EFF: Stupid patents are dragging down AI and machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/eff-stupid-patents-are-dragging-down-ai-and-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> The unfortunate reality is that the 20th century legal code is ill equipped for dealing with software firms. Up until about 1980-1990 it didn't matter all that much, but tech firms are now the largest, fastest growing and most powerful companies in the world. We can't punt on these issues any more.

There are 3 forms of IP protection: copyright, patents, and trademarks. The crux of the issue is that, for software, copyright protection is too weak and patents are too strong. So called "stupid patents" are a symptom of this issue, but not the cause. Software ideas don't work well under either of these existing protection models. Further, software patents are especially broken since they've deviated from their originally intended purpose of helping fledgling inventors launch their creations without larger firms stealing their work. Now every large firm has an arsenal of allegedly "protective" patents that can be swiftly mobilized to crush upstart competitors. Similarly, patent trolls can sit on the sidelines and exact royalties far beyond the economic value that their inventions contribute. Bluntly, there needs to be a new form of IP protection to deal with this reality -- this isn't to say I have any strong ideas of what this form of protection should be, just that these are the characteristics of the problem.

The same core issue is starting to become apparent in anti-trust law. These laws are inappropriate for tech firms because they don't scale like traditional businesses (how do you deal with an industry with super high HHI but massive barriers to entry and no easy way to split up existing competitors?), but that's a topic for another thread.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree with your analysis that copyright is too weak.

Copyright was helpful in an age of boxed products, but is now largely irrelevant in an age of SaaS.

But in an era of SaaS, trade secrets law seems like more than enough to defend a company's IP.

If you invent a new data storage system, as another comment suggests, you can protect it quite effectively with trade secrets if you start a data storage SaaS.

IANAL, but trade secrets law also seems to provide some protection against reverse engineering even if you ship a boxed product: [http://cdfirm.com/pitfalls-to-the-defense-of-reverse- enginee...](http://cdfirm.com/pitfalls-to-the-defense-of-reverse-engineering/) Though it's not iron clad and varies by jurisdiction.

Personally, I'm much more comfortable with trade secrets law being iron-clad, rather than patents existing.

<comment><USER4> Copyright and trade secret is too weak. How do you protect, e.g., video encoding techniques with copyright, where public disclosure is necessary for interoperability? Patents worked really well to create an interoperable world of content and players from MPEG-1 to today. Or the software algorithms sitting in your WiFi chipset. Someone has to pay for all this R&D, but for the technology to be interoperable it has to be disclosed.

Putting the technology in a pool and charging implementors for patent licenses is a good way to do that. In my opinion, it's better than depending on Google to bankroll all these things with their advertising money printing machine (VP9).

<comment><USER3> I don't think MPEG is a good argument for patents; I don't think we should be patenting protocols. The idea that you can't interop without a patent license seems like complete bullshit.

Interested parties will still do development on these technologies, even without patent rights. Everyone still needs to sell the next version of their product.

And honestly, I would trade protocol protections to get rid of all the bullshit patents which outnumber anything meaningful at least 1000:1.

<comment><USER4> MPEG isn't just a bit stream format. The magic is the encoding techniques. That is very hard to protect without patents, because the techniques are exposed in the bit stream formats. And ideally you want to have a reference implementation with source code so you can get lots of high quality interoperable implementations. Same thing with the algorithms underlying WiFi and LTE. Trade secrets don't help because you can't have interoperability without making it public. Copyright doesn't help. The software is the easy part. It's capital intensive to develop the algorithms.

Interested parties would develop these technologies, but they wouldn't make them open. Where are the alternative models for developing something like MPEG? There is the Google/VP9 model, which is to bankroll the R&D it with advertising dollars. Then there is the BBC/Dirac model with public funding paid for by a mandatory tax. To me those models are worse and less sustainable.

<comment><USER3> IMO industry leaders have pressure to reinvest their profits in R&D and put it in their new products, regardless of whether they can get patent protection for them or not.

I'm not an expert in codecs or wireless protocols, but afaik most wireless telephony standards are practically trade secrets, requiring payment of tens of thousands of dollars to even read the spec.

And I can't say I'm really a fan of the situation where people are forced to buy Qualcomm chips because they hold key LTE patents which they're managed to get people worldwide to agree to use.

But one thing I do know about standards is that they often trademark their name, and then require certification and payment for use; it should be relatively straight forward to setup industry bodies like this where you cannot use the trademark Bluetooth without paying into the body, which pays for R&D.

Sure, you have to get creative and you can't just sneak something you patented into a standard and land in a billion dollar monopoly, but frankly, I'm not really crying for Qualcomm and co.

[EDIT]: By way of analogy: we don't let newspapers patent facts, even if they are the first to report them. This makes it hard for news orgs to protect their content, and while it was easier for news orgs pre-internet, Reuters, AP, NYT, BuzzFeed are all doing well. There's no need to prop up every industry.

<comment><USER4> > IMO industry leaders have pressure to reinvest their profits in R&D and put > it in their new products, regardless of whether they can get patent > protection for them or not.

They do. What they don't have is any incentive to open up that R&D for competitors to use unless they have a way of monetizing it. Selling a patent license is better than many of the alternative such monetization models (e.g. Google's model of developing Android for free so it can slurp down all the data pushed through Android phones).

As to standards essential patents—-the whole point is that you don't have to buy the product from the same company that did the original R&D. You can buy someone else's chip, and the original technology developer still gets compensated with a royalty. This is a system that works really well in a whole host of areas everyone depends on. MPEG, WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth, DDRn, PCI-E, all of these ecosystems are mediated by patents. Companies spend a lot of money developing the technology, then implemented who generally don't have the expertise to develop this sort of technology themselves pay licenses to implement the standards essential patents. It works and it's way better than the alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stallman was right.

 _Why Patents Are Bad for Software_ , 1991:

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.m...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.mit.edu/issues.article)

<comment><USER6> as extreme as he is, he usually is right when it comes to IP, privacy, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Patents used to keep inventors from taking their secrets into their graves, but now it seems they only support some kind of cold war between big players that can afford to produce lots of bogus patents possibly usable for retaliation. Also, and this is a nice side effect, everybody who cannot afford to waste money on this is kept out of the game.

<comment><USER8> No. Trade secrets can be taken to your grave.

Patents are in the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8:

      The Congress shall have power ... To promote the Progress
      of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times
      to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
      respective Writings and Discoveries.

Rights to their Writings means copyright. Rights to their Discoveries means patent. Promote the Progress means incentivize.

<comment><USER9> Limited time is the critical point here. The way things are now, the times applicable are way too long. The other factor is that the way copyright and patents are implemented in law means that they are way too broad, way too broad.

In relation to patents, most patents issued are not justified. They do not promote progress in any form. Historically, progress based on a patent occurs after the patent expires. If you look at many of the patents issued, one will see that they are either obvious to someone skilled in the applicable arts or are a failure obvious to one skilled in the applicable arts.

In regards to copyrights, its purpose is to allow a short period of time for an author to make money if he/she can convince the paying community to do so, thereafter it is in the public domain for others to use as a basis for new works. The way it is today, the authors get little or nothing and the publishers (of whatever kind) get to control for extended periods of time (or the descendants who did nothing to create the work in the first place).

This mindset of sitting on your laurels is now progressing into other areas. Yet for the bulk of us, one we have created something and sell it that is the end of it for us.

Trade secret law ends up leading ot serious industrial espionage and often with the backing of the various agencies of ones government (when doing so is against foreign companies).

Today, little progress is being made (in relative terms) by copyright, patents and trade mark law. These areas are about slowing and controlling the dissemination of knowledge for the betterment of society.

The specific part of the US constitution means that Congress can make laws that abolish all copyright and patents as well as locking them down. This is a aspect that is rarely, if at all, acknowledged by those who strongly support copyright and patents.

I have had discussions with a supposed patent holder and challenged him to actually supply all the patent numbers of his supposed creative work. He wouldn't do so and in not doing so, completely diminished all of his arguments because his arguments depended on us taking his word for how creative and important his patents were.

<comment><USER8> _Limited time is the critical point here._ First to file and 20 years is the world standard.

 _They do not promote progress in any form._ Great, then the patentee has just wasted $10K on a pointless patent. Problem solved. If your patent is nothing you have nothing.

 _Congress can make laws that abolish all copyright and patents_ Yeah, Congress could do that. It would take a sharknado of Trumps to be that stupid. Could happen.

I've read a metric shit ton of patents and I have no idea what _all the patent numbers of his supposed creative work_ means.

<comment><USER9> First to file - this means that they are happy to allow patents where they are obvious. This undercuts any actual justification for the patent. Hence, making them not worthy of being patented.

If a patent doesn't promote progress then why allow it?

Patents are issued with a patent number, hence I can't see what your problem is in understanding what this means?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I also blame USPTO execution, IMO USPTO should not be shielded from lawsuits for assigning patents on obviously BS innovation like 'rectangle with rounded edges' etc. if it does not even meets the common sense a decade ago then there should be some liability of enforceability on uspto.

on a general note I feel like everything in US is translating into a money fight. from congress to law to carpool lanes, there seems to be only one goal left that matters in life, money. apologies for tangential rant!

<comment><USER11> On a conceptual level, USPTO is operating on the same procedures that was initial created more than 200 years ago. Practically every other form of government administrative operations has change, but the patent process has not.

Following 19th century government standard, USPTO is only really responsible to take in a patent request and check its own records to see if a patented idea is new or not, and then allow the skill government clerk who took the request to make a judgment based binary decision. The assumption in 19th century government process is that anything not in the records are not something for which the government can be held responsible to make a judgment on. Anything beyond this is assumed to be the courts and juries responsibility.

And in the past they did also have a few safeguards. A working model had to be added in order to make sure that function and copy of the idea is guarantied. The scope of patentable ideas was also narrowed down to a few areas for which a skilled government employee with a massive record could make a relative good guess if something was novel or not. Both was removed about 50 years ago, and a explosion of "new" patents has been requested ever since.

<comment><USER12> > And in the past they did also have a few safeguards. … Both was removed > about 50 years ago, and a explosion of "new" patents has been requested ever > since.

Patent model requirement was abolished in 1880, not 50 years ago:

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

(I don't know when the "scope of patentable ideas" was widened.)

<comment><USER11> That happened with the Patents Act 1953, where the phrase "or process" was added by Congress.

According a legal law professor this was also when they removed the requirement for a working model, but I suspect that this was actually the date when the process to deposit a model was removed. There is plenty of models being sent after 1880 to USPTO (according to museums who write about their collections), so clearly it didn't all stop 1880. Also according to internal policy documents from inside USPTO that dates to early 1960, "the only thing you need to bring us a working model of is anything you claim that reverses entropy", which again highlight a change in attitude during that time in history.

That said, you are right that the official date when the requirement ended was 1880.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always loved the end-run around the limits on patents: just say it is "on a computer" and suddenly it is not a patent on math. Never mind what sort of computer is covered.

<comment><USER14> The "on a computer" trick doesn't work post 2014. Alice v. CLS Bank killed it. Business method + a computer now gets you into an art unit with a sub 5% allowance rate. [http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/06/two-years-after- alice...](http://www.bilskiblog.com/blog/2016/06/two-years-after-alice-a- survey-of-the-impact-of-a-minor-case-part-2.html)

<comment><USER13> So what is the new trick? Software patents are still being granted and the nature of software (as a kind of math) has not fundamentally changed.

<comment><USER15> Why do you think software is more "a kind of math" than e.g. mechanical engineering?

<comment><USER13> Other than convenience, does it make a difference if you evaluate an algorithm by hand (e.g. with a pencil and paper) versus using a computer? I assume you have at least used the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division algorithms on paper at some point in your life -- the results are the same (up to human error) as they would be if you wrote a program that did the same operations. It does not matter how you compute something, all that matters is what you compute. Writing an algorithm on paper is just as good as writing it using Emacs in some programming language.

There is also the question of representations. How you represent an algorithm is not terribly important, and programmers routinely convert one representation of an algorithm to another (e.g. with a compiler). One representation available for any algorithm is a lambda expression, and there is not much room for arguing about whether or not lambda calculus is a field of math (it absolutely is, especially when you consider typed lambda calculus).

For mechanical engineering, simulating something on paper is not the same as building it, and the particular materials, shapes, etc. that you use in a mechanical system make a big difference. There is math involved in ME, but the math is not the final product. Yes, some ME work today is purely algorithmic, but that is just overloading the term "mechanical engineering" to cover a particular subset of CS that is of interest in ME.

<comment><USER8> Rewording that, other than convenience, does it make a difference if you manufacture a widget by hand or with a machine?

 _Utility classes. Utility patents, issued under 35 U.S.C. 101, protect any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof._

Software is a process. Now there are judicial exceptions:

 _laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas_

The business method patents getting nuked by _Alice_ [1] are abstract ideas tied to a computer with a shoestring. The software patents getting issued by _Enfish_ [2] "improve the functioning of the computer itself".

Stallman, as always, is too simplistic.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfish,_LLC_v._Microsoft_Corp).

<comment><USER13> "Software is a process"

Except that the "process" is poorly defined, as the representation of the software is not actually relevant. Changing the compiler flags will change the process; certainly changing the compiler will. Writing the same algorithm in a different language will change the process, in some cases dramatically (e.g. an imperative language versus a declarative language). Evaluating an algorithm by hand will involve a very different process than using a mechanical computer, which will be different from using an electronic computer.

An algorithm is an abstract idea, and it can be expressed or evaluated in infinitely many ways (this is well known). An algorithm can "emerge" from a system unintentionally, as an abstract consequence of a system (template metaprogramming in C++ is an example -- it was an unintended consequence of how templates are processed).

If software represents a "process," what exactly is "processed?" Different representations of an algorithm can have totally different input/output encodings, intermediate states, etc. It is the same algorithm regardless, certainly for the purposes of a software patent (otherwise the patent would be pointlessly narrow and very easy to evade).

Basically, the only meaningful way to patent software is to have a patent that covers infinitely many "processes," without regard to the specific intermediate steps of the "process" or even to the particular inputs and outputs (just their abstract "meaning"). In other words, what is patented is the _possibility_ of some particular computation -- which is exactly how software patents play out in practice. That is an abstract, mathematical idea, "tied" to "a computer" that is completely hypothetical (what CPU architecture? what hardware configuration? etc.).

<comment><USER8> > If software represents a "process," what exactly is "processed?"

Class 719:

 _A coherent sequence of steps undertaken by a program to manipulate data such as an internal or external data-transfer operation, handling an interrupt, or evaluation of a function._

[https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/glossary/gl...](https://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/glossary/glossary_alpha.htm#c719t17)

> Basically, the only meaningful way to patent software is to have a patent > that covers infinitely many "processes," ...

No. There are the judicial exceptions: law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea. Really, the software patents you don't like are covered by the abstract ideas exception.

Basically, I don't think I'll change your mind and that's ok. But I do want to know how you expect to incentivize software developers to take risks without protecting their work?

<comment><USER13> "A coherent sequence of steps undertaken by a program to manipulate data such as an internal or external data-transfer operation, handling an interrupt, or evaluation of a function."

Except that the _sequence_ itself is poorly defined, as it depends on the particular language used, the particular compiler and compiler flags used, how the software is run, etc. This is true for _all_ software; so if you want to patent software you would need to specify all the above, which would be almost pedantically narrow.

"Really, the software patents you don't like are covered by the abstract ideas exception."

What I stated is true for all software, so I guess I do not really understand what other software patents you are referring to. At most all I can see is a patent on some larger machine that happens to use some software e.g. in a microcontroller, but that does not seem like a "software patent" as most people understand the term.

"I do want to know how you expect to incentivize software developers to take risks without protecting their work?"

First of all, patents are one of the three ways developers typically "protect" their work. Copyrights and trade secrets are a much better fit for this domain.

Second, I cannot think of _any_ software innovations that would not have happened without software patents. In almost all cases the patents seem to just be after thoughts that some corporation or university insists on, without having much relevance to the willingness of innovators to try new things. Patents are completely irrelevant to open source software, and major breakthroughs tend to be announced in academic venues long before patents are granted.

Finally, in almost all cases I personally deal with (as a cryptographer), patents only _slow_ the pace of innovation and are actively harmful to our ability to actually deploy innovations. Just the other day I found out that a technique I have seen used in dozens of research systems was patented, and therefore _too risky_ to use in any real-world system -- the latest in a long line of such patents. Put simply, software patents _hamper_ our ability to innovate far more than encourage it; software patents have _always_ been a drag on crypto, going all the way back to the early patents on PKE and RSA.

<comment><USER8> I think Diffie Hellman Merkle key exchange was a brilliant idea and an awesome patent. I understand that the Brits had discovered it in secret but didn't have the compute power at the time. That actually didn't invalidate it; the interplay between trade secret and patents is not one sided either way.

Diffie Hellman Merkle was assigned to and prosecuted by Stanford as was Larry Page's PageRank patent. I do not think Stanford or other universities (non- practicing entitites really) would develop so much IP if they didn't get something substantial back.

Yes, it is the nature of the limited monopoly of patents to both impede and incent. It is the rare patent, Diffie Hellman Merkle key exchange was rare, that is truly amazingly novel. Most patents are incremental and society benefits from the increment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Patents are great in a vacuum, but long term in a system of capitalism, they too tend to coalesce under ownership of the wealthiest.

Edit: grammar

Edit 2: word usage

<comment><USER17> For future reference: _coalesce_ does not work this way as a word.

<comment><USER16> Good catch, fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That is fine. Countries where there are no software patents (for example: Russia or China) will become the leaders in AI research.

<comment><USER8> China has software patents. They even have business method patents.

[https://www.law360.com/articles/924934/a-new-era-for- softwar...](https://www.law360.com/articles/924934/a-new-era-for-software- patents-in-china)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the problems is that patent applicants in the U.S. have no obligation to submit a competent prior-art search; it's the job of the patent examiner to do a prior-art search. Every time the USPTO issues a patent, in effect it's making national economic policy, yet someone seeking a patent need only disclose whatever prior art of which he or she (and/or the patent attorney) happens to be aware. That's like saying that a Ph.D student doesn't need to do a literature search for her dissertation because some junior faculty member will do the search — and then if that junior faculty member judges the dissertation to be acceptable (possibly in consultation with a senior faculty member), then the student gets her degree. The flaws in that arrangement should be obvious, and yet that's how U.S. patents are granted.

</comment><comment><USER20> This article mentions a stupid patent, but it does not support its claim that stupid patents are dragging down AI and machine learning. To make that argument, you would have to show that stupid machine learning patents are being litigated.

<comment><USER21> A patent can stifle work without being litigated. See the recent kerfuffle with react and graphQL. The simple matter of a patent that might exist was enough for people to change tooling.

Patents for AI might very well cool business R&D into AI.

<comment><USER20> It doesn't work that way in this case. No ML researcher goes out of their way to look for ML patents because the penalty for knowingly infringing is much worse than the penalty for accidentally infringing. If nobody knows these patents exist, and nobody is litigating them, then they can't be "dragging down" research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a remainder, if you find EFF's work valuable, you can donate at [https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

</comment><comment><USER23> Funny, there must be at least 10 years of "prior art" on any kind of machine learning patent application these days. Guess the patent officers are as good as they have ever been.

<comment><USER24> The legal meaning of "prior art" has been changed by recent amazing legal decisions. It means "awfully damn famous" now.

<comment><USER23> interesting. any source you could share?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not dragging down entire AI and machine learning, but keeping Americans AI powess down.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Stupid patents" is a pleonasm.

Never have I seen a compelling argument for patents.

<comment><USER24> We certainly don't have proof, but there's a helluva historical correlation between patent enforcement (or existence) and countries with strong economic growth, particularly in technology sectors. That has to be referred to as evidence - since evidence which cannot be misleading, i.e. "incontrovertible evidence" is actually proof.

Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his new kind of steam engine.

Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through treaties would defeat.)

This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies (which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them (sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal with this situation. I wish I knew just how.

<comment><USER27> Funny, i would have figured it was the other way round.

The nations that ignore patents, and perhaps also copyright, are the ones that bloom the fastest.

Best i recall the steam engine saw rapid improvements only after the Watts patent(s) ran out.

And in a different example, Smith and Wesson sat on refinements for the Colt revolver for 20 years.

<comment><USER28> Developing economies with outside technologies they can copy should do better by ignoring patents, while economies at the bleeding edge should encourage more invention and disclosure through having them respected.

Didn't the US ignore patents when it was England that was the superpower? I wasn't there, but:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes-u...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130228/01324622146/yes- us-industrial-revolution-was-built-piracy-fraud.shtml)

If you can get all the advantages of well-documented and reduced-to-practice inventions disclosed publicly without much disadvantage from your own citizens failing to disclose their own inventions, then ignoring patents seems like a great idea.

This isn't to say that I think the US patent system actually works, I think it's all a terrifically counterproductive mess 95% of the time. But there's historical evidence that whether your country benefits from patent adherence depends on how advanced your economy is relative to others.

Once China starts generating lots of good new inventions, now that they're bleeding-edge-adjacent, they're going to see increasing value in enforcing IP rights. It will protect their industry from competing with infringing imports from other countries with lower manufacturing costs, same as here, which is a bigger deal as their domestic consumption increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Remember that time the patent system saved us from Skynet!

</comment><comment><USER30> 3d printers and fidget spinners.

</comment><comment><USER31> This can be broadened: stupid patents are dragging down the US economy.

<comment><USER32> And maybe human progress in general.

<comment><USER33> How do you protect and encourage innovation without patents?

<comment><USER23> False logic. It's not like the absence of patents has prevented innovation in the course of History. Imagine how poor the world would have been if a patent on "fire" was ever granted to some kind of proto-human organization.

<comment><USER34> Twenty years and it's done. No big deal. But the patent on teepee fires, log cabin fires, elm fires, oak fires, pine fires that start faster, maple fires, fire for cooking chicken, fire for cooking turkey, fire for smoking meats, fire for signaling, fire for signaling with morse code, fire for warmth, Uber but for fire, charcoal, fire for witches, and firing employees—those would drown us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The anti-patent hate group at the EFF is at it again. If they think a patent is "obvious", let them file a post-grant objection.

<comment><USER36> Would you be so kind as to disclose any special interest that you have in the matter of patents?

Your comment was fairly strong so I'm curious if you have much skin in the game.

<comment><USER35> I don't make any secret of it. See my web site, "www.animats.com". Although it's rather dated at this point.

<comment><USER36> So if we grant you're one of the patent good guys - are you prepared to defend the whole show? What do you think of the overall quality of patents granted - when compared to the cost of defending against them? Does it seem like a reasonable and proportionate system to you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Just as the US Patent Office problematically gave out patents in the past > for computers doing simple things... the office seems prepared to give out > patents on "using machine learning in obvious and expected ways." Companies > like Google and Microsoft are seeking to acquire, and in some cases have > acquired, patents on "fundamental machine-learning techniques," Nazer > writes.

I find myself in a weird situation. Patents are a drag, and they're misused and wasteful, etc. etc. But it feels like the author here isn't acknowledging or appreciating what patents are intended for or good for.

We can't say patents are bad because there are obvious uses of a technology. Patents protect the people who develop the technology, not the competition who wants to use it for free after it works.

The issuing of a patent doesn't depend on how obvious the use is, it depends on how obvious the actual solution is. And deep convolutional neural nets trained using backprop or adversarial networks, these things are not obvious. They are even counter-obvious, for 30 years people knew about them and claimed they wouldn't work.

Again, I know and agree that bad/stupid patents are being issued, and that trolls who don't develop tech are siphoning money, and all that.

But when someone invents something that works, the patent system is _supposed_ to apply a drag force on everyone else using it, that's it's intended function. And sometimes, maybe not that often these days, but sometimes it actually works as intended and deserving people get to see their work come to financial fruition.

<comment><USER38> I used to feel that way. Unfortunately we've reached the point where patents have so damaged and corrupted our industry that none of us can write any software free of patents. If someone wants to annihilate you with a patent suit, theoretically they can. Unless you have a patent portfolio.

They are the ultimate anti-individual-programmer. Which is another way of saying they're a threat to hacker culture.

You can argue that hacker culture had its day in the sun, and that the world should move forward. But it's important to be clear to yourself that the culture that built the internet and so many of the tools we now enjoy for free is being thrown under the bus.

E.g. see Mike Pall's statement on LuaJIT: [http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00089.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00089.html)

 _I cannot guarantee LuaJIT to be free of third-party IP however. In fact nobody can. Writing software has become a minefield and any moderately complex piece of software is probably (unknowingly to the author) encumbered by hundreds of dubious patents. This especially applies to compilers._

Are you sure you want to live in a world where people can't legally write and release LuaJIT for free without its users facing legal ramifications? Same deal with machine learning. What will the LuaJIT of machine learning be?

<comment><USER37> > E.g. see Mike Pall's statement on LuaJIT

I am playing devil's advocate here, but Mike's statement doesn't amount to evidence. I understand he's afraid, and he's saying he thinks it's now too onerous to do due diligence. And I agree -- he's right. OTOH, it's not normal to guarantee that a piece of software is free from patent liability. Nobody could even if they wanted to, and even if the patent system was healthy. Company lawyers have told me not to look for patent infringement when I write code, they say just write algorithms that you believe nobody else invented, and "they" (competition) will let us know via the legal system if they see a claim.

> Are you sure you want to live in a world where people can't legally write > and release LuaJIT for free without its users facing legal ramifications? > Same deal with machine learning. What will the LuaJIT of machine learning > be?

I don't want to live in that world. But is there not a flip side from the inventors point of view? If I invented something very useful, and very non- obvious, and say just for purposes of example, that Mike Pall put that idea in LuaJIT, released it for free, and my commercial competition then downloaded LuaJIT and put me out of business, I would probably be some combination of sad, mad, and poor.

<comment><USER38> _I don 't want to live in that world. But is there not a flip side from the inventors point of view?_

I would 100% agree with you if the resources to litigate were distributed evenly. Unfortunately they're not.

If you were sad, mad, and poor, you wouldn't be able to anything, because "poor" would disqualify you. No one would even represent you pro bono, probably.

The only people that meaningfully benefit from patents are corporations. If you don't buy that argument, let me know, because it's pretty important that I persuade you. :) Of course, that tends to be the least effective way to persuade someone, but still.

See Stallman's writing posted upthread ([http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.m...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/lpf/Links/prep.ai.mit.edu/issues.article)):

 _In September 1990, users of the popular XyWrite word processing program got a disturbing letter in the mail from XyQuest, Inc., the program 's publisher:

"In June of 1987, we introduced an automatic correction and abbreviation expansion feature in XyWrite III Plus. Unbeknownst to us, a patent application for a related capability had been filed in 1984 and was subsequently granted in 1988. The company holding the patent contacted us in late 1989 and apprised us of the existence of their patent.

We have decided to modify XyWrite III Plus so that it cannot be construed as infringing. The newest version of XyWrite III Plus (3.56) incorporates two significant changes that address this issue: You will no longer be able to automatically correct common spelling errors by pressing the space bar after the misspelled word. In addition, to expand abbreviations stored in your personal dictionary, you will have to press control-R or another designated hot key."_

That's the kind of world we live in thanks to patents. Is that healthy?

My mind is open too: If that's a good thing by you, I'd love to hear the reasoning.

<comment><USER37> > That's the kind of world we live in thanks to patents. Is that healthy?

I agree, it's not healthy.

And I agree completely about the resources angle, if I'm alone, I'm SOL. If I'm in a huge company then I can fight. This is definitely the core failing of the patent system that it's biased toward wealth, and being abused by the wealthy.

> My mind is open too: If that's a good thing by you, I'd love to hear the > reasoning.

I really appreciate you saying it that way. I don't think it's a good thing, I just appreciate the intent. And I don't think it fails 100% of the time, I think it works sometimes and fails a lot. I think getting rid of software patents has a chance of improving everything, but I'm not 100% certain. There might be unintended consequences. Like, I guess I'd put it this way: it's not very likely that the rich & resourceful will stop winning, no matter what happens, right?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any advice on meeting a co-founder in London? - <AUTHOR> I recently started working on my B2B SaaS startup full-time and it's just me. I have a demo product which I am showing potential clients with the aim of having something production ready within two months.
I used to work in investments and I know ~50 potential clients I can contact directly to show the product to. Three firms have offered to take a look (of one offered to take the beta for a test drive). Two of my former managers in London and the US are onboard as advisors and will give my warm intros to potential clients as well
Prior to my time in investments, I used to be a software engineer so I learnt React and am using Graphcool to build my MVP.
I have savings for more than a year, I know clients and I can make the product myself. So given that, I am in two minds about getting a co-founder. On one hand, I know there's lots of work to but on the other I feel like I could potentially go it alone. Maybe an issue will be bandwidth between sales and building the product.
I have or had potential co-founders who were interested but they are in the US and I just moved back to London after 4 years away. I am really looking for someone London-based. Most of my friends here have kids or mortgages...or just like having a job....
I know a few HNW people who could potentially invest for $100k-$300k but I'm not really thinking about that now since I'm focused on building the product and getting product market fit.
Any advice on whether or not I should get a co-founder? If I were to look for a co-founder in London what's the best way to go around it? I've been away 4 years! <comment><USER2> What would you want the cofounder to be doing for the product?

<comment><AUTHOR> If they were more sales focused, I would do the product/tech. If there were more of a CTO, I would do product/sales/business dev</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If not Zoom. What to use for large group video with breakout rooms? - <AUTHOR> So Zoom is getting lots of valid privacy heat. One big issue is that it's currently the best tool for large facilitated meetings (think 50+ ppl) where the breakout room is the killer feature here and you can auto break people into smaller group chats as part of running a large group session.
The use case is public video meetups, so using say Microsoft Teams would be excessive.
Anything else out there that's up for the challenge?
(The other killer feature they have is URL based session invites that just makes it much easier to get people on a call) <comment><USER2> BlueJeans [https://www.bluejeans.com/](https://www.bluejeans.com/) Check it out, Better than Zoom and everything else out there

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks great! $10-$15/month hosted Saas (like Zoom).

\- Shareable URL & calendar integration

\- Breakout rooms

"Create up-to-20 small group working sessions as part of an ongoing meeting where participants can be assigned randomly or designated manually."

If we're talking hosted SAAS as a zoom competitor, this looks to be the most serious contender.

Anyone able to talk to video quality/user experience from actual use of this product (especially vs zoom)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/)

I have used this successfully.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok this looks like best yet. Open source and also available as a free hosted service via their .org.

Share URL. Talk of quality video.

Only feature I couldn't find was breakout rooms (key thing needed)

<comment><USER3> Copy all. Yes it is missing the breakout rooms. That is indeed a really excellent feature on Zoom.

<comment><AUTHOR> New feature request for Breakout rooms on their github.

You can give it some love here: [https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi- meet/issues/5550](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/5550)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Twenty Three is a decent option. Breakout rooms, different URL-based invites for both participants and viewers (participants share the video feed and viewers simply view, but also have a chat option).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. Had a quick look..

At $199/month I think it's too steep to be a drop in replacement. That said it seems a full webinar & marketing platform so maybe worth it for some.

Site: [https://www.twentythree.net/](https://www.twentythree.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Janus gateway + gstreamer is one way to handle this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Had a quick look. Looks open source but not so clear for people how to self host as other options here.

Can you point to a setup guide and importantly how breakout rooms are supported? (I quickly got lost, admittedly only having a quick search around)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> BigBlueButton

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok this looks good.

Open-source web conferencing system.

Focussed around "students" and "teachers".

But seems to have the needed features; including ability to unlock a session and share a URL for access.

Intro video on host features here: [https://bigbluebutton.org/teachers/](https://bigbluebutton.org/teachers/)

As it's open source I think this means it needs to be self hosted. Not sure on usual expect video experience as you're relying on own smaller infrastructure but do get back full privacy I imagine.

<comment><USER7> BigBlueButton or BBB is pretty good. We use it for our clients (edtech). If you need any advice on hosting, happy to give some guidance. They have a install script that does everything in one go for you. You just need a decent server with Ubuntu 16.04 (specifically that version) installed on it. Min. requirements for server are 2 core CPU and 8 GB RAM. We use at least 4 cores though and 16 GB per server and that can handle 50-100 users concurrently give or take depending on what you are doing. Completely HTML5 and webrtc based so nothing to install. Runs like a charm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great Thankyou. I'll also add they list breakout rooms as a key feature. How's that to use as a teacher/facilitator?

<comment><USER7> It works great. You can select a few users from the existing room to create the breakout room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google Meet handles our 100+ person persenations no sweat.

<comment><USER9> It's a good option. All my university classes are holded in Google Meet

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok obv it's google so likely no video issues. Shareable meeting URLs.

No breakout rooms though.

This lecturer uses a bit of a work around making rooms & urls ahead of their session, but this won't scale to 50 people and being able to auto split people into equal groups.

Lecturer video: [https://youtu.be/_MeCJgSh-U0](https://youtu.be/_MeCJgSh-U0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google hangouts / meet</comment>


There are two kinds of student: those with ability, and those who need lectures. - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.org.mensa/msg/3c5c1b3a88f4cabe?dmode=source&output=gplain

<comment><USER2> Well I'm not sure if I have any ability but I definitely didn't spend a lot of time on the campus. In the age of the internet when all the lecture notes and resources are available online going to lectures was sort of pointless. Instead, I got a full time job as a programmer while finishing my degree. I still did fine on the exams. Those extra 2 years of experience on graduation compared to the 0 years of my mates at uni was quite a big help.

</comment><comment><USER3> So it's true. It's common knowledge, among people who look into it, that universities are utterly perverse and quite doomed.

<comment><USER4> The original idea of university wasn't some form of training camp for a profession, it was the idea of coming together to do scientific research on a given topic. I think it would stand them quite well to get back to the roots.

<comment><USER5> Actually, they were originally started as legal institutions designed to give autonomy to masters and students from state and church interference in the training process. They were more like guilds than places to do scientific research.

The shift of focus toward science happened some time after the original universities were set up. Besides which, most of the important research done before Newton into what we would today think of as science happened outside of universities, which were (and for the most part still are, at least when it comes to science) _very_ conservative centers of thought.

But I agree with the idea that universities serve a better function when they focus less on commercial interests and professional training. When universities are commercially driven, they become conservative and narrow and, I think, do more harm than good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If all the teacher is doing is repeating the book, then sure, a lecture is just a terrible way of republishing the book.

A real lecturer, however, should be able to tailor the lesson to the level of the students, fill in holes in the assumed knowledge, and bring their personal experience to the the material.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are people who need lectures? I found out around grade 9 that all a lecture is, is the teacher reading out loud what's in a book,

I do not know what needs to be changed... actually I do. During this final year of Criminal Law, the "lectures" were not lectures, it was a sort of discussion about principles, scenarios, questions. I quite loved it, I was however puzzled that some people felt threatened by this "change" and outspokenly opposed it. They felt scared that they would not have traditional lectures, someone with a powerpoint saying what is already in the book. Seriously, these people should not be in uni.

My tort lectures were also interesting as the lecturer is a solicitor and had just started lecturing so he would give real world examples and less of traditional rehashing.

Compare this with psychology. The lectures were in a massive lecture theatre, about 100 to 200 people in. I asked a question once, are psychopaths born or made, the lecturer could not hear it, so I had to repeat myself 15 times, until the whole students in the lecture room started repeating it with me. Having this kind of experience puts you well off because you are supposed to make the question and move the spot light back to the lecturer straight away, not have all eyes on yourself and hold the room for long.

At least that was an event, something to remember and the lecturer appreciated my question, the rest of the year however was a rehashing of the book chapters in a powerpoint with a dummy and high tech "stick". To be honest, if I want the content in audio, I'll just read it out loud myself.

Those people who need lectures should not be in university, this will allow universities to have the resources to actually teach through inquisitive inquiry, not make their students sit there listening to what you already just read for two hours, which starts to become torture after 30 mins.

I find it idiotic - to use the Greek word - that although the method of teaching in Oxbridge is considered to be the best, the other universities do not copy them. Neither of those two universities has lectures, the theme is rather tutoring, which is afterall why one would go to university, to challenge his intellect, not to have some person say aloud what you just read.

<comment><USER5> Yes, its not lectures which are the problem. You just don't need lectures for technical courses, you need books and practice and someone competent to discuss difficulties with.

For non-technical courses, lectures aren't (or shouldn't be) simply rehashing of the content of books. The best (non-technical) lectures I have been to drew on readings done but consisted of drawing links between them, exposing subtle points, guided discussion and exposition of unpublished research by the lecturer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the helpful way of looking at lectures is to see them as a medium amongst many. When is a lecture / presentation the right choice to get the point across?

</comment><comment><USER8> Having to have stuff explained to you does not make you stupid.

This entire thesis is crap.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the easiest way to make a custom Captive Portal? - <AUTHOR> You know those things where your iPhone latches onto a wifi network, and is instantly redirected to some ip address or domain on the network? How can that be done on a regular home router such as Belkin, Netgear, etc?
From what I understand, you need custom firmware eg OpenWRT and then customize something like Wifidog on top of it. Otherwise your only option is to use some crappy-looking portal that lets you customize text and photos?
I would like to do one thing: simply redirect all HTTP requests without a given cookie to a certain URL hosted by a machine on the local network. Is this possible? What is the easiest way with regular routers?
If I can do this, I can build a local-area social network, I can take attendance very easily and have people automatically check in simply via their devices trying to connect to the wifi, etc.
But how to do it? <comment><USER2> Try looking at this: [http://coova.github.io/CoovaChilli/](http://coova.github.io/CoovaChilli/)

(Full disclosure, I haven't used it for several years. I do a bit of this but all using serious Cisco and Huawei gear these days.)

One thing that's likely to bite you, iOS and Android both have a "captive portal mini browser" which pops up when the os detects a good wifi connection but no external internet access (and a thing that looks like a login form). This has limited javascript capability and limited access to cookies.</comment>


Towards a Standard Parser Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.python.org/community/sigs/retired/parser-sig/towards-standard/

<comment><USER2> Just wondering: I can't find a date for those tests.. (testing was done on a 600 MHz Ultrasparc and most sources are from the 90s?).

Also i am wondering why pyparsing[1] isn't even mentioned in the "other parsers" section. Or boost::spirit[2].

      [1] http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/
      [2] http://boost-spirit.com/home/

edit: Ok, i see. It's not about a standard module for parsing in python but they tried to find a good solution for parsing XML in PyXML. It recommends YAPPS as standard parser generator for python in the end. I guess one would have to redo this _today_ to come up with results on a modern machine with currently available libraries.

<comment><USER3> The latest citations is from 2001. It quotes SPARK and not its intellectual descendant PLY. It doesn't mention PyParsing. It's from the Parser SIG, which is "retired."

Yes, this is an old document.

<comment><USER2> Also i've seen that the YAPPS-developer stopped development in 2003..</comment></comment></comment>


Finding people to launch a startup - <AUTHOR> Throwaway account due to my current employment.
I have a strong tech background (who doesn't here?) and I have successfully created (and sold) a startup in the past.
When I created my first startup I self funded it and did it by myself. I believe I would be more successful in launching a new one if I had a partner with a business/marketing/finance background.
I know many people like me (engineers) but I don't know anybody that could co-found a startup with me.
I have looked at websites like cofounderslab but I looks like its filled with people like me or sales people with an idea but no tech background (not a good fit).
Any advice and how to find somebody on the east cost, reliable, dedicated and with enough tech experience to found a company?
Cheers! <comment><USER2> Building out a network to do just that. Not live yet. Would you be interested in being a beta user for our campaign? Please go to crowdraising.co

</comment><comment><USER3> what kind of startup are you looking to launch? my background is business/finance

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe we can talk privately? What's a good way to contact you?

<comment><USER3> email:email@example.com</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Design a government from scratch, how would it look? - <AUTHOR>

The framework for our government was designed in the 1700's, and I can't help but think today's economic problems are a result of the historical tradition of Statism. The founding fathers implemented a government as best they could using information available at the time. It's now 2011 and  we've experienced a technological revolution. If we were to design a new government using today's technology, how would it be different?
This question is both exciting and depressing. On one hand there is so much potential to improve  the way humans interact and direct resources. On the other hand, it doesn't matter what solution is found, because governments exist outside any  market. Steve Jobs could have designed the most brilliant Constitution of his  time, but it wouldn't matter because following a new constitution would still be considered illegal.
Given I'm a dreamer, why not imagine. The weakest component of a fighter jet is the human pilot. Now we have jets without human operators. I believe the weakest component of our government is also the human. Humans experience emotions, are susceptible to bribes, and aren't consistently reliable. Why not use computers to cut out the middle man, drive down costs, and increase satisfaction? Imagine how algorithms can be used to implement real-time, direct democracy. Imagine how multi-factor authentication can be used to ensure voter authenticity. Laws can be applied to geographical zones, while zones are dynamically created based on voter attributes and commonalities. Computers have restore points, so should governments. If the State gets our of control, a roll-back function could be implemented. Fact is there is infinite room for improvement.
If government is a service it should be a commodity. The best and brightest should be competing to write the most effective government. It's unfortunate we're content with our one party system. Citizens believe in the notion of Republicans and Democrats, while the only option is war and welfare. <comment><USER2> Some groundwork: why do we have governments? To allow us to live in peace with people we've never met before, who we could otherwise kill, rape, and steal from, without consequences. It's a giant machine to enforce the golden rule, "treat others how you'd like to be treated". Of course, governments do a lot of extra things, but they're just that, extra.

The socio-political landscape has changed a lot since the 1700's. I think the biggest difference now is that nations are much less homogeneous than they used to be. In america in the 1700's there was a dominant faith that provided a set of common standards, e.g. that murder, homosexuality, and theft were all wrong. This is no longer the case, and people have become polarized around many different issues. Technology allows us to become convinced of the rightness of our own cause, through association with like-minded individuals.

Another significant change is that people are much more likely to move around the country, and have friends and family in different states and countries. Using geography as the basis for government divisions (counties, states, nations) is still a good idea, but is becoming less and less so every day.

The conventional solution to the first problem is to give more legislative power to the states, so that, for example, people in the bible belt can have more conservative laws and people in California can legalize pot. __This isn't a long term solution any more __, because of the second problem.

So we have widely-differing views on what should and shouldn't be legal, but we can't just tailor certain laws to certain geographical areas.

Given these factors, I make the following recommendations:

* Remove the states, and combine the Senate and House of Representatives into one. Allow cities and counties to control any and all issues that are linked to specific locations.

* Stop legislating morality. Enforcing the Truth (by any definition) isn't part of the government's core purpose. I personally believe that abortion is murder (although in a certain subset of cases it is justified), but this is an issue that comes down to personal conviction. It is therefore out of scope for the government. Theft, on the other hand, should remain illegal because it is demonstratively bad for social stability.

* All laws should be subject to rigorous logical and scientific analysis. For example, if a particular trade policy cannot be proven to have a net positive impact on the happiness of people, it should not pass.

* This would involve setting up a fourth branch of government, which is responsible for collating and evaluating scientific data, and performing the analysis of proposed laws. This branch, like the judicial branch, would have the power to veto laws. I envision that for every law, a formal scientific proof will be made available to the public. This will provide a degree of public accountability.

We now have a system in which bad laws (hopefully) won't get passed the scientific analysis, so the negative impacts of populism (rule by the popular) is decreased. Now, notice that the format of congress was decided when we didn't have instant communication. Therefore:

* Take away the congressmen, and make parties (rather than people) the fundamental unit. Discussions between parties should take place online, or at least be aggregated online. Copies of the discussions should also be made available at all public libraries.

* Allow people to choose a party to represent them, or create their own. Parties will have voting power proportional to their number of supporters (measured in votes, not verbal declarations), and a party must have more than 0.5% of the votes before it gets into congress.

* Parties must have a declared high-level policy on every issue, and they will be bound by these policies. This is to prevent people from setting up specific-issue parties; people must learn to support a governance paradigm that is bigger than any specific issue. Note that this does not stop parties from negotiating about details.

* Elections at the moment are a sham, so instead have rolling elections. After a person votes for a party, they cannot change their vote for 3 months + (some random number less than 14) days. Note that the random number is different to each person, and changes each time the person changes their vote. Within a few years every day will be equally an election day. The purpose of letting people only vote every 3 months is, again, so that people realize that governance is bigger than their one pet issue.

* Any party in congress can propose a law, as can any group of citizens larger than 1% of the population. It passes into law when it (or a later revision) has the support of 50% of the votes in congress, as well as the support of the fourth branch of government.

Finally, because we're a global community now, no law will be passed if it steps on the rights of people from other countries, as given in a extended Universal Declaration of Rights. Declarations of war will have to be proven to be beneficial to everyone in the world, not just citizens of the USA. This should hopefully prevent another Vietnam or Iraq.

<comment><USER3> As a though exercise, how would you extend this to work across national boundaries without triggering the usual arguments against world government?

<comment><USER2> I did a quick google search for "the usual arguments", and as far as I can see it boils down to three objections: loss of control, governments becoming out- of-touch with their populations, and having a single point of failure.

In regards to the single point of failure, I've got no real answer except that governments have scaled well so far. However, this answer doesn't deal with the fact that so far we've always had other governments to compare ourselves to, which keeps the population in a healthy state of mild envy.

Loss of control is a big issue, and not one that's going to go away any time soon. To take the extreme case, there is basically zero chance that any country currently under sharia law will adopt this form of government, because it gives human science the right to veto Mohammad's commands. Likewise, any attempt to join Canada and the USA will suffer from dissidents who don't like to give up their national character.

It is inevitable that large governments will be less attentive to the needs of individual communities, but not to the degree that it is often expected. The simple fact that 200 million + people can have one president indicates that social stability is more important that actually being able to make an impact on the people who rule the country.

I don't really feel like I've given a very good answer to your question. Perhaps the only route to world government is to start with a small country, demonstrate that it works better than the current forms of democracy, and aggressively support national revolutions during times of world turmoil. Because the fourth branch of government is based on independently verifiable science, it wouldn't be too difficult to set up an international confederation of government science. The social laws of different countries would tend to converge simply because everyone would be working from the same data and the same conclusions, and hopefully after fifty years or so the international confederation would collude to vote through policies of non-aggression in their respective countries.

So, yeah, the linchpin in the system - the property that allows it to work across national borders - is that government policies would be able to be verified and tested using internationally-standard science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as there's ways that computing could be (and is unevenly) used to increase retail-level government, there are good reasons to continue to include human beings in the governing process.

A few notions to look into:

* Condorcet voting systems * Mechanism Design Theory * Parliamentary systems

Finally, consider strongly the problem of the influence of capital on any system. In the US, there's the issue of campaign finance, for instance. But if you were to program a government, the problem would be worse: you'd only have to buy off the development team once, rather than bribing members of government repeatedly over time.

<comment><USER3> You could make the development process completely transparent, with input from a wide variety of people, checks and balances etc. and not begin implementing it without plenty of debate, examination etc. The bias is that those who are most interested in the process and/or the most vocal could end up being those with the most influence. But there's no reason not to at least start examining the problem from many angles and for as many people as possible to start trying to pick holes in it.

<comment><USER4> Believe it or not, that's the premise of a republican democracy. There's just more prose and less code involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a government made of computers and algorithms has the same issue as A.I. What costs do you speak of? What sort of satisfaction?

As far as the "best and brightest", it sounds like you're spewing elitism. What should dictate best or brightest? IQ? That's not democracy. Democracy is a representative sampling of everyone's opinion and while not everyone has a high IQ they still deserve to get represented. What you speak of is the 21st century Electoral College.

Beneath your argument, I see your point that we all have a few core values that we want served by the government. Agreed. We might be better served by these zones based on voter attributes. I think if more power is handed to the states, our current government can achieve what you're looking for (cutting out middle man, drive down costs, and increase satisfaction). K well back to dynamics now...

<comment><USER6> What makes you think that Democracy is the best system? I think the reason why the 1st world nations are successful is not due to Democracy but due to capitalism.

I realize that the two go hand in hand (capitalism/free market requires a hands off/light regulatory approach), something that so far only a Democracy has been able to deliver (although it will be interesting to see how the Chinese model evolves).

<comment><USER7> I would say first world nations are economically successful because their economies became diverse, i.e. a heavily distributed, highly concurrent and parallel system of systems.

Given our current circumstances, it seems capitalism - i.e the central idea that a capitalist works for profit, etc - is now appearing to create economies which are now centralized around people/institutions which engage in nothing moving capital from one place to another, one industry to another, without the attendant in-betweens of the businessmen. And there's goes the concurrent property.

And I wouldn't knock democracy much. You might hate American politics now, but the Chinese version isn't better by any much.

<comment><USER6> I agree that engaging in the movement of capital doesn't build any real value, however this applies to only certain sectors of the economy- if you look at places like Silicon Valley, we are creating value through the start up scene, and this is real value because it creates jobs and new ecosystems that fuel further growth.

I think you will begin seeing a trend away from the "no value creation" capitalism of the past 20 years- we're seeing people becoming more interested in physical inventions (see the popularity of the Make Fest and workshop clubs) and a rebirth of US industry (opportunities will open up as China and other "low-cost" centers see wage growth and people see other openings in fields such as shoe production, just to name one.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting question. While at University we had an exercise in my Comparative Politics class (I majored in Int'l Relations) in which we were provide with a description of a fictional country and asked to write a constitution that we felt would best unify the country and address all the political needs of the various demographics and social groups within the country.

What we learned from the experience is that it's the social structure of the country, its history and traditions, that are the driving factor behind how we, as a class, wrote the constitution.

In our case, the fictional country had various social groups of different sizes in tribal areas. Each member of the group was assigned to one of the groups based on the group's size.

We developed a constitution quite similar to the U.S. constitution with a federal system, though I believe we used a proportional representation system rather than a winner-takes-all voting system like the U.S. and U.K. use.

In short, I don't think that modern technology would have a significant impact on how a constitution would be written because, as you said, it's all driven by human emotion, ambition, morality, and ethics. While certain aspects of the implementation of a government may be different if modern technology were applied consistently, the overall structure, design, and operation of government would be still end up being a compromise of the various ideologies of the citizens (assuming a democracy, of course).

</comment><comment><USER3> Fork this democracy on Github?

Something similar:

<https://github.com/rbjarnason/open-active-democracy>

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_democracy#Electronic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_democracy#Electronic_direct_democracy)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_e-democracy>

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Imagine how algorithms can be used to implement real-time, direct democracy.

It's like you have _never_ read a single dystopian sci-fi classic. What you're describing sounds like GOogle writ large.

Count me out! (of course opt-out is not allowed in a system like this)

<comment><USER10> Can you recommend some of the classics to read?

In particular about real-time direct democracy.

<comment><USER3> Not completely pertinent to where I suspect your line of questioning is going, but Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an interesting take on computer aided government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd want the reset button to be hit every 100 years.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, existing politics has analogies for all the programming-inspired ideas that come up here. To wit: fomenting revolution. If you want to tear it all down and start from scratch, rise up and overturn the standing government by force of arms.

Too hard? They have all the good weapons? Then you don't care enough, and that's the check on reseting the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Algorithmic real-time, direct democracy doesn't remove human emotion from the equation. On the contrary, it makes it easy for key decisions to be made an emotive reaction to yellow journalism without those making the decision having any accountability or any penalty for failing to weight up the consequences.

</comment><comment><USER13> We just need a reliable way of keeping a Good King in power at all times. Nothing could be more efficient or ideal.

The Immortal Good King will be an intelligent computer. I, for one, shall welcome our new silicon overlord.

<comment><USER5> All hail the Good King.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to see Skynet posting on HN! How about a government where all citizens get to vote on all bills in real time by texting/tweeting/facebook "liking" yay or nay?

<comment><USER10> Very good... as long as my programs count your votes :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > If the State gets our of control, a roll-back function could be implemented

But who decides when it gets out of control?</comment>


The Shock of Robert Frank's "The Americans" - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-shock-of-robert-franks-the-americans <comment><USER2> This does look like a worthwhile book. Until someone invents a time machine for traveling to the past, collections like this are the next best thing.

<comment><USER3> Photographers have a POV, a narrative (not in the bad sense), but they have a story they want to tell.

A better way for this kind if thing is to look at people's shoebox collections. There is no ulterior narrative and it's more personal to each producer. They're not iconic, they don't have the imprimatur of a known great, but they are an honest look at times and places.

<comment><USER4> > narrative (not in the bad sense)

What is the "bad sense"?

Surely personal photo collections also have a narrative, albeit one focused on the life of the photographer?

<comment><USER3> Of course people will have their interests' POV, but it's a vernacular or even naive.

When a photographer goes on a project which may end up as a book or exhibit in a gallery, it has no comparison to the vernacular POV. They may have statements, but typically have a predefined purpose and also will curate heavily. In a book like Frank's you may see maybe 1% of the pictures taken during that project, if even that.

The bad sense of narrative is beside telling a story it has a known and purposeful bias.

<comment><USER5> In my youth I had a job converting old 8mm and 16mm home movies to video. About 25% were of people at Disneyland on a sunny day. In general they were completely biased towards bright happy moments, and I realized that old photos aren't a very good way to tell what peoples lives were like. In my family photos, there's a sense that people took pictures of things they were proud of --someone in a military uniform, a new car, etc.

<comment><USER3> No doubt, but that's what's important to people. Most aren't going to Disney, and when they take pictures it's not : "I want to showcase a particular narrative." Most just want to keep memories of times _they_ feel are representative and important. Not what a photographer thinks is or should be important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's an excellent documentary about him, "Don't Blink."

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4779036/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4779036/)</comment>


Microsoft gears up to mass produce large-screen touch displays - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-gears-up-to-mass-produce-large-screen-touch-displays-7000033257/ <comment><USER2> Using a combo of two of those 55" PP displays at a MSFT meeting the other day was _amazing_. Drawing with the pens and being able to touch-interact with the screens as giant whiteboards, then click a button and emailing a pdf of the whole thing to everyone, while having PPT and Lync video conference on the other was simply awesome. I _need_ that whiteboard capability. It's so much less 'janky' than smart boards and stuff (mostly because of the pixel density, the multi-interaction (pen is different than finger, etc.), and no projection required. It just feels natural/right - everybody loved it.

<comment><USER3> How much of that is about the hardware vs. the software? How much of the positive experience would be preserved if you ran the same software on a Surface Pro 3 and just cast the screen to a large monitor?

<comment><USER4> I feel allowing anyone on the meeting sharing the document and being allowed to draw on it from their seats would be awesome.

Where I work, we use Google Docs to conduct meetings and on-the-spot polls with up to 30 people (more than that tends to block the document) on different geographic locations.

<comment><USER2> That sounds neat, but I'm a huge fan of pointing and moving around like a crazy person in front of the whiteboard :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the price is right, there could be a whole ecosystem using these big displays.

Imagine every family owning one where they can easily access kids activity schedules, pin lists of groceries, track chores, to do litst that could sync with every family member's phone (for those old enough),...

This could completely replace the fridge magnets and the pin board, and it could be an excellent way for younger kids to interact with educational content.

It could also server as a communication point for younger kids who are too young to have their own phone/tablet, be able to call each-others under supervision, ...

<comment><USER6> I love technology. I totally want what you just described; but if you don't have a "family whiteboard" get one now. Even if its just the low-tech kind with markers. I can't tell you how awesome it is to watch my (gradeschool age) kids sketch their ideas after being brought up with ours.

<comment><USER7> I have a friend who painted an entire wall in his house with blackboard paint, to be used with chalk. It's actually rather gorgeous. The kid isn't old enough yet to draw on it, but we certainly had a lot of fun with it :)

<comment><USER8> The parents of my girlfriend just let her draw on the walls when she was young (<4).

After the years it got hidden behind furniture, because she was so small back then and couldn't draw >1m.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aside from some niche markets such as airport displays and kiosks, I think this is a bad bet on Microsoft's overall strategy. I don't see a demand for these systems anytime soon. Disclaimer: today I was in a meeting where the projector had a touch screen and we only used it twice in the meeting. Although I was 1200 miles away from the meeting room and thought it was cool, it really was a gimmick when it came down to it. We never used it. I can almost see how this went down in a VP meeting at Microsoft "We'll make bigger brighter display and corner the market!" Unless someone can point out a real problem they are solving here, I'm betting in two years we will see Microsoft abandon the platform and all of the developers who invested their time into this flawed vision.

<comment><USER10> Something that's a standing desk/tilted drafting desk form factor combined with good palm/elbow/forearm recognition would immediately address the "gorilla arm" problem with such interfaces. Combine that with Reactable-style tool objects, and input from cameras and/or a Kinect, primarily in order to make the system "smarter" about how to interpret touch, and I could see some really revolutionary interfaces for applications that are amenable to a data- flow style model.

(Applications where you have boxes connected by pipes/arrows to other boxes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see large touchscreens being suited for anything other than whiteboard replacements and maybe exercise games - the amount of effort needed to interact with one that's much larger than a typical tablet (~12") becomes tiring quite quickly. In comparison, traversing a large screen with a mouse requires not much more than a small wrist movement.

<comment><USER12> Tables only made sense if they were used collaboratively, which is why I think that is why early Classic Surface focused on that.

We have tables you can write on with a marker, I don't see why, if cheap enough, adding a digital layer would be unwelcome (but not yet, of course).

Using a mouse with a very large screen is a recipe for serious neck strain. Sure, you can move the cursor quickly, but your head still has to track it. I know, I've tried!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I've wanted for the last 35 years is my actual desktop to be a display.

<comment><USER14> Yes! Although it would have to be tilted then, the far end of a typical 90cm wide desk is hard to reach, and probably just as hard to read if it would be a screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I personally have been itching for an affordable touchscreen that I could do much with. I have needed a touchscreen to augment my work space for a while now.

So here's a counterexample.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was actually wishing we had something like this for our lego league team (team 2600 ftw!) It would be great for that sort of language. I just don't see hanging a $7500 display in my garage.

However, if MSFT/PPI would like to donate one, we would surely find a place for them on our team shirt!

</comment><comment><USER17> Touch display? Nah, don't need it. But it would be nice if someone made a cheap netbook with a display of similar resolution that tablets have.

<comment><USER18> I thought netbooks were dead. Is it about the price?

<comment><USER4> More likely they died unnatural deaths.

Netbooks became a very price-conscious segment that cannibalized sales from higher-end ultra-thin notebooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How cool would this be for controlling a synthesizer/sequencer? Totally killer for arranging music visually.

<comment><USER20> That's exactly what I'd like to do with it (although since I have a lot of hardware, I would also like Microsoft to fix its appalling Windows MIDI drivers, for God's sake). I don't see this being that affordable in the short term but I would absolutely love to work with something like this for both audio and video.

I think there'll be plenty of demand if they can bring it in at a competitive price and it's sufficiently responsive. Of course it will be in niche markets at first but I have no problem thinking of use cases. My day job is recording and editing sound for film and when your timeline runs to a couple of hours with maybe 40 active tracks (and that's on a small project) then even the best control surface has trouble keeping up, you keep having to switch channels or pages to deal with all the virtualized mixer controls, plugins and whatnot - not to mention that that amount of dedicated hardware costs a fortune. A table-sized work surface with a good haptic grammar would make that jobs _vastly_ easier. I imagine the same is true for anyone working in VFX with its similarly elaborate pipelines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looking cool in movies and in corporate and university lobbies is not enough. Microsoft really needs to cut the shit and start focusing on producing a product that's actually desirable to a wide market--something they've only gotten worse at in the last few years, outside of their programming languages.

<comment><USER22> (Disclaimer, msft employee) The surface is legitimately useful as a complete replacement for paper & pen. I never even touched looseleaf during my last semester at university. Plus the pro 3 has a large enough screen to make it useful for coding.

<comment><USER15> I am interested to hear how you utilize the surface for a pen and paper replacement. I want something portable that works for a notebook, but I don't see it replacing a laptop for me. Care to expand?

<comment><USER22> Surface pen + OneNote is pretty magical. It's the first thing I show people when they ask to try my surface, and they're always blown away. So basically I just write on there instead of using paper & pen. As an aside, I also like using the pen to draw diagrams for presentations, instead of using Visio or whatever. People pay more attention to the hand-drawn look, I find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Url changed from [http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/03/microsoft-will-mass- produce...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/03/microsoft-will-mass-produce-its- big-ass-touchscreens/), which points to this.</comment>


Ask HN: Are early adopters rich? - <AUTHOR> The Lex Column in this weekend's Financial Time ran a small snippet about US Cable Companies, namely about how the phenomenon of "cord-cutters" is making investors uneasy (Comcast reports to have lost 119,000 in the 3Q alone).
One quote, in particular, struck me - "There are a few problems with the consumer-as-surgeon thesis, though. For a start, it relies on the early adopters of technology, who are generally rich..."
A proud cord-cutter since 2006, I am certainly not rich. And most of the people I know without cable aren't either; they are young, technologically savvy or forced-into-thrift via the recession.
Do you think early adopters are "rich"? <comment><USER2> I would personally say the opposite is true for me. When I was in college (and poor, living paycheck to paycheck), I would try every new thing. Mp3? What's that? Let me download some. This thing has some kinks? No problem, I'll figure it out and post my findings on a newsgroup.

But now, as my income has gone up and my free time has gone down, I find myself doing less early adopting, and waiting a bit longer till all the college kids work out the kinks for me. Sure, I'm still an early adopter in the grand scheme of things (I dropped cable a few years ago for torrents, for example), but I'm definitely picking things up later in their lifespans than I used to.

<comment><USER3> A big part of this is that the value of your time has gone up. The poor college kids have little or no value attached to their time. As you start getting paid more, being an early adopter has a higher opportunity cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have anything better than my own anecdotal impressions, but it seems to me that early adopters tend to be smart, rather than rich. That said, most people I've known who were smart and not rich were also young. Most people I've known who were smart and responsible eventually started to accumulate money. So, even if an early adopter isn't rich now, chances are they will get there in time.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great observation. From my own experience I would agree- smart & young sometimes requires thrift; smart & thrifty can be ageless; thrifty and young sometimes requires making smart choices.

And, eventually, the product of smart choices and thrift by someone young can make them rich.

That said, no- I don't know a single early adopter who is independently wealthy (which fits my definition of 'rich').

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't had cable since the early 90s. I got frustrated at how annoying it was to set up service with them when I'd be paying $1000+ a year to them. So I gave up trying to make it easy for them to take my money and just never signed up up when I moved. I don't miss it, and I wish all the companies involved doom and gloom.

<comment><USER6> Same here; I think cable companies' complacency in customer service issues isn't receiving due consideration when discussing this "cord-cutting" trend.

When I purchased my house in 2008, I proceeded to call Comcast (intending to sign up for basic cable + Internet), set my iPhone on speakerphone, and paint the walls of my new rooms. After three nights of 30-45 minute waits with no answer, I gave up and purchased AT&T DSL.

<comment><USER7> Comcast's site mentioned self-installation, so I went out and bought a DOCSIS 3 modem that was on their supported list, plugged it in, and it told me via HTTP that it had a good signal. Then when I tried to sign up they explained to me that self-installation was not permitted for new users, and rather than just light it up, I would have to wait two weeks and stay home from work so some flunky could show up and "install" a simple device which _I already knew to be working_. Pissed me off so much I went with DSL, which was live via self-install a few days later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Despite what you might hear if you make more than 60k USD a year you are fairly well off.

For the US take your salary divide by 50k and say "I make X times the average household income in the USA."

<comment><USER9> That may make you middle class, or even lower upper middle class if you want to stretch it, but i doubt you could be called rich on that salary.

<comment><USER2> It depends where you live. In San Francisco, 60K is just scarping by. In Topeka, you're doing pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the time I was living in Philadelphia. A year prior I had been living in San Fran or a touch under 70k and barely making it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In _general_ , I would say that "early adopters" are not necessarily rich so much as flush with disposable income.

This is actually a weird case, because usually being an early adopter requires a financial outlay to purchase some product that provides some sort of superior service of some kind. In this case, we see people with the early adopter mindset but trying to save money who are instead giving up some convenient service (at least, cable with DVR is convenient) for a cheaper alternative that is now merely "good enough". Because I've done it, and while I'm slowly putting the pieces back together as the world catches up with me, I have definitely sacrificed some things. I'm not getting superior service here, I'm cobbling together bits and pieces.

Still, we are getting there. Sports was a big hole but I just watched $MY_COLLEGE_TEAM's last game of the year online in HD over the Internet. That's progress vs. even just three months ago. Cord cutting is getting easier and easier.

</comment><comment><USER11> No. But they have fun!

An acquaintance bought one of the first Compaq computers. He paid $4000 for it. He kept it in his office and would tell people: "When that computer came out, had I instead bought $4000 of stock in Compaq, I would be much wealthier today. Instead I bought the computer, learned to program it and did OK."

</comment><comment><USER9> Not really, but I would imagine they are generally male, with a college degree and extreme tech proficiency.

<comment><AUTHOR> For what it's worth, I'm a female former English major.

(Who also happens to be learning how to code.)

<comment><USER9> Well I was right on one count.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there is some correlation between early adopters and how rich they are.

I would definitely buy more early products if I was rich just because I have the financial backing to withstand the risk that an early product has. E.g. I'm waiting to buy the iPad now in hopes of a better iPad version coming out soon. But if money was no issue, I would buy the iPad now and the new version when it comes out.

But of course, there are some people that would be early adopters despite not being rich. It's just that the statistics of how rich early adopters are would be skewed by the newly rich being more willing to take more risk and spend their money on untried products.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think early adopters are necessarily rich. I think they set aside a portion of their income for early technology exploration in the same way some might for vacations or clothes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think cord-cutters qualify as early adopters anymore. With Hulu's paid offering and Netflix, cable is pretty much useless. At this point people who still have cable are mostly hidebound or sports aficionados.

Well, that and they have too many functional analog TVs. That's the only reason I haven't switched my parents off is that we'd need Boxee boxes or similar, and they haven't quite come down in price to the point where I'd rather not just buy a laptop and pretend it's a TV.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sorting out the wealthy vs. non-wealthy is difficult. Way too many factors to consider. It's probably safer to say that early adopters are more willing to spend their money on technology/gadgets/service but it's not directly tied to income. If you can put aside maybe $2-3K/year you can be a prolific early adopter these days. It's confusing though in the context of cord-cutters because they're doing it to _save_ money. Cable TV is just way too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER16> Most college students I know these days who live in their own place (About 65% of the student population around here) don't have cable. This is because most are apt enough at using the Internet, that they can find all shows for free. Some use Hulu and the like, while others torrent, but maybe one in ten actually pay for cable.

</comment><comment><USER17> You say are not rich, but you even though you like tech. you might not be an early adoptor either.

If you didn't have an iPhone or twitter account by 2007 or don't have accounts on lots of now failed startups from the day they got techcrunched, you're not an early adoptor.

I know I'm not particularly an early adoptor, most of my users are.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Early adopters of ideas is not the same as early adopters of gadgets & services

2\. That said, some new gadgets & services are stand-ins for others which are more expensive or less accessible

3\. Except for #1 and #2, Yes, early adopters are male white privilege

</comment><comment><USER19> Cable free for the last year or so. I just could not keep paying 100$/mo+ on principal. Now it's just internet and netflix, obviously.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my experience. Even though I have the means now, the cost is not proportional to the service benefit for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not really. But they surely want to save some money on their Cable.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think it largely depends on the value proposition of the service.

</comment><comment><USER22> you're wrong, they all rich! rich! richer than astronauts!!!</comment>