Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping? - le-mark Confession time, has anyone ever done this? Given the number of bored developers in this thread[1], it seems like a given that this happens. Have any of you maintained more than one remote job at at time? If so what obstacles did you encounter? Would you do it again? Any tips or techniques to go unnoticed?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14290518 <comment><AUTHOR> I had a DBA, very senior, who was working for me on contract while maintaining a full time job at another Silicon Valley company. I was paying him $50K/Year to ensure that none of our Oracle Systems ever had an issue, and in the event of a problem, he would fix it.

What I liked about this arrangement is that he was highly incentivized to ensure that he would have to do the least amount of work, so his deployments were highly automated (including the back end monitoring), and pristine, by the book. I'm pretty sure his other manager knew that he was working two jobs, but because his work here didn't interfere with his job there, everything was kosher.

<comment><USER2> What happened if you did have an issue? Did you mandate service credits into the contract?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the 2 1/2 years he worked for us, we had a total of two issues. First time it was a storage array went down, and our regular DBAs were having difficulty bringing the dataguard replica back online - Our Senior DBA resolved it within 5 minutes. Second issue was an application corruption that we got stuck into the weeds with until, once again, Our Senior DBA just stepped in, restored a backup and then rolled us forward just before corruption occurred.

And no service credits, he was just an extraordinarily talented DBA - we were happy to have him set our architecture/monitoring/database deployment mechanisms. I'm guessing he worked around 100 hours for that 50K over a year, or about $500/hour, which, if you think about it, for someone at the very, very top of their Oracle (or Cisco, or Java, or Hadoop, etc..) technical game is really quite reasonable - particularly when you are only paying them when they are absolutely needed, and the rest of the time your staff DBAs can handle the day-to-day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen it done onsite.

There was a guy who worked an 8-5 job in my building and the building next door simultaneously. He would show up, look busy, then run next door and do the same thing. He did this for about 8 months before one of his managers caught on and told his other manager. He ended up losing both jobs at the same time.

<comment><USER4> There was an engineering director at one of my previous workplaces that was a little hard to reach. People though he was attending high level meetings including his reports. One of them called him once during work and he answered by the name of another company unintentionally. They spoke with HR and through some investigations found out the guy was coming to work and during the middle of the day going to his other job at a startup where he was the CTO. They fired him of course.

<comment><USER5> How did he answer the phone? Something like: "This is Mike Smith with Widgets Corporation"

My greeting is usually short: "Hi, this is Mike."

<comment><USER4> I would guess the former since he got caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This actually happens all the time. We've had a couple of remote employees I'm aware of who did this.

As a company we don't care. As long as they are getting all of our work done in a timely and effective manner what they fill their time gaps with is not our concern.

Note that our remote workers are not hourly workers. If they were, then we'd take a much different approach to time management and dedicated focus.

</comment><comment><USER7> Since when is working two jobs a bad thing? Plenty of people work two or three jobs to make ends meet. If you can make both work, and you aren't violating any contracts or NDAs, I don't see why you should feel bad about that.

<comment><USER8> It is ok when you don't lie in the process. It is not ok when you pretend to work full time while actually working only equivalent of part time in each workplace (does not matter all that much whether drop in productivity is due to burnout or cheating on time spent by working). The productivity of programmers is often hard to measure, if you don't take advantage of it then it is fine. There are jobs that dont require full time, it is cool to combine them.

Workaday without overtime (and working that much is too little I was told by people here) is 8 hours. Assuming you work it twice plus take 2 hours a day for shopping, food and shower, you have only 6 hours sleep remaining. With such persistent sleep deprivation, you wont be able to produce all that much for each employer - your productivity will go down. Then it is just a question of whether either management finds out.

<comment><USER9> Isn't it wrong for a company to lie about things like remuneration and money too ? Is it okay for companies to pay people they claim internally have the same pay (for the same work), but pay them differently based on things like location ?

<comment><USER10> That's actually a really interesting parallel to draw. I have certainly seen a non-negligible amount of dishonest management ("Sure we'll promote you, we just need a few more cycles" to a friend who was about to be fired). From a legal perspective I'm sure what's signed in writing makes the difference.

But we're not really talking legal here, we're talking ethical. And ethically, I'm not sure why dishonesty on paper is worse than dishonesty in a 1-on-1.

You'll find all kinds of notions/norms in our culture that are inconsistent with each other. Usually it takes a standup comedian to point out our own hypocrisy.

<comment><USER9> Given that I keep reading things like that some 90%+ of employees across a wide range of companies would deny their employer a $1 million contract if it got them, personally, $500 ...

Given those I think the norms in our society are very much consistent. It's just that we assume we're all employees here, and therefore there is no need to lie to each other.

But we'll lie to our employer, or at least leave stuff out. And our employer will lie to us, and leave boatloads of stuff out.

This is the norm. It is also the norm to lie about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Long time ago, in a dot.com startup epoch long ago:

Our Seattle/Bellevue based startup hired VP & Dir of outside sales in Silicon Valley. Expensive hires, big payout to recruiting firm, then these two proved extremely difficult to get on the phone, schedule meetings with, et al.

SVP Sales flew in unexpectedly, called & had them pick him up at San Jose Airport. When he threw his bag into the trunk he noticed they had not only our sales & mktg materials, but __SEVEN __other companies ' materials as well. He grilled them on what work they'd accomplished, clients called / met, et al, then ended up firing them before he flew home.

We passed along info to authorities, who later shared the recruiting firm had been in on it, and they were trying to collect evidence to persecute. Sounded like they were collecting recruiting fees & salaries, then sharing among all 'co-conspirators.' FBI was pulled into it, so I assume it involved fairly substantial cash.

<comment><USER12> Crazy story! Just fyi, "et al." is usually used to mean "and other people," and "etc." is usually used to mean "and other such stuff."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to have just one full-time remote job. Anyone managing to do two at once more than makes up for any points lost on ethical grounds with the bonus points for technical chops and sheer moxie.

If ever were in such an enviable position, these are the potential pitfalls I might see.

      - The companies schedule mandatory meetings at the same time.
      - The companies schedule on-site days that make travel arrangements impossible.
      - Conflict of interest between companies.
      - The companies don't actually care, but you hide it anyway, and they care about that.
      - The companies do care, but you tell them, and they retaliate for the embarrassment.
      - Tax withholding comes out wrong, and you are fined for it.
      - Someone you met through both companies outs you.
      - One of your companies is acquired by or merged into the other.
      - Your life is converted to an 80s-style sitcom script, and you aren't even credited.

<comment><USER14> Have you applied to lots of remote jobs? What's been the biggest hurdle for you in getting one?

<comment><USER13> A big hurdle has been the part where jobs advertised as remote turn out to be not _really_ remote in the initial phone interview. Having to be on-site for M days per week or N weeks per quarter, or even requiring an initial on-site training period of L weeks, still puts a geographic limit on what I can actually accept. Either a lot of people are lying about remote work, or the companies that are truly remote don't want to interview me--possibly both.

I haven't stopped applying, but my expectations have fallen pretty far since the first one I tried in 2008. That was Universal Mind, and they told me I didn't have enough experience in Adobe Flex to interview with them. I had worked with it for about 8 months at that point, which isn't bad for something released in 2004. So from my perspective, a lot of those companies seem to think that since they can hire from anywhere, they should only hire the top quintile of everyone, and my resume definitely doesn't radiate that rockstar aura.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did a short term contract once at the same time as my main remote job. I never lied about my hours or got overpaid though. I won't ever do it again as it was a hellish amount of work for a few months. For me the cost of context switching on my productivity was higher than I anticipated.

Of course you could probably get away with having two remote jobs at once.... for a while. Unless you're monstrously productive, it seems like either it would get noticed eventually or you would get burned out. But everyone is different I guess. I'd rather have a life that isn't so stressful and complicated.

<comment><USER16> I was thinking, upon reading the question that it might be possible to do two mid-level jobs at the same time, making more than a single senior level job. It isn't about being at your max level in both jobs... so long as you can match peers for that job/level, and get work done in a timely manner, shouldn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've done plenty of volunteer work while working a salaried position over the last couple decades. My day job has nothing to do with swinging a hammer, being a youth group treasurer, serving on a youth group advisory board, grunt work at the food pantry, grunt work on hiking trails, being a member of the Army Reserve (although scheduling was an unholy PITA for that and the pay rounded down to nothing once I got a real job). All of those volunteer jobs are paid by someone, I just wasn't charging. Technically my salaried day job owned all that I produced like a slave (which I was), so I was stealing from the company when I cleared hiking trails with the club on a Saturday afternoon, no different than if I broke into the cash box and helped myself.

<comment><USER18> The fault here lies in their policies, not your actions. You are in fact entitled to a personal life regardless of what they coerce you to sign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've done it for exactly two months, I am a remote contractor and had started a new contract when I already had one running, did not think it was something I could've kept doing for long but I'm happy I tried it.

I was working two full time jobs in two different startups. Scheduling meetings between different parties was not an issue at all, I did scrum meetings in the morning in the first contract which happened every other day on the same hour, and I would make sure to schedule the other meetings in the other contract towards the end of the day. What I did notice is that, although I could pull it off if I really wanted to and needed both jobs, and although I love working, I had to trade off creativity in my work, as in I couldn't pull an all-nighter working on new idea for an aggregation framework or try to get ahead and impress anymore, and only felt like working to get the work done and get through the day. I believe that the quality of my work remained the same, but I lost all the fun in it, and strongly felt that my time wasn't my own anymore. Needless to say, it kills all your time and [depending on the nature of your job] you gravitate towards robot-like behaviour and lifestyle.

Wouldn't do it again, I can afford to make less, but happy I got a glimpse of what was humanly possible for me to do, even if it's only for a span of two months!

<comment><USER20> Thanks you, this is the only reply with real experience doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to land one (1) FT remote job, and here we've got folks talking about working two at the same time :)

<comment><USER14> What problems have you had in trying to land a full time remote job?

<comment><USER21> Things I've heard:

1 - You'd be bored (so?)

2 - We only allow remote work for people who've worked remotely full-time before (always enjoy a good Catch-22).

3 - You haven't actually worked with language X (Clojure in the most recent case) professionally (only on personal projects), so we'd want you in the office (on the other side of the country) so you're closer to help as you learn to code in a new language (a particularly insulting thing to say to a senior software engineer).

4 - Oh, why did you turn down our offer for 40% less than your current pay?

and my personal favorite:

5 - :static: the interviewer just goes dark after I spend an entire Saturday afternoon completing a homework assignment and then go through a 2 hour live coding interview.

Eventually one stops trying. My experience interviewing leads me to believe there is a gross oversupply of good software engineers looking for remote work (If I may be so bold as to call myself a 'good' software engineer).

<comment><USER22> Here's how you do it: 1) find a remote _contracting_ gig, even part time (interview is about 15 - 30 minutes for these, no bull shit white board coding involved)

2) start and learn everything needed in about a week and work fast after that

3) be open to become full time - and you'll likely get an offer 1 to 3 months in, or more like they'll switch you fte.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Double Dipping" as in working two jobs simultaneously and billing two employers for the same hours? No.

My current employer about 60% of the employees are remote and my entire team is remote. Almost everyone has their own on-the-side consultancy and is very public about it. Team members swap stories about their after-hours clients. The after-hours work allows us to diversify into new stacks, experiment with tooling that might not be available to us during the day hours, and then bring a lot of this experience back. Since we're all on very flexible schedules, meetings during normal the normal 8-5 rarely conflict. As long as we don't compete in our employer's industry (which is a very niche industry), we're generally trusted to keep our client/employer work separate, prioritize our employers meetings over client meetings in scheduling, then really it's quite kosher.

I'm a little surprised more medium-to-large businesses aren't more encouraging of it. Free training, keeps the engineering team sharp, and definitely keeps a lot of the more ambitious engineers from getting bored with the pace of building boring business software.

</comment><comment><USER24> I knew of a guy who worked two jobs on-site - was about 3 months before he was caught. I think he worked as a contractor and billed through two different agencies. Started early on one job, late at the other on a different floor and lots of meetings away from desk inbetween. :)

<comment><USER17> "worked two jobs on-site"

I did that twice, once at a dying company when a coworker quit until I lined up a new job in a couple weeks, and another time was a horizontal transfer where two engineering managers were rather vocal about my working solely for them. In both cases I just kinda did what I wanted, knowing there was nothing they could do.

I suspect the question they meant to ask was who was getting paid for two jobs. I have a really boring story about that revolving around a company that paid out severance gradually instead of lump sum, which given the time of year was financially advantageous for me WRT marginal income tax rate.

<comment><USER25> "I have a really boring story about that revolving around a company that paid out severance gradually instead of lump sum"

Here in Japan, where I live, this is one of the reasons that people can't take all their accrued vacation, even when quitting their jobs. When you leave a job, your accrued days are paid out as if you were still working. So if your last day in the office is June 30, but you have 30 days saved, your last day as an employee is ~August 15.

This sometimes means you can't start your new job until after that, and because employers typically want people to start ASAP, people end up forfeiting the vacation time they never got to take while working. The new employer wants them on July 7, so they take just the one week and then start at the new place.

And given how hard it is to take time off, the typical employee has lots and lots of unused PTO. My workplace has a cap of 40 and I am always at the cap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Contractors/consultants do it all the time - in fact it's frowned upon, including by US government/IRS, if you don't do work for multiple clients, including in parallel.

What's the surprise?

<comment><USER26> I think OP is referring exclusively to people working 2 or more salaried full time positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are more than a few stories of things like this happening (or my favorite, outsourcing the actual dev work to China or india) but why would you when it's a lawsuit waiting to happen? Freelancing on the side a little bit is one thing (Basecamp's handbook which was recently posted on HN even had a section on this [https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/moonlightin...](https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/moonlighting.md) ), but working a full on second job? If either found out they'd probably extremely concerned about IP theft either direction.

Plus, why have the stress of two jobs and two sets of potentially colliding meetings? Mrs Doubtfire for the corporate world sounds like a funny movie, terrible life.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can see how this would go south really quick once skype meetings / in-person events start to collide. I think for the RIGHT type of remote work one may be able to pull this off for a while, but I can't imagine that full-time, well- paying remote dev roles could be juggled like this.

<comment><USER16> But think of it this way... can a senior person output more than twice what a junior/mid person can? If you take two mid-level FTE roles, putting mid-level throughput would that pay more than a single senior FTE role? It might be worth considering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Remote full-time employee here for a SF-based company.

I occasionally do 1099 work for friends, but always on evening or weekend hours. I always use my own time and computing resources for the work.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does it matter? In software engineering you should be judged by the quantity and quality of the code, nothing in those metrics disqualifies double-dipping. If anything contracting on the side gives employees exposure to tech stacks and processes outside their normal day to day.

<comment><USER31> Quantity and quality are hard to nail down. What is an 'honest day's work' for a developer?

<comment><USER16> That would be determined in comparison to your peer group for the labelled role..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if there is anyone who is working remote has outsourced themselves? Get a remote job that pays quite a bit more than you need to live comfortably in your area, then hire a remote worker from India to do the work for you.

<comment><USER33> \--> [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/17/sacked...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/17/sacked- model-modern-employee-outsourcing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was working 2 part time jobs as software developer/system admin in different cities . Though it does not count in the context of this thread as neither was remote and not full time But both my managers knew that what i was working. 8-12 one job then other job 1-4. Mind you the two jobs where in different cities and there was a commute of 30 mins between cities. Though i was junior most in both places . i guess the managers gave me leeway . I guess it all depends on your honesty and your responsibilities,

</comment><comment><USER35> No! I'll feel bad to cheat someone else - and I don't like to feel bad:)

<comment><USER36> I don't want to be "that guy," but...

If it's a salaried position, you're presumably not filling in an hours sheet dishonestly.

Is it truly cheating if both companies are happy with your work and you're not breaking either company's rules? Even if you don't explicitly tell them you're doing it?

<comment><USER37> Most salaried positions require you don't have any other paying jobs.

<comment><USER13> Most of my salaried positions have been "at will" with no employment contract in place, so the only thing that corporate policy tells me in the employee manual is that I may be fired if they find out. But as an "at will", I could also be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.

As an "at will" employee, the one and only consequence I have to fear is being fired. There is no contract to breach. And in that situation, I would feel a lot more comfortable about going from two jobs to one than from one to zero. The incentive is overwhelmingly in favor of doing it and hiding the evidence, rather than not doing it at all.

If you do everything that is expected at both jobs, neither has any reason to investigate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's possible, but really it's actually no different than holding an office job in which you're not being checked upon. More than one person has been selling things on the side, outsourcing work to their own devs, and schemes like that.

Not really a good idea as far as developing a reputation for trustworthiness.

</comment><comment><USER39> My friend's ex-boss bullied their small company's owner to give him the title "CIO". (IT department staff: grand total of 3).

Next. . . he's working maybe 10-15 hours per week. Telling one person one thing, and another person something else, about where he is. (business is multi sites, so they do travel a bit). Many times he claims he's "working from home" \- but a check of the AD Server's audit log shows that he hasn't even logged in for days.

(also: he's a terrible boss. Bullies people into working overtime, screws them out of billing hours, and takes credit for other's successes, and blames others for his screw ups).

This goes on for months until he up and resigns.

Then, HIS girlfriend, on FB, starts promoting the book he wrote and is selling on Amazon.

(The book is called "IT Management" \- and yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds.)

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm on retainer for a few people. Different situation because they all know my service has a contention, they just care that I'm available when they need it.

Sounds like you're trying to get paid a full time salary for part time work. Unless you're actually going to moonlight, you're depriving one or both companies of the time they're paying for.

It's stuff like this that makes it hard for remote workers. Stop it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sadly, I suspect I've seen this. The particular developer is a coding monster and I suspect he was just underutilized.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like he was massively underutilised and underpaid!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I heard second hand about a guy at a Carribean resort who was doing this. I've been tempted to do it myself :)

</comment><comment><USER31> As a heads up: We have a remote employee (who is on HN). He's not exceptionally fast, and we suspect he is doing this. We'll fire him if we can prove it. From our stand point, we're paying a full time salary but not getting full time results. Pretty much theft. We think...

<comment><USER16> Had to reread to catch the "not exceptionally fast" ... is s/he fast enough that the work gets done predictably? I find that from a business perspective predictable, and generally accurate time tables are more important than absolute throughput. Now if this person is putting less than half the work than his nearest peer is, then I might have issue.

All said though, if the work is getting done and in a timely manner, then it shouldn't matter. In reading through this thread, I've been thinking, if I could get two mid-level dev positions, I could pretty easily do both at a mid- level quality/pay which combined would be more than my very senior level is currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Double dipping is the wrong phrase here.

Having two jobs or two gigs is not double dipping.

Double dipping is typically a form of cheating by getting paid 2x for 1x amount of work.

Say I was being paid to create a website for two clients and it took me 100 hours to finish it. Then I used the same codebase for another client, spent 5 hours modifying it, and then delivered it to them billing another 100 hours.

That would be double dipping.

<comment><USER43> Even that's not double dipping. Depending on how your contract is structured, it might be the smart thing to do.

If I tell you that I'll produce a certain product for $15,000 and you're OK with that, does it really matter in the end if it took me 5 hours or 150? Either way, you pay the same amount.

Now, if you have a contract that specified time & materials and I pad the hours, then I can agree we could have a problem.

<comment><USER42> Agreed. Selling a product vs selling time are two different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great idea, but do remote employees get paid the same? Say 100k+ for an SF based company?

<comment><USER45> Lol I had to negotiate to get about a quarter of that salary. I know Travis CI limits your pay to your region. GitLab as well. Difference from Mexico to San Francisco is about 4x.

<comment><USER46> That's messed up. Unless there's a separate component like local-cost-of- living-adjustment where you get extra for living in a high-rent area.

<comment><USER47> ...yes?

Cost of living between Mexico to San Francisco probably in the neighborhood of 4x, depending on which part of Mexico. 500000 MXN rounds to $25k, which is 1/4 of $100k.

<comment><USER48> Cost of surviving(food, shelter, boose) - yes. What about cost of having trip around the world for vacation, building your retirement fund, price of the iphone, car?

<comment><USER49> Well, the retirement fund might be more CoL adjusted, if you intend to retire to the same region you currently reside.

<comment><USER46> You shouldn't have to decide that up front. Plus someone living in a high-rent area then gets a huge retirement bonus and allows them the option to move somewhere else. Someone in a low-rent area doesn't get that option at all.

<comment><USER49> All true, and yet I imagine a lot of people think in different terms about retirement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kickstarter: Post to Twitter from Censored Countries - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100820943/tweetfree-secure-distributed-social-networking-pla

<comment><USER2> I don't think $15,000 is enough to get this properly code-reviewed. We already have Tor and know what its weaknesses are, and this doesn't seem to address any of those.

Additionally, I think software like Tor is fundamenally flawed when used to give people in "oppressed" countries access to the real Internet. Since all traffic out of the country is easily controlled, and Tor (etc.) traffic is easily recognizable, this can just be blocked too. Tor only works when you want to protect yourself from ISP-level actors in countries with legal protections for common carriers; it can't protect you from nation states.

A really innovative project would be a mobile mesh network that provides point-to-point and publish/subscribe messaging. Then actions like BART's shutdown of the mobile network could be easily circumvented. Accessing Twitter doesn't matter (except to Twitter's investors); what people want is the ability to communicate with the world at large. The first step is allowing uncensorable communication between people physically located nearby. Then you just need someone with a Pringles can to connect that up to the Internet :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Um, ...Tor?

</comment><comment><USER4> After the Haystack debacle, the level of security thought expressed in this proposal is not reassuring.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_(software)>

<comment><USER5> That was my reaction too.</comment></comment>


Announcing Microsoft's Own Content Delivery Network - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-microsoft-s-own-cdn-network/ <comment><USER2> > In addition to launching access to our native global network, we're also > launching a public preview of use-your-own SSL certificate, enabling > customers to customize and self-maintain their own certificate and create a > CDN solution perfectly fitted to their needs.

Any bets how long till Let's Encrypt functionality/automation is built out by a community project?</comment>


Ask HN: What do you want in a javascript MVC framework. - <AUTHOR>

For a project I'm considering making or extending a javascript MVC framework. What features or design aspects would you want in one? I personally want more robust model relationships and less boilerplate. <comment><USER2> Personally, I think there is room for many more! The ones there are out there are generally way to bloated and weird functional hybrids that doesn't solve key issues.

I would argue that the ones we have are way too model heavy, and makes all kinds of presumptions what a model is.

Stuff that does not belong in a javascript MVC framework: -Bindings -Routes -Templates -Coffeescript

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you taken a good hard look at the existing frameworks? I don't think the world needs another JS MVC framework, unless you're just making one for practice or fun.

What do you mean by "more robust model relationships" if it's not something that's solved by Ember and Ember Data?</comment>


Freeman Dyson: Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html <comment><USER2> Duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43793></comment>


In Which I Designed a Part for My Truck, and Got It Built From Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-12/which-i-designed-part-my-truck-and-got-it-built-scratch <comment><USER2> I can honestly say that I never thought I would see a Cummins diesel swap on HN. That being said, I am envious I plan to put the same ISB engine in my 68 Bronco.

More to the point of the story, when I started out in the industry, I started as an 3D artist and simulations developer doing 3D for simulations companies. I picked up a lot of CAD skills back then and never really had a use for them since leaving the industry. That is until consumer targets just in time fabrication came about. It is nice to have an idea while restoring an old vehicle, take some measurements, and then draw up a part, upload it to a fab cloud and receive a part in the mail. There are not a lot of people is the hobbies restoration community that have CAD skills and it is a shame, it brings a whole never angle to the hobby. I think as people see friends fabing items, the idea will catch on more and more. I hope in my kids time, drawing an item and fabing it up will be as common as going to the parts store.</comment>


Feynman's Cargo Cult Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

<comment><USER2> _"I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen"_

He's right, of course, and that's why science is routinely beaten to a pulp in the media by those with an agenda who don't care about the truth.

<comment><USER3> The honest suffer when everyone lies, true.

That can be fixed by raising the cost of lying, rather than accepting it as the norm with consequences.

Humans have a tool for this, it's called reputation.

The more we accept, say, that all politicians are liars, the more both the honest and the listener suffer.

We should be outraged when someone has been shown to lie. It should be a resigning matter.

<comment><USER2> Or at least when it's lying repeatedly and deliberately. Fox News shouldn't have an audience (this is not a statement about conservatism, it's a statement about Fox News).

But if you're confirming people's biases, particularly regarding some "other" being the enemy (this week it's muslims in NYC), then the truth is going to take a back seat to that warm feeling of self-righteousness.

<comment><USER4> > Or at least when it's lying repeatedly and deliberately. Fox News shouldn't > have an audience (this is not a statement about conservatism, it's a > statement about Fox News).

It's curious that you only mentioned Fox.

Many of my progressive friends think that the NYT and ABC, CBS, and NBC shouldn't have audiences either, for pretty much the same reason.

<comment><USER2> I'll stand by the statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you like this line of reasoning, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" [1] is a great academic approach to the same epistemological questions, applied to the academic community, and with some very bold conclusions about knowledge as a whole.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions)

<comment><USER6> I went through that book in a Philosophy of Science class, and I too recommend it. I also recommend the class, if you get a chance.

I think it is important for all scientists to understand the history of science and even spend some time thinking about the cultural/societal problems that hamper scientific progress currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a similar note, Robert Krulwich, one of the hosts of RadioLab on NPR gave a commencement speech at California Institute of Technology called "Tell Me a Story."

It's a great reminder that we all learn through stories, and that stories are really the only way to convey complex ideas to the general public. Not telling these stories, because we think they won't get it, harms everyone and creates a vacuum of truth where more appealing unscientific stories then dominate.

Audio of the talk: <http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2008/07/29/tell-me-a- story/>

</comment><comment><USER8> The field of economics has, for quite a while, been suffering from this sort of scientistic behavior, aping the practices of the physical sciences, while dismissing aprioristic economics simply because it doesn't.

The following is a rather long, but quite decent discussion of the topic with a physicist that actually worked with Feynman.

[http://commentlog.org/bid/4408/Feynman-Rothbard-and-the- Scie...](http://commentlog.org/bid/4408/Feynman-Rothbard-and-the-Science-of- Economics)

</comment><comment><USER9> For those who dont know

This is an excerpt from the awesome book "Surely you're joking Mr. Feyman" The whole book is full of short anecdotes like this and is an amazing read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious- Char...](http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious- Character/dp/0393316041)

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER10> I think you mean anecdotes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Integrity in conducting scientific experiments? Now there's an idea!</comment>


Ask HN: What art would you recommend? - <AUTHOR>

Since PG's spoken a lot about painting and hacking being alike, what art does the hacking community enjoy? What would you recommend a beginner artist to do in order to start learning an artform? <comment><USER2> I edit one of the largest sites about current art, Contemporary Art Daily: <http://contemporaryartdaily.com>

The best and first place to start experimenting with art is drawing. Don't worry about focusing on realism, unless you want to. Sitting down with a pencil and a blank sheet of paper is exactly like making any art, only with less decision making up front. The magical thing about art is the total absence of any criteria. Here's this sheet of paper, and this pencil, and literally anything you choose to draw is totally acceptable and equivalent to anything else you might draw. So you have to start asking some pretty interesting questions to figure out what to do. Photography is also interesting and accessible for similar reasons.

Apart from that, I think just like with programming the best thing to do first is to start consuming the sort of thing you eventually want to make. If you aren't familiar with much art, it will be harder to understand the possibilities and decide what interests you. Get to a contemporary art museum, if there's one nearby, or go to the library and grab a book on contemporary art. If you arrive at any specific questions or want to find more art akin to something you find that you like, feel free to e-mail forrest@ the above URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for, I shall indeed begin with acquainting myself with various art-forms that you've suggested, I've always been fascinated by Van Gogh, I'd be grateful any idea how I should grow this fascination into something more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Procedural art is fun. If you combine it w/ real world tools like projectors/cameras or even something like a laser cutter, really neat stuff can happen

The processing page has a nice gallery and also happens to be a very pleasant way to program this sort of thing: <http://processing.org/exhibition/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I enjoy Dada, Fluxus, Procedural and Avant Garde.

Cant speak for painting but after a couple of failed attempts to pick up the guitar in my teens I one day started playing what I felt like instead of trying to play some fast hard rock riff, instant success and now I play guitar every day and starting to be genuinely good at it. So, paint what you feel like. Explore other painters and artists and try to copy their work while still maintaining your personal touch to it. Get a mentor or show what you do on some site for showing art, feedback is really important!

</comment><comment><USER5> One vote for photography here: you can get as technical as you want (or as your wallet allows) but you can produce great work with just your phone's camera. You can show it off to other people, or just keep your laptop supplied with desktop images.

I have found, however, that while I really like photography and I really like coding, it can be very, very difficult to switch between the two - on the order of weeks to go from "thinking like a photographer" to "thinking like a programmer". Perhaps that will improve with time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been doing some sketching lately and I highly recommend it. It's the root of a lot of visual art, so you get to learn a lot of the important art things (perspective, lighting/shading, how utterly and completely your eyes lie to you about the size and orientation of things). But what's really unbeatable is the convenience. Materials required: 2B pencil, eraser, paper. Put them in your bag. Draw when you've got time. Done.</comment>


Show HN: React-only 5-minute RPG - <AUTHOR> https://failflow.com/bestgame <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to see if I could make a demo for an RPG that lived completely in the browser and only used React (which is very doable). I'm a big fan of minimal storytelling and wanted to try a telling one via a simple RPG.

It was a ton of fun getting it to this point and is a backbone I will use to build a full RPG (with fancy assets and animations). If there is interest I will happily make a repo for this.</comment>


The Crunchpad is proof of obviousness in iPad design - <AUTHOR> http://nikcub.appspot.com/posts/crunchpad-proof-obviousness-in-ipad-design <comment><USER2> Apple is grasping for straws here. The argument that out of the space of all possible designs for a tablet, they own the subset defined by the conjunction of "rounded corners AND flat front surface AND uncluttered design AND thin profile etc." is absurdly overbroad. It's like a car manufacturer arguing they own all car designs that have "good gas mileage AND automatic windows AND bluetooth radio AND leather interior" etc. In the weakest argument the features Apple claims as their own are simply universally desirable features that would be obvious to any designer of such a device. In a stronger argument many of features claimed are necessary for the function of any tablet. Not really comfortable with these IP shenanigans harming the market.

<comment><USER3> I _never_ defend Apple, but they aren't grasping at straws.

They own _design_ patents on those things, and that gives them protection against things that could be reasonably mistaken for them. Arguments about obviousness are irrelevant under design patent law.

See [http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung- analys...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung-analysis/)

<comment><USER4>
      > protection against things that could be reasonably
      > mistaken for them

That sounds more like trademark law.

That said, Apple has to incur a bit of penalty here for being first-to-market. Since the iPad was the first-to-market and the most widely recognized brand, it would not be uncommon for someone to see _any_ tablet (regardless of design similarities) and say, "Is that an iPad?"

It's like Henry Ford claiming that no one else can make cars at the genesis of the Model-T because cars in general are associated with the Ford Motor Company. It would be ridiculous to say that anything with 4 wheels and a combustion engine might be mistaken for a Ford, therefore Ford is the only one that can make cars.

<comment><USER5> Ironically, Ford fought tooth and nail against an overly generic patent for automobile (similar to a design patent because the guy who owns it is a lawyer and never built an actual model before getting the patent) and won.

<http://www.bpmlegal.com/wselden.html>

<comment><USER6> That's not what "design patent" means in US law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, this misses the point.

Apple's argument is based on the _design patents_ (and "Trade Dress") they have. Design patents aren't like normal patents, nor like trademarks.

They are more typically used to protect something like a car or dress design, and the test for infringement is "would this other product be mistaken for the subject by a normal person"

It's things like the radius of the rounded corners, the location of the button, and the width of the bevel that will be argued here, not how obvious the design is.

[http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung- analys...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung-analysis/) explains this pretty well.

(IANAL, and I think design patents are stupid, but this is the law as I understand it. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent#Comparison_to_uti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent#Comparison_to_utility_patents) for more).

<comment><USER4>
      > the location of the button

Do you really think that a 'normal person' would say, 'oh, the location of the button is different. _this is obviously not an Apple product!_ '. I find that doubtful. Being first-to-market and the best-selling tablet to date, most 'normal people' will see _any_ tablet within the same size range wonder, "Is that an iPad?"

<comment><USER7> Indeed. I've lost track of the number of times my ASUS Transformer has been mistaken for an iPad, sometimes even when docked!

<comment><USER8> We will be filing suit tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "There was a lot of prior art when we began the Crunchpad project, and having a tablet that was touch controlled rather than with a stylus wasn't really a revolutionary idea since there were a number of component manufacturers at the time who were scaling up their touch controllers to larger dimensions (9", 11", 12" etc.) in preparation for this market."

Having a tablet that was touch controlled rather than with a stylus wasn't really a revolutionary idea since Star Trek: The Next Generation was aired in 1987, with it's touch-controlled screens [0] and PADDs [1] [2].

BTW. I'm surprised by Star Trek not being mentioned at all since the dawn of consumer touch-screen technology. I expected people to be doing lots of LCARS rip-offs on MS Surface, tablets and phones, and there's almost nothing.

[0] - [http://techspecs.startrek.acalltoduty.com/images/galaxy/ed-m...](http://techspecs.startrek.acalltoduty.com/images/galaxy/ed- msd.jpg)

[1] - <http://www.teleread.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/padd.gif>

[2] - <http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD>

<comment><USER10> > Having a tablet that was touch controlled rather than with a stylus wasn't > really a revolutionary idea since Star Trek: The Next Generation was aired > in 1987, with it's touch-controlled screens [0] and PADDs [1] [2].

Star Trek: The Next Generation also has FTL drive and matter transporters that don't kill you. The idea _may_ have come from TNG, but I think it's more that using a finger was the next logical step after the stylus than actual "inspiration" on the part of TNG.

> I expected people to be doing lots of LCARS rip-offs on MS Surface, tablets > and phones, and there's almost nothing.

LCARS really isn't that practical of a user interface (narrow font, odd color scheme, lack of consistent layouts...) Michael Okuda designed it more to look futuristic and "cool" than to really be something usable.

<comment><USER9> > Star Trek: The Next Generation also has FTL drive and matter transporters > that don't kill you. The idea may have come from TNG, but I think it's more > that using a finger was the next logical step after the stylus than actual > "inspiration" on the part of TNG.

Those are different kind of ideas. FTL drive and matter transporter might not be treated as real idea, but whatever procedures, safety precautions and logistic considerations were conceived around them _may_ prove to be valuable ideas if we ever get to FTL/transporter technology or something similar. On the other hand, touchscreens in TNG were an useful, realistic concept.

> LCARS really isn't that practical of a user interface (narrow font, odd > color scheme, lack of consistent layouts...) Michael Okuda designed it more > to look futuristic and "cool" than to really be something usable.

Sure it's not really usable (compared to our current interfaces), but I personally assumed that ST is so ingrained in minds of most hackers that such projects would start appearing immediately, as an 'obvious thing to do'.

<comment><USER11> I think there's fear of legal retribution from CBS. Sure, you can hack something together for your own personal use, but don't even think about making any real money by selling an app that looks all LCARSy.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, they recently killed a _free_ LCARS app for Android:

<http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/wiki/Tricorder>

:(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The notion that a company can patent rounded corners and sue others claiming innovation makes me sick.

Maybe they do actually believe what they do is innovation rather than slight revision (and product/market fit)... I mean, that's what people keep telling them they do ... eventually it must stick.

<comment><USER13> > The notion that a company can patent rounded corners and sue others claiming > innovation makes me sick.

Apple didn't patent "rounded corners". Apple v Samsung is more than that repeating mantra about rounded corners.

Why would Apple sue Samsung _after_ GalaxyTab 10.1 and not when the original Galaxy Tab arrived?

* original galaxytab [http://www.ebooksytablets.com/68-224-thickbox/protector-pant...](http://www.ebooksytablets.com/68-224-thickbox/protector-pantalla-original-samsung-galaxy-tab-p1000.jpg)

* second galaxytab [http://messenger.com.es/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/galaxy-ta...](http://messenger.com.es/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/galaxy-tab.jpg)

I suggest you to read early Nilay Patel analysis for more understanding about trade dressing and the reasons behind Apple's requirements.

[http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung- analys...](http://www.theverge.com/2011/04/19/apple-sues-samsung-analysis/)

<comment><USER14> After reading the article, I was all I was doing was wondering how could these trivial things possibly get patents that supposedly claims to be new innovation.

<comment><USER15> Just today morning, I was talking to someone who is getting a patent. He was telling me that you outline the idea, and then the patent lawyers come in to phrase it. I don't know how far this is true, but if true just shows how broken the system is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And yet none of the photos of their devices show a screen that's flush with the front of the tablet - in all of them the surface of the screen is slightly indented from the face of the tablet, like laptop screens and TV screens often are.

Being oblivious to that rather crucial point rather invalidates the entire argument being made since you've clearly designed something which doesn't have an identical design to an iPad, thus the design and form of an iPad is not the only possible design for a tablet.

It's fairly important to remember that in order to infringe a design patent you need to have a design that is 'substantially similar' to the described design rather than simply having design features in common with the described design. Rounded corners is fine, as long as its not rounded corner AND a whole bunch of other design decisions that makes it look identical to an iPad.

<comment><USER17> Did you feel the least bit ridiculous writing that? I know I felt a little ridiculous just reading that. Perhaps I just have a really hard time understanding how _any kind_ of rounded corners or edges could possibly qualify for a patent unless it had some sort of _unique function_. Form should never be patentable. Function maybe sometimes.

<comment><USER18> elemeno clearly stated that rounded corners alone is not enough, it's part of many other things. You may disagree that design patents should exist at all, but they do not just cover a single thing.

Also, the "ridiculous" stuff is unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Crunchpad was merely an extension of the ideas from the iPhone/iPod Touch, I think a lot of people could see there was a market for a big iPod Touch. Mostly the competition didn't have an OS ready and Apple was late to the market due to focusing on the iPhone.

<comment><USER15> And the iPhone/iPod was just an improvement over Windows/Palm phones. I guess the article is echoing the sentiment that these "innovations" aren't worthy of a patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm really torn by this debate.

On the one hand, for an idea so obvious, Apple was first for both phones and tablets -- and they were "first" very late in the game. Microsoft OEMs made tablets for a decade, but NONE of them (even the slate tablets) really compared to the iPad.

On the other, I don't see how this is a patent. It feels more like a trademark, although the design of the iPad is probably too general to trademark.

My question is: How did the auto industry resolve this? Early cars looked like horse carriages and steered like boats or trolleys. How did the development of the timeless car design patterns (sedan, coupe, wagon, van, pickup, etc) get to the present state?

<comment><USER21> "How did the auto industry resolve this?"

Perhaps the auto industry's period of innovation and establishment happened during a more rational patent regime.

<comment><USER20> Not really.

Google "George Selden patent"

<comment><USER21> Interesting. Then according to this result, <http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsseldona.htm> , one rational response to patent trolls (established and loved, or merely trollish) is to not pay, to fight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The iPad is basically a big iPhone, so pointing out that there were people making a big iPhone between when the iPhone was announced and when the iPad was announced just shows that they were copying the iPhone instead of the iPad.

Simple, minimalist, elegant designs look obvious in retrospect.

The fact that Samsung, HTC, and others are aping Apple's designs in the iPhone and iPad is clear. Denying it only makes you look ridiculous. The question is, are they aping it too much or are they bringing enough new to the table for it to be considered an original design? That's something that almost has to be addressed on a device by device basis.

<comment><USER23> AFAIK,the point of a design patent is to protect stylistic (non-functional) elements of a design. The question being asked is whether the common elements between these products are non-functional or actual have important functional reasons for existing. Why are all car tires round, with rubber on the outside, and with cool tread patterns on the outside?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does nobody remember that there were big corporations trying to get a tablet out for the last decade and have terribly failed to do so?

The iPad is not at all obvious. It is intuitive. That's why everyone thinks it's obvious _after_ having seen and used it.

<comment><USER25> <http://gdeluxe.com/tablets-before-ipad-part-ii/>

Turns out that there are actually quite a few tablets before the iPad that sport design features that supposedly only arrived in 2010.

<comment><USER24> Perfect link. Thanks!

All of them have either a stylus, are cluttered with buttons all over the place or have a stock WinXP which is totally useless for touch.

For these reasons, all of them failed terribly and nobody bought them. I haven't seen one of these IRL.

I see my point proven, so thanks again for the link.

<comment><USER26> No. Many of those tablets have features (eg, rectangular shape with rounded corners) that are supposed to be not obvious.

It's more evidence that a lot of iPad is evolutionary not revolutionary. See also PDAs which contain a bunch of features which are covered by patents. (a big menu button at the bottom centre of the screen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The iPad is just a larger IPhone. The real innovation in design here was the iPhone which release pre-dates even the first announcement of the JooJoo. I think it is naive to think the sleek iPhone design didn't significantly influence all current tablet designs.

To illustrate how not-obvious the design is, compare the original kindle (released prior to the iphone) to the iPad. And now compare the Kindle Fire (released after the iPhone/iPad) to the iPad.

<comment><USER28> Two of my previous phones, the Sony Ericsson p800 and p900 both pre-date the iPhone. The former was launched in 2002.

They were truly innovative imo (although probably something similar pre-dates them that I just don't know about), but as a smartphone with a single front screen, and nothing else (the keypad was detachable), they were a first for me.

The evolution from a p800/p900 form factor, to the iphone, is a natural progression as engineering techniques improve. Couple that progression, with Apple's iOS, and you have the iPhone.

My point is, where has it been shown that the iPhone design was the _first_ in any case?

Personally, I think Apple's argument is weak. Either way, Apple will continue to dominate the market regardless of competitors - I just hope they fail so we can see some fair competition.

<comment><USER29> I had a P800 and I think the difference between the P800 and iPhone is much greater than the difference between the iPhone and the Galaxy. Replacing a raised plastic bezel with a single flat piece of glass is innovative IMO. The feel of using a modern phone is also completely different from the P800.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pernicious falsehoods about Apple's iPad design patents (take a drink every time you see one of these in an iPad design thread):

(1) Apple has a patent on rounded corners.

(2) Apple has a patent on rectangular slabs.

(3) One example of vaguely relevant prior art invalidates Apple's protections.

(4) Prior art means anything that came out before the iPad shipped.

(5) There's no other way to design a tablet.

And remember kids: slavishly copying your competitors' designs and style should be encouraged and rewarded!

</comment><comment><USER31> The thing that I can't seem to get past is that Samsung (and all the other Japanese electronics makers) has been making televisions that closely resemble the iPad for _years_ now. "Black, rectangular, curved corners, thin bezel" has pretty much been the default design aesthetic of flatscreen displays since their popularization. I have a Philips LCD TV that I bought in late 2007 that could be an iPad if you took it off its stand, blacked out the logo, and put a button on one end of it.

[http://www.argos.co.uk/wcsstore/argos/images/70-5297124MMA75...](http://www.argos.co.uk/wcsstore/argos/images/70-5297124MMA75UC943128M.jpg)

Just because Apple shrunk the black curved rectangle with uniform bezel down into tablet form doesn't mean they actually invented anything new design-wise. They certainly improved upon existing designs, but it's just arrogant for them to try to claim ownership of that particular design aesthetic.

</comment><comment><USER32> IANAL and I hate to sound like a fanboy, but can't Apple claim that the 2007 iPod touch is prior art, since it's basically a small black tablet with rounded corners and a single button at the bottom? It looks much more similar to an iPad than the 2008 crunchpad.

</comment><comment><USER33> I posted this video 7 days ago that shows a tablet prototype in 1994 that looks/works a lot like current tablets:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3304198>

</comment><comment><USER34> Both of these posts are completely opposite to what the system of production should be. OBVIOUSLY we would see the apple design as intelligent, and obviously thats how we think intelligent tablets should look now that they have been established as functional and successful, but that is completely the result of apple engineers hard work, not some universal tablet design that just makes sense. I can understand why apple would be so pissed. They created a novel (and initially, quite criticized for several aspects of it's simplicity) piece of technology, and because everyone likes it, they're claiming that it was barely designed at all. Apple made tough and meticulous decisions that allowed them to nail this design, and now, seeing that they are successful, other companies are claiming that those decisions were obvious and effectively unmade. And even if the designs were in fact "obvious," and impossible to do any other way, then why hadn't tablets taken this form before now? And even further, why do we patent things at all, if whenever someone releases a design seen as intelligent and novel, it can be declared as the industry standard and infinitely copyable? We patent so that apple has an incentive to make such a well thought out product, not so they can "shut out other designs that are simply following the same completely objective universal blueprints for the tablet computer."

<comment><USER35> > then why hadn't tablets taken this form before now?

They have. Many times. Not one aspect of the iPad design is original. That's the whole problem. They're able to claim other people's inventions as their own. It's tantamount to theft.

That's what makes this whole scenario so galling. They're committing the crime they're accusing others of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm surprised nobody made this case before. I remember I started believing in the idea of tablets way before we even heard rumors about an Apple tablet. I started believing in this idea when I first saw the initial Crunchpad mock- ups.

</comment><comment><USER37> So, the Crunchpad is "proof" that -- having seen the iPhone and iPod Touch -- the iPad's design is obvious. The article doesn't mention the prior release of the iPhone and iPod Touch (remember Jobs starting out by saying Apple was releasing three things, one of which was a tablet computer). I agree that having seen an iPhone the iPad design is obvious. Next.

<comment><USER38> What about the star trek padd? [http://www.inventinginteractive.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/...](http://www.inventinginteractive.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/01/Sarah_Sisko_reconstruction.jpg)

<comment><USER39> * Red case

* Screen physically depressed from bezel

* Extraneous white rectangular design elements on the bezel

DS9's dark cinematography, combined with a device that doesn't really look like an iPad, makes for a device that at first glance looks like a black iPad. Well, at least if you've seen a black iPad before. If it was better illuminated it would look more like a metallic etch-a-sketch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> One thing I like about the iPad innovation debade is that it really stresses the importance of execution (because I think it is weak on innovation). People have had the idea of a touch pad for decades and even tried to execute on it dozens of times with real products. The execution of the idea in the form of the iPad made it a success.

</comment><comment><USER41> This post, like almost every other on the subject, misrepresents the content of the testimony being cited, and thus the arguments being made. Please read it yourself if you care about having discussion any more sophisticated than "Apple is the Great Satan!"/"NO U!"

(Edit:"Reading primary sources is heresy! Downvote! Downvote!")

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a good case for Applemif they can get the right point across. Looking back its easy to say that the design of a tablet is obvious but it really isn't.

Since the iPad came out we all have a preconceived notion of what a tablet should look like but had the iPad been designed differently as it very well could have been and it remained as successful then we'd live in an alternate universe where everything is the same including the court cases and me-too tablets except they'd all be copying a different design. Consider this:

Apple could have chosen to use a built in keyboard. They could have used more than one physical button much like Android phones instead of just the home button. They could have used a flat back instead of an convex curve. Consider the similarity in the radius of the corners too - very similar if not the same (I haven't measured though). The black frame is _not_ obvious as a choice. It could have easily had little to no frame. The metal border just outside the frame, also not obvious.

All of this "obvious" talk seems to me like people trying to fit a square peg (the answer) into a round hole (the answer). You may be able to jam them together but it's still not e right fit. "Obvious" is always obvious after the fact. This stuff may make sense from an industrial design perspective but it doesn't mean that tablet makers were ready to actually follow those design patterns. Companies ignore convention all the time when designing products.

And I'm closing I'll leave you all with something a little less compelling. The Samsung tablet really does look an iPad clone. All tablets look somewhat similar but in the case of Samsung it's just so obvious that it looks almost exactly the same and would it be unreasonable to wonder if maybe the similarity was not for usability reasons but just to maybe confuse consumers into thinking "hey, they look exactly alike, I'll just buy the cheaper one since its basically the same thing"?

<comment><USER43> "Since the iPad came out we all have a preconceived notion of what a tablet should look like but had the iPad been designed differently...we'd live in an alternate universe where everything is the same including the court cases and me-too tablets except they'd all be copying a different design."

Right. All of them.

Except of course for the mid-2009 prototype of the JooJoo mentioned in the article, which was what went to market by the end of 2009, months before Jobs showcased the iPad at the end of Jan 2010.

"'Obvious' is always obvious after the fact."

The person writing the article you're responding to is writing it from the perspective of someone who designed a similar-looking product _before_ the fact.

<comment><USER42> Okay, you make some pretty good points and I'm not one to hold on to a belief that's wrong for egotistical reasons but I still have a couple of problems with your argument.

First, when you said "Right. All of them". To be clear, I know that all tablets are in a similar vein as the iPad these days. So why doesn't Apple sue all of them? Well I'm no dummy and I know this has a lot to do with trying to stamp out the competition but at the same time the rest of the tablets except the Samsung tablet in question are just different enough to give them some wiggle room. The Samsung tablet, when viewed next to an iPad is so similar that a layperson could easily mistake them as the same and not know the difference until they inspect it further.

I didn't know the author designed a similar tablet previously. But his case could have been a coincidence. We all know that just because design decisions are obvious not every company will follow the rules of design. It's hard to say that the iPad design is obvious unless you actually have working products on the market. Concepts change before being massed produced and a differently designed tablet that was as successful as the iPad could have become the standard and we'd be arguing about whether Apple copied LG's design or Sony's had they come out with such a tablet first.

Approaching this subject from a legal perspective is the wrong way to go. There's this obvious (I hate to have to use that word I'm this context) gray area between "how else do you design such a product" and "that design is just a rip off". Look at the tablets side by side. I can't imagine any regular consumer being able to immediately spot the difference. They look almost exactly alike in a way no other tablet does. There's an aspect of this that can't be proven in court but is plain as day to anyone else and that's where I'm approaching this from. It's like Samsung intentionally ripped off the iPad because they knew they couldn't compete so instead tried to piggyback off people who think the closer it looks to an iPad the better it is as a less expensive alternative. But despite how much anyone knows in these gray areas you can't prove it in court so they're forced to use patents as a tool to stop the rip offs.</comment></comment></comment>


The Stock Market Is Still for Suckers - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/08/20/the-stock-market-is-still-for-suckers-and-why-you-should-put-your-money-in-the-bank/ <comment><USER3> This is a weak article. There are plenty of ways to beat the market averages while being just one individual with a small sum of capital.

A while back Buffett said that he thinks he could average 50% annually if he only had a small sum of capital. Here are some of the things he would likely be doing:

1\. Go where the big investors can't

Many large institutional fund managers cannot go below certain market caps. Typically you can find a rich hunting ground of undervalued and ignored companies below $100M.

During the crisis I found it pretty useful to actually screen for negative enterprise value stocks. These were companies where they were trading BELOW the cash they had on their balance sheets. (EV = Market Cap + Debt - Cash). Some of these companies were pretty tiny, $10 to $50M mkt cap, but they worked out well. You have to be willing to deal with illiquidity though.

2\. Odd lot tender offers

You can find situations where a company wants to go private and delist. To do that they need to buy out shareholders and get below 300 public shareholders. To do that sometimes they will pay a premium for you to tender shares if you have below 100 shares. Again, this is an area where a small investor can do well but where large institutions are precluded from being active.

3\. Look for areas where institutions are forced to sell

Spinoffs are the classic example. Academic research has shown that spinoffs will in general outperform the greater market. Why?

Many index funds are mandated to only hold stocks that are a part of the index. Sometimes an index member will spinoff a smaller unit which cannot make it into the index. The index funds will be forced to sell that company and so its pricing may get below its actual value. That's why spinoffs tend to outperform the market in their 2nd and 3rd year of trading.

\---

There are plenty of other areas too. These are just a few but it is all pretty well publicized.

<comment><USER4> Fascinating. I imagine you are ludicrously rich via these obvious and well- publicized methods? How long did it take you to learn and implement these tactics? I would also love to see pictures of your yacht and/or Mansion.

<comment><USER5> You will notice he/she is quoting someone who did in fact become fairly rich, and not speaking from first-hand experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Because people buy stocks for only one reason, they want them to go up in price."

Actually I've been buying them for their dividends, with the hope that the stock price itself will just keep pace with inflation.

<comment><USER7> When I was younger, I could never understand the purpose of stocks that don't give off dividends. I just could not wrap my head around the concept of buying something for the sole purpose of expecting it to increase in value. It still boggles my mind.

<comment><USER8> At least in economic theory, a company does not give out dividends if it believes that it can get a better return on its cash (in terms of profit) than the investor can in the overall market.

But, companies must eventually give out dividends. There's a certain point at which the company's cash hoard gets so large that investors become unhappy (see Microsoft).

<comment><USER9> Stock buybacks are an excellent alternative to providing dividends for a company that wants to return money back to it's owners.

<comment><USER10> Yes, theoretically. In practice, managements have a long history of buying stock back at inflated prices and buying back stock simply to hide the shareholder dilution that is occurring due to management equity compensation. I prefer dividends to buybacks.

Companies tend to announce buybacks when things are going well and their stock is fully priced. How many companies were announcing buybacks in December 2008 when it would have really made sense?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nassim Taleb comes to a similar conclusion, but with much better examples (one of the best Planet Money Podcasts ever IMO... just posted it here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623713>)

 _Taleb slams Obama & the media, prefers recession over high deficits, advocates clawbacks, slams forecasting models when high debt levels are present and predicts the broad failure of public companies due to fundamentally misaligned incentives._

That said, here are two (rather discomforting) counter arguments to both Cuban and Taleb:

      1) A warning against credit derivatives
      (or betting the market will go down):
      "The market can stay irrational longer
      than you can stay solvent." - <USER2>

      2) In an inflationary environment, high levels of
      long-term debt can actually be a good thing for the
      issuers. It's the short-term debt that must be rolled
      over that creates most of the problems (e.g. ARM mortgages
      and a majority of commercial loans).

</comment><comment><USER12> You don't need to know more than the other market participants to do well in the stock market, you just need to know one thing that other people don't (assuming your investment is a tiny fraction of the money in the stocks you pick). You should always expect that all the information on a product that is accessible to Wallstreet traders is already factored into a stocks price, but there may be things (does this product really make sense for someone like me who lives in a small appartment, how will this inovation interact with the stuff I learned in all those technical courses I took in college) that you might better information about than the market makers.

Of course, it might just be that random chance has caused the author of the post to do badly in the market and me to do well - causing us both to be biased. You should always diversify your investing and its probably a good idea to put most of your stock money into index funds.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bolshevism. An S&P 500 index will crush any bond, CD, whatever, over the next 20 years. When you are investing long term, the ups and downs and whatever volatility traders and hedge funds cause do not matter, you are still owning a piece of the company that on average will grow exponentially in value.

With inflation on the horizon, stocks are a way better hedge than cash or bonds.

And that said, if you go hunting for value and well priced stocks, you will be way better off.

<comment><USER14> Looking back to 1971, for any 20 year period the S&P 500 netted a gain. For the last 20 years, that gain was 6% per year. OK, but not what I would term "crushing" performance.

For the last 10 years, the S&P 500 is down 2.5% on an annual basis. You could have done better w/ govt bonds & CD ladders.

I think the 20 year plan assumes a greater will power than the greater investing community possesses.

<comment><USER15> Right, you can cherry pick 10 year periods of time when the S&P did good, but don't forget about all those times it crashed. The problem with following Wall Streets advice to put all your money in stocks is that they make too much money from trading commissions to trust them for impartial advice.

Typical investment advisors tell you to buy stocks and then point out that over the last century stocks have done very well. The problem is that none of us are investing on 100 year long timelines. We are usually investing on 30-40 year timelines and hoping to have a good amount saved when we retire. If you happen to need to retire and start pulling money out in a bad year like 2008, you're screwed.

Check out this allocation for returns as good as stocks without the huge downside risk: [http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent- portfolio-...](http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio- historical-returns/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Aren't we already closer to "blood in the streets" than "cheery consensus"?

Financial people love to say that the stock market grows at roughly 9% historically, and that is money in the bank. But if you look at any historic chart these days, the massive amount of wealth and trading volume that has been generated over the past 10 years has made it obvious that we are in uncharted waters for future equities growth.

The Internet has been the game changer here. It has allowed access to equities to a class of investors that really never had access purchase these types of assets. This changed the game.

Cuban is probably right when he tells us to be weary of the market, but I think there are different reasons to be weary than those he states.

<comment><USER17> I think Cuban is comparing vs the March '09 low when the market was down 40% from now. He made several posts during that time about actual purchasing stocks.

<comment><USER16> Right, it was a great time to buy. I do tend to think that we will see DOW 14000 before DOW 7000, barring some unforeseen crisis. And I guess that's market confidence, right? What investors think the chances of something unforeseen popping up are.

<comment><USER18> Of course because the more the dollar is devalued via inflation, the hugger stock prices will go even though they aren't actually appreciating in value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The truth is that most people sell when the market is getting killed and buy when the market is running up.

It is human nature to follow the crowd. Savvy investors can make several hundred % returns buying during crashes and bear markets.

The main keys to success: 1) Never use margin (market day-to-day is too unpredictable 2) Leverage with Options 3) Try to remove emotion from the investment

<comment><USER18> Good advice, and while I see people repeating common myths in this thread, I should just be happy that they are there to take the other side of my positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "It is pretty much impossible for some man or woman or child who devotes a couple of hours per week to the market to outperform the professionals who spend 24×7 doing this for a living and when they are asleep, they have a workforce full of people doing more of the same. In this day and age, none of us are smarter than the market."

I agree that individual investors can't continue to try and play in the big leagues. When you're competing with bankers, you're going to lose because they're doing it 24/7, like Mark said.

However, there is a significant amount of the market (30%? Tried to google the figure and couldn't find it) that Wall Street doesn't cover, analyze or do much of anything about. For the most part, this is the playing field for the individual investor.

My only other advice is buy at a profit. Use value investing tenets to buy stocks that are significantly discounted to their fair value. It's much easier to calculate the value of a company than most think.

<comment><USER21> _However, there is a significant amount of the market (30%? Tried to google the figure and couldn't find it) that Wall Street doesn't cover, analyze or do much of anything about. For the most part, this is the playing field for the individual investor._

Is "a couple of hours per week" enough to do the research necessary to perform well in that area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I stopped reading when the author said everyone wants stocks to go up. You can make money no matter what direction the market goes. A brief skim of the rest of the article finds similar errors. The OP doesn't seem to understand the basics of asset allocation and diversity.

<comment><USER23> technically he said people buy stocks because they think stocks will increase in value. it is an useless/obvious observation but different from what you stated.

like cuban i do wonder why individuals think they can beat the market. well connected and well capitalized groups have access to far more information than is publicly available. with the rise of hft and the like not only are you under attack by players who understand the fundamentals better but also by people who can game the exchange platforms themselves.

<comment><USER20> I agree the odds are stacked against the individual investor. However, I'm an individual investor who consistently beats the market. I don't do anything special. I just follow the tenets of value investing. IMHO, this is the only way to invest as an individual. Otherwise, stick your money in an index fund and hope for the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _"Because people buy stocks for only one reason, they want them to go up in price."_

Indicates the author knows little to nothing.

 _"It is pretty much impossible for some man or woman or child who devotes a couple of hours per week to the market to outperform the professionals who spend 24×7 doing this for a living and when they are asleep"_

There are so many people performing so poorly - even professionals, that working 24x7 obviously doesn't buy you much _"performance"_. While it's true you're competing against everyone else on the market, that doesn't mean there's a large group of professionals performing so well that you can't compete. In fact it's the opposite.

 _"So what does this mean for you ? It means that I don't know if the market will go up or down, or by how much."_

I'm thanking God that _what it all means to me_ is not dependant upon what this author knows.

As for the remaining "scarcity of capital" argument - it's like the author can only see one point in time, and not the big picture. There's a reason why all the capital being made available is not being borrowed. It's because smart companies know growing for the sake of growing, without demand is a bad reason to borrow, thus they don't. It's your job to determine who they are, and the fact you can't does not mean that it can't be done.

There's more to comment on, but overall - I couldn't find much I could agree with.

<comment><USER25> After selling his company to Yahoo for $5.9 billion in Yahoo stock, Mark Cuban personally architected a hedge of his enormous wealth with synthetic indexes, taking a $20 million cut for six months of protection before he could hedge the actual Yahoo shares.

Compare this to John Z. Rigos, who sold his dotcom for $42 million and walked away with $8 million of stock. Between the day of the sale until the day when he could legally sell his shares, the stock tanked, and Mr. Rigos was left with virtually nothing. Mr. Cuban came from a poor Jewish family; Mr. Rigos from a poor Greek family. Same story, two outcomes...

Today Mr. Cuban's net worth is more than $2 billion. I'd say he knows more than "little to nothing" about the market.

<comment><USER26> He also ran a successful hedge fund if memory serves me. From his writing you could easily get the idea that he is more opinionated than informed, especially since he seems to jump from talking about stocks to bonds and back again as if he didn't know the difference between them. I'm pretty sure it's just because he is such a poor writer though. While I don't ever agree with someone who thinks they can time the market, he certainly is knowledgable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I agree. We're about to face a huge liquidity crisis for additional reasons that he missed here.

In the very near future, cash (different currencies, precious metals) will be king.

<comment><USER18> The indicator that gold, etc is not overpriced is that in 2008 when everyone panicked, gold went down cause they sold it.

When everyone panics, and gold goes up, that will be the beginning of the bull market in gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> mark cuban is a smart guy & also a billionaire so i tend to listen to his advice.

the part i don't get is why we should be putting our money in the bank. our government is printing money at a record pace and our money is being devalued by the minute. as much as i hate having my money in the stock market, at least it has some protection against inflation.

<comment><USER17> Despite quantitative easing, we haven't experienced any significant inflation. In fact, we are getting very close to a deflation.

If you have a very pessimistic view of the stock market's future, reducing risk by being in cash make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER28> that's partly because the fed plays all sorts of tricks to hide the real amount of inflation they are causing. regardless of whether that inflation is visible now, it's inevitably coming. it's the only option we have to deal with that 13.3 trillion debt that we can't afford to pay.

<comment><USER29> I heard somewhere that Deflation right now is a fact, inflation a belief. One would've lost a lot of money being short long-dated treasuries this year with that belief. If inflation is the answer to this (most likely the case), would you say that it could be hyperinflation versus the milder demand-driven inflation that America is used to?- Specifically, if the Fed devalues the dollar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Unless you're doing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running> you cannot make significant money via stock markets.

</comment><comment><USER31> ...says the man who sold a $5.9 billion dollar domain name to Yahoo.

Who else here has sold a company for $5.9 billion?

</comment><comment><USER32> _if you were the innovator that was smarter and faster than the other guys, you could make money [on the long and / or short side of the market] before the imitators and then the idiots flooded the market._ \- That seems to be a market universal.

Same shit happens with Blogs, SEO and Internet in general.

</comment><comment><USER18> It is easy to beat the market and invest well because most of thevworld is operating from a position of ignorance. You don't need secret or insider knowledge, you just need to know what you know, and know what you don't know. Buffett calls his a circle of competence. I studied investing, did ok, studied economics and then discovered that the world is full of ignorant or misinformed people who cling to their misinformation. Example- look at everyone bashing gold.

The conventional wisdom is you need someone to manage your money for you because you can't beat the market, and because that is such a common belief, I find it easy to beater the market.

<comment><USER33> So what's the truth about gold?

<comment><USER15> Gold is a good hedge against financial crisis. Whenever the Dow has a day of selling, you'll usually see people buying lots of commodity ETFs like GLD or IAU.

The thing I like about gold is that it responds well to all types of financial crisis. Inflation risk? Gold goes up. Deflation/deleveraging risk? Gold goes up as well.</comment></comment></comment>