Ask HN: Can you recommend an immigration lawyer? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to figure out my chances of obtaining an employment based green card.
I'm 27 years old, I have a bachelor's degree in computer science and a master's degree in informatics applied to computer networks, both awarded by an university in Central America.
I have 5 years of experience working for US-based companies in remote positions.
I have been working for a company based on Seattle (King County area) since April 2017.
The job title that best fits what I currently do for my company is "Computer Systems Engineers" (OES/SOC Code:15-1199), and the most that my employer could offer is a $70K - $90K wage. <comment><USER2> [http://www.wegreened.com/](http://www.wegreened.com/) I recently applied for an EB2-NIW. I recommend this attorney. They're perfectionists in the documentation preparation. Free CV evaluation and in some cases "approval or refund" policy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the part about the Free CV evaluation, some lawyers charge $300 for a 20min call in which they will only tell you the same information you can get online for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Contact the Lawyer Referral Service @ King County > [https://www.kcba.org/lrs/index.aspx](https://www.kcba.org/lrs/index.aspx)

 _The Lawyer Referral Service at King County Bar is the only referral service in the state of Washington that is certified by the American Bar Association_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I didn't know such thing existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try posting your scenario to [http://visajourney.com/](http://visajourney.com/) . They mostly focus on family class immigration, but you'll probably get more targeted replies there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I will give it a try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your company can apply for an h1, if you get selected in the lottery - you can get an h1, move to the usa and your company can then apply for an employment based green card. Depending on country of origin - wait times differ.

Murthy Law Firm is good.

</comment><comment><USER6> Roman Lee in SF is quite brilliant. He's helped me, my cousin, and my brother with all our immigration questions and decisions.

email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will contact him and see if I can set up a consultation call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you considered an L1 visa, which allows you to apply for a green card later?

[http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/](http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

Thanks for your reply, although it seems than an L VISA is somewhat easier to get, that will require my current employer to set up a branch of the company on my country of residence and to hire more people, and that's an scenario we will like to avoid, as the goals is to get me into the USA, if we were to hire more people in here, once I'm gone we will need someone to manage them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think if you're willing to go, Australia would let you stay pretty easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have heard that the immigration process for Australia and Canada is easier, but the problem is that I don't have a prospective employer on any of those countries.

My current employer is based on the USA.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you wanted to manipulate HN, how would you go about it? - <AUTHOR> By manipulation I mean either the suppression or promotion of certain information / discussions, gaming the ranking algorithm, astroturfing, etc.
As just one example, I've wondered if for instance there was a front page article about a bad quarterly report, or a corruption scandal, and I wanted it to drop off the front page fast, would it work to simply introduce some flame-war-inducing topic via a tangential comment? If the company in question was Microsoft, for example, you could pretty easily slide in some dig against Linux, begin a flame war, and then as I understand it (and as I've witnessed many times) the HN ranking algorithm would start to push it down.
Of course this discussion is not meant to encourage any bad behavior, but as a security exercise it seems useful. I also am unaware of and interested in what HN has made publicly known about their ranking algorithm, and how this squares with best practices as far as thwarting manipulation. <comment><USER2> A large number of accounts you control. It must be so large that you can use small and different subsets each time you need them. Make those accounts post and reply sometimes to get points and be plausible users. Maybe some passably intelligent bots. Don't register them at the same time. You probably need one year or two to ramp up the accounts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure why someone would go to great lengths to manipulate HN regarding something like a bad quarterly report or a corruption scandal. HN is not really a significant news source if you're interested in financial or political news, so keeping it off HN's front page won't make any difference - how many people are there whose _only_ news source is HN?

Another way of thinking about it is that HN is a news aggregator, so any article on HN has already been published somewhere that probably has a much higher readership than HN (mainstream media, tech media, etc.). So why bother to manipulate HN?

That said, it's clear that there are articles posted here that have political, social or commercial agendas behind them, so one has to read skeptically (as is true for all media sources).</comment>


US Mac sales grow 9.6% in Q1 2011 as rest of market drops 10.7% - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/13/first_quarter_mac_sales_grow_9_6_in_us_as_rest_of_market_drops_10_7.html <comment><USER2> I've seen data on student suggesting that 90% of the laptops on certain campuses are OSX, a complete inversion from 10 years ago. This was coupled with an increase in computer ownership by students moving up to 100%.

<comment><USER3> Not to say that this isn't true at other universities, but where I am going to school that is certainly not the case. Some campuses are forcing their students to buy macs, but overall I only know of 4 people that own Macs on campus. This includes Computer Science majors and non-Computer Science majors.

If we include iPhones however...

<comment><USER2> I may have misremembered the data. The closet I've been able to uncover is student usage in UVa from 1997 to 2009.

<http://itc.virginia.edu/students/inventory/compare/>

While laptop ownership is near universal; the OS distribution is trending strongly towards OSX but with only about 45% in 2009.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Acer's shipments really fell _42%_ year-over-year? No wonder their CEO was forced out...

The netbook as we know it would seem to be dead.

<comment><USER5> The netbook as we _knew_ it...

That makes me sad, because netbooks are the perfect form factor for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just walk into <http://www.generalassemb.ly/> . At any given time you would be hard pressed to find a non-Apple laptop.

Where the nerd goes - the herd follows.</comment>


Packet switching in Stockholm's waste vacuum system  - <AUTHOR> http://urbanneighbourhood.com/2008/09/automated-vacuum-collection/

<comment><USER2> Why can't it be bidirectional? It can suck garbage in one direction, and blow pizzas and online purchases in the other.

Who's going to be first to write an RFC for IP encapsulation of physical items?

<comment><USER3> Same reason no one talks about sanitizing their urine and drinking it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, my parents have this outside the house, never gave it an extra thought. Will look more into when I am close by.</comment>


Show HN: Upload to Instagram from your Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.socialfrank.com/upgram.html <comment><USER2> You can just open Instagram -> open console -> toggle device toolbar -> reload Instagram and then you're having the mobile layout where you can just upload any picture/video

</comment><comment><USER3> I want to learn more, but clicking Learn More adds it to my cart.</comment>


Education or Brainwashing? - <AUTHOR> https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/11/education-or-brainwashing/ <comment><USER2> Why focus on Israel, when this is an endemic problem everywhere?

History is being taught by whoever is getting to control the education systems. As noted by Fragskope, critical thinking no longer has a place in our education systems, not at primary school, not at second school, not at colleges or universities.

</comment><comment><USER3> Critical thinking in general seems to have become a lost art in schools. It's rarely taught in depth anymore. So if something is brainwashing, its alarmingly effective these days.</comment>


Maths becomes biology's magic number - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37630414 <comment><USER2> As a physician who was a mathematics major in undergrad, I completely agree.

An astonishing amount of biology is rather mechanistic, systematic, and logical. I feel my math (and minor programming) experience trained my brain in such a way as to understand complex biological interactions more intuitively.

I'm not bragging here, but while I was actually _understanding_ the theories behind what we were learning, on a fundamental systemic basis, many of my classmates were essentially relying on memorization. They passed the exams fine, and make okay doctors, but they can't explain things to patients well and their research ideas are very limited and safe.

<comment><USER3> How did you transition from a Maths/Programming undergrad to doing medicine? I'm doing Computer engineering and plan to do go into medicine later, any tips?

<comment><USER4> If I were you: 1) I would go work in a computational biology lab, get some papers out, Cancer research is always a step ahead but there a lot of good projects in Neuroscience too (immunology could also work). Go to the best lab you have around, most PIs know that it is hard to find good programmers because they mostly go to the big tech companies or startups. Make sure you don't do wet lab at this step it is going to be a waste of your time since you will not have time to do anything meaningful. 2) With the papers apply to medicine or preferably to MD/PhD program, if you get into MD/PhD program you will have time to learn some real science too. In any case if you are the ambitious type of person when doing step 1 try not to get stuck working as a bioinformatician: lower salaries than tech although better than biologists, you will hit the ladder cap faster, very few transcend to become leaders and command multidisciplinary groups. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mathematics can spoil you in some ways. It's all very well to show that your longitudinal treatment study rejected a null hypothesis at p of 0.05 or better. It's another to prove that a theorem is true in all possible universes. I'm married to a doctor and we have medical/science friends so I regularly have the pleasure of wielding my mathematician's overbearing sense of superiority when it comes to standards of proof.

<comment><USER6> Science doesn't have "standards of proof" because it doesn't have proofs in the first place, nor is it supposed to.

Also, when you say "in all possible universes", do you actually mean "in all models of mathematical theory"?

<comment><USER5> That is my cue in this particular dinner party to accuse you of being a philosopher, or worse, a lawyer, and flourish the quip about the wastepaper basket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a physician with BS EE/CS. The problem solving skills and the view of systems certainly helped understanding biology/medicine mechanistically. I actually keep track of doctors with undergrad degrees in math/engineering because I've noticed we do see medicine differently than our colleagues who did not have this training.

I work with health analytics and knowing both worlds is unquestionably helpful.

Interestingly, I've noticed several PhDs in Physics or EE change their careers to study biology using their math background.

<comment><USER8> What fields of medicine do you think are particularly suited to the mindsets of EE/CS/Math people? I would think "memorisers" would be best at general practitice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not directly related to medicine, but I advise every high schooler and undergrad that I mentor to take as much math and/or computer science as they can if they are interested in biology or neuroscience (or to major in physics). There are not going to be PhD level jobs given out for graduate work that was essentially being a lab tech for 6 years, no matter how much cheap labor current professors need/want. That said, I also tell them that if they want to be successful they need to read and understand most of Molecular Biology of the Cell because it is the foundation for understanding the fundamental parts of biological systems.

</comment><comment><USER10> After graduating in CS with honors, I intentionally enrolled into two best nation-wide universities and cherry picked the most difficult theoretical courses in order to get a math boost - now it seems to be paying off with the possibilities still open in front of me, capability to learn even bleeding edge concepts whereas observing most of my friends getting stuck in old things that are rapidly being phased out. It seems like you need to study hard every single day in our business; I guess the same is coming to all of them soon.

<comment><USER11> That's great, can you list the subjects and brief contents?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, if you want to become a doctor, at least in the US, knowing some biology will certainly help you on the first step of licensing exams... :-)

But the general point does hold that yes, a high level of math or CS training is advantageous for anyone moving into a career in the life sciences, since it appears that that's where much of the foreseeable growth (in careers and research funding) seems to be.

It's also been said by many that it's easier to learn some biology _after_ training rigorously in CS/math, rather than the other way around. Dudley Herschbach (a Nobel-prize winning chemist) once said to me that his one piece of advice for young researchers would be simply, "Learn as much math as you can."

</comment><comment><USER13> Mathematics and computer science are slowly taking over every other field. I would hazard a guess that it's just a matter of time before psychology meets the same fate. The goal would be to develop predictive models that can solve personal problems — depression, addiction, anxiety, etc. Eventually, machine learning will be able to do this better than people (exactly _how much_ time until this occurs is hotly contested though).

<comment><USER3> It already is! Cognitive psychology (currently the largest field in psychology) has strong connections with Neuroscience and in many cases Computational Neuroscience, which is just engineering and mathematical modelling of the brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If that point about datageddon is true (strikes me as logical but im no data scientist), it seems that learning algorithms that can deduce the importance of datapoints based on a large but fuzzy dataset would be of significant importance.

</comment><comment><USER15> I studied math in college in the 1990s. An NSF official came to our school and told us to get into computational biology.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm currently a medical student, I double majored in mathematics and biochemistry, and fell in love with programming and computer science after doing a physics research internship during undergrad (living with an MIT computer scientist helped too haha).

I agree largely with @GarrisonPrime's thoughts regarding the systematic nature of biological systems. I also share the same sense of trying to understand the logic and intuition of the physiology I learned in the first two years of medical school while many of my peers were just trying to guzzle and regurgitate. I have to admit that I also fell into that mode as well at times, just due to the volume of material that was expected. But that's for another time.

I'm currently taking a year to work on research that is in systems biology/bioinformatics. While there are many things that I like about it, and I'm grateful that it presents an opportunity for me to continue learning about computer science, machine learning (been really getting into learning about Bayesian analysis this year) and biology I have to admit that this article sounds like it was written from the same vantage point that I stood on a couple years ago as I just started getting into this area of research.

The technology we have today to probe cellular systems is amazing and was literally the stuff of science fiction some 20 years ago, but it's not without its faults. This line from the article especially rang true to how I feel these days:

"But there's a problem. The vast data sets that give bioinformatics its power are also its Achilles heel."

The problem is that the systems biologists and bioinformaticists are most interested in are dynamic with complex regulatory systems that we don't have ways of measuring and most methods of measurement either completely destroy the system or alter its dynamics. In addition, it's akin to taking a snapshot of how the system is behaving at one instance in time or condition. Yet many times we are asked to use that information in a way that's akin to trying to describe the dynamics of an entire motion picture from 2 or 3 photos. And those photos are greyscale. Take for example mRNA-sequencing, a type of data that I work with frequently. It's trying to measure the amount of gene product that a cell or cells have at one point in time (basically trying to get a measure of how much geneX the cell is trying to produce). While it is an interesting measure and can give some insight into how the the cell may be adapting to different conditions, those measurements alone tell us almost nothing about the regulation behind those differences, which is the thing we really want to understand. It's a bit like seeing oil on top of water and then trying to infer the complex dynamics of geophysics that are occurring on the ocean floor. Not saying that it's not useful at all, and can help direct your attention to the next interesting thing, but I think that many people overestimate how informative the data is. And then there are still a lot of technical issues but that is a discussion for another day.

The other main point I want to make is that for all the data you think we have now about these biological systems, it's like a snowflake on top of the iceberg. Even many of these large consortium projects like ENCODE have relatively small amounts of information if you want to learn about some transcription factor or cell type that isn't one of the top 10 most well known or studied. And how many of those datasets out there are really lacking in good quality control, and then there is the politics of sharing data in an academic/research environment that is so competitive getting a job (that you will have to continue to work like a madman/woman at) is like winning the lottery.

OK, I don't want this to descend into a full blown rant. Main points - it's still really exciting, and it's a great time to have intersecting interests in medicine, math and computer science. Just that the tech we have to work with right now is still a bit nascent and expensive. I think there will be a point where systems bio and machine learning will revolutionize how we understand biology. We're just not quite there yet.

On a side note - where I do see a lot of potential right now where computer science and machine learning can start to make an impact is more on the clinical side of medicine and using ML to learn from the vast stores of EMR data. But that's also another discussion for another day. If you read this far, here is a smiley face, and have a nice weekend :)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's also interesting is that it seems the inverse is also true for computing. The human brain is a very cool processor and I think in the coming decades it's not super far fetched to see synapses arise as synthetic computers much like the inverse has been true for the past couple decades.</comment>


Autodesk Acquires CreativeMarket - <AUTHOR> https://creativemarket.com/blog/2014/03/19/building-the-worlds-marketplace-for-design

<comment><USER2> This is great news for the CreativeMarket team! I feel like CreativeMarket.com is the only marketplace that is actually giving Envato's marketplaces (Themeforest, Graphic River, Code Canyon, etc.) a run for their money -- compettition wise. The quality is really great on both services, and I like that there is good competition between the two on products. I can't wait to see how Autodesk and CreativeMarket mesh together. Congrats CreativeMarket! :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We've got more goodness on the roadmap and still working towards the best marketplace possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CreativeMarket was a site/service I thought I would never need to use, and so couldn't judge how well they would do. I eventually let my early credit expire.

But then I needed a background, and a some textures, and so on. I came back across their site, and it was so slick and well done, I had to restrain myself from hunting down for other things to buy as well.

It's a fantastic idea with wonderful execution that can change even a skeptic's mind - congrats to the team!

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks Sean. That really means a lot to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, congrats! I totally love Creative Market. I've bought so many photo effects, textures and patterns there over the past few years my accountant actually laughed at me last week when I had my taxes done considering "Creative Market" is a top-level category for my business expenses now. Really high-quality stuff and a great experience.

<comment><USER3> Well thank you very much for the support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Used the site recently and had a great experience. Hope they continue to grow and add new content!

</comment><comment><USER8> I wrote about this trend last week. Building/acquiring communities around a product. I gave 15 examples to this, and this acquisition would be a perfect 16th example. [https://medium.com/strategy- tactics/4dd173a83565](https://medium.com/strategy-tactics/4dd173a83565)

<comment><USER9> nice list; i think HighCharts (javascript plotting library would fit nicely on it); Apparently for H/C, the community (as evidenced by the busy help forums) is an essential component of their value--the source code is available for anyone to read/study/re-use and the license for individual developer use is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have really enjoyed CreativeMarket - I got in on an AppSumo bundle and stuck around for all the free goodies and high quality themes. I'm not really sure where CM fits in Autodesk's massive portfolio, perhaps they have plans for a similar product in the 3D market.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this mean that Creative Market will start to offer 3D / product designs? Is an integrated route to market for industrial designers embedded into the AutoCAD family on the road map?</comment>


Why Roblox succeeded where Second Life fell short - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> WTF is Roblox?

<comment><USER3> It's like Minecraft with Lego characters</comment></comment>


Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-02-15/missing-malaysia-jet-mh370-weeks-away-from-keeping-secrets-forever <comment><USER3> The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans.

A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for human habitation, sometimes wiping out all evidence of entire communities within hours. We lose all kinds of cargo into the ocean and haven't the faintest clue where it goes. We're only beginning to figure out how to convert seawater into potable form effectively. The majority of our planet is covered in something we can't even figure out how to build habitats on top of without piling up dirt underneath.

The belief that we have any mastery over this planet seems to humbly disintegrate when looking at our relationship to our oceans

<comment><USER4> I live by the Atlantic, people go missing every so often. It seems tragic but normal to the locals. The sea is the sea. It'll slurp you out and kill you.

Tourists seems quite shocked that there isn't more that could be done. Everything in a city is very safe, it's pretty hard to accidentally kill yourself. It stands to reason that we should put up some more signs, or have someone stop them from doing something silly.

We had storms last week. A car was found in a car park next to a beach. The guy was working somewhere near the beach. He was never seen again. No one knows what happened. The search and rescue do a days search, but where do you look?

<comment><USER5> Same thing happens here along the Northern California coast. With El Nino this year, the waves are bigger and more powerful than a typical winter and catch people unaware. There are occasional "sneaker" waves that break on the beach and knock people down.

Recently: [http://www.mercurynews.com/central-coast/ci_29405514/san- jos...](http://www.mercurynews.com/central-coast/ci_29405514/san-jose-pair- missing-after-being-swept-into)

[http://abc7news.com/news/pacifica-man-drowns-trying-to- save-...](http://abc7news.com/news/pacifica-man-drowns-trying-to-save-wife- swept-out-by-big-waves/1193987/)

<comment><USER6> There was a story from last week, in France. The guy filming is apparently handicapped, but there was a fifth person who entered the scene afterwards and saved all of them. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSgSMZsMh4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSgSMZsMh4A)

Or this one from 2013, in Lisbon (college hazing gone wrong) [http://news.sky.com/story/1183112/portugal-five-students- mis...](http://news.sky.com/story/1183112/portugal-five-students-missing-in- sea)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another case of a rambling article burying the lede.

I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just _put the important information up front_ , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

<comment><USER8> In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary.

<comment><USER9> That's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where- why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.

<comment><USER10> It's the business model. The longer you are on a web page the more ad cycles you see. I agree with you, its' not good writing, but I think that is where it comes from.

<comment><USER11> But the more you annoy the reader that's just looking for the reason the search is going to fail in 30 days. And the more you do that as a business, the more a bunch of readers (those who prefer that you not waste their time) get inoculated to you, and quit clicking on links to you. That's bad business.

<comment><USER12> That's bad _long-term_ , but profitable _short-term_. It's rare a business that cares about the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The company already offers a similar service for ships and boats, which use Inmarsat's network free of charge for distress signalling."

Interestingly, back when I was an intern, BT used to charge an exorbitant rate for those distress calls. I once wrote-up the whole internship thing [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an- ei...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-eight-in-a- million-chance)

"I was pretty uncomfortable when I found that mayday calls were being charged at the highest rate - £8 per minute if I recall correctly - even though Inmarsat itself explicitly carried those calls for free. I remember the manager I asked about that, when I found those calls in real logs, not meeting my eyes as he talked distantly about why that was."

<comment><USER14> Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what?

Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute?

(Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

<comment><USER15> It's complicated. One of the complications is requiring anything. Most trade agreements now in place defer major standards compliance in aviation to ICAO, and ICAO ends up being lowest common denominator when it comes to rules. Simply, less rich countries don't want to pay for every possible feature.

Another complication is there's almost no such thing as a "backport" in aviation. The equipment a particular plane model is certified for is the equipment it has for life, save for some software updates. And this isn't in the category of a software update, it's new physical equipment. The easiest part is a new weight and balance for every airplane getting the new equipment. Harder is wiring the thing in, and getting it space in the cockpit - that's often quite difficult. If it requires integration of any sort, very difficult. There's extremely low willingness to substantially alter certified aircraft. There are individual systems that make up a whole, change any one part, you change the whole. The liability is too high for the return, these kinds of lost plane events are rare.

<comment><USER16> Actually, your mistaken. Cockpit avionics upgrades are relatively common, even in small aircraft like Cessna 172s. Considering a new Cessna 172 is around $250k, and a refurbished aircraft, with new glass cockpit is around $50k (and sometimes significantly less).

Aircraft have whats known as a Supplementary Type Certificate, which permits changes to a certified aircraft. Even a major upgrade from radial engine to turboprop has been authorized for some aircraft, including DC-3 transports made in the 1940s.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. The 737-300 series jets have glass cockpit upgrades for a common configuration between a 737-300 (Classic) and a newer 737-700 (NG).

If the ICAO mandates upgrades, it will happen. It might not be cheap, but its quite doable.

<comment><USER17> The above comment is very cavalier with the facts on pricing and availability of airplane upgrades.

<comment><USER16> Missing the key point. Aircraft are updated with newer avionics after leaving the factory quite routinely.

Considering Southwest currently has 122 737-300s in service, they wouldn't upgrade them if it wasn't available at a reasonable cost:

[http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/Southwest%20Airlines.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/flottecie/Southwest%20Airlines.htm)

Cockpit upgrades for 737s:

[http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product- Focus-...](http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product-Focus- Cockpit-Displays_77438.html)

Cockpit upgrades for C172 type aircraft:

[https://flyhpa.com/2012/08/the- garmin-g500-g600/](https://flyhpa.com/2012/08/the-garmin-g500-g600/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are:

\- Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure.

\- Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result.

Given the _very slim_ chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out of it… I don't see how the search justifies a 9-figure price tag. (I don't mean to be insensitive)

<comment><USER19> > Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to > plane safety as a result.

Well Wikipedia says a Boeing 777-200ER costs $261.5 million[1]. That's about double the cost for the search. If it's possible to prevent even one future mishap as a result of learning anything the cost is justified.

Besides closure is important for the families and friends of the passengers. Especially with crazy articles saying the plane could have landed in Kazakhstan[2]. Imagine the suffering people must be going through thinking their loved ones are 95% dead but 5% possibly maybe caught up in a crazy conspiracy. Even if it's 1% or 0.001% likely it could be enough to keep one awake at night.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777) [2] [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise- mh370...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise- mh370-theory.html)

<comment><USER20> When you add the lost money from lawsuits, lost value, etc... I'm sure it's much, MUCH more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free, the $250 million jet vanished."

It sounds like Inmarsat is now making basic ping location available for free:

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now- givin...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182223-inmarsat-now-giving-away- free-satellite-tracking-for-airplanes-but-mh370-is-still-nowhere-to-be-found)

<comment><USER22> That quote is disingenuous in the extreme. You absolutely _can not_ track a $100 smartphone in the middle of the Indian ocean, for any price.

<comment><USER21> That's Bloomberg's comment not mine. Not sure where the sudden need to downvote is coming from. My point is that it's now a free service to track planes. It was possible to track MH370, for example, but it required a fee.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I know what quotation marks mean... My point is that the quote makes it seem much easier to track an airplane than it actually is. It's great that Inmarsat is providing the service for free now, but the quote makes it seem like the service is trivial to provide when it really isn't.

<comment><USER23> Your comment would be better if you weren't so aggressive.

<comment><USER24> Curious, what language did the poster uses that implies aggression? I see none.

<comment><USER25> > Curious, what language did the poster uses that implies aggression? I see > none.

This: "Yeah, I know what quotation marks mean..." It comes off as snappy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _"There's always this question: Have we missed something?"_

The question persists simply because its answer continues to be "yes". The plane is _somewhere_ , and you didn't look there.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Forever" is a long time.

It could be found in a few years or in a few decades. Although reading the flight recorders by then could be problematic.

It's not the first time anyway, a British plane disappeared on the Andes in 1947 (after sending a cryptic Morse message BTW) and was found 50 years later, so I wouldn't despair.

<comment><USER28> Andes are dry and cold and will preserve things. People hike the Andes. People can see things from above in the Andes.

The ocean is deep. Sediment drifting down from above layers the debris. Ocean currents disperse the light aluminum fragments that remain from the ocean impact.

An undersea landslide covers the fuselage or it slides down into an underwater canyon, separating and breaking apart.

I vote "forever".

<comment><USER29> On the other hand, this search itself has found I believe two previously- unknown shipwrecks from the 19th century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "forever". What hyperbolic drivel. Ultimately we will find the plane, be it by deliberate searching action, or accidental discovery as we further map the oceans or whatever else draws us below the waves.

</comment><comment><USER31> Rest assured that this mystery will be solved. Petabytes of data? Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps. The fact that we can't successfully crowd-source this search is indicative of our having very incomplete maps of the ocean floor.

Eventually (could be a hundred years but I expect less) there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans. They will find all kinds of interesting things - including MH370.

<comment><USER22> >Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps.

What do you think "add[ing] it to Google Maps" would accomplish? What makes you think the data analysis is easily crowd-sourced? I.e, what makes you think that analyzing the data requires no special experience or expertise?

>there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans

Why? What would be the economic case for doing this? Building machines that work at the extreme depths of the sea floor is incredibly hard. The search for a single lost airplane (and it really is just the one, not a single other commercial airliner is unaccounted for) certainly isn't going to fund this pipe dream.

<comment><USER32> >Why?

Gold lost on sunken ships!

<comment><USER31> yes, that would be incentive enough

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Last year I sailed my 30' boat from Oakland to Hawaii. I went three weeks with no sign of life aside from Albatross and flying fish. None. I couldn't even get my sat phone to work 90% of the time. I covered, roughly, the distance from Oakland to about Massachusetts. My boat was much smaller, and had very little as far as safety equipment on a passenger jet. While both might be exceptionally hard to spot -- even a 1000' vehicle with 1000' span would be hard to find on solid ground somewhere between CA and MA, add deep water, and that piece of wing was not attached to the plane when it hit the water. I know this as it still was shaped like a wing. I'm also a pilot and can only guess as well as other pilots, but when you over-stress the airframe from a loss of control, you can fold a wing. No life jackets floating as they're still in the plane which likely hit well before that chunk of wing fluttered down into the water. I doubt we'll ever really know. Seems unlikely to have been a bomb, as shit would be washing up.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but Malaysia's politics are quite a spectacular bowl of spaghetti. You have Saudi "donations" of billions, a Prime Minister who stands accused of using the country's Speciall Forces team for blowing up a Mongolian woman involved with a billion dollar French defense company purchase of Scorpene submarines. The accused murderer now resides in Australia. You literally have the financier of the Wolf of Wall Street movie, parties with Paris Hilton, squandering of billions of Malaysia's taxpayer funds. You have bankers being murdered in broad daylight. You have attorney generals being fired and prosecutors being found dead inside barrels of cement. You have Deputy Prime Ministers being kicked out. You have ex-Prime Ministers raising a 5 alarm fire demanding that the Prime Minister be arrested. You have apartheid policies being increased in the country. You have sudden import of millions of foreign workers, who have been accused of being used as false vote banks. So.... when they write "keeping secrets forever", that almost seems like what was intended for this flight.

[1] [http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens- agains...](http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens-against- najib-in-france-how-come-not-in-malaysia/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altantuyaa)

[3] [http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias- na...](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias-najib-razak- sacks-attorney-general.html)

[4] [http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up- th...](http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up-the-charge- sheet-against-najib-and-then-sent-it-to-sarawak-report-says-brother/)

[5] [http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin- mo...](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin-morais- murdered-military-doctor-among-7-arrested-say-cops)

[6] [http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true- stories/mala...](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true- stories/malaysias-most-explosive-murder-mystery-is-blowing-up-in- australia/news-story/d8e92bbd5172292a63664f90e2598767)

[7] [http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-...](http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia- moving-towards-apartheid-tendencies-nus-academic-warns)

[8] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27/the- mystery-behind-a-700-million-donation-from-the-saudi-royal-family-to-the- malaysian-pm/)

[9] [http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder- connectio...](http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder-connection- malaysia-1mdb/)

[10] [http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid- de...](http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid-defends-move- to-bring-in-1.5-bangladeshi-workers)

[11] [http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris- Hilton-a...](http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris-Hilton- and-1MDB-what-a-threesome)

[12] [http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf- of...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf-of-wall- street-ties-to-malaysian-fund/)

<comment><USER35> The evidence that the pilots were deliberately masking their flight path shortly before the flight's disappearance, was pretty compelling. I've always felt that the plane was intentionally maneuvered somewhere, but clearly the destination was not dry land.

So we assume for a moment that some organized group deliberately did something to this aircraft. Who has the motivation to execute such a scheme?

Government agencies I rule out - because of lack of a cover story. It does a government no good to leave a massive mystery open to the court of press speculation, especially for so long. It grows distrust in the populace and gives the perception of incompetence, which undermines power. Plus the political risks of being uncovered are too great. There needs to be a cover.

I'd rule out corporations or business moguls for the same reason - <USER2> mysterious loose ends is not in their best interest. Too much risk to reputation.

Terrorists I rule out as well - they are motivated by public gestures that further the cause. They'd have claimed it immediately and even if the plot was steal the plane and use it later, they'd have done it already.

So what nefarious organization is left? What group would be OK with leaving a mysterious unsolved disappearance out in the open? Criminal syndicates.

Professional criminals are _in the business_ of doing bad things and getting away with it without a trace. To a career criminal, an unsolved mystery is a point of pride.

If there was someone or something of extremely high value aboard the plane, perhaps being smuggled, organized criminals would have the motivation to extract it, far away from law enforcement or even satellites, and bury the evidence without a trace.

But they would have a difficult time landing an aircraft of that size anywhere on land without detection. Eventually it would turn up.

So how about on water? Ditch the plane gently on the ocean, Captain Sully style, extract whatever is in the cabin and then let it sink slowly. Disappears without a trace. Do it far enough away from civilization and nobody will find it.

Pretty elaborate heist, and absurdly risky. But criminals aren't known for being overly risk averse. And even if they botched the job, we'd never know about it.

So that's my theory over who would be responsible. Definitely backed up by what you're saying about the level of organized crime in the Malaysian political world.

That plane was carrying some person or thing that a highly corrupt, well financed individual or group wanted very badly - either to take for themselves or destroy. And so far, they've gotten away with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What do you think it means if the pilot of the plane reappears?

[http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/taiwan-mh370-pilot- mysteriou...](http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/taiwan-mh370-pilot-mysteriously- resurfaces-almost-2-years-after-his-flight-vanished-over-china-sea/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm live in Malaysia . There's a lot of weird information in few years. Some even not logical.The airline strike hard twice in a year and now changing hand to new company. Anybody here can downvote me here but we need agent Mulder And Scully to solve this issue. Eistien and new agent can help also :)

</comment><comment><USER38> Did they ever look into that crazy conspiracy theory where it went north instead of South and landed in Russia?

<comment><USER39> [http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia- air...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines- plane-recap-3251098)

They looked into the North Corridor to see if the plane flew there. I don't think they found anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How will Bloomberg manage the content of these animation/graphic heavy articles?

Talking say 10 years from now.

These articles go way beyond standard text/image content.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is it possible to track passengers' smartphone data to get a better grip on where the plane would have entered the ocean?

<comment><USER42> There's nothing there for any phones to connect to...

</comment></comment><comment> rm-rfU It will be found eventually, perhaps by a film crew in 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER43> Later generations will discover our airplanes, lost at sea.

</comment><comment><USER44> hard to believe they have all this satellite pointing back at us and they can track anyone anywhere seemingly but they can't find a giant several hundred ton airplane? Either that or we underestimate just how large the body of oceans are.

And likely more scary is the fact that once a nuclear submarine submerges, nobody knows where it is. We can't even find this plane. A moving submarine beneath the vast body of ocean even more so.

I wonder if it's possible to develop xray vision that sees through the earth's ocean.

</comment><comment><USER45> weeks away from forever?

</comment><comment><USER46> That H3 font style looks soo bad. Just horrible, horrible topolsky

<comment><USER47> Topolsky hasn't been with Bloomberg for nearly a year.

<comment><USER46> it was his baby

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The simple answer to the "mystery" is a scenario about a "lone wolf" with the determination and the capability to direct the plane to the middle of the ocean and die with the plane.

We saw a confirmed example of such a guy almost exactly one year later (8 March 2014, 24 March 2015):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525)

The rest are just the details.</comment>


Show HN: Drag/Drop Email Template Creator for Transactional Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.klaviyo.com/email-templates

<comment><USER2> I'm happy any time I see web design/development moving into the web browser and out of text files. It feels like the natural progression of things.

Some comments:

\- The example email (Weekly Summary) made me think "SPAM!" as soon as I saw it, because it looks like the kind of email that Twitter sends me and goes straight to my trash bin. On the other hand, I imagine there are a lot of use cases where summary emails are welcomed.

\- Other than that, the image does a good job communicating the features you provide. I'm left wondering where the data comes from though. Do I upload a file? Integrate with my back-end?

\- I was confused when the iPhone image showed template tags instead of a rendered result. Are you trying to imply that I will be editing templates using my mobile? That seems weird. If you're trying to show that your design templates are responsive, maybe just show the _rendered_ version of the previous Weekly Summary template on an iPhone.

\- Site looks slick -- I like it!

\- Seeing this make me think that it would be cool for some If This Then This- style framework / API that hooks into your back-end and generates mails automatically. That would enable people to send me the emails that I enjoy reading, like "SoAndSo just cheered you on FitBit".

<comment><USER3> > I'm happy any time I see web design/development moving into the web browser > and out of text files. It feels like the natural progression of things.

I'm often not. I'm not talking about this tool specifically (it looks very nice, and I havn't tried it), but when tools move away from text files, we tend to lose important facilities like "replace image A in all our email templates with image B".

<comment><USER2> This is very true.

But if you buy into the "browser will become the runtime for most things" argument, you'll be able to do this within your browser-based HTML editor, too, one day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an excellent concept that targets a real pain-point I faced many times, which is: How to properly lay-out or template emails without the pain of actually sending transactional emails through SMTP and looking at them in the client (Gmail, mobile, etc...). This also prevents designers and programmers to collaborate, so your concept would allow designers and marketeers to design and change email layouts independently from the programmer, which is another pain-point for non-developers.

Having said that, it seems that you expect the app to use your SMTP, and IMHO that's a deal-breaker. Once an app or company is already using a SMTP provider, changing to an unknown one (which could impact deliverability and so on) is a deal-breaker. However, if you provide a tool that somehow the marketing dept can change templates which then the developers can somehow fetch into the source codebase, now that would be (I think) a good value.

I am a software developer (not a designer nor marketeer) so I may not be the target user for this tool, but I think it would be valuable for developers too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I think there's some confusion (you're not the first person). This tool is just to create the HTML. Our subscription email service allows you to send email, but the email creator is just for creating templates. Basically we took a feature and made it public and free -- our way of trying to make email a little better for everyone.

Create your template, save it, copy the HTML, and do with it what you want.

We're also talking with some email as a service companies about how we can integrate this with their service/app.

<comment><USER4> That's excellent! I got confused because as I was looking at your web site I saw the "Pricing" link at the bottom and assumed that was the price of the tool. Maybe you could create a separate web site to help clarify this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> We probably should. You'll notice there's no pricing link in the header. That was our quick hack for this launch. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <https://github.com/niftylettuce/node-email-templates>

<https://github.com/mailchimp/Email-Blueprints>

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the copywriting above the fold. It is very personable, communicates a need to me that I didn't know I had, and tells me it can solve that need (all in a quick read).

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be really nice if I could start using the tool before giving you my email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on it. We wanted to allow for saving, so that's why we ask for an email.

<comment><USER7> Totally makes sense, but if you can hold off on bugging them until they actually need to save (or maybe until 10 minutes have passed, whichever comes first) I think you'll be better off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the drag and drop HTML development idea. I'm curious whether there's any open source libraries out there or open sourced projects that can help me develop something similar. Any suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER9> I really like the look of your site. Did you make it yourself from Bootstrap, or is it a template?

</comment><comment><USER10> Just disabled. Too much HN love? :)

</comment><comment><USER11> love the ease by which I can set a template. nice</comment>


Internet centralization is not a conspiracy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zerotier.com/post/58157836374/op-ed-internet-centralization-is-not-a-conspiracy

<comment><USER2> A quote: "The centralization of the Internet is not a conspiracy."

No, but it's also not required, and a decentralized Internet has some properties that deserve to be explored. A number of peer-to-peer experiments being conducted rely on the Internet's infrastructure but not its centralization paradigm.</comment>


Apple v. Samsung: Surprises in Latest Court Documents - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/apple-reveals-for-monday-trial/ <comment><USER2> The five 'reveals':

1\. Apple's early vision for the iPad [...] were extraordinarily chunky and included a kick-stand

2\. Google told Samsung that its devices looked "too similar" to Apple's iPad. Google demanded "distinguishable design vis-à-vis the iPad for the P3."

3\. Apple made 23 to 32 percent on gross margins for iPads sold between April 2010 and March 2012.

4\. The iPhone design was inspired by a Sony designer talking about "portable electronic devices that lacked buttons and other 'excessive ornamentation,' fit in the hand, were 'square with a screen' and had 'corners [which] have been rounded out"

5\. Apple researches consumer sentiment on existing products in order to optimize future designs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wired's article certainly presents Apple's side of the story. Although, the Samsung take is pretty interesting: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120726121512518>

Apparently, Apple argues that FRAND patents should be effectively free, estimating that Samsung's standards patents are worth less than 1¢ per device. Whereas, Apple thinks its design patents are worth $24 per device, and their utility patents are another $3 on top of that. Were that to hold, it would eliminate Samsung's profit margin. So, it's hard not to read this as Apple trying to cage viable competitors entirely out of the market through legal maneuvering.

<comment><USER4> FRAND patents of the like Samsung are complaining about are usually patents on the individual component chip. Manufacturer of said chipset license the patent when they make the chipset then sell the chipset to downstream integrators like Apple. Given the cost of the chipset is far cheaper than the overall cost of the device 1c per chip is reasonable, especially when said chipset may require the licensing of hundreds of other patents as well and devices requiring several chipsets. If Samsung wins here they will effectively kill FRAND licensing and costs will increase significantly as everybody will now want $25 per device for their patents.

As part of the standards process Samsung has committed to licensing these patterns under Fair, Reasonably and Non-Discrimartory terms, which means they can't ask Apple for a different rate than they give say Motorola or HTC. Because Apple's Design patents are not FRAND they are under no obligation to give anything to Samsung.

Because Samsung's patents are standards essential you can't build a cellphone without needing them (hence the FRAND licensing), while its certainly possible to build a cellphone that doesn't violate Apple's design patents (RIM, Nokia et al don't seem to be getting sued for example). This doesn't mean that Apple is right for suing companies for violating them, but what Samsung is doing is far far worse.

<comment><USER5> So if Samsung builds ground breaking technology that is so important that it gets included in every smartphone, they can't charge more than 1c per chip. However, if Apple builds trivial "slide to unlock", they can charge $25 per phone and block devices from entering the market? What is the incentive of doing research and developing important wireless technologies if you'll be less rewarded than the company who developed "slide to unlock". Shouldn't important techs get the most rewards? I'm against software patents, but if the law's going to support them at least it should be coherent.

<comment><USER6> If Apple charge $25 for a patent that isn't worth that much then people won't licence it and will find alternatives. If Samsung charges a high rate for one patent (of hundreds) people have to either completely drop the standard or pay.

I don't know if the Samsung patents are groundbreaking or not. It could be that there were other similar options the standards committee could have selected but with Samsung in the room the choice with the Samsung patent was made so all implementers need a license.

Big companies often want to get their technology into the standard as that enables them to get a small per unit license fee across large numbers of devices. I know that was the case when I worked at Sony. If Samsung didn't want to make that patent FRAND they could have made it clear during standardisation and I'm sure it would have been left out. If patents in this area don't get into standards they are effectively worthless.

Remember that the a group of competitors sitting in a room discussing future terms of business is either a standards committee or an illegal cartel. The difference is the rules under which they operate to give others access to the market which include the FRAND commitments.

<comment><USER7> The problem is a patent may be worth so much because it is so trivial that doing anything _else_ is silly.

Apple should never have been granted a patent for slide-to-unlock, that's a trivial consequence of using a touchscreen UI.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure that really is the case. Nokia, Sony Ericcson, Palm and MS had touchscreen handhelds for years before the iPhone. Either that should have generated clear prior art or there are other options that aren't silly. If Apple came up with something new that really makes all the old ways seem silly maybe it really is a valuable technology that they can charge high prices for.

If the Apple patent is shown to be invalid they won't get anything and Samsung won't have to work around it but whatever the situation there is no value in comparing prices between FRAND and non FRAND patents.

I don't recall any of the tech giants including Google and Samsung campaigning to get rid of whole categories of patents of for other major reforms. I would like patent reform but The law as it exists should be enforced.

Edit: Note that in this and my earlier post I am not commenting on the validity of either sides patents or what exactly the damages or license fees for either should be BUT that there is little value making a comparison between FRAND committed prices and those for any non FRAND prices.

<comment><USER7> > Nokia, Sony Ericcson, Palm and MS had touchscreen handhelds for years before > the iPhone

They had enough physical buttons to make button unlock a viable option.

When you have only a touchscreen, the gestures available to you are taps and swipes. Taps easily happen accidentally, so some composition of swipes to unlock is the main obvious remaining option.

<comment><USER6> If that is the case anyone can work around the patent for the cost of a hardware button.

Those saying this is a major critical feature (I'm not)that reduces hardware costs and improves product design are really making the case that it is a good patent, novel and useful.

<comment><USER7> Then what you consider the invention here is really the touch screen and not the unlocking. Adding a physical button just for unlocking is less obvious than just using a gesture already available.

<comment><USER6> A touchscreen is an invention but people managed to use touchscreens without slide to unlock for years. That is a separate and dependent invention.

Either the designers didn't think about this approach or thought it wasn't the best solution. If anyone produced such a solution or documented it the patent should be invalidated for prior art.

My initial reaction to the patent was probably that is a bit trivial but better than many that get granted and that there should be plenty of workarounds. The slide to unlock definitely seems obvious once you have seen it but I'm not sure it is so obvious before you have seen it (it's quite hard to unwind your mind to a state of unknowing). You certainly need to asking the right questions: how can we remove all the buttons, how do you prevent it waking too easily.

There is no need for touchscreen phones to go completely buttonless. That is a design choice not an essential feature to exist in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not good when your own designers are saying "too bad it looks like an iPhone". The Sony concept is interesting; it would be interesting to do a courtroom test (can the lawyers differentiate when the judge holds them up). I don't think it would e a problem with the original iPhone, but the iPhone 4 might be. Of course, Sony never created that product.

<comment><USER9> I also read that Best Buy had people returning the Galaxy Tab because they had originally thought that it was the iPad.

Link: [http://allthingsd.com/20120726/documents-in-apple-v- samsung-...](http://allthingsd.com/20120726/documents-in-apple-v-samsung-give- reporters-plenty-to-chew-on/)

Now, of course one can say that the consumer should have paid more attention to the branding, but I think that's missing the point. It seems that for a few (?) people the Galaxy tab looked similar enough to the iPad to cause confusion and that the big box retailer conveyed the message to Samsung.

<comment><USER10> That data point doesn't mean much. Many people who aren't into tech will just lump a whole category of devices together with the most prominent member of the group. I suspect it's impossible to design a tablet-like device with any commercial potential at all that someone won't confuse for an iPad.

For example, I've had someone call my original Eee Transformer an iPad. And here we're talking of a device that's a different color (brown), different texture (smooth vs. crosshatched), different shape (16:10 vs. 4:3), and much thicker. Oh, and of course attached to a keyboard...

<comment><USER9> If I understand your point correctly, you are referring to the fact that some products by being first-to-market or by popularity start to define a category of products. For example, vacuum cleaners in the UK are mostly called "Hoovers", or say "Coke" represents a cola soft drink etc.

In those cases, people won't buy a product and return it. Although they refer to a vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover", they go in knowing fully well that they are buying a product that does what a "Hoover" does, i.e. pick up dust. Here people didn't go in wanting an iPad-esque product and buying a product in the same category, but rather they mistook it to be _the_ iPad. Pardon me if this seems a little circuitous, having trouble with words today :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Article missed the biggest kicker, which is that the galaxy designs pre-date the iphone:

<http://i.imgur.com/KPGYL.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER12> Is "revelation" really too tough a word for the authors of this article or the readers of Wired?

I really don't appreciate this linguistic trend in the tech community to turn verbs into nouns in a non-standard, _ad hoc_ way when perfectly fine nouns exist. I (unfortunately) hear it with "ask" fairly frequently at work, and it makes me feel like Jules from Pulp Fiction ("Use 'ask' as a noun again, I dare you...")

Can anyone shed some linguistic light on this trend?

<comment><USER13> Pretty sure the "reveal" here is supposed to be this kind: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reveal_(arts_and_showbusiness)>

Which is slightly different from "revelation", though I agree with you that "revelation" is better word in this context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey Falling. You've been hellbanned. Your comments are not appearing to anyone except those who have "turn dead comments on". You may have been hellbanned for daring to defend Apple on HN, who knows since they never say, but they are really active at censoring people for having diverse opinions.

Just thought I'd share this in case you're still reading the thread... I can't even reply to your hellbanned comments alas.

<comment><USER15> Banned for defending apple on hackernews ? Are you actually believing what you say ?

If anything, I would say this place is a little too full of apple fanboys, not the other way around. Get a grip on reality.</comment></comment>


Computability: The Greatest Law of Physics - <AUTHOR> http://researchblogs.cs.bham.ac.uk/thelablunch/2015/11/computability-the-greatest-law-of-physics/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [http://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/0502072](http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0502072)

Also, as a Physicist and Computer Scientist, it explains my uneasiness when existence claims are made regarding infinite objects.

For example, we can _describe_ the trajectory of a particle using Feynman path integrals, which involve infinite sums over all possible paths. That's fine.

Some will then treat this as a _mechanism_ , i.e. claim that the _reason_ particles have the trajectories they do, is because they _literally are_ taking every possible path at once. This kind of reasoning sets my off my CS alarm bells, and articles like this provide justification for that.

To see why this leap of reasoning is flawed, consider the fact that _we_ don't solve integrals by summing up an infinite number of infinitesimal quantities. To say that a human writing out a sequence of symbolic manipulations on a page _literally is_ performing an infinite amount of computation is clearly false.

I think Computer Scientists are much more comfortable than Physicists with considering the role of calculation in a theory; i.e. in Physics, the calculations we perform _about_ a system are utterly distinct from that system: whether those calculations are easy or hard says nothing about what the system is doing (e.g. we can easily calculate path integrals, which particles "solve" using an infinite amount of brute-force); the only physically-relevant details are the values. In CS, we _focus on_ the performance of calculations; we cannot claim that a system behaves over time in some way unless we can show that _calculating_ that behaviour can be done in that time.

<comment><USER3> A classical particle can't literally "take every path at once." But fundamental particles - electronics, photons, etc - are governed by quantum mechanics, in which they really consist of a wave of probability amplitude. These really do "explore all possible paths".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ooooo this topic has been intellectually tingling me for two weeks now - ontologies, knowledge, how we construct the line between abstract (mathematical objects) and reality (all the way down to elementary particles), and at its core the nature of information. If you're further interested in this area, some very interesting lines of inquiry to go down is the the mathematical universe hypothesis [1], bit-string physics [2] (the theory of everything that explains the universe as a binary string), digital physics [3] and of course the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy article on information [4].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis)

[2] [http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/28404/](http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/28404/)

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

[4] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information/)

<comment><USER2> One thing to keep in mind with ideas like the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is their predictive power. Once a "theory of everything" describes what _could have been_ as well as what _is_ , you end up needing _another_ theory to distinguish between the two [1].

For example, Champernowne's constant contains every number in its decimal expansion, and hence contains a complete description of our universe, all of the true laws of Physics and the outcome of every random quantum effect. However, it's not a very satisfactory "theory of everything", since it makes no predictions. (Note that I could have used pi instead, but its not yet known whether pi is a "normal" number [3]). This is the same idea as the Library of Babel [4].

On the other hand, if you start distinguishing between possible worlds in some way, then you can do real science. For example, the Boltzmann Brain idea describes ordered systems (like our Universe) emerging from disordered systems (like clouds of gas) by pure chance [5]. Such a statistical argument is useful, since we can reason about probability distributions over possible Universes. In this case, small pockets of order are vastly more likely to arise spontaneously than large ones (since we can consider a large pocket to be a contiguous collection of smaller pockets), hence we obtain predictions for all kinds of experiments: namely that we'll probably see a cloud of gas, rather than any ordered structure. Since we tend to see ordered structure, we can prove the hypothesis wrong experimentally.

A related idea, which is also relevant for this article, is that the Universe could be generated by a random _computer program_ [7]. If we apply the same reasoning as with Boltzmann Brains, we would expect _short_ programs to be vastly more likely than _long_ programs. Since the length of a program determines how "random" its result is (in the Kolmogorov sense [8]), short programs would produce more ordered structure than long programs, hence this hypothesis make the _opposite_ prediction to the Boltzmann Brain: i.e. that when we observe new places, we will tend to see the same kind of order as we have already observed elsewhere. So far, these predictions seem to hold ;)

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5434](http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5434) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champernowne_constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champernowne_constant) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number) [4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel) [5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain) [6] [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/12/29/richard-...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/12/29/richard- feynman-on-boltzmann-brains/) [7] [http://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/0011122](http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0011122) [8] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect that this is all because the universe is mathematics. It is simply the expression of all possible things.

<comment><USER6> That's always been my view — God created mathematics and the laws of physics just fell out as a byproduct.

<comment><USER7> (Putting to one side your reliance on God)

 _" and the laws of physics just fell out as a byproduct"_

Why? Don't you need a theory for why this is?

<comment><USER6> What I mean is that math seems to constrain our universe, and given enough constraints, the universe might be completely specified. For instance, consider Noether's theorem. The laws of conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum, charge, and particle number all fall out due to continuous symmetries. Mass indexes the irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. Spin is simply the result of SU(2) being the double cover of SO(3). Conservation of probability implies unitary evolution of state vectors. And so on.

My guess is that once you consider _all_ of the symmetries that could exist (and there are many which have not yet been found; supersymmetry has long been posited but remains undiscovered), then our laws of physics are basically the only laws that _can_ exist in a mathematically consistent way. Of course, that's just my hypothesis.

There's also the possibility that our universe is _unnatural_ , which some physicists have recently been considering, but I'm skeptical. ("Unnatural" means that all of the constants in our universe that cannot be calculated from first principles are simply the result of random chance — i.e., only those universes with "finely-tuned" parameters capable of supporting life would have life in it to observe those parameters.)

<comment><USER8> I'm confused by this 'hypothesis'

>My guess is that once you consider all of the symmetries that could exist (and there are many which have not yet been found; supersymmetry has long been posited but remains undiscovered), then our laws of physics are basically the only laws that can exist in a mathematically consistent way.

If physical evolution is unitary, it may be phrased in terms of an S-matrix, and the possible symmetries of the S-matrix are well-known by the Coleman- Mandula theorem[0] and its supersymmetric generalization[1]. So, supersymmetry is possible, but, as you rightly point out, may or may not exist in the world. So mathematical consistency (unless what you mean is that quantum gravity might violate one of the assumptions of those theorems) is a lot less powerful than you guess.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman%E2%80%93Mandula_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman%E2%80%93Mandula_theorem)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haag%E2%80%93Lopuszanski%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haag%E2%80%93Lopuszanski%E2%80%93Sohnius_theorem)

<comment><USER6> Huh, interesting. I was not aware of this. Thanks for the link!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Uber Treats Its Drivers in Its Fastest Growing Market (India) - <AUTHOR> http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/uber-ola-drivers-india-salary-drop-protest-strike-1727132 <comment><USER2> It's sad that Ola, the big competitor in India, is also cutting drivers wages according to this article. It reminds me of how I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart back around 2009, even realizing at the time that Target, Kroger and other stores have often incorporated the same tactics that Wal-Mart has with their supply chains just to stay competitive.

I still try to use Lyft when I can/have to, but I realize they're wages can't be that much different to compete in this new market.

I'd like to see comparisons, not between Uber/Lyft/Ola, but instead between these services and normal taxi drivers (preferably before Uber came onto the scene, both original and inflation adjusted numbers). I knew Uber drivers back in 2013 who use to be cab drivers and said they made significantly more with Uber. Today there are few ride share drivers that started off in Taxis, and I wonder if those former Taxi/now Uber drivers are still being paid above their old Taxi wages.

Say what you want about the corrupt taxi systems in many cities with their medallion programs, made up scarcity and regulations that benefit monopolies, at least there was some attempt to give those drivers a living wage.</comment>


Why is printf better than echo? - iso8859-1 http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/65803/14305 <comment><AUTHOR> God, I hate posix. The UNIX Haters were right about a lot of things, but none more so than the utter brain-damage of the shell's argument parsing unfeature.

<comment><USER2> Your angst is misdirected, unless you can specifically illustrate how the current implementations of _echo_ are POSIX compliant.

The _printf_ command means "print, formatted," where "format" refers to "positional parameters," and this functionality is not present in _echo_.

Signed, a Unix aficionado.

<comment><USER3> they person asking this question must not know why (format ) is greater than printf.

<http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > On those echo that support options, there's generally no support of a -- to > mark the end of options (zsh and possibly others support - for that though), > so for instance, it's difficult to output "-n" in many shells.

It's good to know (while the key takeaway lesson is "use printf"):

        # bash
        $ echo -n
        $ echo -- -n
        -- -n
        $ echo - -n
        - -n

        # zsh
        $ echo -n
        $ echo -- -n
        -- -n
        $ echo - -n
        -n

<comment><USER5> Two nasty hacks:

      echo -e '\x2d\x6e'
      echo '' -n

<comment><USER6> Note that the second one outputs " -n", which is probably not what you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen really old scripts that use awk oneliners doing a printf (like echo | awk '{ printf ...) cause (and I have to guess here) it was not built in to /bin/sh and there was no /usr/bin/printf command either!

</comment><comment><USER8> aside: for ~10 years (1995-2005) there wasn't a printf in java! There were numerous printf libraries for sale( the most popular one was <http://sharkysoft.com/software/java/lava3/printf/>), but jdk itself didn't have a built-in printf until JDK 1.5, when it was introduced via java.util.Formatter ( <http://www.docjar.com/html/api/java/io/PrintStream.java.html>)

As a former Sun consultant, the most common question I had to fend from customers during those 10 years was the lack of a printf. Fortunately, Odersky has much better taste & Scala shipped with a printf on day 1 in Predef.scala, via Console([https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/v2.10.1/src/library/scal...](https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/v2.10.1/src/library/scala/Console.scala) )</comment>


Show HN: Discover RubyGems usage for a GitHub user or org - <AUTHOR> http://gigest.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> This is really awesome, and you made some especially good choices with GitHub and Thoughtbot. I wish you could analyze private repos, because that would be even more telling than the OSS stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's part of the plan further down the road.

But decided to push something out to the wild first and gather some feedback. Glad you like it. :) Thanks!</comment></comment>


What is the best way to send and receive transactional email? - <AUTHOR>

I run a web-app where I would like receive facebook style transactional emails. For example, send an outgoing mail  with a dynamic reply-to address of the form email@example.com (2a3b4b2a34 is dynamically generated hash)
This is in order that people can respond to notifications by replying to notifying email itself (rather than coming to the app). Now this poses multiple potential problems
1) Currently, I collect all incoming email to email@example.com using google-apps. I then pull it to my server using IMAP, and then parse the response. I am a little uncomfortable doing this because I wonder if google really wants to use its email service in this manner. Or if they might have an issue with me receiving thousands of emails on this address.
2) What is a good way to remove quoted text in the incoming email  (so that I can only use the actually reply)
Ideally, I would like to use an external service that takes care of such transactional emails, and use my server only for things that directly pertain to my app. <comment><USER2> Are you looking for something like what Tender App (<http://www.tenderapp.com>) has, where every time someone creates a ticket or responds to your response, they send you an email with the content of the ticket, and you can respond directly to the email to post a response?

For outbound transactional mail, you should consider PostageApp (<http://www.postageapp.com>) to help design, send, and manage the reporting for your emails. I'm the Product Manager there, so I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

As for the receiving and parsing of the emails, that's something a little outside of my expertise. However, if you do find an answer, I'd love to hear it!

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but I already use another service to handle sending transactional email. The ability to receive emails is what I'm looking for. I think sendgrid does it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Just found this ... [http://blog.sendgrid.com/why-you-should-not-use- noreplydomai...](http://blog.sendgrid.com/why-you-should-not-use- noreplydomain-com-in-your-emails/)</comment>


What IT Is - <AUTHOR> https://xn--mp8hai.fm/statement <comment><USER2> > Most importantly, we raised over $60,000 in donations from people who hoped > to get special treatment within our fabled waitlist.

That sounds like fraud. They're giving the money to charity, but they lied about having a product and people paid for it.</comment>


Game tree search on parallel systems (1993) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrr.in.tum.de/~gerndt/home/Teaching/EfficientHPCProgramming/gametreeparallel.pdf

<comment><USER2> Not considered here: parallel Monte Carlo methods. Monte Carlo methods tend to play Game of the Amazons well, and I think they lend themselves better to parallel search than methods such as Alpha-Beta and related/improved algorithms like NegaScout.</comment>


Ask HN: Can tech B corps offer a viable alternative to VC funding? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> No.

B Corp is a governance model, not a funding model. It doesn't explain how the company will find funding. And B Corps can be venture funded.</comment>


ShowHN: Javascript Inpage SEO Checker - <AUTHOR> http://inpage-seo-checker.eventsofa.de/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, the author here. I've been doing some landing pages with SEO checking in my spare time. I often forgot to check SEO in the end, did SEO unfriendly changes and was not aware of them for some time.

Being a programmer I thought immediate (red) feedback like in acceptance/unit tests would be great for SEO. So I wrote a very basic small Javascript library for me which you can include in your pages. The library, if included, does continuously (on page load) check onpage SEO like image tags, H1, META descriptions etc.

It helped me to not forget SEO, and I've learned a little bit. I hope it helps you with your landing pages. If you want more checks included, you know how Github works :-)</comment>