Motorola wins Xbox and Windows 7 ban in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17924190 <comment><USER2> Live by the sword, die by the sword. I don't feel bad for Microsoft. It's just a testament that a patent war helps no one, not even the companies with a lot of patents that were the aggressors. In the end it's just mutual destruction.

I mean, Microsoft even went after companies to pay them royalties for ChromeOS...really, Microsoft?! I hope Motorola does the same to them now and asks for royalties for Windows 7. Something tells me they'll get a lot more for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it just me who finds these little spats between huge companies a little tedious? It doesn't affect my life, or my work, if Microsoft or Adobe or Apple takes Google or Motorola or Samsung to court for another expensive round of willy-waving.

I find it incredibly hard to want to cheer for any of these organisations, or get behind any of this stuff. These are just big, faceless corporations, each the same as the next, when it comes down to it. It's a bit like supporting professional sports teams, I guess.

<comment><USER4> My "take-away" from all this is that, if this can affect Microsoft so profoundly, how much more damage could be done to startups and small businesses in the technology arena? Most of them couldn't afford the fees to start the legal process, let alone pay for a protracted fight on obscure areas of copyright.

<comment><USER5> It could actually kill a lot of them. Patents are just fine as long as they are used defesivly. If they are not they can ruin everything.

Some effects I can imagine:

\- Potential competitors aren't bought but sued to death.

\- It could be harder to get founding if your situation is not sure, investors could loose their money

Consequence will be that start-ups will become more expensive again...

<comment><USER6> > Patents are just fine as long as they are used defesivly

Not really. Good patents are fine, but in order to use a patent defensively, you'll have to defend against something, most likely the abuse of an actual patent (be it a good one or not).

And it's certainly sweet to see Microsoft tasting its own poison. They have extorted just about every Android set maker (or Linux embedder) with a secret list of patents they paid Barnes & Noble US$ 300 million to keep secret.

BTW, this seems to be the soft spot of their armor - future litigants should press hard for the list to be made public. Microsoft will settle before risking exposing a weak hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "It follows a ruling that Microsoft had infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback."

Oh the irony. Wasn't the MPEG LA consortium supposed to guarantee protection against that kind of attack ?

Any details on the infringing patents ?

<comment><USER8> While I don't know the patents, the MPEG-LA can only protect against the patents that are committed to that specific portfolio.

Even if Motorola are a member of the MPEG-LA, if they are suing for a patent that they have not committed to the MPEG-LA, then Microsoft have no protection.

About the worst that could happen is Motorola get kicked out of MPEG-LA.

<comment><USER9> I don't think getting kicked out of MPEG-LA is so easy. If Motorola is a member and does have patents committed to their pool, wouldn't a kick mean that those patents that are submitted would no longer be part of the package? If that's true, then Motorola would have even more bullets.

This only goes to show how nobody is protected from patents, even if you're careful about buying licenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Motorola Mobility brought the matter to German courts, who agreed to ban those products, but "a US court has banned Motorola from enforcing the action until it considers the matter next week.".

How is a ban Motorola has solicited under German law under the jurisdiction of a US court, or am I misunderstanding this?

<comment><USER11> Makes no sense to me either but since Motorola is a US company as well, MS might have found an opening.

Banning Windows sales in entire Germany is no child's game, if enforced and then reversed Motorola might go bankrupt. Simple as that.

<comment><USER12> Google owns Motorola now.

<comment><USER13> Not yet it doesn't. They're still working on the final elements of the deal (approval in China I believe), though it will almost certainly go through before any such liability might become due.

And for clarity, it's Motorola Mobility they're buying, not all of Motorola.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's no news that German courts are favored for patent infringements, because they mostly play well.

I've even seen a reportage about this topic, that covers why large companies fight patent lowsuits in Germany. It's because Germany has understood how to capitalize on this "new market".

Tax route optimizations, patent-pool leverage, secret partnership agreements, HR Capital squeezers, talent headhunters, innovation buyout..is that out of an "imperators guide to the 21st century"?

<comment><USER15> Is this based on actual facts or did you just make that up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Okay, someone please explain this to me: I thought a few years back we had all this uproar about the EU wanting to introduce patentability of software. They eventually backed down, if I remember correctly. Now a German court rules that Windows 7, a piece of software, infringes upon a patent. What?

</comment><comment><USER17> Links to patents? I haven't been able to find them.

I notice that people are very quick to attack Microsoft here, despite the fact that a great many parties have been touting h.264 as a standard to adopt, and acting like it wasn't a morass of patents and lawsuits waiting to happen. Granted, one of those parties was Microsoft.

Depending on what's in the patents at issue, maybe there is a lesson here about making sure that the standards we approve of aren't encumbered by patents.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thats the patent version of what would have happened if the US and USSR had started throwing nukes around...

I always thought patents were there to protect against such attacks, a balance of awe and destruction. But who the heck was stupid enough to start that? Seriously, replacing development and business operations by law suites only will get you so far.

Maybe I should switch careers and become a patent lawyer!

<comment><USER18> Failing companies have no reason to avoid the patent wars.

<comment><USER19> Reminds me of grain/food aid given to the USSR during hard times. Even the Cold War US was afraid of what could happen with weapons of mass destruction during desperate times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Microsoft may not be what it once was but they're a big enough beast that I'd be thinking twice about this sort of move.

But that's kind of micro level stuff, at the macro level it's just another volley in the on-going patent wars where it seems that lawyers will win and the companies and the consumers lose.

Common sense says it will end soon but it really doesn't feel like that's happening.

<comment><USER20> Call me a pessimist, but I don't see IP law in general ever getting any better.

<comment><USER21> Call me an optimist. But I think some time soon there will be such a ridiculous lawsuit, that even politicians/the electorate will see that it's time to review IP laws.

<comment><USER22> I think the problem is that all the companies involved (Apple, Microsoft, Google etc) are American; if the products of one American company are banned somewhere, another American company will invariably benefit. I think if an American companies products were being banned in the US to the benefit of a non-US company, only then will US law-makers start raising their eyebrows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love this. This is what you get for betting on patent encumbered formats. Maybe WebM wasn't such a bad idea after all...

<comment><USER12> You don't get it do you.

EVERY company in the industry has now been given carte blanche to completely ignore FRAND principles and sue everyone after a standard has been adopted.

This is the worst precedent to hit the industry in a long time.

<comment><USER23> It's not clear that Motorola didn't offer "fair, reasonable and non- discriminatory terms" for licensing. Microsoft claims licensing would cost them $4bn/year; Motorola disputes this claim.

Also, who is to say that $4bn/year isn't "fair" when video is an essential part of Microsofts products?

Don't get me wrong, I hate patents as much as everyone else here, but I still think this lawsuit poses as a _very_ nice example of why free video/audio codecs are important.

We had the same shit with LZW/GIF patents a decade earlier and all the warnings were ignored and laughed at ("Nerds with tinfoil hats" ~Gruber). Microsoft (and Apple) doesn't deserve better for their arrogant stance on this issue.

<comment><USER24> >It's not clear that Motorola didn't offer "fair, reasonable and non- discriminatory terms" for licensing. Microsoft claims licensing would cost them $4bn/year; Motorola disputes this claim.

It's not clear why Motorola should be able to do in the first place. If Motorola's patents cover encoding and decoding of H.264, those patents should be in MPEG LA's pool. However, Motorola is not listed as licensor on the website(<http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx> ). Since the pool covers all the essential patents related to encoding and decoding H.264, why isn't Motorola included in the list?

<comment><USER15> Nobody is forced to join the MPEG LA, in fact their behavior is pretty much illegal. They are explicitly banned to claim, assume or declare that it is impossible to encode/decode videos without a license from them. Which is pretty much what they do.

<comment><USER24> That's tangential to the problem at hand. MPEG LA's entire purpose for existing is to be a one stop shop for the essential H.264 codec patents. So instead of going to MS, Apple, Samsung, Hitachi, etc. individually, you just go to MPEG LA, get a license, then go on with your life.

Motorola is not on that list, and have not granted their patents. However, since they're asserting that it covers the encoding and decoding of H.264, it's questionable whether or not they can assert them against H.264 codecs. In fact, the US courts have invalidated patents that were not declared to the pool before. See dpark's post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3919324>

<comment><USER15> Thanks for rephrasing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's actually a bit worrying about this, is that the scourge of sleazy greed-lawsuits has spread to Europe. It used to be a purely American phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER26> It will be interesting to see what happens when Microsoft uninstalls Windows 7 from all those machines. How is this recall going to be done?!?

<comment><USER27> The irony is that they're able to stop all their security updates, even self- destroy with their home-calling mechanisms.

I'd love it if Motorola went all-in about it.

<comment><USER12> I bet you would love it. But think about it. Motorola can now extort ridiculous royalties from every company that provides:

DVD Players, Projectors, Video Cameras, Digital Cameras, Smartphones, Tablets, Operating Systems, Browsers, Portable Media Players, Consoles, TVs, Media Centers, PVRs.

<comment><USER27> The current situation is a joke. No small player can get above the radar at basically anything software or else they risk being sued out of business. Big players calculate their movements because they all have a big portfolio and they reach agreements. Most people cannot resort to this.

Hopefully a clusterfuck between two industry giants will cause a fundamental change in the rules of the game.

I wish all the devices you mentioned would be outlawed overnight to force a decided reaction. I'm willing to go full OSS and open formats, I'm mostly there anyway. Remember static GIFs? Here's hoping they do enforce all these patents to the fullest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Maybe only with such actions, the patent law finally gets reformed.

</comment><comment><USER29> >Microsoft moved its European software distribution centre from Germany to the Netherlands last month ahead of the verdict to minimise potential disruption.

The law doesn't really apply to these software giants, they'll always find a way around it.

<comment><USER30> You see MS obeying the law, causing considerable disruption to their setup (changing a distribution centre from one country to another is pretty big move) and you say that they are "finding a way around it"?

<comment><USER31> Isn't that _exactly_ what MS are doing by moving their operations?

"Finding a way around it" does not imply they are avoiding any cost in doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It like with poletics at one point you just have to laught because nothing makes any sence anymore. It just ...

Its not this case but the general state of these laws.

</comment><comment><USER33> > Microsoft has said that if it met all of Motorola's demands it would face an > annual bill of $4bn (£2.5bn).

Eh? Is this their defence?

</comment><comment><USER34> Motorola wins. Germans lose :-(

</comment><comment><USER35> Ludicrous...

I really have nothing else to say.</comment>


The author of 'The Stars in Our Pockets' on eschewing the internet - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/how-the-internet-destroyed-our-natural-ability-to-navigate-the-offline-world-1cf0c224da12?source=rss----444d13b52878---4&gi=f9622d4f3821 <comment><USER2> I don't think I'd ever give up the internet altogether, but I wonder if there is a place for more thoughtful interaction with the internet - e.g. like how RMS browses(has a daemon download a page and email it to him for offline viewing).

You can still access all the information that way, but the "click ->dopamine hit, click ->dopamine hit, etc" training like you might get scrolling through reddit or social media feeds is interrupted by the time delayed nature of your browsing.

<comment><USER3> I hadn't heard about RMS' daemon before -- that's brilliant! I think I may do something along those lines myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > To keep reading this story, create a free account.

Unskippable this time too. Reader view doesn't help. Turning off JS doesn't help.

Medium has gotten worse and worse. At this point it is literally unusable.

<comment><USER5> [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/3265](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/3265)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I saw (actually, misread) the title I was hoping it would be about Samuel R Delany's "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" which is a complete knock- out SF book and probably the best thing Delany ever did. Oh well.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Stars_in_My_Pocket_Like_Grains_o...](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Stars_in_My_Pocket_Like_Grains_of_Sand)

<comment><USER7> Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders far eclipses (the forever unfinished) Stars in My Pocket, but won't get the same attention for obvious reasons.

It is also a lot more relevant to the article, given the protagonists' eschewal of communication technology. With similar artistic goals, I think.

<comment><USER6> But not an SF book? And I find everything after and including "The Mad Man" pretty unreadable.

<comment><USER7> It spans an alternate history beginning in 2007 to numerous predicted future events through 2080ish; if the sf community doesn't want it the sf community is poorer for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vincent-toups It often feels as though almost everything on the internet post 2000 or so has been an enormous bait and switch. Build a good service people like, get a lot of people hooked on it, and then gradually fuck it up in an attempt to generate some kind of revenue.

I, personally, hate it. Its depressing to see a technology so full of promise (seem to, anyway) regress. Become less magical, less useful. Its no wonder young people are skeptical of capitalism - it seems to literally be eating the goose. Not even the goose that laid the golden egg - just the goose, in hopes there might be a golden egg inside.

<comment><USER8> It feels that way because it has been exactly as you describe. I can only assume it's youngsters who have been doing the undeserved downvoting. If you look at the timeline, you can get a feel for why, and who:

1988/9 First ISPs and connections outside academia

1993 Eternal September, AOL let the great unwashed out on to the net. Damn annoying for six months or so, but the net recovered.

1994 First spam, and colossal in scale. Two bottom feeding US lawyers filling every usenet group with US Green Card spam.

1995 NSF end their ban on online commercial activity.

First e-commerce kicks off, and it's all a bit hobby-esque, and even large businesses are adopting netiquette habits. Like linking out, providing chatty informative pages for no other reason than "because", etc. Putting an e-commerce order somewhere might get you a lovely long chatty thank you email direct from the owner, or a hand written note in the box. The internet still feels like something remarkably different to meatspace.

By the millennium, _the year AdWords was born,_ as the first dot com boom turned into a full on idiocy fuelled bubble, it was the birth of bait and switch. There's a whole ballooning category of "internet marketers" with gloriously scummy SEO, fraudulent sales tactics, learn to spam better courses and worse. Like all easy way to riches sales, the only way to get rich is with the easy way to riches book, subscription or course parting fools from money.

Now everyone commercial, from the largest 5 world companies down, are internet marketers of the worst possible interpretation of the term. Commerce, scam and affiliate slice forced into _everything._ Bait and switch all the way down.</comment></comment>


PlantNet – App that helps identify plants from pictures - <AUTHOR> https://plantnet.org/en/ <comment><USER2> I've tried Seek by iNaturalist [1] to identify some plants in real time (the app can also identify fungi and wildlife). It's been a bit hit or miss sometimes. I like that it doesn't require any registration and doesn't collect any data. I'd like to know how this compares (at least for plants).

[1]: [https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app](https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app)

<comment><USER3> Myco-nerd here: absolutely never rely on the image recognition apps for fungi ID.

There are fungi in entire different genera that are VERY morphologically similar, and the apps are just not there yet — likely won't be for a few dozen years.

An app can make a lethal mistake much easier than a human.

<comment><USER4> I've used Google Lens as "if it says unsafe, definitely unsafe". I would not rely on it for "oh yeah, I can eat this" :).

I doubt your "few dozen years" though. Humans are only so good at it themselves. Computing has improved a lot since 1984 (3 dozen years ago), and so I'd wager that by 2050 we can be better than human at "Eat or not?" for fungi. Up for a longbets.org wager? :)

<comment><USER5> I mean the thing about fungi is that the tops can look the same and you just need to do a spore print to positivity distinguish one from another. There may be some mushrooms which are simply impossible to tell apart by outward appearance. In one of the fast.ai lectures Jeremy shows how to distinguish different breeds of cats. Then he shows how to look at the confusion matrix, and he found one pair of breeds the network really struggled with. It turns out they look really similar to him too, and when he researched further he found they're simply hard to tell apart. Perhaps with an enormous data set there might be small differences a network could detect, but the confidence might still be low.

And given that mushrooms can kill you, it may simply never be advisable to rely on any photo based identification.

<comment><USER4> I don't consider it against the rules of the bet to allow multiple pictures, including the underside and perhaps even "here, smush the mushroom on a piece of paper and take a picture of that". My question is can a vision-based AI thing outperform humans within another thirty years, not if it can do it via a mechanism that isn't discriminating.

For all the myco folks here: Do you have a sense of whether or not the multiple hours mentioned is "required" or "just" makes it easier to get a strong signal? (That is, how much is the signal boost due to our inability to see well as humans)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_print](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_print)

<comment><USER6> We foragers and amateur mycologists use smell, touch (slimy, dry, etc,) sometimes taste (bitter, acrid,...), habitat (on wood, ground, type of wood, is there a bulb below ground or a root-like structure, time of year, spore prints, sometimes color change due to drops of chemicals (especially on boletes), sometimes even microscopes to view spores, and more.

all of these variables could of course be coded for a good classification algorithm.

just saying, it's often more than simply visual.

<comment><USER7> It's mostly visual. I would add location and latest weather to any software trying to recognize the mushroom. The mushrooms that people commonly forage for are not that numerous, so the algorithm needs to know about a dozen or two varieties. Chanterelles are easy to tell from images. You can probably have an AI chanterelle identifier coded right now and for most edible mushrooms very soon if not now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great. The app doesn't appear to be open source, just the API docs: [https://github.com/plantnet](https://github.com/plantnet) Given the public funding of the project, wouldn't it make sense for the code to be open to welcome contributions/improvements from the community/users?

<comment><USER9> iNaturalist is publicly funded, a wide collaboration, and IIRC mainly FOSS and Open Data. They're using machine learning and knowledge of users to identify flora and fauna; I've found it excellent at doing automatic ID at the genus level (but not really species).

[https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/developers](https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/developers)

<comment><USER10> Depending on what you are interested in (and where) there will be plenty of enthusiastic users willing to identify your observations. In my experience, birds will _always_ get identified, while insects and plants will only sometimes register interest from others. I think it's because bird watching is a popular hobby, while entomologists tend to be a rarer breed.

<comment><USER11> There are also at least 2 orders of magnitude more species of insects on Earth than of birds (>1 million compared with ~10,000). An amateur birder can know a significant fraction of all birds, and all of them commonly found in their location, while no entomologist is anywhere close to knowing all insects.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, a good point. I would think for the particularly avid birder that you could probably memorize all of them. We certainly have larger vocabularies than that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google Lens does this. But not only for plants. And it is quite good. I could identify most of the plants in the park. Cool to know there is some edible stuff in the park like ramson

<comment><USER13> I was going to say the same thing, I would like to see a comparison of the two

<comment><USER14> Ramson smells like garlic, anything herbaceous that smells like garlic when cut fresh is Allium. Is a pretty unmistakable genus.

Something that does not smell exactly like garlic can be Allium also, like Onions.

Convallaria has runners also so it forms thick mat roots. Leaves stand in a different angle. In Bear's garlic each plant is individual.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I meant of Google Lens. I am going to have to try ramsom though

<comment><USER14> Start with the flowers to avoid any risk. Are edible also. Then you will recognize easily the same flavour in leaves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been using PlantNet for a few years, rather surprised to see it up here.

It's probably the best of its kind, as long as your photos are sharp and well lit.

For scientific identification you still absolutely want to verify with a dichotomous key, but it's really good for quickly getting genus.

Out in nature, you can cross-check with something like [https://wildflowersearch.org/](https://wildflowersearch.org/) to help verify that you have the correct species.

</comment><comment><USER15> For french speakers, you can follow the Tela Botanica Mooc on botanic here : [https://mooc.tela-botanica.org/course/view.php?id=12](https://mooc.tela- botanica.org/course/view.php?id=12)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Semi related: goes well with [https://birdnet.cornell.edu/](https://birdnet.cornell.edu/) for bird song identification.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thirty years ago I was walking farmers soybeans fields, making weed maps and then writing prescriptions of what to spray. One feverish afternoon with the temperature hovering in the nineties I had an idea. What if we had a plane flyover, grab images and have a software program identify the weeds and spit out a prescription?

I talked to some professors at Michigan State and other software developers I knew. The consensus was it was a great idea but the technology simply was not there or even remotely close.

Little did I know several years later Monsanto would come out with genetically engineered soybeans that you could simply spray Roundup over. Walking fields, weed maps and prescriptions of chemicals became a thing of the past.

To me it was an excellent example of how technology can blind side you at times. Now of course weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup and prescriptions might make a comeback!

<comment><USER19> Prescription maps and Precision Agriculture are most certainly alive and well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've used this for a while but I'm never really sure about the results. Honestly I had no idea that identifying trees accurately could be so difficult - and I mean as a human with access to photographs and Wikipedia and books and other people.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, it's wonderful how complicated the natural world is.

We're still discovering stuff every data. Recently it was discovered that one of the most unique looking critters in the world (the mata-mata, a turtle) was actually two species.

In even grander confusion, a friend of mine was working her way through her masters in mycology. She focused on the fungus Phytophthora ramorum. In the end it turned out that the Phytopthera aren't even fungi. They're algae, an entirely separate branch of the eukaryotes. It's like discovering that your cat is a house plant.

<comment><USER14> > In the end it turned out that the Phytopthera aren't even fungi.

What? those %&$#!!! things are classified as public enemy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried something similar with Google auto ml a while back. Although I'm no ml expert, I think it's quite difficult to identify plants. There are many different parameters like distance, flowering or not or even time of the year. In some cases it can also be quite dangerous to mix up plants, like wild garlic and lilly of the valley ( I hope I translated those right)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've had this app a while and just used it to identify Eastern Skunk Cabbage growing near me. I didn't know that some plants could be thermogenic.

This app seems to work pretty well. I tried this identification first on a single leaf and only got results for plantains. But using a pic of the whole plant got an accurate ID.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been trying to determine whether the oak in my front yard is a scarlet oak or a pin oak. The two varieties have very similar leaves.

According to the app rankings, based on acorn, leaf, and flower pics, it is a downy oak. Not perfect, but I am impressed that it picked up that it was an oak at all.

<comment><USER14> oak genus is easy to recognize. The species level can be a nigthmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been using [https://plant.id/](https://plant.id/) for this. It's also the first and maybe only time I've seen my camera viewfinder embedded in a mobile browser!

</comment><comment><USER26> What about mushrooms? What about slime molds? What about insects? Google Lens does all of the above as well as plants and flowers and fruit and shoes. I think PlantNet looks nice, and I appreciate the web-only version! But Lens is built into my camera, it's hard to beat.

What I think would be useful is an app that could diagnose problems with plants. Some get yellow when dry, some get yellow when too wet. You could tell it the species and it could compare it to training data of sick plants of that species.

<comment><USER14> (it seems that replacement of taxonomists with robots is going full steam ahead...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How does it compare to other plant-identifying apps?

(PlantSnap, PictureThis, etc)

<comment><USER28> I've tried a bunch and plantnet is the best so far

<comment><USER29> Agree, PlantSnap is not bad either but I still prefer PlantNet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can already see how future ML platforms going to gain a lot from crowdsourced data.

Imagine a platform that can publish an app for classification of any particular use case, and the dataset is contributed and vetted by the community of users

For example: 1\. App for identifying animals ( like inaturalist ) 2\. App for identifying a car/bike model versions 3\. App for identifying languages and translate 4\. App for identifying different kinds of dogs

<comment><USER31> All these apps need to do is come up with a CAPTCHA like implementation. If you hated "Find all crosswalks", just wait for "Find all Lilium longiflorum".

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The website is missing an aboutus page, what is this a company, a nonprofit? a project of a research institute? it's not clearly identified.

<comment><USER33> Agree. They act like they're doing it for public benefit and connected with academia but without being clear if they're a commercial offshoot or charitable or something else. They are accepting donations in a way that implies they're charitable but isn't backed up by clear details (although maybe it's buried somewhere in the site?)

Whether they're planning to be open source with their data would be good to clarify too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I once wrote an identification app for a some trees with a decision tree.

Then it would ask a handful of questions like, are the leaves jagged or round.

<comment><USER35> Where did you get the data?

<comment><USER34> From my biology class in middle school. There was a flowchart, perhaps from a textbook.

Then I had pictures for each case. Do not remember where I got them from

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reminds me of a similar project - Diatoms[1].

[1] [https://diatoms.org/](https://diatoms.org/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've used PictureThis with great success.

</comment><comment><USER38> For people interested in identifying plants, the PlantCLEF dataset is a great start. Here's the link: [https://www.imageclef.org/PlantCLEF2019](https://www.imageclef.org/PlantCLEF2019)

Implement a simple image classifier built with fast.ai and you can go quite far!

I believe it is to be used for research only.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there a good plant ID app that's not based on my camera? I was thinking something that will ask me increasingly specific questions. "Where are you?" "What kind of bark does is have?" "How large are the leaves?" Etc

<comment><USER40> In book form that'd be called a "plant key" or "identification key". I can't recommend anything specifically, but maybe that helps with the search?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Nozha Boujemaa is the scientific co-leader with Daniel Barthelemy (CIRAD) of Pl@ntNet project"

[https://project.inria.fr/nozhaboujemaa/](https://project.inria.fr/nozhaboujemaa/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I tried their plant identification game. I think they could really benefit from hiring a game designer.

It would be possible to make something pretty cool out of the database I think.

</comment><comment><USER43> Google Lens has done this decently for me in the past.

</comment><comment><USER44> Is there a training dataset for this kind of thing (with nice license)?

</comment><comment><USER45> Android app not available in the Australian play store?

</comment><comment><USER46> Please forgive me. A Shazam for plants?

<comment><USER38> Yes, exactly. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> @shrikant @dang

Kindly edit the current title, "Pl NtNet." Change it to PlaNtNet if Pl@NtNet wouldn't work.

Current title looks like it's about Raspberry PI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it in a bit of a hurry, and couldn't think of a description that didn't sound like shilling the app. Looks like dang (or sctb?) has put in a perfect descriptor!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I misread it as "identify planets from your pictures" :)</comment>


Memories from VMware's Hosted UI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chipx86.com/2016/02/02/memories-from-vmwares-hosted-ui/ <comment><USER2> A very interesting post. To me this illustrates a couple of points very well.

1) VMWare likely have no idea what they lost when they cut this team. Once teams just look like just a number of people to be re-located to save costs, there tends not to be consideration of the value of a long-lived team with the experience and team spirit that this post talks about.

2) If you're an employee of a large corp, never ever stay out at a role out of "company loyalty", it's a mugs game. Not to say that that's true for all companies, but large ones seem to have a distressing tendency to treat people as numbers to be valued and shifted and cut, and loyalty shown by the person to the company means very little in these circumstances.

<comment><USER3> I find that when a company grows beyond 150 people, there starts to be a disconnect between the CEO level and individual workers. That is when these sorts of problems come up and the culture changes.

<comment><USER4> BTW 150 is a common value for Dunbar's Number - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

> Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with > whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is no small feat to create this kind of culture in any large organization. Even more impressive is that the culture was defended during a decade of changes in personnel and corporate priorities. It is fitting that a team which brought cross-platform interop to the developer masses would achieve cross- company portability of their culture.

For those lucky enough to find such an oasis as their entry point to the corporate world, please know that even though your experience may have been atypical, it can be replicated as you move into future leadership positions. It only takes one cultural existence proof to transform a collective industrial race to the bottom, into a contagious race to the top of human possibility.

One reason why industry veterans appreciate open-source is that they can have an ongoing role in the long-term evolution of their software creations. As operating systems increase vertical integration with cloud services, device owners need Client Neutrality. Products like VMware Workstation can set boundaries that reflect the goals of device owners, rather than OS, cloud, advertising or hardware vendors. Workstation team members may find kindred spirits in open-source projects attempting to follow in Workstation's pioneering footsteps.</comment>


Teen Has Filled the Scots Wikipedia with Thousands of Fake Translations - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/alleged-teen-brony-has-filled-the-scots-wiki-with-thous-1844845086 <comment><USER2> This was posted by another HN reader to the other thread, but I feel it's more relevant on this more sensationalist article.

>Honestly, I don't mind if you revert all of my edits, delete my articles, and ban me from the wiki for good. I've already found out that my "contributions" have angered countless people, and to me that's all the devastation I can be given, after years of my thinking I was doing good (and yes, obsessively editing). I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started, and sometimes when you start something young, you can't see that the habit you've developed is unhealthy and unhelpful as you get older. I don't care about defending myself, I only want to stop being harassed on my social medias (and to stop my other friends who have nothing to do with the wiki from being harassed as well). Whether peace can be achieved by scowiki being kept like it is or extensively reformed to wipe my influence from it makes no difference to me now that I know that I've done no good anyway.

I can imagine it's quite a punch to the gut to find out an activity you were doing for _years_ was literally the wrong thing, and major news outlets are piling on.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, thank you for posting. I'd also like to add: I wish this article had been title had used the word " _Incorrect_ " instead of "Fake". I generally attribute things called "Fake" as having had some sort of intentional incorrectness. "Fake" doesn't always imply _malicious_ intent (think "fake houses" for nuclear testing), but it does imply knowing intent.

This kid was well intentioned, tried his best, and got it wrong. To me, that's _" incorrect"_, not _" fake". _

[Edit: Spelling]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous discussion (39 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851)

</comment><comment><USER5> If the teen behind it was well meaning, then teaching him proper Scots might be worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> > proper Scots

I don't think there is such a thing?

Scottish people speak English, some use more slang than others, but it's English.

This Scottish wikipedia reads like utter nonsense.

<comment><USER7> Tosh, as they say. Scots speak multiple languages and multiple dialects. The Scots language you incorrectly dismiss comes from a linguistic divergence in the 1500s, and has distinct regional dialects (e.g. Doric, with many Danish loan words etc.) Which is separate from Scots Gaelic....

<comment><USER8> Correct. Scottish English is a dialect of english, while the Scots Language is a germanic language that is different enough to have low mutual intelligibility (which means it's a different language and not a dialect... although this distinction doesn't have really clear criteria in Linguistics currently).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The user is [https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener](https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener) Since the edits are public I'm not going to consider this doxxing. I'm not going to link any other identities to the username.

</comment><comment><USER10> oot the hoose w'him!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is absolutely hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER6> I tried to read this page [https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns](https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns), and really struggled. Is it just meant to be regular wikipedia pages but written in some awful slang?

<comment><USER12> Why do you expect to be able to read a page in a language/dialect you apparently don't speak? And then take that as a sign that it's not a real thing?!

<comment><USER6> Well, I'm Scottish, I've been Scottish all my life! Lived in Scotland all my life.. That page is mostly nonsense.

<comment><USER12> And I'm German and lived here most my life, that doesn't magically mean I speak all the dialects/languages that exist here.

<comment><USER13> Scots is usually fairly intelligible, at least to the Scottish.

Essentially, Scots branches off from middle english in a slightly different direction. But vernacular Scottish - the language you'd expect to hear day to day on the streets - is modern English with borrowings (both in content and grammar) from Scots. And the scale of these borrowings goes a long way to define how "thick" we perceive the various accents as.

So this leaves Scots with a few interesting traits. It can be easily mistaken for "just slang", because huge amounts of Scottish slang are near-direct borrowings. And this goes both ways, where the more slang you've been exposed to, the more you can pick out in Scots without actually knowing it. This leaves it being nowhere near as "foreign" as Gaelic, for example.

(It also helps that Robert Burns was dragged out annually at school, leaving Scots as least as recognisable as Shakespearean English.)

I'm not arguing that the Scottish "just know" Scots by default, or even that half of those who claim to know it, actually do. But there is a lot more exposure to it, or at least parts of it, than many people realise. It does turn out to be surprisingly recognisable (although I will admit, very jarring to see it written).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Tmux Crash Course (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/2641409235/a-tmux-crash-course/#

<comment><USER2> If you're willing to spend $14 for a more detailed tutorial, I'd strongly recommend _ tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development_ from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

It goes through common use cases, common customizations, and pair programming.

[http://pragprog.com/book/bhtmux/tmux](http://pragprog.com/book/bhtmux/tmux)

<comment><USER3> I do not get the idea of buying a "book" to learn a *nix utility that explains itself in a single man page when all you need to learn is just a few keyboard shortcuts.

Obsessively focusing on the tool does not magically improve productivity.

<comment><USER4> A manpage doesn't help you arrive at a workflow or show the forest for the trees or give field advice from someone that uses the tool or reveal ways to integrate the tool with other programs.

<comment><USER5> No but 45 minutes using it will. Not saying this book is no good, but 90% of tech books on softer subjects like this aren't worth the paper they are printed on. They hark back to the day when I first walked into Sun and saw a dozen volumes xn versions for the xmotif and xlib reference manuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Terminal multiplexers are great if you're stuck in SSH, working without a window manager at all, or have a real need to share a set of terminals with multiple people at once.

But if you're hacking together a desktop environment with tiled terminals, status bars, keyboard shortcuts, dynamic or static layouts, and the ability conceal layouts on different workspaces (which is what most people's intent is when using detachment), then just get a tiling window manager already.

You're reinventing the wheel.

<comment><USER7> I agree wholeheartedly. Take what you love about tmux and extend it to include all applications. In addition to terminals (rxvt-unicode-256color) I run Firefox with Pentadactyl. With wmii (my tiling window manager of choice) I have keyboard-free navigation between vim and Firefox.

I don't buy into the remote development over SSH method. Servers with as much horsepower as my ThinkPad with an i7, SSD, and loads of RAM cost a lot, and I can't stand latency on my terminal when I'm working hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tmux is definitely a nice piece of software.

For me it has been the last brick in date in my terminal-based IDE, which is made of zsh/vim/ssh/tmux.

Everything is running on a remote dedicated server, and I can access my dev environment wherever I can find an internet connection and launch a ssh tunnel (which is, in my case, almost everywhere I would find myself wanting to work). In that case, tmux's sessions are god sent.

I would have say the same for screen before, but with Tmux you can have this sort of niceties : [https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline](https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline). Basically, it's a statusline with bells and whistle.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Terminator ([http://www.tenshu.net/p/terminator.html](http://www.tenshu.net/p/terminator.html)) primarily on local machines instead of screen/tmux(or byobu). I get the added benefit of scrolling.

I tend to copy paste a lot from log tails etc into my my text editor for quick searches or other things. The infinite scroll feature(with a scroll bar) helps me out a lot. In tmux/screen i still haven't figured out a good workflow to copy a few screenful of content.

On servers i tend to use Byobu bindings which now use tmux(used Gnu screen some time ago). It has good defaults and some help for newbies to get used to.

<comment><USER10> Have you tried tmux's mouse modes?

You can use the mouse wheel to scroll and highlight to copy. I think you are specifically trying to say the mouse highlight won't go past one window though, right?

You can also resize panels and select widows.

<comment><USER11> I knew I saw a way to interact with it through the mouse. Thank you for reminding me. `tmux` is really a neatly little program, everything is there, simple and efficient.

ps:

        man tmux | grep "mouse-" # shows the mouse related options
        C-b : "set mouse-<option> on"

pps: turning on mouse windows/panels interactions disable text selection, do you know a way to have both ? (beside switching beside custom defined modes on your .conf)

<comment><USER12> You can always do text selection in a terminal by holding shift while selecting the text, no matter if the program running in the terminal supports mouse or not. I think on some terminals it's alt instead of shift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the exact workflow we use at my company as well, and we've all grown to love it.

I got a new laptop today, and because we do all our dev on a remote server via ssh, tmux, and vim, it only took a few minutes to get my new machine set up for development. All I had to do was download iTerm and copy over my private key and config file! So easy.

I've seen this referred to as "Unix as an IDE". Big fan.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like the author only uses one session he calles "work". What I really like about sessions is that it allows for isolated contexts which are easy to switch (prefix-s get prints you a nice list [1]).

Right now I have seven sessions open [1]. Three are work projects (they usually have windows for vim, db console, etc.), two are university courses (vim, matlab), in one session I'm learning some Haskell, and in the last one I'm working on an open source ruby gem. If I had all these windows in one session only, I'd constantly be switching to the wrong windows.

[1] [http://cl.ly/Qgaz](http://cl.ly/Qgaz)

<comment><USER15> > What I really like about sessions is that it allows for isolated contexts > which are easy to switch (prefix-s get prints you a nice list [1]).

I always end up doing the same as the author (out of bad habit), when I should really be using windows more often (to split out dev work, irc, uni work, etc). It's good advice and stops the too-many-windows problem.

Also: what theme are you using in that screenshot?

<comment><USER14> The colors are base16 [1]. You can find the tmux conf for the tab bar at [2].

[1] [https://github.com/chriskempson/base16](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16)

[2] [https://github.com/fphilipe/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L...](https://github.com/fphilipe/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L69-L88)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I highly recommend byobu. It acts as a front end to tmux (or screen) and provides some nice functionality like a status bar and various default keybindings that are consistent.

<comment><USER17> I use byobu pretty heavily and love it. Even if you don't venture too far into the scripts etc it's incredibly handy to fire up on a server and have multiple panes whilst working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've seen this before, it was immensely helpful for moving from a multi-window workflow to a single window with tmux. The tmux docs themselves are a bit obtuse and don't do a very good job explaining the various concepts tmux uses.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am curious to know what are the major differences between tmux and a tiling window manager? I've used awesome Wm for a while, now on i3wm.

<comment><USER20> So I wrote a book on tmux and use it every day, but I use i3 on my Linux box.

The main difference? tmux is a terminal multiplexer. So it's not going to handle the web browser stuff at all. Other than that, it's like Screen.

A lot of devs spend a lot of time in the Terminal, running scripts, background servers, etc. With tmux (like Screen) you can have them running and detach, and come back later.

Even with i3 I still find lots of room for tmux in my workflow when I'm in that environment.

tmux is also a hell of a tool for pair programming, and for managing remote servers.

But yea, if you're happy with i3, and you're using that to do Terminal splits, that's probably pretty great as is. tmux will remember the current working dir when you open new splits, and you can script it to launch your project workspace, but that's kind of just icing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Boy, a tiling WM might just blow his mind.

<comment><USER22> Maybe, but personally I find that terminal windows are the only thing I tend to want to split the screen for. Almost everything else I prefer to run in full screen. If I had a 50" screen or something, I might feel differently, but with two smaller screens the two separate screens offer enough tiling for non- terminal windows.

I was planning on installing a tiling WM when I got my last laptop (I used to use Ion, so I'm used to the concept and wanted to give it another go), but frankly as much hate as Unity gets, once I had Ubuntu installed I realised that with some keybinding tweaks it was sufficient.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, in your the OP's case at least your editors are included in the terminal category.

For me I find that even on 25" screens full screen is usually too much. I prefer to split at least once for every screen now. It was different when monitors were 4:3, though. I made things full screen all the time and was happy with it then.

I'm not 100% happy with tiling WMs though, tbh. I find their focus on being completely mouseless and minimalist integration-wise kind of limiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Since this article was written in 2001, iTerm2 has implemented support for the tmux protocol, so windows, panes, scrolling etc. happen at the GUI level instead of the terminal level. Kind of the MacVim of tmux.

[https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration](https://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration)

</comment><comment><USER24> Tmuxinator is an awesome gem that extends tmux to allow you to set up specific sessions that can be booted up. You can customize panes, pick specific apps to run in each, and there's tons of customization that can be done: [https://github.com/aziz/tmuxinator](https://github.com/aziz/tmuxinator)

</comment><comment><USER25> How to copy to system clipboard from tmux output after mouse selection?

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12287432/how-to-copy- to-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12287432/how-to-copy-to-system- clipboard-from-tmux-output-after-mouse-selection)

<comment><USER13> If you have mouse integration off, selecting text in the terminal copies it to the system clipboard. As simple as click+drag to select.

<comment><USER26> How about copying text isolated in a pane to the system clipboard? For example if I have a split vertical pane, it will copy text from both panes.

<comment><USER27> Newer versions of tmux have an expand pane command mapped to Leader-z. It will grow the pane to full size, do your xopying then leader-z to toggle back to your normal split view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been seeing tmux posts a lot the last couple of years, but I can't pull myself away from screen which I've been using for what almost a decade now?

It has a higher chance of being installed by default on a remote system I don't have root on, and works just fine for everything I need so I haven't had a reason to switch yet.

<comment><USER10> If you happened to have mastered screen, all the more power to you. I know there can be a lot of power in screens rc and scripting.

Tmux was easier for me to understand and the default packages are much easier than patched screen.

Also, there seems to be a steady stream of features released for tmux. I've heard screen can be quite stagnant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have learned to be careful about any long running or interactive processes that end up out-of-sight-out-of-mind. I accidentally left a db connection open in one of my tmux windows and our staging db didn't refresh for 2 days haha. (And I immediately started debugging in the wrong places, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I like being able to shift+pageup in consoles to see history, but haven't got a good replacement for this in tmux. (Including when you switch to a new window and want to see something.) Usually I go into copy mode and scroll up. This works. But maybe there's a better way. Anyone know?

<comment><USER31> I found this [http://superuser.com/questions/209437/how-do-i-scroll-in- tmu...](http://superuser.com/questions/209437/how-do-i-scroll-in-tmux) (take a look at second answer). But it has its drawbacks like not respecting panes etc... After some time I had this in my config I found myself using copy mode anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I found the info at the following to be a bit more in-depth and its split into a number of posts.

[http://blog.hawkhost.com/2010/06/28/tmux-the-terminal- multip...](http://blog.hawkhost.com/2010/06/28/tmux-the-terminal-multiplexer/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I know everyone remaps their prefix to ctrl-a - how do you then jump to the start of a line?

Edit: Thanks for the solutions. Will have a play. Like the sound of using ctrl-\

<comment><USER14> You map a to send the prefix: bind-key a send-prefix

Now when you type <prefix-a> ctrl-a gets sent.

<comment><USER34> A while ago I changed my prefix to ctrl-q because of ctrl-a interfering with me being able to move to the beginning of a line. Not sure if I would go back to ctrl-a now, but this is nice to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Totally irrelevant, but this is from 2011.</comment>


Interstellar Communication via Gravitational Lens - <AUTHOR> http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35486 <comment><USER2> TLDR: You're reading that right — one-tenth of a milliwatt radio is enough to create error-free communications between the Sun and Alpha Centauri through two FOCAL antennas. Maccone's paper assumes two 12-meter FOCAL antennas.

<comment><USER3> Actually the proposal is a bit more complicated than using a 12 meter large antenna, it is sending this antenna at 550 AU (the FOCAL in "FOCAL antenna"). Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:

"The gravitational field of the sun will focus light from a distant source to a focal point at a minimal distance of 550 Astronomical Units from the sun.

A proposed mission to this gravitational focus could use the sun as a very large lens, allowing (in principle) a large amplification of signal from the target, and a very high magnification."

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351)

<comment><USER3> Some people as Louis Friedmann says that only moving 10 meters away from the focal point (at 550 au) would reduce the gain by 10 dB. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEZ6zYZ6lDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEZ6zYZ6lDQ)

That said I like people proposing big ideas.

<comment><USER2> What's interesting about this is that with closed loop control (using multiple antennas on the very signal they are receiving) one might well be able to achieve that 10m accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe their math is correct, but the presentation here doesn't seem right. "Not so — there is no focal 'point' here but a focal line. As we move through and past 550 AU, we take advantage of the fact that the focal line extends to infinity."

Light is reversible, even if the space is curved. If all light from the "focal line" gathers at the focal point on the other side of the star, where does it go in reverse?

<comment><USER5> > If all light from the "focal line" gathers at the focal point on the other > side of the star...

It doesn't - the light on the focal line may be from any source that falls on the same line on the opposite side of the star. But since the chances of more than one light source (distant star) falling on this exact same line are pretty minuscule, it's still a (potentially) useful lens

<comment><USER4> I don't understand what you are trying to say. There is no such thing as a focal line. More generally, it's not possible for light from several points to focalize at the same point because you can't revert those rays. I guess Randal Monroe explains it better than me here:

[https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/)

However, I can see one way to read what they mean. If you take the Sun's "focal point", the point where parallel lines from one side intersect after being bent by its gravity, and move a tiny away from the Sun, then you form the image of a point that resides on the line going from you through the Sun all the way to infinity on the other side. You need to move very little for the opposite to move a lot, so for measurement purposes you are still at 590 AU from the Sun. This way with very tiny moves you could survey the planets in a different solar system, and in particular you could resolve them to multi- pixels.</comment></comment></comment>


Any Suggestions for My Awesome Reference Tools Repo? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/willhoag/awesome-reference-tools <comment><USER2> You have a typo: "mozilla developer netowrk"

<comment><USER3> I noticed that and a broken link too.. sent a PR on Github</comment></comment>


JavaScript Reference Monitors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pickhardt/js_reference_monitors <comment><USER2> Isn't this more or less doable with Service Workers, CSP, SRI etc?</comment>


Random image from the Library of Congress - <AUTHOR> http://www.alecjacobson.com/weblog/?p=1816 <comment><USER2> This is awesome. My friend already found my father's doppelganger. Anyway to link photo info with it too?</comment>


EFF in Court to Argue NSA Collection from Internet Backbone Is Unconstitutional - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-court-argue-nsa-data-collection-internet-backbone-unconstitutional <comment><USER2> "Under the government's legal theory, it can copy virtually all Internet communications and then search them from top to bottom for specific "identifiers"—all without a warrant or individualized suspicion—as long as it does so quickly using only automated processes."

Love it. I hadn't thought of it like that before. Just because your search is fast doesn't mean it's not a search.

<comment><USER3> Also, just because there isn't a "human" that does the search manually, doesn't mean the human doesn't _benefit_ from the search (exactly as if he would if he did the search himself).

And another thing: the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and _seizures_ , so saying "we're only collecting it, but not searching it" shouldn't work as an excuse either.

EFF should also make a case for how searching into your online Facebook accounts, Google accounts, chat accounts and so on, is the "searching through your home without a warrant and fishing for crimes of the 21st century" \- or something along those lines.

A third party may hold the data _for you_ , but people think of those accounts as "theirs", and they have _an expectation of privacy_ for them. If you keep something in a bank deposit box, does the bank own your deposit box and everything in it? Or is that "yours", and you expect nobody but you to access that? Right now, the government much prefers to go to these companies and just ask _them_ for what you have in those accounts, because it's so much easier for them to do that, than ask _you_. But I feel they are skirting an important right humans should be having here.

The "physical" protections seem to be so much better than the "digital" protections in the US law right now. It's time to change that, and make it clear that digital protections should be _at least_ as strong as the kind of protections we benefit from in the real world.

For example, it makes no sense for email to be considered under a much lower standard than real mail. They are both _exactly the same type of communication_. It's just the medium that's different, but that shouldn't matter _at all_.

<comment><USER4> > the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and _seizures_

Not to nitpick, but how exactly is making a copy of something a seizure?

<comment><USER5> The full text is:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

A plain English interpretation would seem to make the NSA slurping illegal, but a legal interpretation could be completely different.

<comment><USER6> I think an important point here is that at the time the Bill of Rights was written, the language you quoted _would_ protect you from having your private information copied. Because without photographs, video, or digital information, you had to actually physically "search" or "seize" a document in order to make a copy of it. There would be no way of copying a document without first getting access to it which, unless the government had a specific warrant, would have been prohibited by the 4th amendment.

<comment><USER5> Therein lies the problem. The government gets to approach the issue from "It's not explicitly in the Constitution, therefore we can do anything we want," when it is doubtful that the spirit of the document intended peoples digital communications to be handled differently than their physical communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you haven't already go to this link (Probably need to be logged into Amazon):

[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/charity/change.html?ie=UTF8&ref_...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/charity/change.html?ie=UTF8&ref_=ya_pldn#q=Electronic+Frontier+Foundation+Inc&page=1&ref=smi_se_cycsr_srch_sr&orig=)

And select EFF as your Smile charity. THEN get the browser extension to automatically redirect you to the Smile link:

Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile- always/jgpmh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile- always/jgpmhnmjbhgkhpbgelalfpplebgfjmbf?hl=en)

Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/amazonsmilere...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/amazonsmileredirector/)

EDIT: I only use the chrome extension, if someone has a better FF extension just let me know and I'll change the link, that was the first one I found.

<comment><USER8> To give $50 to a charity through Amazon Smile, you'd have to spend $10K. Still pretty nice of Amazon I guess, but if you'd rather not deal with the extra Amazon Smile extensions and junk, most people could just do a $5 or $10 to the EFF and be done.

<comment><USER6> I saw something really good on LessWrong the other day. There's a link you can follow so that 5% (10x more than the 0.5% from Smile) gets donated to charity. I think it uses the affiliate link system, but I haven't really looked into it. This LW post explains it:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb4/shop_for_charity_how_to_earn_pro...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb4/shop_for_charity_how_to_earn_proven_charities_5/)

It's not the EFF, but if you believe in GiveWell, it's a fantastic way to make a sizable (and mostly passive) positive impact.

And the best part: It's stackable with Smile. Presumably, EFF could set the same thing up. (I believe Scott Alexander of SlateStarCodex.com has one set up to support his site as well, so it can't be that hard or restrictive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is it. This is the tipping point. I'm donating money to the EFF.

<comment><USER10> Great! Be sure to do the recurring donation option. I donate $10 per month automatically, which is barely noticeable.

<comment><USER9> I wish $10/month was barely noticeable for me! But I've send them $25, which I'm sure they will put to good use!

<comment><USER11> I was going to do 10 recurring but just hit 25 to help those who can't do the 10 :)

<comment><USER12> That was exactly my reasoning for Wikipedia's donation request: "if everyone reading this donated $3, we'd be done." "OK, well, I'll pay for 10 people then".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 0x5f3759df-i The title seems a little misleading

>Jewel was filed in 2008 on behalf of San Francisco Bay Area resident Carolyn Jewel and other AT&T customers.

This isn't a new lawsuit, it has just taken forever to even get to this point. The main focus of this case isn't from the Snowden documents but the Snowden documents did open up the case to actually go forward without State Secrets censorship.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Fourth only protects 330 million out of 7 billion people.

However, if we don't help US citizen for their democracy, we'll have no weight for ours.

<comment><USER14> Interesting that the "Bill of Rights" wouldn't apply universally. We're all human.

<comment><USER15> AFAIK the US Constitution is just a contract put forth by the US citizens limiting the power of the US Govt. By agreeing to obey the constitution, you become a US citizen and vice-versa. Although the principles apply universally, they have a legal basis to be enforced (by the US judiciary) only in the US.

<comment><USER16> Technically, it was a contract put forth by some citizens of the several states in confederation, to create a government with enumerated powers. That is, it both enabled and limited at the same time.

In a strictly technical sense, the US Army is prohibited from disarming citizens of Iraq in their own country, for instance. But they might just do it anyway. Because said foreigners would not be able to petition for relief anywhere else but in a US federal courts, and there are currently several barriers to them initiating an action there, which largely do not exist for citizens in the US, that foreigner is usually unable to exercise those rights using strictly peaceful means.

In short, it's far easier to form your own militia and kill any agents of the US that you find in your own country. That seems like bad policy all the way around. It would be much better if the US just obeyed its own laws anywhere it goes in the world. It might even be prudent to set up a 12th federal circuit, with at least one district in each country with which the US has an extradition treaty, to support cases with jurisdiction established by Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 1: " _and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects._ " Such courts would be authorized by the Constitution, but as far as I am aware, none exist.

If there were a foreign circuit, it is likely that Guantanamo Bay detainees could file Habeas Corpus motions in it. Foreign banks could fight to restore their privacy safeguards while still serving US customers. Private military contractors might face civil suits from the families of people randomly gunned down in the streets of their own cities. If the US had to obey its own laws everywhere around the world, it would certainly devolve into pure chaos~

<comment><USER17> Interestingly enough, we did (kind of) try this once. There used to be a United States Court for China in the first half of the 1900s. This court exercised extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. citizens living in China. Appeals were heard in the 9th Circuit.

What I find most intriguing (or appalling) is that a District Court judge in the Western District of Washington (State) held in 1942 that a U.S. citizen who was tried, convicted, and sentenced in the U.S. Court for China was not entitled to Constitutional rights. Judge Black wrote in Casement v. Squier[0] that Petitioner Leroy Lomax, then-incarcerated on McNeil Island was "mistaken in his contention that the Constitution of the United States guaranteed him a trial thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the United States." Lomax said that his confinement was unconstitutional because he had been denied a trial by jury (one of Americans, versus the bench trial he received).

Judge Black quoted the U.S. Supreme Court decision In re Ross[1], where Justice Field wrote "[t]he Constitution can have no operation in another country." Thus, the Petitioner in Casement was denied habeus corpus.

I've not studied law, so I'd like to hope that this was "clarified" or overturned, though I don't hold much hope.

0 - [http://www.leagle.com/decision/194234246FSupp296_1271](http://www.leagle.com/decision/194234246FSupp296_1271)

1 - [https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/140/453/case.htm...](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/140/453/case.html)

<comment><USER16> Actually, the Constitution says

 _The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed._

By my plain, non-lawyer reading of the law, Judge Black was either misinformed or lying about the law. It hardly matters if you are beyond the boundaries of the US, if the US comes to you to claim jurisdiction over you.

It certainly is appalling. The Constitution must have operation over agents of the federation wherever they may go, even if not over citizens or other people, otherwise you end up with malicious workarounds like extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay prison.

And while Oliver Twist is non legal canon, when the law is an ass, we should feel free to say so. The argument from In re Ross seemed very disingenuous, in that it claimed that a court established in a foreign country using the Constitution as the basis for its jurisdiction was then no longer bound by it thereafter. It is obvious to me, as a layman, that both Black and Field were seeking expedience rather than justice. I imagine that anyone seeking to overturn the precedent set by the Field opinion could simply petition as an expatriate filing income taxes, and claim it as sole argument against the 16th Amendment having operation in another country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is exactly what we need: worldwide and on a large scale. Bundled with media support, grass roots call for action campaigns and much more.

Let them know we won't accept the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER19> Donating money to EFF. Finally. I've been waiting so long :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love for this to actually make a difference, but I doubt it. The NSA has redefined the language around wiretapping just as the military has redefined the language around war and the CIA has redefined the language around torture. I'm sure everything that has happened was legal.

The question is: if all of these crimes are legal and those with the power to ban them have no interest in doing so, what's left? And how long will it be until that happens?

</comment><comment><USER21> If I send a copy of a music record by email and the NSA keeps a copy of it, can they be sued for copyright infringement ?

<comment><USER22> I had that idea a while ago. Write a short article, copyright it, and then email it to a bunch of terrorists to make sure the NSA pick it up. Because we really have two different paradigms involved here; the big copyright trade associations claim that the law is broken when you copy something, whereas the US government claims the law is broken only when/if they inspect the copied material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> EFF joins the ranks of ACLU in my book. Donated.

</comment><comment><USER24> Even if the EFF win the NSA will carry on regardless. Our laws have been diminished to the point where the powerful do not have to obey.

</comment><comment><USER25> The courts do have power in the federal government. If they say that some law is unlawful, then it is not able to be enforced as a law. The courts have that power since the constitution gives it to them. I think that you need to look at constitutional law a little more. The Executive branch does not have more power then the courts or the Congress. By the constitution.

</comment><comment><USER26> What Internet Backbone is that? The one that closed in 1995?

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone) A decentralized, redundant network among many companies.

<comment><USER26> Ok, it's in Wikipedia! But, backbone's are normally singular and control a single organism. I think that the metaphore held fine until 1995, but that which has come since then does not look, act or smell like a backbone to me...

(see what I did there with the metaphore thing :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think the EFF is going to win this one. It's not because of some government conspiracy, or the odds being stacked against them or anything like that, but rather because their argument is flawed. As detailed elsewhere on the EFF's site[1], the core of their case centers around NSA's Section 702 Upstream collection. They have more recently hinged their argument on the Privacy and Civil Liberty Oversight Board report on Section 702[2], but the case predates it going back as far as Mark Klein's Room 641A disclosure. The identifiers that the EFF talks about are described in the report as follows:

 _As noted above, however, all upstream collection — of which "about" collection is a subset — is "selector-based, i.e., based on . . . things like phone numbers or emails." Just as in PRISM collection, a selector used as a basis for upstream collection "is not a 'keyword' or particular term (e.g., 'nuclear' or 'bomb') but must be a specific communications identifier (e.g., email address)." In other words, the government's collection devices are not searching for references to particular topics or ideas, but only for references to specific communications selectors used by people who have been targeted under Section 702._

In other words, the NSA is searching for the communications of specific people - it's targeted collection. The EFF itself even concedes that they are filtering out wholly domestic communications[3]. Instead of questioning the specific procedures for targeting these people, the likelihood that they may fail and collect an innocent bystander's communications, the procedures dealing with incidental or accidental collection, etc., they are instead taking the stance that the filtering itself is illegal because a packet filter needs to see a packet before determining whether or not it matches the specific communication. As an analogy, if where to pull up my terminal and run:

      $ seq 1 3 | grep -v 2 | grep 3 > out.txt

... the government is arguing that the collection is the contents of out.txt ("3") and furthermore, they put an extra measure in place to ensure that the number 2 (i.e. purely domestic communications) is never collected. The EFF is arguing that 1, 2 and 3 are all collected because each one exists in grep's buffer for a millisecond before it is discarded - it doesn't matter that it's never seen by a human, entered into a database, written to disk or transmitted elsewhere.

I think I see why the EFF is making that argument: in Clapper v. Amnesty International it was ruled that the plaintiff didn't have standing because they couldn't show that their specific communications had been collected. Jewel v. NSA would likely have the same issue, so to get around it the EFF is instead arguing that the very fact that the NSA is conducting any sort of packet filtering itself constitutes a search and seizure, regardless what safeguards are put in place or whether the filtering is targeted. I think they're grasping for straws with this one - I'd be really surprised if they win. If I were in their place, I'd probably FOIA the hell out of the 702 procedures and look for loopholes instead.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-judge-rule- nsa-i...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-judge-rule-nsa-internet- backbone-spying-techniques-unconstitutional)

[2] [http://www.pclob.gov/Library/702-Report-2.pdf](http://www.pclob.gov/Library/702-Report-2.pdf)

[3] [https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg](https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER29> What???!!

</comment><comment><USER10> FYI, these proceedings are open to the public. I've gone to two of them before to support the EFF. You just wear a suit and sit in the audience quietly. When the arguments (which are fascinating, by the way) are over everyone gets up at the same time and leaves. Hopefully, the judges notice how much public support is there for the EFF.

If you are in the bay area, I highly encourage you to go (this one is very near the Oakland 12th St BART). You are watching history in the making.

<comment><USER30> How do the judges know that you are supporting the EFF and not the other way around? Does it have to be a suit or could you wear a t-shirt to indicate which side you are on?

<comment><USER31> In the deeply twisted world of lawyers, anyone not wearing business clothes isn't a real person.

<comment><USER32> It is not just lawyers. Pick any two people at random and have them choose who they would trust, Stallman or some guy in a suit.

<comment><USER33> True but on the flipside, me personally I trust someone that isn't in a suit (maybe not as hacker look like Stallman) more than someone in a suit.

I think it is a generational thing, dressing up to me is mostly getting into your sheep B.S. clothing to make whatever you are doing look better. I have also been working in the game industry where suits usually mean you aren't a good fit or it is someone to probably not trust i.e. publisher/salesman.

I think for court you should put on your best, but in most cases I distrust the suit more than I trust it.

<comment><USER34> I am not so sure it's generational as I assume you are on the younger side... Forty-five here and I don't trust people in suits to much (or really religious people).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am a supporter of the EFF but I don't really see the point of suing the NSA. If they loose, they will call it something else keep doing it. And the NSA is only one of the offenders. Don't think foreign gvt aren't doing the same on their side of the cable. The only solution is systematic encryption. The EFF's let's encrypt effort is way more constructive in my mind.

<comment><USER36> Both avenues must be pursued. One without the other is useless. Pursuing the technical-only approach will fail if the use of such technology is made illegal.

<comment><USER37> It doesn't even need to be made illegal, just incorrectly "regulated".

<comment><USER38> \--Someday in the futre---

SecurityAwareCustomer: _" I've noticed that my VPN and ssh connections have started to lag & disconnect frequently"_

Comcast: _" We've gotten several reports on this issue. To better serve our customers we've implemented a software designed to optimize network traffic routing. To do that, the software must do some deep packet inspection. Unfortunately, if a traffic is encrypted this software must go through all its known packet types before determining that it's encrypted. This takes time and also because the incoming buffer might fill up before it's done determining the packet is from an encrypted stream, said packets might get dropped entirely."_

SecurityAwareCustomer: _" So, encrypted traffic's performance is severely degraded then?"_

Comcast: _" We're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause"_

SecurityAwareCustomer: _" Couldn't you check if it's known encryption first, then try other packet types?"_

Comcast: _" The software vendor has been made aware of the issue. Due to net- neutrality laws & regulations, the vendor was assigned to us by the USGov and they must review any proposed changes to the software. This legal process could take a long time."_

SecurityAwareCustomer: _" How long?"_

Comcast: _" Thank you for choosing Comcast!"_

-Comcast hangs up phone-

SecurityAwareCustomer: _"............huh"_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> shawn-butler >>>>

The court thus faulted them [the ACLU in ACLU v. NSA, 493 F.3d 644, 648] for "assert[ing] a mere belief" that the NSA eavesdropped on their communications without warrants. Id. This failure of proof doomed standing. Ultimately Jewel may face similar procedural, evidentiary and substantive barriers as the plaintiffs in ACLU, but, at this initial pleading stage, the allegations are deemed true and are presumed to "embrace the 'specific facts' needed to sustain the complaint." [0]

>>>

EFF is on a fishing expedition. I am not unsympathetic. But this judicial arm- twisting and absurd twisting of language / law needs to stop as the road it opens is not helpful to our democracy. They will never be able to justify their claims with anything that will pass evidentiary muster.

Supporting the EFF is all fine but generally a waste of time and money for effecting real change. The only way these programs end is if Congress is full of people who want this to stop and will ensure that it does.

If an obscure libertarian like Grover Norquist can dominate electoral cycles with a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" why can someone not similarly dominate electoral cycles with a "Privacy Protection Pledge"? Demand every presidential candidate sign it, etc. Make it a real wedge issue.

I wonder if the answer is that US citizens don't care because they don't really see how they are harmed? They believe the Govt is protecting them by doing this?

[0]: [http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/12/29/10...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/12/29/10-15616.pdf) [pdf]

<comment><USER39> Oh, people are still making this comment on HN? The whole "the only answer is politics" thing sort of lost its luster when absolutely nothing happened politically over _one and a half years_ since Snowden. One could argue the NSA has only been solidified by the political system.

So good luck with that approach.

<comment><USER40> It is odd how, with all the "shocking" revelations, nothing has effectively changed. It's like Snowden did the NSA a favor - exposing their secrets and so now they can act exactly the same but not in secret. Like a husband caught in an affair, and the wife doesn't care. Makes the NSA's lives a lot easier not having to lie about what that locked room is for at AT&T.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> All these comments about donating to the EFF. Any way I can donate money to the NSA to balance things out a bit?

<comment><USER7> It's called taxes, and don't worry, you are already a BIG donor.

<comment><USER42> According to Wikipedia, NSA's share of Federal budget outlays was about 0.28% in 2013 (although there's a conceptual question whether you can just multiply your tax bill by 0.0028 to find out your contribution to NSA's budget, because Federal expenditures are also funded from sources other than personal income tax).

(Here I kind of wish we had a "facts we wouldn't know without Snowden" mock- HTML tag.)

<comment><USER7> Not to mention the "Black Budgets" that undoubtedly fund the NSA and friends.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using the Datastore API in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore/tutorial/js

<comment><USER2> As someone who integrated Google Drive as storage using JavaScript when that came out last year, I've been following Dropbox's efforts closely.

The keyword there is "JavaScript", i.e. the application talks directly to the storage from the browser, traffic (data) doesn't have to go via the application providers servers. I've talked to a lot of people who prefer the idea of bringing their own storage and virtually all much prefer direct comms with the storage back-end (once it's explained). Privacy is always high up the list of important things for users.

Dropbox started on this a bit later than Google, but as a developer I've been very impressed with the direction they are taking at technical level and the way they've listened to what developers have fed back. I'm liking their platform from a dev perspective more and more.

I'm rarely positive about anything, it causes me pain. If any part of the above is quoted, I will deny it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dropbox-as-a-backend is an interesting angle compared to other cloud providers as the user can be truly in control of his data.

Does anyone know who is leading DataStore efforts inside Dropbox? I'd like to chat as we have something complimentary coming.

<comment><USER4> I did it once about 1.5 years ago and the latency fucking killed me. Over a second is not ok. Need sub 200 ms.</comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple, Picks Up his Galaxy Nexus - <AUTHOR> http://phandroid.com/2011/11/18/steve-wozniak-co-founder-of-apple-picks-up-his-galaxy-nexus/

<comment><USER2> That's kind of ridiculous to say that since Woz bought a Galaxy Nexus he's turning his back on Apple.

It seems to me that Woz likes technology in all forms.</comment>


Interplanetary Internet - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet <comment><AUTHOR> Not to be confused with IPFS!</comment>


A Long-Sought Proof, Found and Almost Lost - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/statistician-proves-gaussian-correlation-inequality-20170328/ <comment><USER2> This was submitted and discussed at length four or five months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13977554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13977554)

There were another 8 comments here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14031057)

But it's a popular article, and obviously resonates with the HN community. Lone wolf proves outstanding conjecture, publishes in a non-traditional manner, gets ignored. It's a good story.

Here are some other submissions from other sources:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14472592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14472592)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14201675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14201675)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036226)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030500)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14027972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14027972)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I use silly headlines in LinkedIn to attract attention - <AUTHOR> Hi there,
do silly headlines and profile images on LinkedIn attract attention or kill it?
How would people react to a headline like this: "Source of complex solutions to your simple problems".
What about the profile image that, instead of my photo in suit and tie, shows "FooBuz" word?
When it comes to business -- I'm dead serious. However, I'm sick and tired of LinkedIn profiles that all look the same.
Just trying to find out if people think it's too unprofessional or cool. <comment><USER2> My impression is that LinkedIn profiles are simply click-bait for recruiters. So I would suspect that your proposed profile changes might reduce the number of unsolicited emails you get.

I only use LinkedIn to reconnect with colleagues from past jobs and very occasionally read posts to the few groups that I have an interest in. Basically I use Facebook for family and friends and LinkedIn as a sorta facebook for "professional" connections. Keeping the two spheres of my life quite separate.</comment>


Zombie Startups in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1047037881892655106 <comment><USER2> I got to pt4 with my solo startup/project

`The first step is inevitably to raise money from dumb/ignorant investors who couldn't care less about your startup: that would be the government / unemployment benefits in France / tax-incentivized angel investors in the UK.

It buys you 12-18 months of runway.`

After it I realised it has no market and no interest from anyone.

Now I am in a mixed bag of thinking that I did well in stopping it at an early stage and dealing with the feelings of having failed/wasted a lot by pouring 2 years in it.

Such is life :/

<comment><USER3> Who are these tax incentivised angels in the UK??

<comment><USER4> The UK has two tax-efficient schemes for investing in startups: SEIS and EIS. For some perspective, if an 'additional rate taxpayer' invested £10,000 into your startup, they are only actually risking £2,750 due to tax relief (source: [https://www.crowdcube.com/pg/seis-tax- relief-42](https://www.crowdcube.com/pg/seis-tax-relief-42)). They get additional relief on capital gains tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nicolas Colin :

       everyone knows them in town because they're spending
       their time speaking about entrepreneurship to ignorant
       people gathered in salons

Well isn't that what TheFamily is ? [https://www.thefamily.co/about/nicolas- colin](https://www.thefamily.co/about/nicolas-colin)

<comment><USER6> The problem is not the salon itself. Rather it's zombie entrepreneurs being all over it, and non-zombie entrepreneurs wasting time in it trying to catch up.

Neither is happening at The Family: our portfolio entrepreneurs are busy working on their product/their customers and are on stage only when it makes sense from their roadmap's perspective.

As for the zombie "entrepreneurs de salon", they are not allowed as speakers at The Family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is brutally true in Spain as well. I used to love everything I read about startups, being lean, iterating, etc. But seeing Valencia/Spanish startup ecosystem... yikes

I have only seen up close one startup (out of dozens) with actual profit that could sustain itself if VC money was to withdraw. From my University friend who I always though he could do it.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not just in Europe, it's mostly the same everywhere, with very minor modifications. I'd even risk saying that most startups are like this, i.e. at one of the stages described in the article - only a small minority are actually successful.

<comment><USER9> Unsuccessful startups, for me, are not the problem. The problem is:

a) venture capital coming from government which have very low incentives to not waste money (their goal is usually only to have X amount of start ups) - which leads that capital and talent is diverted to this bad startups

b) since they are zombies, they don't die quickly enough, the resources waste keeps going on (capital, talent, office space, bandwidth, etc.)

<comment><USER10> Governments have secondary returns -- VC coming from government generally has restrictions (i.e. the money has to be spent on employees). Employees pay taxes. Those people spend their money mostly locally. Even if every euro invested is lost, it'll still be profitable in most cases (because everything eventually flows back into the local economy).

<comment><USER11> This sounds eerily like the broken windows fallacy.

<comment><USER10> Yet this is how these things are set up. I know a VC fund manager solo managing a €50m fund, of which €20m came from the European Investment Bank, and €20m came from the local government. He put in €200k. Just €9.8m came from HNWIs.

So he's getting 2% on €50m for 7 years, to invest €40m government money with pretty much no expectation of any return. Not bad, not bad at all. I'm sure "the people" would be outraged if they knew. But they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So glad people are talking about the deceptive strategies EU companies uses to mimic those in the US. It's as if there's a deep cultural force against acting like US startups here in the EU, which I frankly don't like and would like to see some push against, and I think all parties will be happier once we've gone through the phase shift.

<comment><USER13> I don't think this is a special EU force.

Only the fact that most people can't deliver.

Sometimes it's the dev and you end up with crap instead of a product.

Sometimes it's the CEO and you end up with a consultancy instead of a product business.

<comment><USER14> And sometimes it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The first step is inevitably to raise money from dumb/ignorant investors who couldn't care less about your startup: that would be the government / unemployment benefits in France / tax-incentivized angel investors in the UK."

I have seen many entrepreneurs who just kept repeating step #1 for years. They would hop from one startup accelerator to another, joining as many government grant programs as possible (Startup Chile et al.) without ever really building an actual business.

There's one particular case I know of someone who managed to get more than $300,000 in grants in just a couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is so true of the Austrian startup scene, I had to double-check that it wasn't written by someone I know.

IMHO, the worst thing a startup can do in Austria is get involved with AWS funding .. state funding of tech. Its just so deflating, it removes the incentive to actually be productive and work on the needs of the end-user; the customer. This is not something Austrians, at least the startup generation, get right .. and I feel very strongly that its a consequence of the welfare generation, who equate "got free money from the government" with 'success'.

I'd love to see the funding dry up in the scene. There are so many innovative groups here in Austria, but they're just not hungry enough. They don't have the drive, or the motivation, to launch in their markets and do what needs to be done to _service_ people. Service is not a part of Austrian culture. But, I feel, it never will be for as long as state welfare is the first handout expected by founders.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is cargo culting, is it not? Going for the form, but not the essence.

<comment><USER16> _All_ startups go through a cargo cult phase. What differentiates the successful ones from the non-successful/zombie ones is that it is recognised as a phase, and people work damn hard to get out of the cargo-cult zone.

When you have a handout to keep you fat, this isn't really conducive to recognising the cargo cult fallacy. It 'feels' like you're successful at your cult, because after all: money is there, and people have given it to you, i.e. the planes arrived and cargo fell out of the sky.

But this is so deceptive. The only way to escape the cargo cult phase is to actually build the real things which real people - strangers, beyond the horizon - actually want. Not, those things your local government bureaucrat wants but rather the things that non-native, out-of-scope _real customers_ want.

Recognising the cargo cultism takes real balls. Not a lot of people have the balls for it, alas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey ! I live in Paris and I went to some presentations at The Family some years ago. I heard Sam Altman speaking there, thanks for organizing it.

Regarding the state of software startups in France, how could you compare it to the Silicon Valley? I guess the same phenomenon is happening in the USA.

Startups arent only about softwares, entrepreneurship already existed in other sectors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but The Family is exclusively about softwares.

</comment><comment><USER19> _[Note that nobody has paid for a product yet.]_

If you don't have "paying customers" in some fashion, you aren't really in business. The rest is just window dressing, basically.

 _An even longer runway!_

There's your "Universal Basic Income" right there: Money for nothing (and your chicks for free, no doubt). See, also, _Duke Nukem Forever,_ where they basically didn't ship until they had to because they were running out of money.

I think an essential source of friction in the world of business is there are two ways to make money:

1\. Add real value such that if someone pays for your product, you both walk away better off. The world is enhanced by the existence of your company/product.

2\. Milk people for money in some social/commercial variation of strip mining where you extract resources for yourself and don't really make the world a better place. There are externalized costs of some sort where the world is, in the aggregate, worse off because you got your needs met in the short term.

Real startups are the first thing. Zombie startups are the second thing. And friction over "Yes, but am I paying for something that genuinely makes life, the universe and everything better or am I paying for some blood-sucking piece of shit?" is the essence of a lot of criticisms of business, capitalism, etc.

<comment><USER20> Ended up spending 30 minutes of my life for reading [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Fore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems like a good place to ask: What does it mean for a startup to go into a Series A, B ,C? Is it like some kind of IPO? I have never understood how all the finances around startups work

<comment><USER22> It usually means that they raised a new significant round of investment from a new group of investors at a new valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> All true! but "the healthier the ecosystem" should read "the richer the ecosystem / the more money there is in the system", which is different than "health".

</comment><comment><USER24> On a completely unrelated note, why does this website have to change the way my scroll works, making it unbearably slow? I wonder, what is the motivation behind this decision?</comment>