How Safe Is Tesla Autopilot? - <AUTHOR> https://betterembsw.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-safe-is-tesla-autopilot.html <comment><USER2> The 94 million mile mean is for all types of driving, in all types of situations, all types of people, in all types of cars.

First and foremost, highway driving is much much much safer than regular driving. There are no intersections (which cause 40% of all accidents), there is high viability, slow turns, no pedestrians, and a super simple traffic pattern. Autopilot is only doing the "easy" driving.

Second, that 94 million miles figure includes motorcycle deaths. Motorcycles have 34X more fatalities per mile driven. That juices the number of fatalities per mile.

Demographics matter too. Telsa owners are disproportionately older than average (not a lot of teens driving Teslas). They are more educated and richer. These people tend to be safer behind the wheel on average.

Telsa's also have a lot of safety features that should reduce fatalities to way below median anyway.

If you want to test if Autopilot is safer you have to test it against a control group that is the same but just didn't use Autopilot.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree with most of these points, but the demographics one is actually a mixed bag. Fatalities plotted against driver age follow a U-shaped curve [1], with younger and older drivers being the most likely to cause a fatality. The U is higher on the younger driver side of the curve, but this is likely due in part to the fact that teens have less money and therefore drive cheaper/less safe cars.

Because Tesla owners probably skew older, we might expect to see slightly more fatalities with Teslas than with other vehicles. The male/female fatality rates [2] are also relevant, and I would guess that Teslas are driven more by men than women.

(My estimation of Tesla demographics is based on my commute down Sand Hill road, so not scientific but probably the highest-traffic area for Teslas.)

Lastly, I haven't seen data that wealthier people are safer drivers than poorer people. Source? It's believable, but I have looked in the past for data on this and not seen this particular conclusion.

1: [https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2012OlderD...](https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2012OlderDriverRisk.pdf)

2: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-vs-women-who-are-safer- drive...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-vs-women-who-are-safer-drivers/)

<comment><USER4> We don't know if we have accurate fatality numbers for Teslas though. IIRC, the first fatality was unreported for a couple months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a superficial analysis. Tesla's MTBF has been discussed here before. For one thing, Tesla's auto-driving is only expected to work on freeway-type highways, and fatality rates for those are lower than for all driving.

Tesla's "autopilot" now has a second fatality, in China.[1] There's dash cam video. "When it was approaching the road sweeper, the car didn't put on the brake or avoid it," a police officer said in the CCTV report. "Instead, it crashed right into it." Take a look at the photo. It's possible that the big rotating brush behind the street sweeper didn't produce a radar return. Remember, Tesla's radar is only at bumper height. Teslas are radar-blind at windshield height. The rear profile of the street sweeper truck, which is high off the ground, may not have been recognized as a vehicle by MobileEye, especially since the street sweeper is throwing up dust. Video: [2]

So far, there seem to be at least two Tesla autopilot defects that can kill people:

#1 is a high obstacle. That was the trailer crash fatality. It's also the auto-parking failure where the vehicle didn't stop for a truck with overhanging ladders out the rear.[4] Teslas are radar-blind at windshield height, and if it doesn't look like a car or truck rear end, the Mobileye vision system won't see it.

#2 is a left side obstacle partially blocking a lane. There are two videos of crashes in this situation.[2][3] The "how big is the open space" vs the "how wide is the vehicle" analysis may be defective.

#1 is the result of an under-sensored system with a huge blind spot. #2 may be a software bug.

Looking forward to the NTSB report. Nothing new from them yet.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/business/fatal-tesla- crash...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/business/fatal-tesla-crash-in- china-involved-autopilot-government-tv-says.html?_r=0) [2] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3790176/Shocking- das...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3790176/Shocking-dashcam- footage-shows-Tesla-Autopilot-crash-killed-Chinese-driver-futuristic-electric- car-smashed-parked-lorry.html) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus) [4] [http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car- technology/news/a29...](http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car- technology/news/a29133/tesla-self-driving-crash-summon-autonomous/)

<comment><USER6> Tesla contests that the China fatality was due to autopilot (they say it may not have been active). But in actuality, it doesn't even matter that the sweeper was throwing dust - autopilot straight up can't detect and avoid stationary objects in some situations, regardless of ground clearance. Here's an example of it hitting a normal van stopped in the left lane:

[https://electrek.co/2016/05/26/tesla-model-s-crash- autopilot...](https://electrek.co/2016/05/26/tesla-model-s-crash-autopilot- video/)

<comment><USER5> Tesla didn't get telemetry data from the vehicle, so they have no idea what happened yet. (Does Tesla get telemetry data from cars in China at all? Does that get through the Great Firewall? Do Tesla cars in China report to a server in China or back to the US, or what?)

<comment><USER5> If you watch the video, the car is tracking the lane very accurately. Either the driver is working very hard to stay precisely in lane while not watching for obstructions, or the autopilot system is driving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good background on statistics and sample size. Also relevant is the fact that Teslas are (1) heavier than the average car, (2) newer than the average car in America, and (3) more expensive than the average car. All of these factors are not only correlates of—but actually cause—better vehicle safety outcomes. For more detailed numbers, see [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/14/why- tesla-s...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/14/why-tesla-s-cars- and-autopilot-aren-t-as-safe-as-elon-musk-claims.html) (disclaimer: I am one of the co-authors).

<comment><USER7> > One Tesla owner describes this Catch-22, after being told that a crash was > her fault because she turned off Autopilot by hitting the brakes: "So if you > don't brake, it's your fault because you weren't paying attention," she told > The Wall Street Journal. "And if you do brake, it's your fault because you > were driving."

If this is true, this is a fairly damning statement about the reliability of autopilot - it calls any statistical claims Tesla provides into question.

<comment> J-dawg The "Catch-22" doesn't make a lot of sense, really.

In either case you _are_ driving. Until we legally recognise autopilots as being fully in control of the car, the driver is _always_ driving.

Her statement does make me wonder how relaxing it would really be to drive a car with autopilot, though. If I can't sit back and trust it 100%, I think I'd rather just be fully engaged in driving the car.

<comment><USER3> You're not alone—humans are not very good at constantly monitoring systems, which is essentially what are asked to do in the early days of "autopilot": [http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2016/0827/NASA- thi...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2016/0827/NASA-thinks-Tesla- Autopilot-is-a-bad-idea)

<comment> J-dawg Thanks for the link, really interesting. It does seem that there's a huge amount to overcome as autopilot moves from driver aid to fully autonomous.

I'm starting to think the ideal compromise (for now) is a car where I'm in control, but with lots of systems that cut in when I make a mistake, rather than the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article on the statistical nuance of their claims. But even before you get that far, you also need to address the fact that national highway statistic they are comparing to is highly misleading. Like gnicholas mentioned, the age, price, geographical distribution, weather conditions in which autopilot runs, and typical owner characteristics of a Tesla, all differ sharply from your average car which rides in the highway. And, I'd suspect if you zeroed in on proper comparables, all of these factors would drive the average highway safety way up.

So not only is their claim yet statistically unproven, they are also setting themselves an artificially low bar.

<comment><USER9> > all of these factors would drive the average highway safety way up.

Up? Why not down? More data could easily show the opposite.

<comment><USER8> What I was trying to get at is that the benchmark that Tesla is using as comparison (1 fatality/94 million highway miles) takes into account all highway vehicles. Tesla is a high-end, expensive, luxury vehicle, and the autopilot also does not function in certain conditions (like heavy rain). It would seem to me that if you just took into account other luxury vehicles, and excluded really adverse driving conditions, that the 94 million mile number would probably be higher, and I think that would be a fairer comparison for Tesla to use if they want to claim the car is faster than human driving.

Are you trying to say that you think taking these factors into account would actually make comparables comparitively less safe?

<comment><USER9> gnicholas@ linked to this article that explains the factors: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/14/why- tesla-s...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/14/why-tesla-s-cars- and-autopilot-aren-t-as-safe-as-elon-musk-claims.html)

From what I understand, if you limit the stat to a) cars made in the last 2 years and b) luxury cars and c) the conditions where Autopilot is mostly driven, the fatalities per million miles would be lower. i.e 94 million is too low of a number

<comment><USER8> Right, that's what I was saying! I guess we just misread each other, but this is absolutely right - their comparison should use a higher denominator than 94 million!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this point from the post deserves emphasis, for consideration in future discussions:

> If Tesla makes a "major" change to software, pretty much all bets are off as > to whether the new software will be better or worse in practice unless a > safety critical assurance methodology (e.g., ISO 26262) has been used. (In > fact, one can argue that _any_ change invalidates previous test data, but > that is a fine point beyond what I want to cover here.) Tesla says they're > making a dramatic switch to radar as a primary sensor with this version. > That sounds like it could be a major change. It would be no surprise if this > software version resets the clock to zero miles of experience in terms of > software field reliability both for better and for worse.

I am admittedly a broken record on this point, but Tesla moves very fast and very nimble on a system that is under design controls. It would be very educational to learn about their development process and how it maps to ISO 26262.

</comment><comment><USER11> The naming of Autopilot is unfortunate, because it is not one... but that name may give drivers an inclination to trust it more than they should.

<comment><USER12> Am I missing something with this argument? It's consistently made on these anti-Tesla threads here and on Reddit, but from my understanding an aircraft's autopilot is actually dumber than Tesla's. You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it. Some will land in optimal conditions, but they're unable to taxi. Also a great deal of plane crashes are due to "handoff" issues.

So it seems to me that Tesla's auto-pilot is aptly named.

<comment><USER8> The problem with the naming has nothing to do with the technical capabilities, but an understanding of how that will impact human-machine interaction. You are absolutely right that aircraft autopilot is a lot "dumber" in a sense. But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations.

By naming the system autopilot, Tesla has also created that same expectation with their customers. Not only that, but it has at best turned a blind eye to reports and videos and stories of customers who willfully take their hands of the wheel/sit in the back seat/etc. and at worst encouraged an erroneous public perception of how the autopilot system should be used.

The issues you cited in handoffs with airplanes are far more complicated when it comes to cars, where decisions need necessarily to be taken in a much shorter period of time. But all of that seems really downplayed by Tesla marketing, which instead chooses to aggressively market just how close the system is to full driving autonomy, instead of more like a gentle aid to monotonous highway driving.

The disconnect between their official documentation and their marketing is immense. That is what is potentially dangerous.

<comment><USER13> "But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations."

What do you mean by this? There are many autopilots which won't take over all flight operations. Some only handle a single control axis, or two. More sophisticated ones can indeed handle everything, but that's not the only kind out there.

If people _think_ that's what all autopilots do, then the name is still a problem, but that's a bit different.

<comment><USER14> An autopilot in newer light GA aircraft, like Bendix/King KAP-140, is able to hold/climb/descend to an altitude, and maintain heading based on the GPS input, so it does handle hands-on flight operations leaving the pilot to maintain awareness and program the GPS.

<comment><USER13> Looks like the KAP-140 comes in a single-axis version too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The naming of Autopilot was likely originated by Tesla's marketing department.

Just like the blog post this article critiques was likely written by content marketers, or even more likely, by a collaboration between top-level marketing and engineering officers. The success of the Autopilot feature is a critical aspect of Tesla's business and all communications about it certainly rises to the C-suite.

Edit: the success of self-driving cars in 2016 is more about reputational and liability risk than it is about engineering effort. A self-driving car rollout effort by any company is being driven (no pun intended) by legal and marketing, not engineering.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article is a good summary of Statistics 101.

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR for every piece written about this, it's still safer than a human driving alone, period. When used properly, it's vastly safer, and when used improperly, it's probably still safer but only just...the thing to consider is the kind of driver who's selfish and dumb enough to misuse this kind of thing is a high risk driver without it and would probably still be worse.

<comment><USER18> Not disagreeing, but is there any hard, independent third-party research to back up this claim? As an engineer, I tend to lean this way. As a father of two, I want to see some numbers to back up statements like "still safer than a human driving alone, period."

<comment><USER19> Hard to find current statistics. This [1] seems pretty believable. Not sure if it's "good" or not, but there you go. It's interesting that, just eyeballing it, mass seems to be the dominating factor. The crown vic is discontinued, but was fairly inexpensive, looks like it was originally $25-30,000. Compared to a C Class, $30-35,000, which had more fatalities.

Of course, this is all 5 years old, so maybe there are better safety features available now.

There are a couple of things that may or may not be believable. Maybe it's possible for one or a few drivers to greatly improve the global traffic system [2]. I believe it, but i can't find a real study that proves it. I do think a handful of self driving cars can smooth out those compression waves, just by driving sanely.

Finally, purely anecdotally, a friend of mine is a truck driver. We get to catch up over dinner every few months. He sees people doing crazy things multiple times a day. He sees the helicopter ambulances on a weekly basis, passing by wrecks in either direction. His assertion, if people would just stay calm and consistent, a lot fewer people would die. It's either someone not paying attention, or being super aggressive.

I, also, would like to see a study. I would bet quite a bit of money, that a highway with _only_ autopilot drivers would have zero wrecks.

I guess the real question is, does sensor failure (device failure, snow, things like that) dominate wrecks? or is it interaction with unpredictable (aggressive, inattentive) drivers?

[1] (pdf) [http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_e...](http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_emb.pdf)

[2] [http://trafficwaves.org/](http://trafficwaves.org/)</comment></comment></comment>


The Curious Case of the Hangzhou House? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/houshanren/hangzhou_house_knowledge <comment><AUTHOR> Noticed this trending today, with twice as many stars as the next project in the list...</comment>


A fascinating and huge Russian earthflow [video] - mh-cx http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2015/04/17/russian-earthflow-1/

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy doing the filming talks on the phone and says that "road to Talda" is being blocked by landslide. There is Bol'shaya Talda and Malaya Talda not too far from Novokuznetsk Kemerovskaya obl. That's in Siberia and does have a good amount of mining there.

That said, it could be just seasonal melting gone out of control.

<comment><USER2> There appears to be some sort of activity happening on the mountain in the background during certain shots ... I couldn't decide whether it was mining or timbering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Watching those high-tension lines (and complete towers) being pulled along by the earth and snow would make me get out of the way much faster!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a shaky handheld video, postprocessed using very aggressive content- morphing stabilization measures that have recently become available (like Adobe Premiere's Warp Stabilizer). These are normally not a huge issue, but in this particular case, the actual background of the scene is moving all around and deforming in various ways. Figuring out how much of the effect is cinematic and how much is real is visually confusing.

Spectacular result, even so.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is a pretty amazing video. It reminded me of videos of lava flows in Hawaii (but without the glow and sparks).

Interesting that the high tension power lines were dragged along so the section has been stable prior long enough for those lines to be erected.

The other thing that I found fascinating is where and what is the new material that is displacing this material? You effectively have a horizontal flow at the camera position but what is pushing it from the back to move? The side of the hill coming down? Gases coming up? And while the "article" suggested snow melt I could see that lubricating the material but pushing it?

Glad I'm not responsible for keeping that road open, that seems like its going to be closed for a few weeks while they dig it out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I happened to be listening to Electric Wizard while I watched this, would recommend!

</comment><comment><USER6> A consequence of climate change induced permafrost melt? The post suggests it might be more a result of mining activity combined with typical thawing behaviour for the area?

<comment><USER7> > There is no information about the landslide, except that it occurred on 1st > April 2015 at Zarechnyi.

> Given that this would be the thawing season, the conditions would be right > for this type of landslide.

I wouldn't jump to those questions.

<comment><USER8> Dont jump to conclusions, of course. But dont jump to questions? A strange turn of phrase. Siberia is certainly warming. There is a huge amount of evidence for this. [http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming- locations/northe...](http://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming- locations/northeastern-siberia.html) Questioning whether this warming is causing more examples and more extreme examples of this sort of phenomenon is certainly reasonable. (Maybe its not, I dont know, but to a rational person it begs the question) There is already growing evidence for warming in Siberia causing the release of methane resulting in craters. [http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0076-how- gl...](http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0076-how-global- warming-could-turn-siberia-into-a-giant-crater-time-bomb/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Soviet Russia, the earth moves you!

<comment><USER10> pretty sure that "earth moves you" is not a localized phenomenon

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > There is no information about the landslide, except that it occurred on _1st > April 2015_ at Zarechnyi.

Doesn't look very real. I think it's a fake.

</comment><comment><USER12> At 44 seconds in, there's a very strange linear camera bounce. I don't know how that can happen naturally. There's something fishy about this video.

<comment><USER13> I think it is software stabilized</comment></comment>


Google TV Jailbreak Opens the Doors to Developers, Hulu - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_tv_jailbreak_opens_the_doors_to_developers.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d2bf84d247db0a8%2C0 <comment><AUTHOR> Hackers + Google TV units = cool ass shit, IMHO.</comment>


Show HN: Understanding Relationships - <AUTHOR> http://www.understandingrelationships.com.au/ Hello HackerNews, I have something a little different to show here. I'm a PhD candidate in Melbourne, Australia and I'm working on a research project investigating how couples differ in the way they prefer to deal with relationship problems. My goal is to recruit as many participants as possible to complete an online questionnaire. For doing so, each participant will be sent a free report and relationship profile that compares their preferences and behaviours to groups of other similar people.
I'm bringing this to HackerNews to see if I could get some feedback on my project website and pitch. Initially I used Google AdWords to direct traffic to the site, then used conversion tracking + questionnaire data to give me an insight into what elements were lacking. But now I'm at a point where some richer feedback would be helpful.
Most psychological research projects are quite obtuse so I've made an effort to pitch everything in a straight-forward, plain speaking kind of way. These kinds of projects are also typically quite poorly organised, offer no real value to participants and therefore depend on begging for support. My ideal objective here is to construct a website/project that can stand on the strength of the value it offers people.
So, I'm interested in: 1. your overall impressions of the site and questionnaire 2. whether you would choose to participate based on these impressions
Your feedback is much appreciated. Please post any questions you may have about this project.
Thanks for your time.
http://www.understandingrelationships.com.au/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HackerNews, I have something a little different to show here. I'm a PhD candidate in Melbourne, Australia and I'm working on a research project investigating how couples differ in the way they prefer to deal with relationship problems. My goal is to recruit as many participants as possible to complete an online questionnaire. For doing so, each participant will be sent a free report and relationship profile that compares their preferences and behaviours to groups of other similar people.

I'm bringing this to HackerNews to see if I could get some feedback on my project website and pitch. Initially I used Google AdWords to direct traffic to the site, then used conversion tracking + questionnaire data to give me an insight into what elements were lacking. But now I'm at a point where some richer feedback would be helpful.

Most psychological research projects are quite obtuse so I've made an effort to pitch everything in a straight-forward, plain speaking kind of way. These kinds of projects are also typically quite poorly organised, offer no real value to participants and therefore depend on begging for support. My ideal objective here is to construct a website/project that can stand on the strength of the value it offers people.

So, I'm interested in: 1\. your overall impressions of the site and questionnaire 2\. whether you would choose to participate based on these impressions

Your feedback is much appreciated. Please post any questions you may have about this project.

Thanks for your time.</comment>


Ask HN: Any javascript game libraries? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to develop a browser based 2D game with top view. I've been trying out javascript game libraries.
I found a jquery plugin called gameQuery but doesn't have adequate docs and the only tutorial is lengthy and doesn't explain much.
There was an old library called gamelib but that's obsolete. jsGameSoup isn't in-development.
I've started writing a tile based javascript game engine already (no canvas or svg). Wondering is there are already some that exist. <comment><USER2> You state that you're building a tile based game without canvas/svg already, but is it a requirement to not use either canvas or svg?

If a canvas-based library is acceptable, I recommend Akihabara: <http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/>

<comment><AUTHOR> No it's not a requirement that I use canvas or svg. But does svg have javascript functions to make elements drawn interactive, like keyboard movements etc? (under the assumption that svg/canvas is one way. like only draw and not refer to the elements and edit props)

Teamonkey and Akihabara. Thanks for the links.

CakeJS and Akihabara are both good enough for me. Also, CakeJS's Google Code page says that the author is looking for a maintainer.

<http://github.com/kesiev/akihabara>

Somehow, these days I feel like if an opensource project is on Github it seems to be active and the maintainer responsible enough. Don't know why I have this feeling, maybe it's just easier to look at the last commit date or fork it or just find another forker who's been working on it actively.

And if anyone's interested, I'm using the graphics from [http://www.lostgarden.com/search/label/free%20game%20graphic...](http://www.lostgarden.com/search/label/free%20game%20graphics) to prototype the game. This guy has some cool graphics to make prototypes look neat :)

P.S: Just tried Akihabara's demo game Legend of Sadness here: <http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/demo/game-tlol.html> and it's super awesome. Suits my needs.

<comment><USER3> > But does svg have javascript functions to make elements drawn interactive, > like keyboard movements etc? (under the assumption that svg/canvas is one > way. like only draw and not refer to the elements and edit props)

Not sure about svg, but you're right that canvas doesn't support that sort of thing natively. It's one of the main things canvas-based game engines encapsulate, though. While the canvas loses all your higher-level object information once you write it (it's just a bunch of pixels), the engines keep track of object locations separately, and then map clicks on canvas (x,y) coordinates to the objects that were clicked on, which can then trigger a callback (sometimes with some additional features supported beyond the direct click-to-object mapping).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Library:

Check this out: [http://www.sean.co.uk/a/webdesign/javascript_gamelib/javascr...](http://www.sean.co.uk/a/webdesign/javascript_gamelib/javascript_gamelib.shtm)

Forum:

Also check out [http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=5...](http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=59)

which is a great place to start for web game development. This crowd has historically come from desktop C++ gaming with DirectX and OpenGL but have great niches for technical aspects, technology, and open forum.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the library I was referring to as "gamelib" in the thread's text. The last update it got was in 13/04/04 (by Brent Silby) as per the docs in the download :)

Thanks for the link to the forum on the gamedev.net site. That sounds useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out the Effect engine: <http://www.effectgames.com/effect>. It's been discussed here on HN previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=986196>

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a slightly older one that looks very interesting as well, and has been on my list of things to try: <http://tommysmind.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> The HTML5 canvas and audio API's are fairly simple and easy to coordinate. You probably do not need a library unless you require complex collision detection, or physics math.

<comment><USER8> I Agree. A library you use might not align 100% with the type of game that you are developing, slowing you down, especially if you target mobile.

The game I have built with web technology, Orbium (<http://jsway.se/m/>), I choose to use no libraries, the HTML5 stuff that already exist in the browser is already very powerful and easy to use.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tools are you using to keep notes on research papers? - <AUTHOR> Currently I am using evernote to keep notes and thoughts on papers I read on arxiv. What are you guys using and for what reason ? <comment><USER2> I use Trello. Being able to link between cards/papers is the selling point for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Mendeley but I struggle to maintain a good noting higyene</comment>


Skype to Acquire Qik for $100 Million - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/01/06/skype-acquires-qik-rumor/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting that the Andreessen and Horowitz are on both boards. Typical incestuous nature of the tech/startup world I guess. Does that make people question the value of the deal for Skype? Or possibly is the original thought in investing in Qik that it could be acquired by Skype? Seems like sitting on these two boards could have been a huge conflict of interest.</comment>


Ask HN: PO box or mailing address for digital nomads? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any available solutions for a permanent PO box/mailing address for digital nomads? A place to have mail delivered, digitally scanned, with the option of opening (for scanning) or forwarding?<p>I remember watching Earth-Class Mail featured on the Startup Junkies series in 2008, but it looks like they haven't changed much since their initial launch. <comment><USER2> travelingmailbox.com</comment>


Released footage of the police raid on the Kim Dotcom mansion - <AUTHOR> http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-What-really-happened-in-the-Dotcom-raid/tabid/367/articleID/264651/Default.aspx <comment><USER2> So, there's an overblown police operation, using two helicopters, 5 paddy wagons, AR-15s, dogs, and a forceable takedown of a suspect deemed to be "low- risk", to serve an illegal warrant by a unit that NZ Police _themselves_ describe [1] as "[providing] Police with the means of effectively and more safely responding to and resolving situations in which there is an actual or threatened use of firearms or other weapons against members of the public or Police." All of this was done so that K.C "couldn't destroy evidence" that he didn't have access to, in the first place.

Forgive me, but who the hell planned this? It sounds so incredibly American, but I don't see why the NZPD would allow the FBI to dictate tactics like that.

[1] <http://www.police.govt.nz/service/aos/>

<comment><USER3> As we know the entire thing was a staged PR-move, to show them filthy pirates what they're getting themselves into ("We will track you down and get you anywhere!").

The overblown Raid was likely part of the script - or it happened out of anticipatory obedience.

Try to see the positive in it; old money in the media mafia is literally kicking and screaming by now. They're in their death struggle.

After this public humiliation it seems unlikely they will be able to pull similar nonsense at such a scale again. It must have cost them a fortune to pull those strings, and not only are they running out of fortunes, but the involved puppets will probably also ask double next time, due to the now obvious risk that something might fling up and stick to their name.

<comment><USER4> _After this public humiliation it seems unlikely they will be able to pull similar nonsense at such a scale again._

They've destroyed Megaupload and got away with it. I' not sure I'd call the result "public humiliation", at least not for them.

<comment><USER5> > They've destroyed Megaupload and got away with it. I' not sure I'd call the > result "public humiliation", at least not for them.

Megavideo was replaced by a dozen video streaming sites (many with Indian .in domain names) within a week. Only ones who lost anything were the people using it to store personal files.

<comment><USER6> Correct, the people who destroyed Megaupload have not lost anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it a little scary that Hollywood can order armed men in helicopters to raid a man's home, anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER7> IIRC _Accelerando_ (linked below) by HNs very own cstross postulated something similar in 2005.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_(novel)>

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but in that case the RIAA/MPAA had sold off the collections rights to organised crime. This is the _cops_.

<comment><USER9> But if the "state"(s) co-ordinates a raid that rests on illegal arrest warrants, is this not also organised crime?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two helicopters, AR-15s, police vehicles, dogs, ninja-clad police, FLIR, and beating him up all over...... _copyright infringement_. Does anyone else see a problem here?

<comment><USER11> I think it shows an interesting trend in our society, maybe something that will become more and more common.

We now value money immensely, and have a lot of laws in place to protect not only the money we have, but the money we're trying to earn (see Apple v Samsung).

Sooner or later, it could plausibly be a more serious offense to steal money, or the means of making money, than murder or child abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What if the guards started shooting at the police for tresspassing if they couldn't identify them in the first second of seeing them? Why did they have to use the helicopter?

<comment><USER13> Unless you're a South American drug lord, I don't think that's how security guards work. You don't get to just shoot wildly at anyone approaching, unless you're being shot at.

If Kim had trigger happy guards like that, that alone would seem a little suspicious. Who was he afraid of?

For that matter, this is a pretty paranoid panic button setup:

 _"I was on my bed, once the banging started, I pressed an alarm button that is situated right at my bed which was installed in case of an emergency. When I press that it automatically sends a signal to all security guards including Mr [Wayne] Tempero's room including SMSs to everybody informing them there is an alert._

Perhaps that's just standard operating procedure for a multi-millionaire.

Full story in text: [http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-What-really-happened-in-the- Dot...](http://www.3news.co.nz/VIDEO-What-really-happened-in-the-Dotcom- raid/tabid/817/articleID/264651/Default.aspx#ixzz22wnfnuMl)

<comment><USER14> Alarm-Buttons and panic rooms are not so uncommon and often installed in houses of much-more low-key persons then Kim Schmitz. A family friend purchased a house (not a mansion, just a bigger house in a suburban neighborhood) here in germany that was formally owned by a CEO of a mid-sized tech company. And there is a panic button in every room, as well as a hidden room. Why should such a system be uncommon in, from what I remember, the biggest mansion in NZ? I guess it was already there when he bought the place.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, his actual name is Kim Dotcom, as ridiculous as that is.

<comment><USER16> I suspect he might change it again to spite his American tormentors. We might see "Kim LOL USA SUX" or "Kim Vote-Pirate-Party" in the news.

<comment><USER15> Kim Nohollywood?

Kim Unamerican?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TV news in New Zealand spent a whole 10 minutes on the same story. That would be an unprecedented level of detail on an American news program.

<comment><USER18> *for any news story not involving a pretty young white woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The site is still overloaded, link to the video itself:

[http://flash.mediaworks.co.nz/tv3/streams/_definst_/News/201...](http://flash.mediaworks.co.nz/tv3/streams/_definst_/News/20120808/cl_thetape_080812_700k.mp4)

edit: OK, it works now, but well, you can have it as mp4 :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Kim seems a bit douchey at times but all the man power they put into this raid seemed a bit overkill.

<comment><USER21> Without commenting on whether Kim is in the right or the wrong ... this whole thing was pretty disgusting. For a case where there are no drugs, no murders, nobody hurt, to storm in with weapons and detain women and children is pretty despicable. Completely unwarranted.

<comment><USER20> Well, he was really good at "Call of Duty" apparently. Maybe they were concerned about his "mad skillz?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So did they get Bin Laden or what?

</comment><comment><USER23> Was the C-130 Gunship on standby circling overhead or something? Why were so many 'assets' thrown into a raid? Who sanctioned this? I would be looking for resignations and full hearing/inquiries into total miss allocation of resources.

</comment><comment><USER24> I for one think this whole raid was made so that the media, and people around the world are distracted and ask the wrong questions while the real issue at hand is silently taken care of.

There was probably a file, or a bunch of damaging data to the US government that has found it's way to megaupload.com and had to be eliminated without a trace so that it doesn't resurface at an inconvenient moment.

The raid, the illegal warrants, the choppers and swat teams are all just a big show that will have people talking for years now while the FBI/CIA secretly got what they needed behind the scenes.

Speaking of.... why is the FBI the one giving directions to NZPD... isn't this supposed to be a CIA operation if it's outside US borders?

</comment><comment><USER25> He was, "low risk" but the police carried AR-15s and handguns, brought along with 2 helicopter units and apparently copyright infringement sniffing dogs. What a gross waste of police, as well as taxpayer money.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of this (acted) video, which is currently front-page on the pirate bay: <http://www.political-prostitution.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> I can't believe they brought assault rifles to a raid for _copyright infringement_? What next - bazookas for shop lifters?!?!

There was definitely political pressure from someone on this one - and I would definitely point the finger to someone within the United States.

</comment><comment><USER27> The real question is, why release the footage now?

One likely reason is that they are loosing this case in the court of public opinion and this video may have been thought to make him out to look like "the bad guy".

<comment><USER28> It's so over-the-top though it seems to have had the opposite effect. The intro to the video indicates the footage came from a source within NZ law enforcement; perhaps he had a change of heart and felt the video needed to be seen.

<comment><USER27> They may not have understood what effect it would have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wonder if the recorded video was saved to megaupload... :)

</comment><comment><USER30> why did kim go to the red room alone, presumably leaving his wife and kids to be handled by the intruders?

<comment><USER15> It doesn't sound like they were in the same room as him at the time (it seemed like they were on the other side of the house or something), and given the intruders, I'm not sure what else he could have done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> a/v 6/5, no sample wtf?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a disgrace for New Zealand and as a European this whole ordeal has warned me plenty to not do any business there ever.

The US who were obviously the ones in charge of NZ police and general "law" enforcement are another story. The world police has done their will again. Without thinking, without logic, without sense, but Hollywood money behind them.

<comment><USER33> The way this has been handled has been disgraceful, but this is a ridiculous reaction. I am a New Zealander (now in SF) so I'm biased, but New Zealand is a peaceful country [1], frequently rated as one of the least corrupt [2], with excellent freedom of press [3], and is relatively easy place to do business [4].

You could certainly do a lot worse.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index> [2] <http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/> [3] <http://en.rsf.org/press- freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html> [4] [http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/new- zeala...](http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/new-zealand/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The raid was written by Michael Bay.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well. To play the devil's advocate - when you listen to what Kim Dotcom says, it sounds like he has hell of a security on his place. In that light, the operation was not that overblown - especially when the officers couldn't know the exact details of his security.

<comment><USER35> The night drop was not as smooth as planned. The 101st missed the drop zone and found themselves scattered over most of the back yard. Small units formed and conducted raids, where possible, taking the shed and guest house, but the primary objective remained unaccomplished.

The transports dropped the first wave within sight of the massive compound but the gate loomed shut. The airdrop obviously failed to open a safe passage.

Multiple twisted ankles resulted in 50% casualties but a squad of men reached the gate. A brave private, barely old enough to shave, rang the buzzer and asked "Hey mate, would you mind opening the gate? We have a warrant."

Truly, New Zealand's greatest generation.

<comment><USER26> Not to mention, it took them 15 minutes to actually find Dotcom.</comment></comment></comment>


Bright (YC W15) raises $4M to bring solar to the developing world - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@JGreenberger/bright-raises-4m-to-bring-solar-to-the-developing-world-ae3d07abc93a <comment><USER3> Can someone explain to my the biggest arguments against the viability of solar energy vs fossil fuel?

<comment><USER4> It's complicated but solar keeps getting cheaper, fossil doesn't. On the other hand solar stops working an night unlike fossil so you need more complicated infrastructure. I just googled the latest price for solar and was slightly amazed it's dropped to 3.87 c/kWh for a bulk deal in Nevada. To put that in perspective I pay about 20 c/kWh as a consumer in London. Solar was much more a couple of years back. I've found an eia.gov estimate that the cost of coal generation including building the plant for 2020 will be about 9.5c/kWh in the US.

[http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/buffett- stri...](http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/buffett-strikes- cheapest-electricity-price-in-us-with-nevada-solar-farm_100020120/)

[http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm](http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm)

<comment><USER5> And orbital solar collectors solve the night/day problem. The 50% improvement in duty cycle would offset transmission losses.

<comment><USER4> Orbital may be a bit pricy compared to a battery though.

<comment><USER5> Not so much any more (and getting cheaper), and orbital has huge advantages. You can have square kilometers of collectors in orbit, with no ecological impact statements to file, or eminent domain issues to solve, or annoyed neighbors. You can grow an orbital farm essentially without bound, without buying any expensive real estate. You can beam the energy where its needed instead of having to consume it locally.

<comment><USER6> Rooftop solar + marginal land for utility scale is simply cheaper and more feasible than orbital solar.

<comment><USER5> Land has to be close to use or transmission losses reduce efficacy. And day/night 50% loss, remember? Feasibility depends upon cost mostly - <USER2> that's changing every day.

Also, most solar worldwide is large solar farms. Rooftop is a yuppie gimmick of no significance.

<comment><USER6> In places where you can't force your utility to buy renewables, rooftop solar isn't just feasible, but the only way.

The Union Of Concerned Scientists seem to disagree with you that its a "yuppie gimmick".

[http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/clean-energy/increase- renewab...](http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/clean-energy/increase-renewable- energy/affordable-rooftop-solar-united-states)

<comment><USER5> There were 5GW of solar farms in 2014([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_States))

There were under a million private, rooftop solar installations, which are each very likely under 1KW. Which amounts to maybe < 1GW total? Which amounts to a percent of a percent of the solar-farm output. Which fits in the category of 'gimmick' very nicely.

{Edit: math, thanks for pointing it out?}

<comment><USER6> From 2013:

"Already, the average size of a rooftop solar system around the country is 3kW – and many of the new systems are well above that. According to Johnston's data, 5kW systems are now the most popular in the progressive "solar" states such as Queensland and South Australia – while 3kW remains the most popular in NSW and W.A. That is probably a reflection of the tariffs paid for exports to the grid.

Of course, Australia still has some way to go to catch up with the US – where according to SunPower, which specializes in solar leasing products, the average size of rooftop solar systems has gone to 8.3kW.

That's got something to do with the size of the roofs, and also the tariff measures. Most places in the US get a 1:1 tariff, so the incentive is there to put on a larger system."

[http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/28/graph-of-the-day- super-s...](http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/28/graph-of-the-day-super-sizing- rooftop-solar-systems/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their Mexican site seems to target the standard middle-class homeowner with grid connection model. I wonder why they're positioning themselves as off-grid for Africa? I would have thought the same model would be a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER8> very very good.</comment>


What the US Tax Bill Would Look Like for 25,000 Middle-Class Families - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/upshot/what-the-tax-bill-would-look-like-for-25000-middle-class-families.html <comment><USER2> But I thought the Trump tax plan was going screw the _middle class_.

From just a glance at the chart, though:

1\. More are receiving a tax cut than a tax increase.

2\. Those receiving an actual increase are highly concentrated near the $0 amount, which means the increase is minimal.

3\. The tax cuts definitely begin phasing out as income goes up (about $80K), which is exactly what a true, progressive, middle class tax cut would show.

So if this can get rid of a lot of loopholes and complexity, I'm not seeing why liberals are throwing such a fit, at least on the portion related to the middle class. Those parts of the plan that may or may not (we'll see) end up being massive give-aways to the 1% and wealthier are a whole different topic.

<comment><USER3> 1\. The chart represents the impact in 2018; the situation looks considerably different in 2027, after many provisions of the bill are set to expire.

2\. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under congressional budgetary rules, the tax plan would force deep cuts to Medicare spending over the next decade.

3\. Many households most affected by the loss of the state and local tax deduction live in coastal states such as New York, California and Connecticut. Those states have high tax rates; they also tend to vote for Democrats

4\. Executives and other top earners would probably get the biggest boost.) And people who own stocks or have other business investments would see a direct benefit from corporate tax cuts

>Those parts of the plan that may or may not (we'll see) end up being massive give-aways to the 1% and wealthier are a whole different topic.

That's the _whole point_ isn't it?

Basically what it comes down to is this: I'd save $1500 on taxes next year. Big whoop. Meanwhile, we'd gut medicare, further increase the national debt while having a president who doesn't seem to understand that you can't just default on it and be fine, corporations would see huge tax reductions and top earners would see most of the benefit, and the "little guy" continues to be fed patronizingly small improvements in their life and society. The entire point of this bill is to hugely benefit the wealthy by giving the less better off tiny improvements to make it palatable</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your favourite colour? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> #5dbe64

</comment><comment><USER3> #f2c800</comment>


"You should write about this on your blog" - <AUTHOR> http://www.16thletter.com/2008/06/03/you-should-write-about-this-on-your-blog/

<comment><USER2> The author doesn't write like a human. Was there any substance? It sounded like a couple paragraph's worth of "I can't just link to old stuff I've written! Perhaps some context about how great I am would help."

Summary, in case you're curious: the author gets ideas from friends, who tell her to write about them. She can't always do this. But sometimes she does! Also, the little gas-pump icon in cars shows you which side your car's gas tank is on.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The author doesn't write like a human"

hahhaha

My writing has received a lot of constructive criticism in my day, but "not human" is a first. I totally agree that this is not the most stellar of posts I've ever written - I'm actually in a bit of a blogging slump (which you would actually know if you followed me on Twitter)...I am just trying to dig (claw?) my way out of it. Thanks for bearing with me...or not if you can't stand it.

Have a great day!</comment>


Why Google Chrome and FireFox are a big security risk for anyone using them - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2009/10/05/why-google-chrome-and-firefox-are-a-big-security-risk-for-anyone-using-them.aspx

<comment><USER2> Being careless is a security risk. Please place the blame in the correct place. When it is trivial to avoid the risk and not at all unobvious why you would want to, the risk does not lie with the program.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just like some people point in the comments, why is he saving his passwords anyway ?</comment>


Fessenheim nuclear accident played down by authorities - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.com/en/reports-fessenheim-nuclear-accident-played-down-by-authorities/a-19093477 <comment><USER2> No details given.

<comment><AUTHOR> No details? In a nutshell, there was water damage which ended up affecting systems that must never be affected by water damage. They lost reactor instrumentation (no sensor readings for several minutes) and control (the control rods were stuck). They ended up flooding the reactor with boric acid, which is a measure of last resort to shut down the reaction, and apparently unheard of in European nuclear power plants.

None of this was reported, although I'm pretty sure reporting it was obligatory. The whole thing was classified as INES Level 1, from a brief look at Wikipedia it sounds more like an INES Level 3 incident.</comment></comment>


The 51-minute OkCupid experiment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seangransee.com/post/53693393575/the-51-minute-okcupid-experiment

<comment><USER2> So based on your findings, men are more interested in attractive women... intriguing.

<comment><USER3> This guy deserves a nobel prize. I wonder if society is aware that the hotter you are, the more people of the opposite sex will be attracted to you?</comment></comment>


Jury in Apple v. Samsung Goofed, Damages Reduced; What's Wrong With this Picture - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390 <comment><USER2> What people who have not been in court don't realize is that Apple won on the narrative. Find the good guy, find the bad guy, and the bad guy will almost always be found to "lose."

Many times, patent cases are argued like someone was trespassing: This idea is my property, and you started using it. What Apple did well in this trial is that it portrayed Samsung as a cheater—someone who looked over Apple's shoulder and copied down its answers. This portrayal obviously resonated with the jury leading to the overwhelming win.

Is that right? No, not really, especially for technical issues. Frankly, the most astounding part of this decision was that Samsung's standard-essential patents were not considered infringed. I fully expect Samsung to file (and win) a JNOV (a judgment notwithstanding the verdict) on that issue. But overall, I doubt this verdict will be overturned as a whole.

<comment><USER3> Staggering how much ignorance there is about this case:

1) It was NOT TECHNICAL. It was predominately a lawsuit about trade dress and UI driven patent infringement. It is exactly the same as judging whether a Nike shoe has been copied or not. You don't need to understand the technicalities of the manufacturing process.

2) The Samsung standards essential patents WERE considered valid and infringed. Just that due to patent exhaustion Apple was exempt from infringement.

So maybe you should understand the very basics of the case first.

<comment><USER2> Umm, you are mistaken. Yes, they found there was patent exhaustion. They also found that the patents were not infringed.

Exhaustion is a _completely separate_ issue from infringement.

<comment><USER4> If they found that there was patent exhaustion, Apple could not have been guilty of infringing on the patents.

The exhaustion doctrine is pretty clear on this.

<comment><USER2> Patent exhaustion is about liability for infringement, not infringement itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Hogan holds patents, so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier.

...we debated that first patent -- what was prior art -- because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple.

"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."_

This, as well as other accounts on groklaw, give the distinct impression that this jury was _very much_ led by the foreman - both procedurally and intellectually. The latter being a little worrisome.

Additionally, the mention that they glossed over their debate on prior art because it was _slowing them down_ is disturbing.

I suppose since they had, according to this juror, essentially made up their minds on day 2 - there was no need to get bogged down in these pesky details.

<comment><USER6> I expect Samsung's lawyers will focus some effort on this, the Foreman set him self up as an unacknowledged expert witness. And if the Jury member's statements are strictly correct, then a lawyer would argue that the Jury debate was tampered by evidence that was not introduced at trial. Judges go out of their way to point out to Jurors that the job requires considering just the evidence that was presented at trial and nothing else (which is why evidence rules see a lot of fireworks).

So the argument will go, this juror set their self up as an expert in the minds of the other jurors, gave testimony (evidence) on the veracity or relevance of the evidence presented, and that materially influenced the verdict. The client, Samsung, was denied due process because the were not allowed to cross examine this testimony.

Now it sounds simple but its not really as simple as that, because the Jury is expected to debate the evidence and trade opinions on whether or not they believed it. So what the lawyers would need to prove is that by creating the impression of being an expert, this jurors opinions carried undue weight with the other jurors and rose to the level of effectively new testimony. Its hard to prove a jury tampered with itself :-). I've got a fuzzy memory of something like this being pursued in either the Enron case ore of the AT&T cases but sadly I don't have access to Lexis.

More likely the speed of the verdict and the inconsistencies in the verdict will be sufficient for the court to take some action.

I do know that there will more motions and what not but I am not at all comfortable predicting the outcome :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the best critiques so far of the decision.

There are two sides to this trial. On the one side is the emotional appeal: Samsung copied Apple, and documents detail the extent to which Samsung imitated the iPhone. On the other side are the various technical ways in which Apple claimed that Samsung copied them. But just as Apple engineers slaved for years over the technical details of the iPhone, it is incredibly important for the future of mobile innovation that all of the technical parts of the trial are correctly decided. If the jury finds no infringement but finds that infringement was induced, this indicates that technical mistakes were made. But in particular, I wonder if the jury was so swayed by the emotional appeal that sufficient attention was paid to the substantial prior art demonstrated regarding capacitive touch screen phones and multitouch displays.

<comment><USER8> According to the comments in the post, this is one of the infringements: [http://androidheadlines.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/thumb...](http://androidheadlines.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/thumb_550_ip4-vs-captivate.jpg)

If this is true, then it's hard to give this decision much weight at all. These two phones are vastly different and one literally says _SAMSUNG_ on the front.

<comment><USER9> Just to remove all doubts about whether the jury was smoking crack or not, this phone is found to be infringing the iPhone's design patents:

[http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/samsung- ga...](http://androidspin.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/samsung-galaxy-s- epic-4g-sprint-front-landscape.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Close the keyboard, then look at it. The jury, apparently, decided what their criteria were for infringement and then applied those criteria to all of the phones. The extra fact that this model had a keyboard wasn't one of the criteria.

Let's not assume that we have the whole story behind the way the jury decided anything, one way or the other.

<comment><USER11> Also, I thought the design of the home screen (a grid of icons with labels) also had something to do with it? Both of the linked phones have a grid very much like the iPhone.

<comment><USER12> icon grids predate the iphone, of course (windows mobile, palm pilot, newton?). I think Apple's claims were more specific, dealing with particular icons, colors, and the favorite apps at the bottom.

<comment><USER13> Did 16x16 (and then 32x32, and etc etc) icons get patents? Because someone, somewhere, lost a lot of money - and I got consistently sized icons for many years.

EDIT: This isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. See this 2002 article. BT registered a patent in 1976 for "double clicking hyperlinks" (or somesuch), and then in 2000 they realised that they owned this patent, and a bunch of people were clicking hyperlinks on the WWW, and they started suing people. They lost.

([http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/BT-patent-case- raises-...](http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/BT-patent-case-raises-e- commerce-planning-issues))

(<http://eupat.ffii.org/pikta/xrani/hyperlink/>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if the jury took a month and asked 1000 questions, the losing side or those who align with the losing side would find something, no matter how minute, to question the decision.

<comment><USER15> The fact that your valid opinion got downvoted shows that the problem may not be an emotionally biased jury in the courtroom so much as many emotionally biased HN users.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I feel like many HN readers think this is Apple vs Android, but it's not. HN readers want to defend Android, so they feel this is the case where Apple battles Android, but really the case has little to do with Android. In most of the cases where Samsung copies Apple, the Android default implementation would have prevented that. Android handsets usually have a micro usb connector, but Samsung chose to copy Apple's 30 pin connector over the Android default. Why would anyone do that unless they wanted to clone Apple?

<comment><USER17> Was it plug-compatible with Apple's connector? That would seem open-and-shut for infringement. I thought it just looked similar, which makes it a judgment call for a jury.

I could accept most of what Samsung did as a technical choice, but that power charger really leaped out at me. Proprietary chargers suck for end users.

<comment><USER18> It's similar, but not exact. You can actually plug the galaxy into apple addon products (the connector will fit), but you'll probably fry your galaxy. Maybe someone has already done this and complained to Apple.

However, even if the copy was exact, I think it would still be difficult to make the case for infringement.

<comment><USER19> It's a mirrored version of Apple's connector. This was an especially goofy choice, as there's already a standard called PDMI they could have used.

There's a detailed discussion here: <http://www.pocketables.com/forum//showthread.php?p=55941>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Samsung's own words:

 _The verdict form in this complex case necessarily spans 20 pages and requires unanimous answers to more than 500 discrete questions across 5 different legal disciplines. (Dtk. No. 1890.) The likelihood of an inconsistent verdict is a possibility despite the jury's best efforts._

"DESPITE THE JURY'S BEST EFFORTS"

Groklaw even linked to the source of the above quote: <http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/ApplevSamsung-1927.pdf>

Seems like a classic case of confirmation bias, by both Groklaw as well as a bunch of people here.

<comment><USER20> The argument is that they didn't make their _best effort_ , because they couldn't have possibly done so in only 3 days.

<comment><USER10> To be honest though, a lot of the questions were checkboxes. Did this device infringe, Y/N...

Once they had their criteria for evaluating infringement, they could hammer through the devices pretty quickly. I suspect that most of the deliberation was on if the patents were valid or not. If so, how then to evaluate if a device infringed?

I'm more curious to know how they determined damages... it seems like there should be a worksheet or something on that.

<comment><USER20> There's no way of knowing, but having served on a jury where the foreman was a lawyer (he only handled civil cases), I think the most likely scenario was that most of the jurors just followed his lead.

People tend to defer to perceived experts, which is why I find it odd Samsung's attorneys didn't catch this guy.

<comment><USER17> If they didn't know about him, they were incompetent.

More likely, they knew about him and made a bet he would side with them. They were wrong.

<comment><USER21> I read once about a case where the foreman on the jury (in a personal injury suit) was both a lawyer and a state senator. The judgement was set aside on the basis that he exercised undue influence by explaining the law to other jurors (thus usurping the judge's role).

Of course the law is full of funny cases (like the time the Supreme Court filed a per curiam, and then along with it a unanimous partial concurrence). Figuring out what was meant there is... well, something lawyers can argue about forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was surprised by the resumes of the people on the jury given the flack they've received from the tech press. These were some very qualified people, much more so than the tech press that criticized them.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive- appl...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple- samsung-juror-speaks-out/)

<comment><USER23> The foreman holds a patent that could be the poster child for what's wrong with the software patent industry.

Being a Very Serious Person(tm) in an area that most people, who are paying attention, think has gone insane is generally not the kind of credential that should make people give your opinion more credence.

<comment><USER22> I would think you would want someone who actually understands the patent system and the patent process on the jury of a landmark patent trial.

<comment><USER24> To hold a patent doesn't qualify one to automagically understand the patent system and the patent process. Or in the case of this jury, to be able to redact error free concensus from the group. The fact that one person on that jury has a patent on a "Method and apparatus for recording and storing video information" is a really disturbing factor that might explain a lot on how the jury deliberated.

<comment><USER6> This. At one time I had over a dozen patents where I was one of the inventors and every time I find something new about the patent system. I've got the bonus education in having been retained as an expert witness in two patent cases, which nominally would qualify me as an expert and I find the system quite murky still. I can categorically concur that just having at patent does _not_ make you an expert on the _patent system_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why everybody keeps saying that a win for Apple is a blow for innovation. Samsung didn't innovate. They flat-out copied. Seems to me that allowing blatant copying like this is what will suppress innovation, because why bother spending 5 years and a lot of effort/money designing something awesome if someone else can come along and clone your product in 3 months?

<comment><USER6> Its a question of scope. There are a lot of patents in this case that a majority of engineers or designers would not consider worthy of patent protection, the most infamous being the 'rounded corners' one. That these patents were upheld then has a huge chilling effect on everyone's design. Can I be sued because my device is rectangular? How about square? Are all quadrilaterals covered? Those are ridiculous questions on their face, but you've just seen someone who got hit with a billion dollar judgement and you can't tell that they did anything wrong, and it paralyzes you.

 _That_ is why its a blow for innovation. All the rabbits will freeze hoping the hunter can't see them.

<comment><USER18> No, it's not a blow to innovation. The only reason Apple went after Samsung and not HTC or other Android handset manufacturers is because Samsung has gone into detail copying every small feature from Apple. If you look into Samsung's prior history, you'll see they do this for every popular product on the market -- it's part of their business model, and it's not focused specifically on copying Apple. They copied Motorola products before the iPhone came on the scene. The details of the blatant copying are addressed in that 127 page "smoking gun" that was released recently.

I think businesses that focus on cloning other people's successful products actually reduce innovation because the innovation comes from the initial product inception, not from a copy. If cloning actually increased innovation, we should be seeing lots of innovative products come out of china since they're so good at making copies of other people's products.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying that now that this case is 'over' and Apple won it, they won't sue anyone else on the same patents? If so I think that is pretty naive. If you look at other cases you will see that Apple will be compelled to sue everyone else, and/or get a license from them for these patents. If they did not do that then Samsung would be able to argue that Apple didn't really believe in their patents, they were just trying to put Samsung out of business. That at least is well understood, you can lose the protection of your trademarks or design patents if you don't enforce them.

<comment><USER18> Sadly, the case is far from over. Both companies will say they will appeal until they win so it may last as long as SCO vs IBM. From Apple's statement, I believe they went after Samsung because of their blatant copying. There have been other manufacturers that Apple have not gone after because the copying was not as significant as Samsung's.

Personally, I think someone has to reprimand companies that make a business out of cloning others. It happens all the time, but it's often hard to enforce.

I think you're one of those HN readers that think this is Apple vs Android, but really it's a case against Samsung and their cloning behavior. Few companies out there act like Samsung and get away with it.

Also, I think you're a bit extreme in your arguments. Apple is not going to put Samsung out of business; Samsung makes everything from air conditioning units to memory chips.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps we're talking past each other.

"Personally, I think someone has to reprimand companies that make a business out of cloning others. It happens all the time, but it's often hard to enforce."

It is the nature of free market economies that successful products will get emulated. Compaq emulating the IBM PC, Char-Broil emulating the Weber griil, Ford emulating the Toyota Camry, Microsoft emulating Netscape, Apple emulating the Xerox windowing system, Burger King emulating McDonalds, Airbus emulating Boeing, it just goes on and on. That is what is generally referred to as competition, sort of "if you thing you can do it better, then bring it on."

And within that competition there are often signature "styles" which are distinctive to a company, so it would probably have been a bad idea if Airbus had given their A380 a 'hump' on the front like the Boeing 747. And there is a whole bunch or case law about what is and what is not acceptable.

The question on trial here was did Samsung cross the line in emulating Apple products. As you know, those of us outside the courtroom had access to all of the arguments and evidence about whether or not Samsung copied too much, or if Apple was accusing Samsung of copying their own copied work. The judge in this case emasculated Samsung's argument by denying the admittance of evidence which had exonerated them in other courts.

A number of folks (and I'm one of them) feel that many of the claims in Apple's design patents were flawed by both being obvious and there being prior art to indicate that any ordinary person skilled in the art who was given the task could have independently arrived at the same design elements.

So some folks, like me, don't think Samsung got a fair trial. That's just opinion of course and they've got one of, if not the top IP Litigation Firm working for them so if you can't get a fair trial (opinion) with Quinn Emmanuel, well it doesn't bode well for anyone.

So if you are a designer at a start-up, or even at a reasonably sized company, and your company is trying to compete against a market leading product that you think you can do better. But given that you now know that you can make no assumptions about what is 'fair use' or 'prior art' or 'obvious' you might be inclined to believe that if you made a device that had icons and made phone calls you were infringing on some random Apple patent and would get yourself sued out of existence. You see the way Samsung got treated and you say "Crap even if I've got a friggin' article in the New York times that pre-dates their patent they will figure out some way to keep that out of the trial and _still_ kill me."

We can debate all day about whether or not Apple would do that to our hapless designer _we know they just did that to Samsung_ so we know its possible. And if you are putting the company at risk by getting near that Apple monster your Board of Directors will fire you faster than a guy who lied about his degree on a resume. That is the way that intimidation works, the US Gov't hasn't used nuclear weapons in anger in nearly 70 years but they did that one time.

You claimed that this case was not 'a blow to innovation', I rebutted that by saying that the chilling effects of this case would lead to significantly less innovation. If you want to argue your case you have to show how people can continue to innovate in the smart phone space and defend themselves against a litigious competitor like Apple has been shown to be. And part of that rebuttal has to be some compelling narrative about how the trial was 'fair'. That, for me is a hard one to get past.

<comment><USER18> There are great examples of innovative products that are the result of not copying another -- see the windows & palm phones. I don't believe that innovation comes from cloning -- it only helps that business stay alive for a longer period of time, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. The examples of emulation you provide are significantly less blatant than the way Samsung copies Apple. Samsung even uses Apple icons as part of their wallpaper at their own "white" brick & mortar stores. Even when products emulate one another, it's usually possible for the end consumer to differentiate between the two, however Samsung has gone an extra step to make it difficult.

I'm not sure I understand why you think the trial was unfair -- it was a jury who made this decision, and the jury consisted of untechnical people who would be the right types of people to make this decision. If the average Joe thinks that the Toyota is the Ford, then I think it goes beyond the line of emulation.

I would say HTC emulates Apple products, but does not clone the same way Samsung clones. For example, the boxes for HTC phones look nothing like Apple's, and the connector is the same micro usb everyone is familiar with. Samsung goes the extra step to make sure their brick and mortar store, the boxes, the connector, the interfaces, the keyboard, the genius bar, the physical phone, etc are all indistinguishable from Apple. I don't understand why Samsung would have to make their brick & mortar stores identical to Apple, and even have the same style of genius bar inside -- that's going an extra step to make a product identical. In the countries where the name "genius bar" is not a registered trademark, Samsung actually uses that exact name. For the countries that have the registered trademark, they call them smart tutors. It's crazy how deep the copying goes.

My hunch is that ethics in that region are a bit more "loose" than they are here. It's perfectly okay to butt-in line there, or cheat in certain situations. When I was there, I'd stand in line at the hotel like a typical westerner (even though I'm chinese) only to have people butt in front me every 5 minutes. Eventually I just forced my way in front of the line to speak to the receptionist. I asked why they butt in front of me and they replied "you let me". Old people there are even less respectful, they just don't care you exist. All of my relatives who went to school in china lied about their age so they would have an advantage by starting at a lower grade level than the proper age. I've been told this happens in Korea and Japan as well.

When does a company go beyond emulation and into cloning? Would you say something like this is okay: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4426835> ?

<comment><USER5> >> _the jury consisted of untechnical people who would be the right types of people to make this decision. If the average Joe thinks that the Toyota is the Ford, then I think it goes beyond the line of emulation._

Demonstrably false. The foreman, for instance, is the owner of a patent for a variant of DVR ("Method and apparatus for recording and storing video information").

>> _Old people there are even less respectful, they just don't care you exist._

Agree to disagree.

>> _Samsung even uses Apple icons as part of their wallpaper at their own "white" brick & mortar stores....I don't understand why Samsung would have to make their brick & mortar stores identical to Apple, and even have the same style of genius bar inside...In the countries where the name "genius bar" is not a registered trademark, Samsung actually uses that exact name. For the countries that have the registered trademark, they call them smart tutors. It's crazy how deep the copying goes._

You seem to think that this judgment is "fair" because Samsung is a "bad cloning company". That's fine, and you are entitled to your opinion. Please understand that their evilness is not really central here.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that Samsung is a particularly innovative company. However, their brick & mortar stores have very little bearing on whether or not UI elements in rows of 4 consist of an infringement on Apple's IP. Routinely bringing up their company (or country's) culture as an example for how terrible they are is essentially an ad hominem attack.

The fact is that the court did come down _strongly_ in Apple's favor, and ruled that _quite innocuous and non-obvious_ elements of Samsung's design were an infringement of Apple's IP. How anyone can think that this may not have far reaching implications for technological innovation is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."

Incredible.

<comment><USER10> What is so incredible? If you run into a question that is slowing you down, why not skip it, and get back to it later? In the case of a jury, you may even find that you didn't have to decide in the first place, because the issue may be moot by the time you get back to it.

There isn't enough context in the quote here to tell what went on.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I should have made the context clearer.

They never went back to the issue later. They were discussing whether a specific Apple patent should be invalidated because of the prior art. They were sick of dicussing it, so they just moved on. Hence, the patent was not invalidated.

<comment><USER10> I'm saying that we the news posts that we currently have don't give us enough context... the cnet post [1] doesn't explicitly say that they never went back to it. They explicitly decided that the patent was infringed, so they must have had _some_ further discussions. From the article, though, it's hard to determine which patent they were talking about - likely '381.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive- appl...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple- samsung-juror-speaks-out/)

<comment><USER25> I agree with you that the article doesn't give enough context. We can't know whether or not the jury came back to it. Though, by the same token I find your assumption that "they must have had _some_ further discussions" to be spurious for the same reasons. You're both reading assumptions into the quote.

The fact is, we can't really know whether they came back to it or not unless they tell us. I'm basically advocating that we can't assume the _did_ or _did not_ come back to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What do others think of Hogan's patent?

<http://www.google.com/patents/US7352953>

It strikes me as just recording video and doing the standard things that people do with digital video.

<comment><USER17> Oh, good, a lynch mob to attack the foreman's professional work.

<comment><USER27> More like a demonstration of just what kind of flawed mindset he may have on patents, given that he holds such a silly patent.

It appears to be, essentially, a DVR patent. I'm very concerned with his ability to handle a case like this since he thought something very similar to a TIVO (1999) was patentable when his patent was filed in 2002.

<comment><USER28> Did Samsung get a chance to reject jurors in a voir dire process, as one does for a criminal trial? If so, it's hard to complain about the jurors after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The tl;dr jury: decided all 700 questions in 21 hours (time to read aloud all 108 pages, sure, but to understand and reach consensus?)

From the groklaw article:

> If it would take a lawyer three days to make sure he understood the terms in > the form, how did the jury not need the time to do the same? There were 700 > questions, remember, and one thing is plain, that the jury didn't take the > time to avoid inconsistencies

> Had they read the full jury instructions, all 109 pages, they would have > read that damages are not supposed to punish, merely to compensate for > losses.

</comment><comment><USER30> Stop supporting a particular company. The Appletards are worse but you all need to quit it. Apple copied the LG Prada when they made the iPhone and good on them. They helped move mobile devices forward and I now have a huge choice of amazing portable entertainment devices. This lawsuit is moronic.

</comment><comment><USER31> UK comment: members of the jury _giving interviews_ that include _descriptions of their deliberations_. I find this system amazing.

[http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/CrimeJusticeAndTheLaw/Juryservic...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/CrimeJusticeAndTheLaw/Juryservice/DG_196118)

<comment><USER17> If a jury member volunteers information, I think that's fine. In fact, it's how we can learn about things like a jury failing do to its duty. (NB: I am not saying that happened in this case.)

I do worry that jury members' names are not kept secret. They are being asked to make what is possibly a very unpopular decision and shouldn't have to worry about what strangers think about them.

<comment><USER32> Read the link under 'responsibilities' - in the UK you can't even discuss the deliberation process with your own family, even after the court case is concluded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't think there's ever been a patent lawsuit where I didn't root for the person being sued.

If someone sued North Korea for patent infringement, I'd root for North Korea to win.

It's a joke of a system, unfortunately too much money is being made by the lawyers for there to be any change anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER34> That site is such a massive eyesore, to the point where I struggle to have any motivation to read past the first paragraph.

Colors, typography, the massive line-lengths. It's a wall of text. Just an all-round horrible design.

<comment><USER35> Frankly if walls of text can turn you off something, you are probably not Groklaw's intended audience in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not a law expert, so my way to look at it is simply : \- did samsung become number 1 smartphone seller with an original product or by copying apple work ? Obviously, yes ( and i'm talking memory here, the first time i saw a galaxy i took it for an iphone). \- is it fair they pay something to apple for it ? Yes \- is 1 billion $ fair ? Judging by market size and profits made by samsung, it doesn't seem an absurd amount. That's all we should matter.

<comment><USER37> Nope, that's not all that should matter. The reason is copyright vs. patents. Both are made to prevent copying but in different ways. Copyright says this product is not copyable. Patents say this aspect of the product is not copyable. HUGE difference. Now in this case Apple used several patents to act similarly to a copyright. The difference is that these patents were found valid meaning that if your product infringes even ONE of them, you can get sued big time. So if you create a product with rounded corners you could get sued, even if you didn't copy apple at all. Should Samsung get sued and pay $1 billion for copying Apple? Probably. Should Samsung get sued using individual aspects like having rounded corners? Definitely not, considering now several companies who have done nothing wrong will be liable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is the quality of work you get when you pay $20 a day.

The lawyers for both sides are making more per hour than the entire jury per day. What kind of performance do they expect?

<comment><USER39> The payment for jury duty is "the rights and privileges of US citizenship". It's a civic duty, not a work-for-hire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can somebody calculate the probability of assigning a jury foreman, on a very important case, whether a patent is crazy and then finding out he has a crazy patent himself? Life is full of coincidences hard to believe.</comment>


Google removes Instant Search from its desktop web search engine - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-removes-instant-search-desktop-web-search-engine-2017-7 <comment><USER2> different article, but lots of discussion on the topic [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857120)</comment>


Performance data for LevelDB, Berkley DB and BangDB for Random Operations - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/11/29/performance-data-for-leveldb-berkley-db-and-bangdb-for-rando.html <comment><USER2> Looking at the benchmarks, something looks wrong in the graphs. For example, for one it looks like they were doing from 0-2M ops for the test. Some of the engines were claimed to do 1M ops per second. That would result in a 2 second benchmark?

Is a 2 second benchmark actually useful?

</comment><comment><USER3> OpenLDAP's MDB is also in this space that is new enough that most people haven't heard of it's exitence.

<http://www.symas.com/mdb/></comment>


Reinventing Capitalism: Putting Soul in the Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j28/bloom.asp?ecp=tat-031809

<comment><USER2> Howard Bloom thinks capitalism is getting a bad rap; what we need is messianic capitalism. Every day we praise the food we can do for our fellow man. His heart is in the right place, but depending on the goodness of corporate board members isnt going to do it. Both democracy and corporations are much too susceptible to the aggregated influence of money. Aggregated influence creates "too big to fail banks", senators for hire, and Microsoft-like bullies.

We also have an enormously creative and productive society that encourages things like the YC entrepreneurs, or Google, or even Microsoft. The enormous challenge is to keep the creativity, productivity, and personal freedom while preventing undue influence. Personally, I dont think fine tuning a chaotic environment is possible, but maybe mitigating damage to individuals is. In any event I dont think Howard has the answer.</comment>


Defeat the New York Times Paywall with 2 lines of CSS (or a Chrome Extension) - <AUTHOR> http://wesbos.com/remove-new-york-times-paywall-css/ <comment><USER2> If you don't believe the money that the NY Times spends reporting stories and producing quality journalism is worth it, please just don't read their news.

It costs money to hire quality journalists and send them around the world to report on the news. If you're willing to pay the cable company $100/month or more to pipe Jersey Shore into the house, you should be willing to pay the New York Times to bring you the news they spend so much to report.

<comment><USER3> I don't pay for television, and I've never seen Jersey Shore. I literally only view NYT articles online when I'm linked to them from a site like Hacker News or reddit.

<comment><USER4> Then you will probably be unaffected by the paywall, since it sounds like you read less than 20 NYT articles a month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might very well be by design. Why make it hard for those who wouldn't pay anyway to get to their articles? This seems to me like exactly the right way to do this (if their pricing weren't so strange).

It will be interesting to see whether they will make it harder or whether everything stays the same. I could imagine that they get desperate and introduce much more drastic DRM should their pricing not work out.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am sure it's not a technical oversight. As with most DRM, it's about audience segmentation more than anything. The "DRM" defeater was never going to pay, and keeping him away from the product provides no upside.

Apple sells a lot of MP3s without DRM. People are looking for convenience and integration. The convenience/integration sell for the NYT is mobile.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you like the NYT enough to read it, just pay for it.

<comment><USER3> If they want to establish the fact that their content is worth money, they should actually require a payment to view their content.

<comment><USER4> They have made it quite clear that they want readers to pay for the content they access. I know, you said "require," which implies that you think they should make it nigh-impossible for you to read without paying. But this is not a legal distinction. They want you to pay. You know this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First 4 lines of java, now 2 lines of CSS. I'm feeling a new game of golf coming on.

What's the fewest characters required to defeat the NY Times paywall?

<comment><USER9> Thanks for submitting this! I thought of an even smaller way to do it:

$="";

Since they use prototype as $, we can just break the library before they load it in ;)

<comment> mike-cardwell $=0;

:p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm on the fence about paying for the NYTimes once the paywall pops up. I'd rather not use two lines of CSS to get around it, just like I have made the decision not to use an AdBlocker.

While the NYTimes pay model would work for me (I'd access via a PC or smartphone.) I think their pay model is clunky. Why does someone who wants to access the site via their iPad have to pay more than someone accessing the same content from a smart phone? The Kindle subscription is left out from this paywall so those users wouldn't be able to access the site with that subscription. The full access unlimited digital subscription is $35 a month. That same user can sign up for the weekend only home delivery for around ~$12 a month and get the full access digital subscription with it.

For such a large, risky undertaking, I don't think it is thought out well at all.

<comment><USER11> _Why does someone who wants to access the site via their iPad have to pay more than someone accessing the same content from a smart phone?_

I haven't looked, but I imagine it's a different, more complex app with a better workflow that takes better advantage of the ipad's capabilities. If you didn't want the app, you could just pay for the basic website and browse to it on the ipad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please choose ONE of the following:

1\. One or more developers working full-time on fixing bugs and working on new projects/features

2\. One or more developers working full-time updating Class and ID names and staying on top of the latest Plugins and Greasemonkey Scripts...

No, seriously - make a choice.

<comment><USER13> This is a lame false dichotomy.

This is such an easy exploit that the developers must have known about it, and consciously decided to ship with a vulnerability.

As others have suggested, they probably realized that those who break the paywall probably wouldn't have paid anyway.

<comment><USER12> You are right and I apologize.

There are any number of ways to get around it. Thats a known, regardless of what you do.

Rather than expend time and resources locking this up as much as possible its accepted that _X_ number of people will do whatever they want.

What is a little frustrating is people thinking they've totally hacked the NYT subscription model and subverted our cleverly crafted lock-down methods.

However, its been stated publicly at several pay grades above me, that is there is an organized concerted effort to work-around the subscription then we have to act on that. Not just in a legal way, but also by developers working to lock-down the site more and more.

As I said, I'd rather work on constructive projects instead of that.

It is easy for anyone who knows how to _View Source_ to get to the content. I just wish they'd stop thinking they're all _l33t_ and subversive when its just a little sad (to me at least).

I think I'd ultimately feel better if I just ignored this stuff.

<comment><USER14> Come on, this has nothing to do with "expending time". It's about SEO. Otherwise they would take the minimal effort to serve a different page to people above the threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They're trying to have their cake(paying users) and eat it too (free Google traffic).

<comment><USER12> Debatable. Right now the only significant revenue stream is advertising on the site. However advertising took a huge nose-dive last year (or is it closer to 2 years?) and that IMHO was a huge wake-up call.

Having a solid subscriber base would help offset the risk of being soley dependent on the ebb and flow of advertising.

<comment><USER15> I'm not mad at their strategy. It seemed to have worked for Experts Exchange who I would guess has a more tech savvy user base. Just pointing out that you can't hide your content from users while getting it indexed by google at the same time.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure of the specifics but I believe we did continue getting it indexed by Google during TimesSelect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stylish is your friend on Firefox.</comment>


Oculus Co-Founder Who Wanted "Billion Person Virtual World" Departs Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/10/iribe-oculus-vr-billion-mmo-facebook.html <comment><USER2> You'd have a make a VR as cheap as a used cell phone.</comment>


How China's Tech Revolution Threatens Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/05/chinas-silicon-valley/559871/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> _... a social-networking app that uses facial recognition to connect people who look alike._

i guess people can share hair styling and make-up tips with each other.

would it make more sense, from a social network's point of view, to connect people who look _different?_</comment>


Hacker Culture: A Response to Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/hacker-culture-a-response-to-bruce-sterling-on-wikileaks/68506/

<comment><USER2> What does it say about the, um, rigor of the writing and editing of this piece that the author goes on about differing with Bruce Sterling's assessment, says it is "important to read" -- and doesn't provide a link to the essay in question? Feh.

Here's that missing link: <[http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast- shack/>](http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/>);</comment>


Ice-Nine - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine

<comment><USER2> Love that book.

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'

Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand."</comment>