things. What git would need is a front-end (remember, the cli is a frontend) to implement these.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree fossil is adding some new cards to the table. I just think it would be better implemented as extensions to git than a new system made from scratch.

<comment><USER29> Yep, this is completely possible to implement in git. Fossil has it built-in already, that's good.

For anyone who wants to see what's possible using low level git tools: [https://github.com/google/git-appraise](https://github.com/google/git- appraise)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Surface Go is Microsoft's big bet on a tiny-computer future - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/surface-go-microsofts-big-bet-on-a-tiny-computer-future/?mbid=social_twitter&__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> My problem is that with the keyboard and the pen you end up with a laptop that is far from the advertisement price. You go smoothly from 399$ to 599$. The keyboard is a minimum...

<comment><USER3> You also have to add in the $50 to get the full version of Windows.

<comment><USER4> No, that upgrade is now free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I keep hoping one of these announcements from Microsoft will be a Surface Phone. This one had my hopes up from the title of the article, but it's just a tablet—not really that tiny.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not particularly "tiny". Yes, it's slightly smaller than typical laptops are right now, but I had an Asus EEE back in the day when "netbooks" were a thing (over a decade ago) and that was much smaller. It's always a tradeoff between portability and size of keyboard/screen. For a while machines get smaller and then eventually people get frustrated and larger machines return.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I mean the original Surface was 10" too. This seems like a nice product, but there isn't anything particularly revolutionary about it. Except it has a USB-C port - finally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The $549 model with 8gb RAM and 128GB SSD storage interests me. I currently own a 10.5" iPad Pro but would have considered the Surface Go had it existed when I bought the iPad.

<comment><USER9> It's probably about 2x the weight though... At least judging from the Surface line I've seen so far. I'm not really a fan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wanted to be a student AND a social justice warrior.

Just like I'm sure my friend's father wants to be both a veteran and a WASP

/s of course</comment>


Millennials may need to double how much they save for retirement - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2017/01/09/millennials-may-need-to-double-how-much-they-save-for-retirement/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_gt-millennials-955am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.ec84953881ca <comment><USER2> As a millennial I honestly think we'll benefit from the baby boomers being forced to sell their stock as they approach retirement. The baby boomers selling stock will increase supply which will decrease prices. Maybe those stocks won't grow a lot for the next few decades, but by the time I retire in 4 decades the market will probably have had enough time to start growing.</comment>


Life is a RPG video game - <AUTHOR> https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/life-is-a-video-game-a-mental-model <comment> core-questions Hard disagree.

First, the article is a bit puerile - the big finish is that you should have goals and recognize opportunity cost. That's not bad advice, but neither is it a particularly difficult realization that requires a mental model of a game to arrive at.

Second, consider this: RPGs have a story, an overarching plot you are directed into by your interactions with the characters around you. Our lives do not have such a story, other than what we tell ourselves and are told about ourselves by others. While we have relationships, and even "drama", there's no conclusion, no inevitability, no plot.

The tendency to think of life as a game is ultimately solipsistic: it stems from our desire to simplify that which is around us because the true complexity of things is too much to bear.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article doesn't talk about the reverse and more logical conclusion. RPG video games imitate life. If life were really a video game then death doesn't matter since you can always press the reset button. You can also start over from a saved location.</comment>


Why I Love Basic Auth - <AUTHOR> http://www.rdegges.com/why-i-love-basic-auth/

<comment><USER2> Hey, nice write up. As you said in the article it is a controversial topic and I definitively see that "bandwagon effect" when it comes to using OAuth in favor of Basic Auth. One thing I'm a bit worried about, though whenever I use Basic Auth is the longevity of it's credentials. The lack of tokens automatically means that as long as the dev does not implement some "credential rotation" mechanism (carried out either manually or automatically) leaked credentials become a long lasting problem.

OAuth is not perfect by any means but this scares me away from Basic Auth a lot. Especially given the fact that those "leaks" might go by unnoticed. Using some authentication mechanism with short-lived tokens mitigates this risk at least in the long run as leaked tokens will just expire.</comment>


Tesla Autopilot Accidents: 1 out of 4,5M Miles; US Average: 1 out of 479,000 - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/01/tesla-autopilot-accidents-1-out-of-4530000-miles-us-average-1-out-of-479000-miles/ <comment><USER2> Not sure that this is an apples to apples comparison. The US average includes many driving scenarios that Tesla's autopilot cannot navigate.

~52% of accidents happen within 5 miles of home. At least where I live, Tesla's autopilot couldn't navigate the 5 miles around my house on city streets.

A better comparison may be to compare accident rates for same/similar driving scenarios as the Tesla autopilot. While we all know that humans are bad drivers, perhaps it would would be better to compare accident rates for freeway driving.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that number 52% has a lot to do with how many miles are driven within a 5 mile radius the home. A 5 mile radius is ~78.54 square miles where Manhattan for example is only 33.58 sq mi.

<comment><USER4> Not only that, but you're at your most tired as well. Early morning and late at night after a long day. Driving tired is like driving drunk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the average accident rate in the kind of conditions in which autopilot is used?

<comment><USER6> Furthermore, how do the severity of the accidents compare?

<comment><USER7> Furthermore, how many times an accident was averted by a driver taking control of the vehicle at the last moment?

<comment><USER8> Furthermore, how many times Autopilot fucked up so much that the accident could not be avoided when the driver took control, but since the driver had disengaged Autopilot at the last second, it is technically no longer an "Autopilot Accident"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The study needs to stratify the results by the typical driver that buys a Tesla and conditions/situations when Teslas are driven.

Already, using their numbers, just having a Tesla with no safety features enabled drops the accidents rate to 1 in 1.4 million.

Is it hard to believe that much fewer Teslas are used to drive home at 2 am, with five distracting passangers, after a night of partying?

</comment><comment><USER10> Headline rewritten: Accidents are less common in situations where accidents are less common.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting comparison but I'd also like to see how safety systems in other cars compare - i.e. Subaru Eyesight system. Anyway less accidents is always good news.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the rate generalizes, one could imagine Tesla being able to offer their insurance rate at 1/10th the price of comparable vehicles.

That would make Tesla ownership that much more appealing from the TCO perspective.

<comment><USER13> Insurance also covers your car being stolen, vandalized, and other things unrelated to being in an accident.

<comment><USER14> Only if you have comprehensive insurance.

I know that well because my car was stolen and I only had liability. Still came out ahead though - comprehensive on that car was horrendously expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this another selective comparisons article?

Autopilot is primarily a highway tool, but the vast vast majority of accidents happen on normal streets, and is generally unavailable in many of the cases where accidents are common.

A comparison of crash rates is _only_ relevant when comparing similarly situated crashes. So what is the average American crash rate on highways in clear weather, without construction, etc? I suspect that crash rate is far better than at night, during a blizzard, on an ordinary poorly lit suburban road. Yet AP wouldn't run then.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article acknowledges what the title does not:

"First of all, Autopilot is more commonly used on longer freeway trips than in city driving, and accidents are much more common in urban driving than on the freeway, especially per mile. Additionally, in general, Autopilot would be engaged in safer driving situations in which an accident is less likely in the first place.

Lastly, the figure for the US average is based on annual data, and accidents are more common in winter. (Naturally, Tesla's Q2 data doesn't cover the winter. Although, its record-breaking result in Q1 does.)"

</comment><comment><USER17> In other news, roads without intersections have fewer accidents.

</comment><comment><USER18> Assuming the US average includes drunk drivers, sleepy drivers, inexperienced drivers, speeding drivers, etc, etc. and under hugely varying environmental conditions.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll just add this to the long list of reasons I won't buy a Tesla. Don't put out misleading statistics about safety. It's unforgivable.

</comment><comment><USER20> For me, these are the two most interesting statistics:

1 accident every 1.56 million miles without Autopilot and without active safety features

1 accident every 479,000 miles — US average

Does this mean Tesla drivers are three times "better" than the US average?

<comment><USER21> No, it just means Tesla drivers are less likely to drive on the most dangerous types of roads, such as rural highways.

<comment><USER22> I know that two lane highways can be dangerous, but are those really among the most dangerous?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> However Tesla was prohibited from marketing it as a self-driving mechanism. So they can't be directly compared.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what the numbers are for comparable vehicles with comparable drivers in comparable situations.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm always surprised at the backlash against this stuff.

Is it the boldness of the claims or the name they gave it?

Because autopilot is really quite nice. It helps.

I wonder if people complained about antilock brakes or cruise control when they first came out? Anti-lock brakes don't work well on snow. Cruise control has to be monitored. But they both are helpful and I have paid to have them on my vehicle.

<comment><USER26> Because you can only use it during prime driving conditions and yet people compare it to overall incidents when driving.

<comment><USER27> I dont know what you mean by "prime driving conditions", but it seems to work great both in sunny clear weather and in severe rain and thunderstorm, as well as with varying levels of traffic (from none to heavy).

I have been using it for almost a year on my daily commute to work (~13 miles one way), and only once it didn't let me engage autopilot due to severe weather (but it was so bad, even i couldnt see much, so i had to pull over at the nearest exit and wait until weather conditions cleared up; and no, i wasnt going to let autopilot drive in such poor conditions, i just wanted to check if it would let me engage it). Every other time, even in thunderstorms and rain, it worked flawlessly (and we get plenty of rainy days here in PNW, though mostly not waterfall-tier of rain like you would get on east coast).

I can imagine, it would probably not work well with significant snow on the roads, but i didnt get a chance or reason to test it, because when it snows enough here to be an issue, everything pretty much gets closed.

<comment><USER15> prime driving conditions means: well marked freeways.

Accidents primarily happen in areas like suburban and city streets with pedestrians, effectively randomized lighting and road surfaces, and random mix of traffic lights, stops sign, and poor road markings.

The closer you get to the latter the less likely AP is to engage, and also the higher likelihood of a crash for any vehicle. Effectively AP is ensuring that it can never been operating in the situations that produce the bulk of the crash rate statistics, so any claims of relative safety are kind of meaningless.

<comment><USER28> >Accidents primarily happen in areas like suburban and city streets

I was just taking a defensive driving course for the insurance discount, and I think it said the vast majority of (lethal, major) accidents are on two lane rural highways. Because in the US they are often posted at 55 mph, and have uncontrolled intersections, unpredictable visibility, no separation between oncoming traffic, and so on. But I assume you also wouldn't want to use autopilot there either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always wonder if they can slice the data where they compare with decent human driver.

I drove for 15 years and never have a single accident. All of my friends never have major accidents (e.g. breaking bones).

Sure, we are privileged. We don't drink and drive. We aren't deprived of sleep and overworked and etc. We never have to go out when the road condition is bad. We don't really drive over a speed limit.

I'm worried that this "US average" stats is skewed by some bad drivers.</comment>


Retire in your Mind even if you Love your Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/30/weekend-edition-retire-in-your-mind-even-if-you-love-your-job/ <comment><USER2> Another great post by MMM. Before starting a Lean Startup every founder should try to lead a Lean Life as per his advice...

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure. I think that when you are running a business, time and money are much more exchangeable than they are otherwise. I mean, outsourcing housekeeping duties is likely the least Mustachian thing I can think of, but I think it makes a lot of sense if you can easily work a few more hours for significantly more after tax dollars than what the housekeeper charges.

Or cooking. Man, what a time sink, and that one is actually kinda hard to solve; restaurants are sub-optimal, unless you can schedule meetings during the wait time, simply 'cause they are so slow. I mostly eat frozen food and salads, which is suboptimal, 'cause frozen food is crap. I guess learning how to cook quick and easy stuff would be one solution. So would having someone come and cook for me, but I suspect that'd be significantly more expensive than just eating out every day.

But yeah, I'm trying to say that when you are running a business? you have a whole lot more power to increase your revenue (vs. when you are working for other people) - often it makes more sense to spend limited time on increasing revenue than it does to spend that time on decreasing expenses.

Which isn't to say decreasing expenses isn't good. I've started my company by living off 1/3rd to 1/2 what my job role is usually paid, contracting, and putting the difference into capital goods for my business. There's no way I could have started a capital intensive business if I wasn't able to earn like the upper middle class while I lived like the lower middle class, So cutting costs was pretty essential. But at this point? my food budget is about a grand a month, while my co-lo/bandwidth budget is closer to ten grand a month. (fifteen, if you count all the temporary stuff that I need to move out of) - the thing is, I can get a lot more mileage out of putting effort into making that $10K number smaller than I can out of making that $1K number smaller.

<comment><USER4> I read that batch cooking can be quite efficient: You spent a day every month cooking a huge amount of food that freezes well. Works especially well, if you are not bothered by eating the same meal for a few days in a row.

<comment><USER5> We've been 'Once a Month Cookers' for almost 8 years now. I swear by it, though my wife is starting to waver.

 _"eating the same meal a few days in a row"_ has never come into it. We batch cook 6 different meals by 4 portions = 24 dinners, and mark the calendar so we mix them up but don't have 3 quesadillas left at the end.

<comment><USER6> Even once a week cooking can save a ton of time, and you can pump out a lot of food in an hour or so if you plan correctly.

<comment><USER4> Or you can even pay someone to come over once a week and do it for you.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if we'll get to this point, though it interests me. We originally started as a cost-saving measure (I took a pay cut to move to a better city; mortgage; and a wife-to-be still at university), and my beautiful wife actually enjoys cooking so we'll outsource other time sinks long before food preparation.

<comment><USER4> Oh, if you enjoy cooking, then by all means do it yourself.

But otherwise, you might want to do it in the most efficient manner possible (or let somebody else whose time you are paying for do it efficiently).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if I could be another MMM, but with buying stuff that are of extremely high quality and improve my life?

A simple example would be a fairly high priced mechanical keyboard... I would be using it every day.

<comment><USER8> It depends what you mean. There's certainly something to be said for buying stuff that's decent quality if you're going to be using it for a while, but just buying things that are high quality isn't going to free you from a job if you still have bad spending habits.</comment></comment>


Introducing the premium full-archive search endpoint - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2018/access-the-full-history-of-tweets.html <comment><USER2> Premium searches cost about $1 per query: [https://developer.twitter.com/en/pricing/search- fullarchive](https://developer.twitter.com/en/pricing/search-fullarchive)

<comment><USER3> It's strange that page mentions rate limiting of 60 requests/min, 10 requests/sec. Are you sure the pricing is 100 requests per month?

<comment><USER4> They don't specifically define the "period". No matter what the period is the price per search goes from $1 to $0.76 depending on volume.

I wonder how they can justify these prices?

<comment><USER5> I could certainly see a "search of everything by user" be very much worth a $1 for groups like intelligence agencies or background check companies.

That cost is then passed back on to the requester.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If there is one thing I despise about tech companies nowadays it is how everything always reduces down to advertising or marketing analytics. They are turning marketing people into some of the most obnoxiously demanding folks out there

<comment><USER7> Nobody is willing to pay for any of that stuff directly so advertising is the only way to make money these days.

<comment><USER6> Then at this point I would rather all the nonfree stuff just go away. (Yes including HN)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Too late. They killed their own platform not providing good API services. When everybody was interested in connecting with Twitter they didn't provide options, now Twitter is falling and it would be very difficult to attract interest.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a parameter to exclude tweets from bogus accounts? Twitter has clearly identified these and they've been disappearing by the millions, but will they still appear in the search archive?

It'd be nice to exclude those tweets, and given the very expensive API calls, only pay for non-human tweets when explicitly desired.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would sooner pay $1 per Google query to expunge tweets from the results.

</comment><comment><USER11> Only ~$1.00 per API call...

<comment><USER12> The default # tweets returned is 100, but the max is 500. That's a $4 penalty for not using the correct API perameter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Name really rolls off the tongue.

<comment><USER14> collect a bunch of results and print them out.

PFASEbook.

<comment><USER15> And, then Facebook could come out with their own framework named: Total Web- to-React-Redux framework...Or, TwtRR framework.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Code is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?m=1

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191587).

</comment><comment><USER3> See discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191587)</comment>


What the Bible Really Says About Sex - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/06/what-the-bible-really-says-about-sex.html

<comment><USER2>
      "When it comes to sex, the Bible is often divided against itself," writes Knust.

Can't really sum up the Bible better than that, in all aspects, not just those of a sexual nature.

There's some really beautiful writing in the Bible, and more importantly (in my opinion), Biblical texts have inspired some of the must amazing music ever written. That, for me, is why it is so culturally important.

Anyone who reads it as a guide to life is going to end up being very selective with chosing what to follow and what to ignore.

 _FYI, I'm an atheist._

</comment><comment><USER3> _When biblical authors wanted to talk about genitals, they sometimes talked about "hands," as in the Song of Solomon, and sometimes about "feet."... When he is teaching to college students, he writes, someone inevitably asks about the scene in Luke, in which a woman kisses and washes Jesus' feet—and then dries them with her hair. Is that author speaking about "feet"? Or feet? "As both modern and ancient elaborations suggest," Coogan writes, "sexual innuendo may be present." Scholars agree that in this case, a foot was probably just a foot._

</comment><comment><USER4> lol. All of those arguments, or variations of them, have been talked about before. And all of them are rather easy to debunk. It's always amusing to watch people try to make the Bible say what they want it to.

<comment><USER4> As I said... [http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/02/what-the-bible- really-...](http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2011/02/what-the-bible-really-says- about-sex.html)</comment></comment>


Mt. Gox CEO Confesses: All the Bitcoins are gone - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mtgox-bankruptcy-japanese-news-video-2014-2

<comment><USER2> "We have lost Bitcoins" != "All the Bitcoins are gone". Headline doesn't match actual quote -- BI are editorializing.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use A/B Testing? - <AUTHOR> A/B Testing is touted as one of the most effective UX design tools but nowhere I've worked has ever used it. Has any company you've worked for used A/B Testing? <comment><USER2> YES!

<comment><USER2> ab -lt 10 -c 3 "www.youdomainORwithoutwww.com/" I apologize for mixing up ab testing with A/B testing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Negotiating for ownership in a client's company - <AUTHOR>

A favorite client has been aggressively trying to get me to come back to work for them (I was an employee for them for a few years before I left to return to consulting / starting up some new ventures).
I currently consult for a software company that is wholly owned by a larger, established company. The software company was created to spin-off the larger company's internal software for sale. They have a few licensees, but are not profitable at this time.
There are some market opportunities in their industry that I'd like to get involved with, but have avoided due to conflict of interest with this client. I believe that chasing down some of these opportunities will make this company profitable within 2 years.
I'd like to approach my client about going to work for/with them to explore these opportunities & drive growth, but I want to negotiate ownership in/of the software company as part of the deal in lieu of the extra compensation they've offered me to return.
The owners of the company are planning on retiring in the next 10 years. I would like to negotiate some kind of equity transfer as part of an employment agreement with them... In a perfect world, I'd ask for 5% of the company per year for 10 years, with some kind of mechanism for actual control at the end of 10 years. However, that feels like a greedy starting point to me.
I would rather approach them with an aggressive deal that they may say no to than a deal where I've left something on the table. The worst case scenario for me is they say they're not interested and I continue to consult for them (which is a pretty great situation already).
My questions:

  * I'd love any examples of people succesfully doing this
    in the past.
  * What's a realistic goal for taking ownership? I have
    been responsible for nearly all of their growth over
    the past 5 years.
  * What sort of mechanisms can I suggest to protect both
    myself and the client?
  * Am I missing something obvious?
 <comment><USER2> 1\. One of my friends (who I worked with at the time) wrote an OSS software package in his free time and leased its installation to our at the time employer. At my current workplace, one of the owners worked his way into his ownership stake in the company, but he is a minority owner (and the only owner who is also an employee).

2\. You are very unlikely to be given any consideration for ownership whatsoever. They've already compensated you for all of the growth you've created, and unless you are CTO material ownership is probably not on the table.

3\. I would suggest you start a company, with the client having a stake and you having a stake (you'll probably have the minority stake). Then you're on a bit more even terms, the client is reducing their exposure, and limiting their responsibility to you. They'll bring the capital to the table and you can bring the ideas. There are a lot of different ways to structure source licensing that greatly reduce the risk of getting fucked, for lack of a better word.

4\. Maybe. From the amount of information you've given you sound delusional. You expect them to take on risk, give you ridiculous equity in return, and then walk away after ten years. You'd be greedy to ask for a 30% stake. 50% of the company is ludicrous.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is useful, thank you.

Starting a separate company to go after some of these market opportunities is a good idea; and one that I've thought about as well. I should have made it more clear that I wasn't trying to negotiate for them to give me their company, but to negotiate significant ownership interest in it.

Since I've left, they've asked me to come back and offered significantly higher salary, shown interest in licensing software from me that would take care of some of their business problems, and "would consider any other option" that I brought to them in order to come back and take the reins again.

I do have a track record of generating results for them, and their growth has completely stalled since I left.

Approaching this as a separate company in which I'd ask them to invest, I don't see much difference in the end result. I'd still want to hold significant ownership interest in the new company, I'd still be asking them for money to fund the venture, the risk appears to be similar to me. I am certain that I can significantly improve the value of the company because I already have paying customers lined up for this new functionality.

I agree that even asking for 50% after 10 years is ludicrous, but I want to consider ludicrous options.

The proposition that I'm making to them is to consider the value of holding 100% of the company as things go today, versus holding half (10%? 20%?) of the company at whatever value can be created between now and then.

I suppose a better way of approaching the question would be this: A client has been actively recruiting me to return and take over management of their software company. How can I maximise the outcome / what is possible via aggressive negotiation?

When I left their employ and they became a consulting client again, I was able to negotiate a pretty ridiculous seeming consulting arrangement with them and they have been very happy with it thus far. But it left me feeling like I wasn't aggressive enough in negotiations.</comment></comment>


Ask German: What is your hourly rate? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you're hoping to gain from this vague question.</comment>


Apple facing record bill for Irish tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37216176 <comment><USER2> Seems kinda crazy to retroactively assess taxes/fines on a company that was doing something completely legal in the country it was operating in. If you don't like the rules, change them - but to go backward in time and say what was clearly legal shouldn't have been is crazy.

That'd be like re-scoring the 1890 World Series based on today's MLB rulebook.

<comment><USER3> It wasn't legal though, it was illegal state aid in contravention to the laws of the single market Ireland was signed up too.

<comment><USER4> That depends heavily on whether Apple received clarifications and information about the existing tax code, or whether they received special-case tax breaks that didn't apply to everyone. The latter might violate EU requirements.

<comment><USER3> Apple have publically admitted to getting special treatment.

<comment><USER5> source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still don't understand why companies avoid local taxes. It doesn't make any sense to me. Their fiduciary duty is to act in the best interests of their investors. Unless the investors all consider their best-case-scenario to live in a world of anarchy and lawlessness, it is obviously in everyone's best interest (financially and otherwise) to pay taxes as expected. Anything else is an affront to the structure of modern civilization.

It is not in the best interest of Apple shareholders for the quality of life in the US/California/etc to deteriorate due to missing tax dollars. Long-term, stable societies are much more useful for making money than a few billion in secret stash tax havens.

<comment><USER7> I'd rather pay taxes to Apple, Tesla, and Google than the US government. At least they're competent.

<comment><USER8> So, in case anyone else hadn't noticed, we have reached peak libertarian techie madness.

<comment><USER9> It's almost as if none of these guys have ever read any nightmarish dystopian cyber-punk fiction. Megacorps as stand-in for governments == bad.

<comment><USER10> Or they don't happen to think that cheap sci-fi pulp, which is the vast majority of cyber-punk, are a good argument for or against anything.

<comment><USER11> "We live on an internet created by corporate persons, our government is hacked by Russian spies, and virtual reality is real now, dear." \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gazACJ0R1Hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gazACJ0R1Hc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amusing that Ireland are going to appeal a decision which results in their receiving billions of dollars. They accurately calculate that a few billion is scant compensation if the Masters of the Universe then choose to go elsewhere for their tax-avoiding needs.

<comment><USER13> Not really. Apple have been in Ireland since the eighties and are one of the biggest private sector employers in Cork. There are a lot of jobs on the line, it's not like they are some kind of brass plate company with no actual presence here.

<comment><USER14> > one of the biggest private sector employers in Cork.

What do all those people do? do you know? I'm interested.

<comment><USER15> Simple, they take the mail out of a corporation's fake HQ PO box in Ireland and forward it to where they're actually based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J0-nas I think it's quite amusing how Apple(+other companies) and their tax avoidance scheme earned them a fortune in "tax heavens" and now both the EU and the USA are trying their best to get some of the money back.

Here is to hoping EU politicians fix the tax system and force companies to pay a meaningful tax in the countries where they sell their products.

Personally, I'm not very optimistic considering J.C. Juncker is still one of the most influential EU politicians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Claude_Juncker#Controvers...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Claude_Juncker#Controversies)

<comment><USER16> funny thing to say since the US Treasury is criticizing the EU over this abuse of tax law

The US and Ireland both signed off on the arrangement that apple and other companies use to avoid tax.

Now, a government that didn't exist at the time, is using new case law it has created, to retroactively change the tax laws of the governments underneath it.

Think of it as Europe's Marbury v Madison moment

<comment><USER17> > Now, a government that didn't exist at the time, is using new case law it > has created, to retroactively change the tax laws of the governments > underneath it.

It's kind of tricky because though the EU as it is today is relatively new Ireland joined the European Economic Community which essentially became the EU. Also whenever that rule came into effect the special rules Ireland gave Apple should have been reevaluated and removed. They've always been against the state aid rule it's just not been tried until now. As for "changing the tax laws of governments underneath it" that's part of being in the EU you give up parts of your national sovereignty in a number of areas for the benefits of being in the open market.

<comment><USER17> > Ireland joined the European Economic Community which essentially became the > EU

Forgot to finish this sentence:

"Ireland joined the European Economic Community which essentially became the EU back in 1973"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it Ireland's prerogative if they want to collect taxes on corporations or not? It's bringing in excessive amounts of jobs (and payroll taxes) and investments to their country.

This whole tax avoidance criticism just boggles my mind. There's a sale in China. One person pays money to another person in their country for a phone created in China that never left China. Yet somehow US citizens believe they are entitled to 30-40% of the money that exchanged hands there or it's "tax avoidance".

<comment><USER19> > Isn't it Ireland's prerogative if they want to collect taxes on corporations > or not?

What is not a member of the UE prerogative is giving unfair deals to just some companies. This is what the case is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > US warning The investigation into Apple and similar probes into other US > firms have been criticised by US authorities.

Ha! I like it. US all of the sudden is defending Apple. Not because it loves Apple, but because it was hoping it would get its hands on those billions ... somehow.

EU here is basically saying, "ok Uncle Sam, fish or cut bait, do something. If not get out of the way, we'll take that money". So Uncle Sam is a bit upset at that, he doesn't like to be handled that way.

They will probably be various threats of sanctions from US and EU will buckle eventually. Maybe some scheme to divide the tax penalty between US and EU eventually.

Ireland's position is understandable. It could lose those companies overnight basically if this goes through.

<comment><USER21> I like the EU slowly becoming a friendly and peaceful counterpoint to the US. Two democratic superpowers of about the same size is better than one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting that the US is backing Apple's tax shelter scheme, which isn't to say that EC isn't grasping way beyond any reasonable measure of where it should go.

<comment><USER23> I think it is hilariously hypocritical coming from a tax authority that wants to collect taxes on income their citizens earned while working outside of their borders. Talk about trying to be a 'supra-national tax authority'.

In some ways there is a fight going on with national governments telling corporations to start putting their hoarded cash to work in the various economies or else we'll take it and put it to work in the economies. In a number of dystopian futures there is an event in the past called the "corporate wars" and this kinda feels a bit like something you might call a corporate war.

[1] "Do I Owe Taxes On My Foreign Income?

U.S. citizens and resident aliens earning over a certain amount of income from foreign sources may have to pay income taxes on the foreign income." \-- [http://www.efile.com/foreign-earned-income-and-income- exclus...](http://www.efile.com/foreign-earned-income-and-income-exclusion/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apple (with backing of the US government) vs EU. My money is on Apple winning this battle. I'm sick of these lawsuits against Apple/MSFT. Europe is just jealous that US/Korea/Japan can create global tech brands that anyone cares about.

<comment><USER25> Or people in the EU get angry that it's hard to compete against US monopolists 'tech brands' who pay 10000 times less tax percentually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here are the allegations

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52014XC1017\(08\)&from=EN)</comment>


'Companies don't need large support teams' – Interview with Gianni from Disqus - <AUTHOR> http://blog.supportbee.com/

<comment><USER2> I find this semi-humorous and quite expected for him to say this. I've dealt with their support on a few occasions; it's like pulling teeth to get them to respond.

</comment><comment><USER3> The dynamics of this change completely for "enterprise" software where your customers are paying extra for support. In that case there is little incentive for you to put FAQ's on your site. In fact you want to make it hard to run your software without a support contract.

<comment><USER4> As someone who has worked for several companies that provide "enterprise" software, I can say that's only the case with bad companies. There are many companies that are constantly trying to improve and update their documentation so that support only has to deal with the unusual or complex and difficult problems.

Edit: And I should add that there are plenty of people who will call support for every single problem they encounter, no matter how clear the documentation is.

<comment><USER3> I wish we bought more software from companies like that :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty funny that even though this was an interview by SupportBee, he keeps mentioning that they use Assistly, a clear competitor of SupportBee, and how awesome it is...

</comment><comment><USER6> What happened to linking directly to the article?

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe we should get Watson to do tech support. He seems to be pretty quick with the right answer.</comment>


How many people are willing to give up their day job to risk a startup? - <AUTHOR> http://trogger.com/discussions/how-many-people-are-willing-to-give-up-their-day-job-to-risk-a-startup

<comment><USER2> Maybe I have been extremely lucky my whole life, but I have never thought of a startup as being risky.

Financial risk is all about investing your personal human capital and looking for the highest expected value.

When I approached the end of college, I looked at what I was given (mediocre programming skills, some street smarts, a knack for bs) and I realized that my expected financial return was much higher in a startup.

Take 5 years out for example.

Assumptions:

\- 10% at 20 M = 2 M \- 10% at 10 M = 1 M \- 10% at 5 M = 500k \- 10% at 500,000 = 50,000 \- 60% at nothing = $0 \- Total of 3.55 M expected return on my personal human capital

\- 100% at 500k (salary over 5 years, being generous) \- Total of 500k expected return

3.55 M > 500k. Of course these numbers are personal, and everyone is different, but I don't think they are unrealistic.

<comment><USER3> Could you clarify how you arrived at the numbers for the five year expected return?

<comment><USER2> Just come up with expected exits if you were to start a startup then come up with percentages as to which you think those exits are reasonable.

The numbers I came up with were largely based on my personal feeling of how good I am at this whole being a business-man business, this is different for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it hard to escape my comfort zone when I'm comfortable. When I had a "job" I would set a goal each year of setting up a small internet business. I called it a cyber lemonade stand. I wanted something small that I could learn from and experiment with different types of promotion. It wasn't until I left that job this happened. The years I was in my comfort zone I couldn't be pushed to do the uncomfortable thing of working extra to make a small business to learn from. Having my back against the wall seems to be a good motivator for getting things done.

</comment><comment><USER5> I resigned from my 8 year career at a large financial software firm to work on my start-up full time this past January. It is definitely a risk and most people who work in a large stable corporation won't make that move. They thought I was insane to leave a stable high paying job for a risky and unknown venture. I don't know if I'll succeed yet, but I'm sure it was the right move for me. But there is a company full of people I left who will never make that kind of leap.

</comment><comment><USER6> After seeing my parents slave for other people, all their ideas wasted or stolen, why would I think it is the easy route not working on my own thing?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had opportunities to leave a comfortable day job to work on startups. What kept me from joining up wasn't just risk but I didn't believe it would be a success. That's most important. Bootstrapping my own startup has taken more time but I've been completely relaxed on it and able to really set my launch up well without having to worry about supporting my family through a risky situation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nope, that's why I'm doing one right after graduating college. That's before getting a day job, so I won't have to give one up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the answer is surprisingly few. This makes it hard because you need to have the ganas enough to a) quit b) devote most of your time. On top of that, you need to have a co-founder who is willing to make the same sacrifice. Having a co-founder who isn't on the same page isn't completely worthless but it can be terribly frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER9> Me.

I had kept a day job and worked on my startup only in (all) my spare time for more than 2 years, that _is_ challenging, kind of keeping-an-out-of-marriage- affair challenging -- you get the idea. (or do you? :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish I had a day job :(

 _(actually, I'm a student, and I'm starting co-op in 2 weeks)_</comment>


Wallace Tree - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_tree <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Multiply numbers in hardware by multiplying as you would in school - each digit by each other digit, then add up all the results.

The apparant speedup comes from the fact that adding a list of N integers doesn't take O(n) time because it can be parallelized (for example by adding pairs of numbers first to make a list half as long).

The hardware specific tricks are that multiplication by 1 or 0 is simply a very cheap and operation, and that adding 3 numbers to make two results is much faster in hardware than adding 2 numbers to make one result.

<comment><USER3> This summary has some important errors in it. If you added each partial product in parallel, you would get O((log N)^2) delay, because each addition has O(log N) and there are O(log N) levels in the tree. The Wallace tree has total delay O(log N), which is smaller.

The way you learned in school is to add each number up in series, which doesn't give the correct parallel structure to multiply numbers quickly in parallel.

For example,

          1234
        x 5678
       </comment></comment><comment>-
          9872
         8638
        7404
       6170
       </comment><comment>-
       7006652

In school, you would add each part column by column, and keep track of a carry digit. This gives a fairly bad delay from right to left, since the result of a carry from the right-hand columns will affect the results of the left-hand columns, many operations later. If you add pairs of numbers in parallel, it will be faster, but you will still have to propagate carry from right to left.

The key insight in the Wallace tree is to reduce these numbers hierarchically, but only bitwise. Three bits in the same position are reduced to two bits in different positions, at each level. Eventually, there are only two levels left, and we do a single addition.

This process for addition is completely alien to the way humans do it.

> (for example by adding pairs of numbers first to make a list half as long).

That is absolutely not how it works. There is only one pair of numbers being added here—at the end, the very last two numbers are added together normally. If you try to add each pair of numbers in parallel, you will add more gate delay as the carry bit has to propagate all the way from the right side to the left at each level in the tree (instead of only once at the end).

With the Wallace tree, the carry bit only has to propagate the width of the numbers once, at the very end. This is much faster. At the beginning, again, bits are being added with full adders which shrinks the tree at a rate of 3:2 (not 2:1) where possible. You will notice that the height of the numbers goes from 8 to 6 (not 4), then 6 to 4, 4 to 3, and then 3 to 2. The final two numbers are then added normally.

<comment><USER2> Your explanation here is described in my original reply as "that adding 3 numbers to make two results is much faster in hardware than adding 2 numbers to make one result."

I initially typed a further explanation of "no carry chain is necessary, so each addition becomes constant time", but decided for most readers here, they either wouldn't be hardware experts and wouldn't see why a carry chain was relevant, or would be hardware experts in which case it's already obvious, since full adders are used in loads of things wired like this.

Thankyou for expanding in a lot more detail though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What method do modern CPU's actually use?

<comment><USER5> Radix-4 modified Booth encoding to reduce the number of partial products and then a sort of modified Wallace tree using 4:2 compressors (or some sort of 3:2 & 4:2 compressor combination based on technology node). There is another type of multiplier sometimes used for maximum performance: unlike Wallace trees where you go through steps of tree reduction, the "Three Dimensional Method" looks at each output bit and generates the fastest possible tree from the partial product matrix. The problem with this method (besides area) is that the wiring and layout of cells is highly irregular. However, now that we are in the age of automated tools, this type of design is more feasible. Paper here: [https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC280/Web- page/p...](https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~vojin/CLASSES/EEC280/Web- page/papers/Arithmetic/A%20Method%20for%20speed%20Optimized%20Partial%20product.pdf)

If you're interested, this paper from Synopsys has some neat information about datapath synthesis: [https://guest.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~zimmi/publications/datapath_sy...](https://guest.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~zimmi/publications/datapath_synthesis.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always wanted to beleive somebody would make a coherent case for a real decimal encoded adder/multiplier: use voltages or phase or frequency or something in ways which were strictly additive, subtractive over 10 discrete values, and compute the sum by .. doing decimal. Not decimal BCD but real decimal in the logic. 10 distinct voltage levels.

Not to be totally surprised, my hardware lecturers said "notachance"

<comment><USER7> I understand enough to think the proposal sounds reasonable, but not enough to know why it is apparently, in fact, unreasonable.

<comment><USER8> Digital logic is built from amplifiers with the gain set right up, so that any voltage above the threshold goes to max and any voltage below goes to zero. Very little tuning is needed to get a working circuit, compared to multi-level or analog circuitry. In CMOS, current basically only flows when the circuit is switching between two states, whereas in an analogue circuit it flows all the time, so digital logic can be more efficient. In digital signal transmission, "eye diagrams" are used to visualise the quality of the signal: the eye is the gap between low and high and it needs to be clearly open for receivers to be able to detect the signal with decent integrity. [https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/AND9075-D.PDF](https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/AND9075-D.PDF)</comment></comment></comment>


We need an addon to exclude content-farms from search results - <AUTHOR> Aren't you fed up lately with all the noise you get when searching for something? I mean, people do have the right to express freely, but when I search for something, I'd like to limit the results to types of sites like Wikipedia, Goodreads, Medium, but exclude all the Wordpress, blogging platforms, anything that a kid,can setup, because the've read somewhere that if they write content for words people search, they'll get rich. Lets separate the natural from the monetization greed. We have an AdBlock list. We need a FarmBlock list.<p>I forgot to say, they want to write content not because they have something to say but because thet want to target the first result on your first search page. <comment><USER2> Totally! I think people need to get their heads around the fact that Google...sucks at search. It really does. Try searching for a Grammarly review – you'll get nothing but affiliates / content farms who are making a commission on Grammarly sales.

It's very often the case that the first page of search results are all from the same website, usually the company behind the term or brand, which is not what we want most of the time. For example, a lot of searches on AWS will return nothing but Amazon pages. We should get one or two links to Amazon's AWS pages, and the rest should be third-party reviews, how-tos, and so forth.

I think Google's algorithmic approach to search might be overwrought, overengineered, and beatable by fundamentally different approaches. Right now, the results suck. Ironically, I think what most users are after in most searches would be best satisfied by a web index, like Yahoo used to be in the 90s, not by Google's algorithmic approach.</comment>


Day 3 of Oracle v. Google: Larry Page bests David Boies - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120418212325628

<comment><USER2> Strong play by Google's lawyers here.

        Google: This means that a JME app may not run on a JavaCard device?
        Edward Serevan: Yes.
        Google: There are different APIs between JavaCard and JSE?
        Edward Serevan: [Some disagreement over the differences between versions.]
        Google: There are differences between JSE, JEE, JME, and Java Card?
        Edward Serevan: Yes.
        Google: How can it be that (Oracle can say that Java is WORA)?
        Edward Serevan: Oracle defines WORA as across platforms [different operating systems], not Java versions.

I'm not sure how Oracle is going to get the assertion that Google caused significant damage to the Java ecosystem by their violation of WORA to stick here, in light of this testimony. By any objective measure, Google has created a new platform for Dalvik in Android.

<comment><USER3> They are going to assert the Android is for phones, and J2ME is for phones. Thus Android broke their WORA definition for that platform. Seems fairly straightforward and that Google is kind of making their case for them.

(Just to clarify: I think Oracle should, and is likely to lose their case.)

<comment><USER2> I think that's easily trumped, though, because "phones" are not a platform. They're a form factor. Otherwise, J2ME should run on iPhones and Windows 7 devices.

Part of the whole Android package is a hardware specification [1]. Android The Product is a platform, which consists of a compatible hardware device and a Dalvik VM with Android APIs. It isn't just the software. J2ME might happen to run on some handheld battery-powered computers, but a form factor does not a platform make.

[1] [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/source.android.com/en/us/compatibility/4.0/android-4.0-cdd.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that saying J2ME _should_ run on any given OS for a platform or form factor is relevant. I could then argue that if there is no Java for Minix or someone's pet OS that runs on a server somewhere that servers are not a platform for Java. Doesn't seem right.

I don't think it matters how complex or precise the Google definition of what Android is, that is their definition. Oracle's point in this was the damage to the perception of Java as a portable way to build programs for anything "Java" -- Android was only part-way Java, creating the alleged confusion. I think the parallel to Sun's MS suit from long ago is fairly straightforward.

<comment><USER4>
         I think the parallel to Sun's MS suit from long
         ago is fairly straightforward.

Not it isn't.

Microsoft had Java licensed from Sun, meaning that they could use the Java trademark for their own compiler and their own VM. In return Microsoft had to make their compiler and their VM be compliant with Java's specifications.

Microsoft then started to extend everything, the language, the base class library (and you cannot extend the base namespaces, e.g. java.*) and their virtual machine. They did this while advertising to developers that their compiler takes Java code and produces Java-compatible bytecode.

The differences:

         - Google never agreed to an (explicit) license
         - Dalvik is not a Java VM and was never advertised as such
         - Google does not claim Android has Java technology inside
         - Google does not claim that the compiled binaries can be
           executed on Java VMs

What Google actually did:

         - created a compiler that translates from JVM bytecode
           to Dalvik bytecode
         - took the base Java library from Harmony, a
           clean-room implementation

What Google did is exactly what projects like IKVM.net are doing. IKVM is a project that allows you to recompile and run Java jars on top of a .NET VM.

This is not new and if Oracle wins it will open a huge can of worms, as if our industry wasn't having enough problems related to "intellectual property" already.

<comment><USER3> Google did not agree to a license but if Oracle convinces the court they needed one then that is a moot point (Oracle asserts trademark, copyright, and patents to make this claim I believe). All the differences between what MS and Google did are irrelevant if Oracle can convince the court that having Java all over the developer website and documentation created confusion with respect to what Java is.

I think to a relatively non-technical judge they have a chance -- I can imagine a judge asking himself/herself, "So you used the language Java and the libraries for Java but you said that it wasn't Java. But if it walks and talks like a duck and you call it a chicken are you still not creating confusion for anyone who knew what a duck was before you showed them your 'chicken'?"

I agree that this would line projects like IKVM up to get nailed but that has nothing to do with the merits of the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy reading both the incredibly biased but still informative Groklaw and then the incredibly biased in the opposite direction (and paid by MS/Oracle) Florian Mueller. Looking past the thinly veiled cheerleading isn't that hard once you realize where they're coming from and both seem fairly thorough.

But what would be really awesome is if there was somewhere I could go for legal tech blogging that isn't always good or bad news for open source.

Nilay Patel and Matt Macari at the Verge do a good job but coverage isn't as regular as what you'll get by checking Groklaw daily and it gets lost in the Verge-o-polis.

<comment><USER6> I mean this honestly: what makes you think Groklaw is biased? That deosn't match my [uninformed] mental model of their site.

<comment><USER5> I don't think PJ ever hid the fact that she was advocating in a certain direction, quoth wiki:

"Groklaw publishes articles (both news and opinion) from a self-described pro- FOSS, anti-FUD perspective"

The comments are similarly policed to comply with this. This certainly isn't a secret, as Florian Mueller's deals with MS and Oracle were, and I don't think I'm making a wild accusation here.

Back in the day a 100% anti-SCO line worked great because SCO was a fraud. But the current issues are murkier and the one sidedness of the site now sticks out like the news channel at your grandparents house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure what is being contested in the case any more. Larry Page testified that their implementation of Java was a clean room implementation. Is Oracle trying to assert that an API is something that is subject to copyright?

<comment><USER8> The trial is examining both copyright and patent issues. But yes, one of the things Oracle is claiming is that they can copyright their API and you can't reimplement it without a license.

This does not seem like it should fly, in my inexpert opinion.

<comment><USER9> If it does fly, Oracle is going to have a lot of fun.

For instance, Oracle copied SQL from IBM years before it was a standard. There's also Sun's involvement in Wabi. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't mind extracting some cash for that "infringement".

<comment><USER10> Novell and the Unix API...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Misspells the Oracle software architect Edward Screven as Edward Serevan throughout.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oracle mobile phone plans revealed

<http://ofb.net/~pcullen/ophone/ophone.html>

<comment><USER13> Gonna start to get pricey with multi-core phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How strange is it that Eric Schmidt guided the development of the very software Google is now accused of copying?

</comment><comment><USER15> What is SSO?

<comment><USER16> I just searched the linked page and found this: SSO (Sequence, Structure, Organization).

<comment><USER15> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>