With a 10-day supply of opioids, 1 in 5 become long-term users - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/with-a-10-day-supply-of-opioids-1-in-5-become-long-term-users/ <comment><USER2> The problem with the backlash against opiod use in the US is that people who actually have to have the drugs are finding it increasingly harder to get.

As a disabled veteran with nerve damage I am rationing pain medication daily. I cannot afford to have a manageable pain day due to the fact I might have a week of excruciating pain.

As you may or may not know, little can be done for functional nerve damage. Some experimental procedures are available but in general, only the symptoms can be treated. For me this means a lot of different muscle relaxers and an opiod for when things are beyond control.

But, the opioids have become increasingly more difficult to get prescribed because of recent DEA rule changes and legislation affecting these medications.

This basically means, for me at least, I will take my own life at some point as the pain will be too unbearable and I won't be able to acquire the medications necessary to control it.

<comment><USER3> So there are two big camps of people going to the doctor for pain med (gross simplification, obvious it is more of a spectrum). People like you, that need the pain meds to live. And people that have a "bad back" aka they grab their back and groan and act like it hurts to get a powerful drug and be high (or sell for a nice profit).

If I understand pain theory correctly, there isn't really a good way for a doctor to do a test and say "you are really in insane pain" vs "2 advils will cure you".

Then the choice is either:

a) Be generous with pain meds. Some abusers that don't need it will get them to either use or resell. Some will lead to deaths, due to addiction or increased supply on the black market. But all people in real pain are treated.

b) Be stingy with pain meds. Some legit people in pain could end up taking their own life due to not being able to live with the pain. But there will be less deaths and addiction outside of people in pain.

As a society, it seems a hard choice. Either way some very vulnerable people are going to be hurt. Ideally we would come up with better pain meds with no abuse potential, but that doesn't help things right now.

<comment><USER4> The problem you elide is that _switching_ from A to B, as the US has done, can take a lot of time.

In the transition, you drive the usage of illegal drugs through the roof and spike the number of deaths. It's possible that these behaviors, once prevalent, take generations to switch out of, by which time, it's entirely possible that our formulation of drugs will be better.

So even if B would be better now, it's possible that our transition from A to B is pointless (the problem would have solved itself in the same time) and leads to a worse outcome than just remaining with plan A.

This kind of secondary analysis is usually totally missing from these debates, but is what is actually driving the harm of the opioid crisis.

<comment><USER3> For sure, this is true about almost any kind of debate like this.

One view is to say that you may need to have short term struggles to get to a long term better place. Which may be true, but it also depends if the new long term place is actually a better place - or did you do a lot of short term struggles for nothing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're given a 10 day supply of opioids, you probably have a much worse problem than someone who is given a 3 day supply of opioids. The 1 in 5 that are still taking opioids a year later probably had a long-term problem that caused significant, chronic pain.

Looking at the study, they didn't adjust for this at all. Also, keep in mind: 1 in 5 are continued on _prescriptions_ , which are given by doctors who assessed the situation and thought it was OK to continue it. It's NOT saying that 20% of people who try opiates for 10 days become hopelessly addicted, which the clickbaity headline implies.

<comment><USER6> Wanted to leave the same comment and found a few here saying the same. It is surprising how such an obvious objection has not been addressed - unless they expected most of the readers to miss it, which is then very sad.

The deaths figure - 91 per day or about 33K per year - seems to be the deaths of all opioids (including heroin abuse, etc.) and not the prescription opioids, which are half that:

[https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/o...](https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/overdose-death-rates)

Moreover, prescription deaths are relatively stable for last 6 years (though lower before that) while heroin deaths are raising quickly.

<comment><USER7> The study obviously has an agenda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world's population, but consumes 80 percent of its opioids -- and 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone, the opiate that is in Vicodin." [1]

I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts where addiction medicine doctors talk about the state of their industry. Their views and their guests views, are almost in complete alignment and those views are the exact opposite of the comments in this thread. I find that alarming.

If you listen to addiction medicine doctors, they will tell you:

1) There is a massive epidemic of opioid addiction. Opioids are wildly addictive and are negligently / over prescribed.

2) There is little evidence that opioids provide benefit for long term chronic pain and evidence that long-term use of opioids actually causes many problems. Getting off the opioids tends to reduce the chronic pain.

3) Patient surveys rule supreme and patients want pain-killers even if the doctor does not believe they are the solution.

Anecdotally, if you watch the A&E show "Intervention", the number of opioid and heroin cases has shot through the roof since the series started two decades ago. There has been a titanic shift in addiction. It's painful to watch some of these addicts lie to their doctor to get opioids, turn around and sell them, then use the money to get heroin because the opioids aren't strong enough anymore.

This comment thread really saddens me.

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/US/prescription-painkillers-record- num...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/prescription-painkillers-record-number- americans-pain-medication/story?id=13421828)

<comment><USER9> For me, the problem is fear. A decade or so back, I badly broke my arm in a mountain biking crash. The event itself barely hurt at all, but the muscles around the broken arm all tensed up, and after several hours were extremely painful. The hospital gave me morphine.

As far as I could tell, the morphine did nothing. I remained in significant pain for a few hours while I awaited treatment.

It's impossible for me to say why. Is morphine just ineffective for that sort of pain? Or was I underdosed to prevent negative interactions with the drugs they gave me later? Or was I underdosed as a precautionary measure for opiates due to addiction?

All I know is that I'm afraid of ending up in pain in the future and being denied effective treatment out of misguided concern that I will become an addict.

I do not fear addiction. I fear pain.

<comment><USER10> _The hospital gave me morphine._

This seems to illustrate the US mentality towards opioids: I had a similar accident and the fracture itself didn't really hurt but the muscle tension was indeed very painful and all I got in a Belgian hospital was some Brufen (Advil in the US if I'm not mistaken) - and that did work. In Belgium opioids are generally looked at 'only if it's _really_ necessary'. Belgium does have a severe problem with prescription antibiotics though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the actual study, rather than a summary of it: [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6610a1.htm)

Here's what it says about adjusting for pain intensity:

> Third, information on pain intensity or duration were not available, and the > etiology of pain, which might influence the duration of opioid use, was not > considered in the analysis.

</comment><comment><USER12> A strong confounder is those getting a 10 day prescription are a sicker group.

<comment><USER13> Maybe sometimes. Seven or eight years ago, I had a badly ingrown toenail; my doctor removed the left half of it under local anesthesia, and then wrote me a prescription for 30 Vicodin tablets. (I think 3 or 4 would have been plenty; the pain was gone in 2 or 3 days.) Maybe things have changed enough that he wouldn't do that now.

<comment><USER14> I've had similar experiences with overly speculative opioid prescriptions, and I have to wonder, do the doctors think they're doing you a favor by being generous??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We _will_ solve the opioid crisis in this country and the solution will almost certainly come through new scientific advances.

For instance, a recent study in Nature Medicine[1] showed that you could decouple the positive analgesic (pain relief) effects of opioids from the negative effects of increased tolerance to opioids and increased sensitivity to pain. This is critical because tolerance to the effect of opioids and increased sensitivity of pain to opioids is part of what drives increased use and eventually abuse of opioids.

The practical upshot of this study (if validated) is that you could potentially take a smaller amount of opioids and not have to increase your dose over time to get the same level of benefit. This could severely limit the mortality associated with opioids.

I am hopeful that we will get through the opioid crisis in this country if we invest money in fixing the underlying physiological problems associated with these drugs.

[1][http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v23/n2/full/nm.4262.html](http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v23/n2/full/nm.4262.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been prescribed opioids twice in my life, once for wisdom teeth extraction and again for a broken ankle. In the first case I filled the prescription but ended up flushing the pills down the toilet without taking a single one, as the pain did not override my fear of developing dependency. I never even filled the prescription for the broken ankle, and also didn't need it.

These should be treated as treatments of last, not first resort. In both cases, marijuana would have been a more appropriate for pain relief anyway (though I did not use any).

</comment><comment><USER16> About the linked study, it's important to emphasize that it's _retrospective_ \-- it tracks the behavior of people who applied for and received opioid prescriptions. This means the stated results may not apply to a person not inclined to use opioids.

A hypothetical _prospective_ study, obviously impractical on multiple grounds -- one that chooses study subjects from the population at random -- might produce a completely different result.

Or the outcome might be the same -- for ethical reasons that deserve to exist, we may never know.

</comment><comment> tmp-20150107 Sounds about right. As a heroin addict, I have seen people who are completely clean relapse after maybe three days of taking it daily again, and I have even noticed signs of withdrawal in people who have only taken the drug a couple of times, but on consecutive days. In general, it is the _repeated_ consumption without giving your body time to return to its baseline state (which can take up to three days, depending on the drug and its half-life) that causes the physical addiction - all the scare stories about 'one hit and you're addicted' are just that; stories.

For anyone needing opiates as pain medication, I would suggest taking them only in response to acute pain, not as a regular dose, although this may not be possible for chronic sufferers. It's a difficult situation, the best painkillers are horribly addictive and socially stigmatized.

</comment><comment><USER17> I broke my wrist on march 1st, and I've had opioids absolutely dished out for me. Seemingly more easily prescribed in the US than South Africa. I was upped on my second refill to 15mg oxycodone three hourly. Seriously hoping getting off them isn't going to be a struggle :(

<comment><USER18> If you're taking 45mg of oxycodone an hour, you are definitely going to have discontinuation symptoms when you stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see a bright future for cannabinoids - assuming that politicians figure out that it's an obvious escape hatch for this opioid epidemic.

<comment><USER20> I don't get it. Cannabis has always worsened my pain, not relieved it. I have chronic often severe back pain and cannabis has always emphasized it. I spent 4 hours thinking constantly about the pain until the drug wears off. I may be a minority, but it hardly inspires confidence in cannabis as a silver bullet.

Opiates however... they really work. They really make the pain go away. Which is why I stay the hell away from them. :-(

<comment><USER21> I also have chronic pain (fibromyalgia) and have had a similar experience with cannabis. It makes me feel spacey and like I'm dreaming rather than awake. It didn't really reduce my pain at all, only my ability to concentrate on things that aren't pain as a distraction from the pain. Overall it left me in a worse place than before I had taken it.

I've never taken opiates for pain, only occasionally for cough (tussin + codeine during a bout of pnuemonia and again when I had bronchitis, and low dose vicodin once for about a week one winter when my asthma was extremely bad and I couldn't sleep because of the coughing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had a total hip replacement very recently. Having been given a 2 week supply of Oxy, I took very minimal doses and was off of it after six days.

I had no idea how addicting this is for people. Personally, I didn't like how it made me feel, so I can only wonder about different people getting different types of "buzz" from it? I think I was irritable for a day after I stopped.

</comment><comment><USER23> I got opiods after a surgery, still have 1 left that I am saving for a rainy day :)

I wasn't even close to become addicted. But it is a nice painkiller.

<comment><USER24> You could also take part in National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day: [https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drug_disposal/takeback/](https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drug_disposal/takeback/). Just a thought. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> every few years I get an operation, this year it was 4 wisdom teeth extractions. they gave me 21 oxycodones, I took 18, threw 3 down the trash. (this was on top of maximum strength ibuprophen)

for acute pain, discipline.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doing something illegal (like pot) doesn't automatically make you a criminal. I'm serious.

For example, any time two people have sex if they drank first (are drunk) then no matter how much they consent and really, really want to have sex it's "technically rape" (I am serious). That doesn't make them criminals. And rape is serious.

You have to look at the ACTUAL enforcement practices where you're located. What do people (police) ACTUALLY do?

Also, remember: the reason it is not completely legal might have nothing to do with your consumption of it. For example, would like advertisements for it? Totally legit companies doing things that are "legal" today like shilling on Reddit, trying to get people to use their (legal) drugs?

So I would encourage you not to have such a black and white view of what is "criminal." It's a scale. Just as you're not raping a girl if you two have great drunk sex some night and both wanted it, you're not a criminal if you light up a joint.

<comment><USER7> I wish it was that simple. My girlfriend said if it is not prescribed by a doctor I shouldn't be taking it and started calling me an addict. I personally don't recognize these laws, but I know unlucky people that were caught and did time for it. Yes, for having a joint and they have criminal record now.

<comment><USER26> Well, I can only try to convince you, not your girlfriend.

I can see it bothering her. For her information if you want to share this thread, in my research marijuana is less addictive than soda: if you drink 3 liters of soda every day then suddenly stop and don't get caffeine from somewhere else like coffee, then due to the caffeine withdrawal you would have a headache for a day. (That's it.) it would be uncomfortable.

Have her read the comments disagreeing with this article:

[https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/marijuana- withdrawal-r...](https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/marijuana-withdrawal- real)

You will not be "addicted.". (Waaay less than caffeine or tobacco.)

You can read people's own reports there, including peoplr in a similar situation as you who lead happy lives.

That said, the smoke itself could be uncomfortable, and you don't want to get high, so I am not saying this is a solution or anything.

Also the enforcement practices in your area are a different matter, and if people you actually know served jail time, then perhaps the enforcement is not lax enough.

In that case I can see what you mean.

(Btw pot now figures in TV shows, like Silicon Valley, too. It's "normal".)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for that, but this will not work. She will not believe in comments of some random people on the internet.

My choice is to leave her and self medicate, but that will be viewed as "marijuana changed him" and I am pretty sure she will call police on me (she did this once).

<comment><USER26> It's very easy to see her point of view and I can see why you give it some respect. It's particularly easy for me to empathize with as I have been quite militant with girlfriends that they quit smoking [edit: cigarettes] if they want to be with me - while I wouldn't call the police on someone just to change their behavior I disagreed with, if she feels that this is in your interests (she views it similarly to starting to do heroin, etc) then it is very easy to see her view. it's not "crazy" or something, and she probably wants you to be the person she's always loved.

Actually I've since learned that such changes can't be external in nature but have to come from within.

The Internet generally gives horrible, horrible advice. I think your best bet is to make her feel like the idea is hers. But how to do that?

I don't know.

If you want to share her email (you can send her email address to the email address I list in my profile) I can send a letter like this:

\---

Hello,

I'm a fellow IT worker like your boyfriend. I don't have any pain problems or use any drugs of any kind. However, there was a recent discussion on opioids (which include many prescription medications) and your boyfriend mentioned the prescription drugs that he deals with for his pain. Because these are tightly controlled (for various reasons particularly due to being addictive), several of us wondered if he has used cannabis to deal with his pain. It is well-known that many people use it very well. It's not addictive (almost at all - you can do any quantity and quit overnight and a couple of days later be fine. Lots of people do this. It's not even like cigarettes or caffeine.) which is one of the reasons that even in states that legalized it, for a long time medical usage was allowed. I am sure you want a boyfriend who is not in pain, so I was curious if you wanted to talk about any of the reasons that you hold such a strong position against it? It is becoming legal in many places, has lax enforcement, and it sounds like it would improve his quality of life? By the way, I personally don't really like the legalization movement: I don't want companies to start advertising it, make profit on it, or even treating it like drug companies do (medical marijuana) which generally take money from everyone they can - Americans pay an obscene amount on health care. If this solution works for others and isn't addictive, what are the reasons you are against his trying it? I'd like to emphasize that I'm not a drug user at all and just an IT worker. I don't consider cannabis criminal the way other drugs are, regardless of the jurisdiction. Just so you know, your boyfriend is thinking that if his pain gets bad enough and he does not want to risk becoming addicted to prescription pain medication (which is highly addictive: see, Rush Limbaugh, who genuinely become addicted to prescription pain medicine and ended up arrested due to abuse of them: [https://www.google.hu/search?q=rush+limbaugh+pain+medicine](https://www.google.hu/search?q=rush+limbaugh+pain+medicine) ) then it might come down to having to choose between you and a pain-free life. I don't think he should be forced to take addictive medication if everyday non-medication (like cannabis) works for people so well that many states allowed it for a long time before legalizing recreational use. I also think you can be reasonable about it, so I would just like to understand your reasoning about it better. I offered to ask you about it after he said that you certainly wouldn't change your mind. (And would probably report him to the police if he ever tried it, for whatever reason. That certainly seems extreme to me.) I appreciate any thoughts you might have on the subject. I'm sure you have good reasons for how you feel about the matter and I'd like to understand them. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Matthew Carter: My life in typefaces [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/matthew_carter_my_life_in_typefaces#t-130910

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't all design type, but we all cope with imperfect and rapidly changing technology. Carter describes what it was to make the best of it. There's much to learn from such an attitude.</comment>


Django-hijack 1.0.2 - <AUTHOR>

Djangonauts, we released https://github.com/arteria/django-hijack 1.0.2 today. Version 1.0.2 comes with a new release mechanism, hijack history, better UI/UX and other minor improvements. It's ready to install from PyPI. <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting. This could be really useful.

In my previous project for a client I implemented a similar feature (though I named it masquerade).

Thanks for sharing it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/arteria/django-hijack](https://github.com/arteria/django- hijack)</comment>


Interval sequences in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://ahefner.livejournal.com/6735.html <comment><USER2> From what I can tell, this provides two operations: interval and below. I'm not a Common Lisp user so I don't know the intricacies of CLOS but it seems to me that these functions can be written much more compactly, albeit without the extensive error reporting (in Scheme):

        (define (interval a b)
          (if (<= b a) '()
              (cons a (interval (+ a 1) b))))

        (define (below x)
          (if (<= x 1) '(0)
              (append (below (- x 1)) (list (- x 1)))))

What advantage does the wall of code in the article have over these two functions?

<comment><USER3> The main advantage that I see is that his class transparently works with any function expecting a 'sequence', which spec only defines as either a vector (i.e., 1-d array) or a list (i.e., linked list) while providing a some (extremely simple) lazy evaluation. I, for one, never realized that you could extend the sequence type in this way in SBCL.

For example, if he created an instance of his interval-sequence class with (below 100000000), he wouldn't actually have to allocate the memory for a hundred million element vector (or a 100 million cons cells). Instead, it would just use a handful of bytes to represent the start of the sequence, and the length.

By itself, it's fairly trivial. But, this sort of manipulation isn't part of the ansi spec so this post was just sort of letting us know what was possible (a 'hello world' of sorts).

I already have a few interesting ideas on how one could use this same technique to provide slightly smarter lazy evaluation, and some sort of time/duration manipulation stuff.

<comment><USER4> I'm a big python user, with some lisp coding in the past. I took a look at his code and I'm just wondering if this is any different than xrange() in python? For those that don't know, xrange is a generator of integer sequences... a way of iterating a "list" of N integers while only allocating space for 1 integer.

*note: This isn't a "python is better" argument, it's an "I'm surprised sbcl doesn't provide xrange type functionality, am I right in that assumption" argument.

<comment><USER5> It looked like xrange to me. Honestly, though, I can see why it's not in SBCL, because I don't actually find myself using xrange all that much. It's mostly stuff like:

      for unused in xrange(500):
        # perform some operation (500 times)

In Lisp, this is just:

      (dotimes (unused 500) ; perform some operation... )</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Calacanis Shreds Arrington, Calls Him "Trainwreck," "Liability," "Sociopath"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/calacanis-arrington-techcrunch-aol-2010-9

<comment><USER2>
      you've a had a partner ... take food out of your kid's mouth?

Jason has 3 teslas. Maybe he should tone down the poverty stricken rhetoric. He is less very rich because of Arrington (allegedly) - not poor.

<comment><USER3> So, hypothetically speaking, the more someone has the more OK it is to steal from them?

<comment><USER2> I didn't say it was ok. I'm saying the rhetoric about his kids starving is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, is this Angels Go Nuclear week?

As incendiary as JC is (by nature), he makes an interesting case: killing the Tech Crunch conference was all about flipping TechCrunch to AOL without giving away a piece of the pie.

 __> >IF<< __that's the case it would make it harder to feel any sympathy over the (very real) screwage inflicted by Fusion Garagae over the CrunchPad/JooJoo.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's so sad...does this mean they are not BFF's anymore?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Check out his further clarying comments in the thread:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/calacanis-arrington- techcrunc...](http://www.businessinsider.com/calacanis-arrington-techcrunch- aol-2010-9#comment-4ca20a217f8b9a657b300000)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of a good open-source microwave oven firmware? - <AUTHOR> Short story long: My microwave has a terrible control panel and now the very custom and highly integrated rotary encoder broke and I can't set time and wattage anymore.
Pretty much all microwave ovens work the same way, you need a relay to turn on the magnetron, and one for the light bulb, a few buttons to set time and wattage, and a few pins for the segment display.
I am surprised that I couldn't easily find a generic microwave firmware for arduino boards..
Do I have to write this myself ? <comment><USER2> I doubt there is, they are too inexpensive to replace. Cheap ones go for < $100 bucks so people just dispose of broken ones and buy a new one (electronics people will harvest parts from the broken one first). Even a nice Microwave is $150-300 most places, anything more and you are paying for some gimmick usually. My point on that is putting effort into writing software and connecting everything is just not worth the time & effort, unless you just want to play around of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I will write that software and push to github at some time.

The one I have is $500 and rather well built, it's simply criminal to throw away so much material due to a stupid switch being broken.</comment></comment>


GitHub Diff helper (remove files from the diff view) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-diff-helper/dhggdgaoccikibijlbocggphcomehbih

<comment><AUTHOR> Really cool chrome extension.

Usually, when you view a PR, you don't care about some files, this gives you an option to remove them from the view and focus on what's important.</comment>


The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/139147/year-silicon-valley-went-morally-bankrupt <comment><USER2> The day Palantir was founded? Oracle founded? Cisco caving to NSA backdoors in the early 90s?

Seems like there may be many days where this occurred.

</comment><comment><USER3> tldr; Gawker was a "critical investigative news outlet" say people who worked for Gawker.

And the media wonder why they've lost credibility.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "Tech moguls are trying to remake the world.."

No, they are trying to get more attention, power, and money. This is made especially clear by "me too" startups receiving almost all funding, and all "big talk" eventually amounting to empty words.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, my thought too. Plain ol' "getting rich" is the more common motivator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Political - isn't there a moratorium on that?

<comment><USER5> Yeah. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

> Thiel has been publicly vague about the specific policy alignments he shares > with Donald Trump—but the two share a certain grandiosity and a disdain for > the government, as well as a warped view of what it means to be a good and > decent human being.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth switching from web development to native iOS dev? - <AUTHOR> hello everyone, hope you are having a good day, my background is CS in university after that worked on some agencies did many things, from back end JAVA EE to android apps, and recently (3 years ago) moved to do React and frontend mainly, I live in Copenhagen and have a decent job and a good pay my question: is it worth it switching to IOS development and do that mainly for the next few years, my motivation is mainly investing more in the exclusive apple ecosystem, looking to expand my area and work in completely different constraints and runtimes
Also if you have a better career idea please suggest it
thank you <comment><USER2> In my opinion here are the pros:

\- iOS will be around a long time.

\- Big brands and startups are basically required to have an app in the App Store if they want to succeed.

\- Every year a new version comes out that requires developers to fix bugs and sometimes adopt new technology.

Here are the cons:

\- Extremely difficult to build an indie business on iOS given that there is a single distribution channel that you don't control.

\- The learning curve is pretty steep.

Here are some other points:

\- Good iOS developers are harder to find than good web developers (feels true to me, it might not be).

\- You probably won't be on call as an iOS developer (this is important to me, it might not to you).

Developers are paid well across the board. I would pick a technology you enjoy working in and isn't in decline. I believe developers are more likely to succeed if they chase their interest over their salary.

<comment><USER3> _Big brands and startups are basically required to have an app in the App Store if they want to succeed._

I don't think that will continue to be the case for much longer. It's mirroring the web to an extent - for a long time every business needed to have a website, and now more and more don't bother with anything more than a holding page that directs users to a few social media accounts. Brand apps are likely to go the same way, especially as Apple are doubling down on rejecting apps that don't provide useful functionality now.

Having an app for your brand is worthwhile if you have something to say and something for users to do. If you don't it's _painfully_ obvious that the whole effort was a waste of time.

<comment><USER4> What brand can you name that wouldn't have something useful you could do with an app?

<comment><USER5> The Hershey Company.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.hersheys.com/en_us/products/hersheys-milk- chocol...](https://www.hersheys.com/en_us/products/hersheys-milk-chocolate- emoji-bar.html)

<comment><USER5> What's the purpose of linking this? It's chocolate...with an emoji stamped on it. There's no app.

<comment><USER4> No but it's obvious there could be.

<comment><USER5> Nothing valuable, and especially nothing that _shouldn 't_ be done with a website.

<comment><USER4> Just because you don't personally value something doesn't mean it isn't valuable. Anyway, it's clear that the issue here is that you simply _want_ apps to go away. Not that they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd focus on what platform you like working in.

As a backend dev that has built a few mobile apps in Android and iOS, I hated wait for code to build and deploy to mobile phones. I hated trying to track down errors that only happen on certain devices or tweaking the UI for each phone screen. I hated the annual upgrade monkey dance to support the new version of iOS or Android.

If you switch languages or platforms, you may take a pay hit while you ramp up or you might can get lucky and find a company that will pay full price you to learn the tooling.

Typically, there will be an opportunity cost of learning swift instead of getting paid to do what you know. If it takes 200 hours of learning and you earn $50/hr, that will set you back $10k in lost time.

Don't change because of money. Change because you're bored of react.

<comment><USER7> I developed Android/iOS apps also, and now I'm full stack .Net/C# dev. The amount of jobs out there is insane, many enterprise jobs, where you build apps to support the business. Super laid back, good work/life balance and decent pay. I can't imagine myself going back to mobile dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been an iOS dev for... 12 years now. And I love it. I'm in a position now where I'm learning Android for the first time. It's Kotlin and I don't hate it. And I'm still trying to learn back end. I can't code my way out of a box using HTML. I guess you'd say I can't code my way out of a

The ecosystem is amazing. I love the tools. Xcode is a joy of an IDE to work with. There's some room to improve, but compared to everything else... it's not even a question. The community is full of people who are full of wonder and excitement.

As a web dev, you probably already know some Ruby and have some familiarity with some build tools that I didn't when I came to iOS dev. That'll help. You won't be exclusive to Apple. You'll be using CocoaPods and Gradle and Bazel and Jenkins and Travis and god only knows what else. On any given day I code in Swift, Objective-C, Ruby, Kotlin, and Groovy.

At the end of the day, remember you'll be doing this 40 to 80 hours a week. Make sure you enjoy it.

<comment><USER9> Curious how you have handled some of these challenges:

1\. What do you do to avoid massive view controllers? I have found that a lot of iOS apps I have worked on end up having the view controller be responsible for doing everything from fetching data from an API to setting the corner radius on some component. This leads to view controllers being really big and not unit tested.

2\. Do you do anything to explicitly keep your application state in one place? I find that state in iOS apps ends up being scattered between a data store, singletons and view controllers. This is a lot more cumberesome than something like Redux where state is just in a single store.

3\. I am pretty excited about SwiftUI as it addresses a lot of these pain points and brings iOS development into a more modern era similar to React. What is your opinion of SwiftUI? Are you using it on your apps? If so, what have been the challenges of introducing it into existing apps? If not, why not?

<comment><USER8> 1\. Don't have massive VCs by not having massive VCs. That sounds unhelpful, but hear me out... You're asking the VC to do too much. Break that sucker down. Have many, many small classes that do small things. Use libraries for stuff. A VC should be a hub to transit data from the user to a model us MVVC, MVP, MVC... I don't care, every architecture has their acolyte.

2\. No. Again not helpful. This is a domain specific problem. I will say I'm waging a now multi-decade war against singletons. Dependency injection is the way to go. For Swift checkout Swinject, it really superpowers your testing.

3\. Haven't touched it... yet. My primary projects need to ship and my secondary projects haven't hit the point of UI. Won't until later this year. Then I'll deal with SwiftUI. Combine, however, is my new _hawtness_ and I recommend diving into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only things I would consider: what do you love to build?

After a lot of web and APIs dev (NodeJS, Go, Rust, VueJS) I'm now building the native apps of my project ([https://bloom.sh](https://bloom.sh)).

I find mobile development (especially iOS) very frustrating, the ecosystems are really closed and platforms are not focused on empowering developers but growing their profits and closing more and more their walled garden.

The only 2 reasons I've not abandoned mobile development are:

1) Flutter, a fresh air in UI development, whether it be the simplicity, the tools or the ecosystem.

2) the possibility to build offline first apps.

<comment><USER11> Build?

Most jobs out there are fixing other people shitty code. If the company is mature enough to be making a lot of money, the chances are the code has lots of crap in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "switching" give the impression of let go the web. I say "adding".

I work freelance for more than 20+years and have done almost all: Windows Apps, Web Apps, Mobile (iOS, Android), Cloud, nosql, sql, utilities, etc.

Adding an extra to what you have make you stronger. Is a big plus for me to say "I know this and that and that...".

Of course, I have my preferences and strengths, but I can fit in almost any project.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. It's good to have the skillset required to develop a mobile app in its entirety, including the API layer if one is necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I made exactly this transition and don't regret it. Having a native debugger is hugely luxurious, and the Apple developer ecosystem is for the most part, an extremely nice walled garden. The platform is progressive and quick to deprecate legacy features, which keeps things interesting.

In my anecdotal experience however, frontend (React) and backend (Go, Java) devs are in much greater demand broadly across the market, rather than mobile devs.

</comment><comment><USER15> In general, I think that having knowledge of multiple different tech stacks is good. The IT industry is constantly changing and evolving, and learning to evolve and change is good.

Also, you might want to take a look at Flutter. It's a new(ish) cross-platform mobile development framework from Google. It seems to be getting some traction, and allows you to write truly cross-platform mobile apps. There are other cross-platform mobile frameworks (React Native, ...), but Flutter seems to be gaining momentum.

Anyhow, if you are interested in mobile development, give it a try! It's not you are locked into your choice for life...

</comment><comment><USER16> My advice would be to focus on iOS as a platform, and not as a matter of React vs native vs Swift vs Java. In the end, you could write an equally amazing (or distasteful) app using React as you could using Swift. Where most developers fall short is understanding the capabilities and constraints of iOS; they aim for the greatest common divisor when it comes to functionality.

While a more senior developer could mentor you, once you understand the platform inside-out, you become more of an authority, and that opens you up to amazing possibilities irrespective of what language or framework you're using.

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes. I switched in 2010 and haven't regretted it once. More fun, much less framework churn than frontend, and better pay. And if it crashes for some reason, you can switch to something else.

And learn native Swift, not React Native or Flutter or some other fad hybrid approach. It'll be worth it in the long run.

<comment><USER18> > _And learn native Swift, not React Native or Flutter or some other fad > hybrid approach. It'll be worth it in the long run._

How? Feels to me like I keep seeing recruitment for cross-platform devs more than native devs. And a lot of companies seem interested in pumping out cross- platform apps from a single codebase than developing separate native apps.

<comment><USER19> >And a lot of companies seem interested in pumping out cross-platform apps from a single codebase than developing separate native apps.

There will always be a need for expert native devs who can build high performance apps. There are things you simply cannot do with crossplatform apps, specifically things like low level OpenGL code and edge ML. Yes there are less of these jobs, but they tend to pay much better and are in heavy demand.

<comment><USER20> Both OpenGL shader code and on-device ML can be done in React Native. However, you likely won't reach full native performance today.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HYnrdKEVMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HYnrdKEVMU) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbcuLfrt8XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbcuLfrt8XA) [https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/image-classification-on-react- nat...](https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/image-classification-on-react-native-with- tensorflow-js-and-mobilenet-48a39185717c)

You're right there will always be a very high demand for native engineers to build the underlying bridge code to back these capabilities. As cross-platform tools gain new bridged capabilities and become faster ([https://engineering.fb.com/android/hermes/](https://engineering.fb.com/android/hermes/)), as they have been slowly, I think the use-cases where using something like React Native or Flutter is possible and makes sense will grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I did the opposite. Started as native iOS dev for 3 years, then picked up React as a hobby, then started a new job with React-Native, and now I do full- stack. I've also done a lot of back-end both as a hobby and at work.

As others said, play with different tools and do what you enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER22> This question echos fifteen years ago. Swap "iOS" for "Flash." People might have said, "Adobe isn't going out of business any time soon." And those people would have been right. Web development on the other hand is as much "a thing" today as it was back then.

Can you make money as an iOS developer? Sure. But the unit economics are not great. iOS apps are usually free. Paid apps usually $0.99. $1.99 is an expensive app. That's retail before Apple takes its cut. On the consulting/contractor/freelancer side, it's probably harder to find iOS clients than web clients. iOS is after the gold rush. Any stable company with deep pockets that wants an iOS app probably already has one.

<comment><USER23> You can't swap iOS for Flash.

iOS/Android is more similar to the introduction of the Web Browser. It's an entire platform shift that fundamentally changes how people interact with computing, period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you only care about the iOS ecosystem, then sure. Swift is great, a lot of great support from Xcode and a bunch of tools around it.

I did the opposite. I moved from native iOS to React Native for iOS only to React Native for iOS and Android.

It is definitely more complicated to do React Native for now, if you need to do anything that touched the native frameworks/hardware, so it definitely helps to have the native experience.

Finally, I would say that if you are into learning more iOS and getting the native feel, go for it, it will be a fun trip. And after a year or two, you can decide if you want to keep going with it, switch back to something else, or go with React Native (or anything else, I just have more experience with it to talk about it).

<comment><USER25> I have done the same switch recently and I react native has been a lot of fun to learn. Especially knowing native iOS and android it makes rn sooo powerful cuz you can expose whatever you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The mobile "web" is embracing native apps in a big way. It's difficult to go anywhere now without being pestered into installing an app - even if the site already has a perfectly usable mobile version. Worse still, some sites refuse to work at all or are severely limited. I don't particularly like the direction things are going in (despite having very few nice things to say about "modern" web frontend) but if I was in your situation I could certainly see myself going with iOS (or Android) from a salary perspective. Not sure how things are in Europe but I've noticed a lot of tech startups where I am in Tokyo skipping the web entirely in favour of apps.

</comment><comment><USER27> Some people are generally good at doing software development and they choose the platform based on how well it pays. iOS is certainly way up there both in terms of demand and pay. If that's what matters to you, switching should give you a bump in pay.

</comment><comment><USER28> My perspective on this has evolved quite recently.

I've been doing Angular and React apps on the web professionally for six or seven years now, and a few native iOS apps on the side for fun.

Last summer I got a gig doing a React Native app. "No problem; I know React, I know native. Let's go."

I kind of hated it. Everything I was doing in React, though familiar and second nature, seemed so DUMB because I knew that Cocoa Touch had better, faster, simpler solutions.

I came out of the experience with the feeling that web apps are profoundly misguided; that we ought to be going back to static sites for the web, and _real_ native for functionality.

I guess my answer is "yes, absolutely, and maybe you should consider ditching web apps altogether."

</comment><comment><USER29> My situation is a bit different: switching from iOS to ML. One thing I could say is that iOS development is a fun experience. I did it for the past 5-6 years of my career and was self-taught. I learned both Objective-C and Swift during my time in that world. Doing iOS development has taught me a lot UI/UX, amongst other things.

Recently, I switch to a role in ML and its been a change in my workflow so far - which is something I expected, but fun nonetheless. I don't get to do UI/UX in the visual sense but now I have to care about design of ML models and deployment so that other front-end clients can use them.

I would say give iOS development a go ahead because you want to!

<comment><USER30> How did you find changing from one field to another. I've been doing iOS for about 3 years and I'm started to feel like I might be trapped doing iOS forever. I mean I can't imagine a company wanting to hire me in something else given all my workplace experience is iOS.

<comment><USER31> Not the parent, but as a hiring manager I would guess that you can implement UIs, make API calls, manage client-side data, work with a type system, etc. Those seem like pretty useful skills in modern client-side web development.

If you would want to make a move to backend/full-stack, you might need to pick up skills like databases, queues, caching, building APIs, and DevOps. But good companies are willing to bet that you can pick up new skills on the job if you have some sort of foundation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In my experience, you will excel the most at what you enjoy the most. I would try iOS and see if it something that would excited to work on most days. I doubt good web developers or good mobile developers will be going hungry in the next couple of years.

Have you considered Flutter, at all for native mobile development? Not sure there is any demand for Flutter developers, per se, but since you are looking at mobile development anyway, might be worth a look.

</comment><comment><USER33> For web:

It's easier to test UI You can choose the language of your preference Easier to be cross-platform For native:

No browser bugs to worry about Easier to just get started (fewer dependencies) Less worry about supporting outdated OSes I have visited INORU [https://www.inoru.com/ios-app-development](https://www.inoru.com/ios-app- development) for better iOS development

</comment><comment><USER34> Early last year I made the exact switch you are considering. As another commenter pointed out, since I work as a freelancer it was more a matter of "adding" a skill rather than "switching" I was able to gradually transition to doing native iOS.

Swift itself has made me feel a lot of enjoyment and productivity as a solo developer, I feel I'm able to produce a higher quality of software faster with far less npm noise and "busy work". There is a lot more work in React right now but with that comes a lot more competition and a lot of not very interesting jobs doing repetitive CRUD work. The community is much smaller but very friendly and welcoming to newcomers and beginners. With CoreML, ARKit, SwiftUI and Catalyst it's quite a fun time to be working in Apple's walled garden.

Keep in mind there is a considerable upfront time investment in doing this, there is a lot to learn. Swift itself should come fairly naturally as it's designed in a way that you can get by with a small subset of it and gradually add more. Learning the platform and it's APIs however takes some time.

</comment><comment><USER35> Like most things, it depends... If you don't hate React, you may want to look into React Native, or Flutter so that you have a decent path to cross platform support. There's also Cordova/PhoneGap if you wanted to dip your toes more slowly.

If you're going all in, you'll probably be okay, but I'm nut sure how broad the audience will be longer term. It feels like the focus is going towards cross-platform (at least iOS + Android) as much as possible. There will always be a need for some custom glue to each respective platform even then though.

iOS isn't going anywhere, but Android is also here to stay, and a huge market share to ignore. Few businesses will fund two separate applications with distinct code bases if they can target both relatively well with a single code base. That's just my $.02

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd suggest investing in a few months of iOS dev in your spare time to get a feel if you like it before making any commitments.

Understanding the tools and basic architectures and APIs will be useful on your CV.

Doing some React Native might be the way in for you.

</comment><comment><USER37> I too am a web developer and have constantly been fascinated by new technologies. I had looked at android development but could not get a hang of Java. Recently flutter has been in the wild and so I choose to get my hands dirty by doing flutter challenges. I loved the process and the ease of working with flutter so I ensure that I spend at least 1 hour everyday developing in flutter. I look forward to getting off from work so I can switch on my home laptop and do some flutter. P.S : I will continue being a web developer.

</comment><comment><USER38> I suggest to take as a hobby and learn more about how mobile os works, Also try android dev. All this task will lead you to better understanding of full stack development. Pick a tech of your choice in Full stack development and revisit skillset every few years. Pro Tip- If you have decent job, do not ruin it for small temptation. First jump into it prove yourself and if possible just find that work in your existing company.

</comment><comment><USER39> Oooh, interesting. So, people who know: I get the impression that we're moving to a "business that has an app front end" model rather than the app itself being the business. So isn't it "better" to use a cross platform toolkit?

</comment><comment><USER40> I would cut off my left nut before building anything that depends primarily on either iOS or Android. It's lose-lose - if you get successful, they'll copy you and fuck you over.

Obvious exceptions apply e.g. if you just build a widget as a lifestyle business.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you have front-end development, the much better move in my opinion would be to master modern back-end development in ruby / elixir / go / etc... and become a true full stack developer. I made the move to iOS 5 years ago and regret it for a few reasons.

1\. I became "stuck" doing iOS development. I recently had to switch jobs, and even though I have some server and web experience, it was more scattered and dated than my iOS experience. I was looking for senior software engineer positions and with my track record of iOS development, the only positions that gave me an interview were the iOS ones of which there were a lot less. If I had a history of server work, I have a feeling I would have gotten a lot more interviews even for jobs that didn't use the specific stack my experience was in. At this point, if I want to get back into full stack dev, I would either have to convince my current job to switch teams, or take a cut in seniority and pay.

2\. iOS development is behind on modern UI dev concepts. Developing for iOS feels like going back to jQuery or Backbone.js from React. Things like a declarative user interface, automatic DOM re-rendering and UI Bindings are in their infant state in iOS, while they have been core concepts of web frameworks for a decade. As a result, a lot of iOS code out there is very messy. While the web moved towards light user interface components and centralizing business logic in the Redux state, iOS stayed with the MVC pattern which in practice often results in giant, untested view controller files very reminiscent of the big jQuery script files of the early 2000s. You can try to fight this by adding your own architecture and external libraries, but such approaches will always be second class citizens, not the default.

(SwiftUI is going to address some of these issues. However, its a newer technology and most existing iOS apps will be slow to adapt to it)

3\. It will be harder to pass a FAANG interview. One of the crucial interviews is the "system design" interview which is almost always server related. As opposed to the algorithm questions which are easy to study for from a book, the only good way to answer these system design questions well is by having experience in designing and building such systems. If you stay on the client side doing iOS or front end, you won't be able to answer such a question effectively.

The reason I moved to iOS from front end was because I wanted to get outside of the browser to a more full feature platform. In retrospect though, the obvious platform to transition to is not iOS or mobile dev, its the server. The server is a full feature platform which gives you the ultimate freedom to do whatever you want. And while frameworks like Ruby on Rails or React come and go, I found that job openings were pretty indifferent between the specific framework you worked on as long as you have server experience in general.

</comment><comment><USER41> React Native and then you don't have to :D

</comment><comment><USER42> The only thing native really gives you is notifications and performance (and better sensor access) at the cost of high coupling and having to use a specific OS for development.

Church-Turing yadda yadda

</comment><comment><USER43> nope. iOS market reach is limited, as you're likely to reach more potential customers via web. Yeah the mobile ecosystem is trendy, but looking at numbers the apps that make money are games. which you can make via some platform agnostic engine such as Unreal | Unity etc.

</comment><comment><USER44> Very risky to be a developer for a walked garden.

If Apple does Apple things, they might make it harder and more expensive to develop. You might be a great programmer, but your company may not want to build native iOS apps.</comment>


"Superfish is currently transitioning our focus" - <AUTHOR> http://www.home.superfish.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but think it's funny that they're using React for a page like this, with scripts like 'wixAppsBuilder.min.js', 'wixAppsClassics.min.js' and 14 requests to frog.wix.com (whatever that is). So apparently they built this (extremely simple!) page with... Wix Website Builder?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, Wix has been transitioning all their Angular code to React.

You're blaming superfish for using a website builder for a trivial page rather than actually care about hosting + coding + etc?

<comment><USER4> What happened to a plain HTTP page? (with all js you want, of course)

<comment><USER5> HTML page you mean? HTTP is a protocol.

<comment><USER4> Correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm assuming this means the thing with Lenovo didn't go that well, or is it a different company?

<comment><USER7> Very same company. Fish as in phish as in phishing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lenovo-case: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9524536)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good riddance?

</comment><comment><USER10> doublespace between "transitioning" and "our" that is visually unappealing</comment>


Hackers, experts decode the magic of 'Mr. Robot' ahead of Season 2 - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/06/06/mr-robot-decoded-season-2/#j58RHP1BcEqn <comment><USER2> It was an entertaining show. Just wish it had been a bit more creative than a simple copy/paste/merge of American Psycho and Fight Club. I guess they added computers in the middle.</comment>


You know the new movie about Jimi Hendrix?… it won't use any Jimi Hendrix music - <AUTHOR> http://www.noisemademedoit.com/jimi-hendrix-movie-legal-issues/

<comment><USER2> That's pretty broken. Did John Lennon really say what they quote him as saying on that page?

<comment><USER3> According to WikiQuote it is "unsourced."

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:John_Lennon>

My brother in law gets a kick out of making stuff up and posting it to Facebook. So long as it is followed by "John Lennon," "Gandhi" or "The Dali Lama" it will get liked by multiple people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _"a movie about Jimi Hendrix being made, starring Andre Benjamin"_

If it's starring anyone other the Jimi Hendrix, it isn't about Jimi Hendrix, it's fiction.

I can't see how the estate is out of line. Furthermore, I personally think it's wonderful that his estate still controls the rights to his music rather than a large media conglomerate. "Revolution" as a sound track for a shoe commercial convinced me of that.

</comment><comment><USER4> That is strange.

BTW, I saw Jimi Hendrix in concert a week or so before he died - he was an awesome talent! I have some nice pictures I took at that concert shooting Anschrome ASA color slide film that I developed myself to push the ASA rating up for the dim light.</comment>


Dead children currency - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/2012/06/dead-children-currency-51/

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting idea, but note that all currently living children will die one day. And so will you and I. I'm not about to donate my money to delay the inevitable for some random person. Everyone's body is a sinking ship. Find other things to focus on.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's cold. Republican much?

The same argument could be made against providing any sort of universal emergency medical services as well, but I sure wouldn't want to live in that society.</comment></comment>


What happened to HTTP authentication? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/what-happened-to-http-authentication

<comment><USER2> It simply isn't a win.

* Application designers want to control the login/logout experience for users; HTTP auth delegates it to the browser's UI. Here's a telling example: where do you put the "Forgot password?" option on a site that uses HTTP auth?

* There's no logout and no inherent state tracking and to add either of these in-app you have to use the same hacky-seeming techniques you need for form-based auth.

* The "advanced" stuff you can do with HTTP auth (digest auth, for instance) isn't a real security win, especially vs. form-auth and TLS.

* The advanced stuff that is a win, like multi-factor, requires you to keep step-by-step control over the login experience and so isn't amenable to being delegated to the browser.

* It's just not better than web forms as a user experience. Popups are intrusive and ugly.

At the end of the day, there are a couple minor changes all browsers could make in concert merely to make HTTP Auth experience as good as the form auth experience; this would cost many tens of millions of dollars to deploy and would result in an Internet unlikely to be one iota better than what we have now.

<comment><USER3> _Application designers want to control the login/logout experience for users_

This could have been achieved by allowing a custom form in the 501 response page.

 _Where do you put the "Forgot password?" option on a site that uses HTTP auth?_

Also in the 501 response.

404 pages have been tailored to great extremes. Why not the 501s?

 _The "advanced" stuff you can do with HTTP auth [...] isn't a real security win, especially vs. form-auth and TLS._

Digest auth has the distinct advantage that the password is never sent to the server at all. With forms over TLS the password can be intercepted on the server doing the validation. With digest auth this is not possible.

 _There are a couple minor changes all browsers could make [...]; this would cost many tens of millions of dollars_

The real question is, why didn't browsers evolve in that direction to begin with, before too much was invested in form-based authentication?

<comment><USER2> Ok, your proposal is, "application designers will control the login experience by invoking a browser-controlled popup box over which they have virtually no control, and then, when that popup fails, they can do a really creative error page". I think you're making my point for me.

Your point about the security of digest auth appears to be the actual inverse of reality. Allowing for the fact that I could be wrong, since I think about HTTP Authentication very rarely in my professional career, since nobody uses it and nobody ever will, can you account for the fact that in order to verify digests, the server actually needs to _store_ the plaintext of the password, and not a hash? This is exactly the problem SRP was designed to solve.

Browsers didn't evolve in this direction because HTTP Auth was never a win over form auth. Form login is prettier than HTTP authentication, it's more usable, it's less intrusive, it's more flexible, it's easier to implement, 90% of it is required anyways since every app in the universe still needs a secure session store, and its future-proof.

<comment><USER4> >can you account for the fact that in order to verify digests, the server actually needs to store the plaintext of the password, and not a hash?

That was my first thought too, but apparently doesn't _have_ to be the case. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digest_access_authentication#Ad...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digest_access_authentication#Advantages)

On the other hand, wikipedia also points out my other gut reaction to the article, which is that forms over https basically provide all the same advantages without most of the drawbacks.

<comment><USER5> At first that appears to not store the plaintext of the password, but looking closer, isn't it really using the hash as a password? That is, if the bad guys got a copy of the hashes stored on the server, they could use a modified client to log in.

The protocol is requiring the client to prove that the client knows that hash, not that the client knows the password, if I'm reading it right (I might not be).

<comment><USER2> Yes, the intermediate hash is password-equivalent, but at least you haven't (directly) handed over your Google Mail password at the same time.

SRP was designed, in part, to make the serverside storage of passwords crypto- hard to break. It's an elegant protocol, but it's a little more complex than digest auth.

None of this stuff is anywhere nearly as safe as bcrypt and TLS with form auth. Digest HTTP auth can, in fact, make you even less safe than unencrypted form auth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the horse is out of the barn on this one - HTTP auth isn't going to come back. Even if all the browser vendors went and fixed the issues listed in this article tomorrow, HTTP auth still wouldn't support federated identity scenarios which is being used more and more every day.

</comment><comment> k-zed The reason why we should use HTTP authentication is similar to why we can have custom stylesheets, or why everyone should just use nntp instead of web forums, or a MUA instead of web mail.

"Content" shouldn't provide its own "style" - the user should be free to choose whatever matter of presentation they desire.

Furthermore, using HTTP authentication everywhere (at least as an omnipresent alternative) would make sites much more programmable, and thus accessible.

</comment><comment><USER7> "HTTP Authentication may be RESTful, but it's not very USEful." <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=155252>

</comment><comment><USER8> People don't like popups. Esp. none with just bare text.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sites dead... Google's got it: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.rooftopsolutions.nl/blog/what- happened-to-http-authentication&hl=en&strip=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dzone also has a copy

<http://css.dzone.com/news/what-happened-http>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It lives on very promisingly--and largely unadulterated--in the world of SIP digest authentication for a) registration requests (401 Unauthorized) and b) proxy challenges for outbound calls (407 Proxy Authentication Required).

<comment><USER11> It lives on in regular old HTTP proxy authentication, as used by a corporate network near you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't the big issue that none of the browsers ever implemented logout of any kind, and just expected you to close your browser?

<comment><USER13> In Firefox, Tools -> Clear Recent History -> Active Logins

Yes, it's terrible

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Basic auth is insecure except over SSL. Digest auth is secure, but Internet Explorer ruined it for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER14> IIRC, the digest HTTP auth stuff essentially forces you to store cleartext passwords.

<comment><USER15> It _sends_ Base64 encoded passwords. So if you use http it is basically cleartext. You still don't need to store the passwords in cleartext, as you can use the same hashing mechanisms you would with other login methods.

<comment><USER14> I thought for digest auth, it the server sends a new nonce, and then asks for md5(md5(username:password):nonce:md5(something i forget)) - you couldn't verify that unless you had access to the raw password, no?

summon @tpateck</comment></comment></comment>


Why Even Use Java 8 Optional? - <AUTHOR> https://www.voxxed.com/blog/2015/05/why-even-use-java-8-optional/

<comment><USER2> Newbie here. It this the same optional present at Swift?</comment>


SSL Labs Tests For Forward Secrecy Now - <AUTHOR> https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2013/06/25/ssl-labs-deploying-forward-secrecy <comment><USER2> "Internet Explorer 9 and 10, for example, support DHE only in combination with obsolete DSA keys. "

"Google, for example, does not have any DHE suites in their configuration"

Please upgrade.</comment>


Computing Fibonacci - <AUTHOR> http://atgcio.blogspot.com/2013/01/computing-fibonacci.html

<comment><USER2> _"The proof of this identity probably requires mathematical knowledge that is beyond my current capacity"_

Not at all!

Let M = [[1 1] ; [1 0]], the matrix under discussion. What does M do to a column vector v = [x ; y] under the rules of matrix multiplication?

        M*v = [x+y ; x].

But what is this transformation, in terms of the input and output vectors? It's the same transformation as the Fibonacci transformation! We take [current, previous] --> [current + previous, current].

This tells us that multiplying the matrix _n_ times will give us a matrix that gives the same result as applying the Fibonacci transformation n times:

        M * (M * v) = (M * M) v ,

etc. (Think of the left hand side as applying the transformation twice, one after the other, and the right hand side as applying _once_ a single transformation that has the same effect as two Fibonacci transformations.)

Now this tells us that M^n [1 ; 0] (the n^th power of the matrix M, multiplied by the initial state vector Fib_1 = 1, Fib_0 = 0), equals [Fib_n ; Fib_{n-1}].

You should be able to work backwards from that to see that M^n must have the entries specified, since matrix multiplication is just a simple algebraic process.

I've probably made some sort of off-by-one error here. But that's the idea.

What this suggests is that _any_ method of computing M^n will work to give you Fib_n. You could try repeated matrix multiplications, but why not an adaptation of the standard fast exponentiation algorithm? To compute M^k, either square M^(k/2) (if k is odd) or multiply M by M^(k-1) (if k is even). So M^13 would be

        M * M^12 = M * (M^6)^2 = M * ((M^3)^2) ^2 = M * ((M^2 * M)^2)^2,

done in 5 multiplications instead of 12 the naive way

        (M * M * M * ... * M).

This is done in chapter 1, exercise 19 of SICP, although they never explicitly admit that the transformation under discussion is a _linear transformation_ or write down its associated matrix. [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/book/book-Z-H-11.html...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/book/book-Z-H-11.html#%_thm_1.19)

By the way, this view of matrices--that they express _transformations that can be applied to vectors_ , and that transformations that can be written down as matrices have special properties and can be manipulated and composed to form new transformations with the same properties--is why linear algebra will knock your socks off in the right hands. (By contrast, if all you're told is that a matrix is what we call it when you line numbers up in a pretty little row, you will begin to hate your math class.)

<comment><USER3> For those wondering: that fast 'half the exponent' multiplication algorithm is not optimal in the number of matrix multiplications. For example, x^15 can be done in 5 multiplications, while 'half the exponent requires 6. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addition_chain_exponentiation>:

        x3 = x * x * x
        x6 = x3 * x3
        x12 = x6 * x6
        x15 = x12 * x3

vs

        x2 = x * x
        x4 = x2 * x2
        x8 = x4 * x4
        x12 = x4 * x8
        x14 = x12 * x2
        x15 = x14 * x

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The naive recursive implementation + memoization would be a cool addition. :)

<comment><USER5> See also [1], which, however, does not provide a recursive version.

[1] <http://stackoverflow.com/a/427810/48015></comment></comment>


Would a Google car sacrifice you for the sake of the many? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dweinberger/e9d6abcf6fed

<comment><USER2> I have been thinking about this the last few days. My first thought is that I would accept being sacrificed so that the overall impact of any collision is minimized.

When I get into a car, I'm not really worried about my chance of getting into an accident on this one trip. I'm interested in my overall chances of getting in a serious accident over the long term. I would happily drive in a car that will sacrifice me for the greater good, knowing that every other car out there is programmed the same way. I will get in a car each day knowing that my overall chances of surviving the trip are pretty good.

That said, I do pay attention to short-term factors such as impending severe weather and unusual road conditions.

The real question is, how do we help people who are less statistically minded accept cars that reason like this? The current US political climate does not seem like one that will accept this level of rationality easily.

<comment><USER3> My first thought is I would never get into a personal vehicle if the decision to "sacrifice myself for the greater good" was not my choice. [1][2]

How do you program "greater good" in a split-second decision making scenario? How do you decide who wins and who loses, and by what criteria?

I'll answer those rhetorical questions for you: you don't.

The guy that darts into traffic, which results in a network of cars deciding to kill me in order to minimize "overall" damage to humanity? You've killed a person with a family, with people who rely on me to provide for them. The guy that darts into traffic is running from the police after having committed a serious crime. How do you programmatically determine that his life is more worth than mine or the others who may be impacted by avoiding just running over him in the first place?

You don't. Not with a set of programmed rules in a decision making system that doesn't have the ability to take in external variables in the process of making that decision.

That guy jumping into the road, with the cop chasing him that I can see on the sidewalk? I'm running over him instead of killing myself in the process. If I see that "guy in the road" is the entire soprano section of the Angelic Children's Choir, then maybe I aim for the light pole and pick a deity to pray to.

I do not trust ANY piece of software to make that decision for me, or for anyone, for any reason, and in any situation.

[1] I have intentionally ditched my car in a way that I thought would result in my own demise in order to minimize damage to others. It was my choice to do so.

[2] I understand by getting into a vehicle that I don't control (plane, train, bus, taxicab, etc) that I am giving that decision-making process over to someone else. But that someone else is also human, with the same ability to process external input as I would, and I entrust them to not sacrifice both of us foolishly.</comment></comment>


Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/trump-administration-backs-oracle-in-google-fight-b23f0583-2dad-457a-be78-69c2e2e993cd.html <comment><USER2> Did anyone here bother to check the bio's of the officials listed on the amicus brief? If so, you'd discover that the many (maybe most, I didn't count) were holdovers from previous administrations. But, conspiracy theories are fun, I guess.

Given the bipartisan history of the lawyers for the Copyright Office and the DOJ, one possibility is that they are basing the amicus on their interpretation of the Copyright Act and related legal precedents. My preference would be that public interface part of API's would be public domain. But that's a preference, not a legal opinion.

<comment><USER3> Your last sentence nails it.

The problem with this case is that the legally correct thing is that Oracle wins. The most desirable practical outcome is that they lose.

Copyright protects creative works. It's not clear why an API wouldn't be a creative work. Oracle's lawyers argue that it is a creative work, because different people can come up with very different designs to solve the same problem, that API design is a skilled and creative process. They're right.

The tech industry has always been in an unstable situation with respect to this consensual interpretation that APIs are facts and not creative works. That's convenient for many people, but tricky to legally support. The correct solution to this problem is an exemption in copyright law for APIs. Given no such exemption exists, why should Oracle not win this case? The judges are meant to rule on law as it is, not what it should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the absolute reason why Dart, Flutter and Fuchsia exist. You can now imagine that if a loss from Google in this lawsuit were to happen, it would mean royalties in the billions for Oracle which Google won't pay for, or at least for a long time for Android.

So an option is to migrate the Android ecosystem onto Fuchsia to rid of the Oracle royalty fees and own the ecosystem without anyone else looking to sue you for the tech you're using if you created it.

<comment><USER5> How is Fuchsia relevant to Java API Oracle is chasing them for? Google's back up plan is Kotlin anyway; they can push new version of API that completely severs backward compatibility while providing some library for "legacy app API translation".

<comment><USER6> I thought that Kotlin required the JVM to run?

<comment><USER7> JVM is fair game; this case is about Java SDK interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMO there's two ways to read this: either A) this is a baldly transparent attempt to "own the libs" and punish a company that the administration sees as a threat or B) they are too incompetent to understand the technical nuances of the case and are essentially morons. Maybe both? This administration can't be thrown out on their collective asses fast enough...

<comment><USER9> Both. 50 years of people cynically saying "all politicians are crooks". And now we have legitimate sleazeballs running the country and nobody believes it.

On the one hand, Google is huge and needs competition. On the other hand: not this way. Antitrust and monopoly laws exist for a reason, but if you look at telephones in the 80's and microsoft & intel in the 90's, better lawyers get you around that.

We need trustbusters with teeth. Especially for tech. I wish the EFF was 100x larger.

<comment><USER10> The government _caused_ the phone monopoly and the slap on the risk had nothing to do with Microsoft's missteps when it came to the internet and later mobile. Microsoft still has the same dominance on the desktop that they had during the 90's.

<comment><USER11> The action in the 90's wasn't to break up their desktop dominance, it was to prevent them using that power to dominating the internet too.

<comment><USER10> That might have been their goal, but do you really think that it had anything to do with the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the resurgence of Apple?

What had more effect on IE being toppled by Chrome, the government or the most popular website advertising it on their front page and bundling it with third party downloads?

<comment><USER12> If Microsoft had built adblockers into IE from the beginning there would be no Google. But that was a strategic error, not due to law. And people were definitely on the Google bandwagon in part because of Microsoft. The "do no evil" motto was a direct shot at MS, and everybody felt relief.

<comment><USER10> Only the geeks cared about the "do no evil".

<comment><USER12> Fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did not follow every step, but assuming Oracle win this, will it also apply to Amazon proposing DocumentDB with the same API that MongoDB ?

<comment><USER14> Who even knows? If APIs are copyrighted and implementing them is a crime, Tim Berners-Lee might end up a billionaire.

<comment><USER15> See also everyone (including Oracle) that copied Perl 5's regular expression API, and typically even say that straight in their own documentation (again, including Java's).

<comment><USER16> How does Java not copy much of C's API / syntax and type system -- which I'm sure is mostly copied from something else.

It's turtles all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Question: if this lawsuit goes in Oracle's favor, what does that mean for WINE? Isn't that the same issue? WINE provides compatible Windows APIs.

Also SMB? Although I think that's done at the protocol layer and not the C API layer (?)

</comment><comment><USER18> > The administration found Google's policy arguments are "unpersuasive" and > argued software code is copyrightable.

What? Wasn't it about APIs not code?

<comment><USER19> That was part of it. This article is light on details, but there was one part of the codebase that was copied verbatim. It was the RangeCheck function. Google argued that the function in question was not copywritable, and judge Alsup agreed (after learning how to write code). [1]

It's unclear to me if the administration only sides with Oracle on this count, or also on reimplementation of APIs, which would have sweeping impacts.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs- googl...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-google-judge- william-alsup-interview-waymo-uber)

<comment><USER20> Honestly, I feel that it would almost be worse if the Court ruled in Oracle's favor on the ability to copyright intuitively obvious functions. There are only so may ways to write `return x >= a && x <= b;` that aren't unnecessarily obtuse and contrived. It's honestly tantamount to being able to copyright math itself.

<comment><USER21> I know this is inappropriate..

but to me, it sounds like a fascinating and hilarious dystopian visions... there'd be entire legal teams dedicated to find, and claim and defend the corporate specific ways to implement.. a range check (NO! Don't put a space there! Oh dear!). Or, if a number is even. And an eternal cultural feud between the "is-even"-clan and the "is-odd"-triad.

Once we include mercenaries hired to steal certificates about a specific is- odd implementation, we're in a really weird kind of cyberpunk or shadow run.

Also, don't count the number of paragraphs in this comment and think about them. Don't! Or else!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this in anyway tied to Ellison recently hosting a trump fund raiser?

<comment><USER23> Politically correct answer: No, they are completely independent just like all other fundraising activities.

Reality: Yes, Oracle is openly bribing the president to get the administration to push their agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Of course they do. Some might point to Larry Ellison being a major supporter [1] but I think the real motivation is this plays into the narrative that Google is somehow biased against conservatives.

What's interesting about this is Google made two huge mistakes here:

1\. According to Google, Sun was fine with their use of Java. If so, why not just put it in writing and get a license? This might've only cost $10 million at the time. Maybe not even that. Even if it was $100 million, it sure looks cheap now;

Remember, Microsoft originally paid for a Java license for IE [2]. And one issue with the Sun-Microsoft lawsuit was that Sun argued forking Java was a breach of contract. Surely this establishes that even if Sun were fine with Android they could try and enforce their IP rights through litigation. So why not enshrine this in a license?

2\. Google declined to bid on Sun. I remember when this went down and it seemed risky to let Oracle control Java given how invested Google was in Java at that point. And it should've been clear that Oracle's interest was to leverage Sun's IP to get a slice of Android. Hubris is the only thing I can think of that justified letting this happen.

[1]: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-employees-call- on-l...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-employees-call-on-larry- ellison-to-cancel-trump-fundraiser-2020-02-18)

[2]: [https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-seeks-35-million-in-java- suit/](https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-seeks-35-million-in-java-suit/)

<comment><USER5> Jonathan Schwartz was always complaining about Google using SUN's API; they hoped Google would write them a nice fat check and be BFFs but Google decided to be selfish and just used and replaced SUN's tech. I think combination of ex-SUN's people mood and Oracle's lawyer-heavy structure couldn't have led to a different outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like in a normal presidential administration the support of the president is great for companies. With this administration it's a liability.

<comment><USER26> Please define what a "normal presidential administration" looks like.

<comment><USER25> One that has more bi-partisan buy in, and just generally less controversial. Basically every administration in the last 50 years except for Nixon post- watergate, and Trump.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there any doubt that this is some kind of score-settling? Republicans _hate_ Google. I don't think people inside the SV bubble appreciate just how intense this hatred has become. You know the seething, implacable anger, that bile that comes up out of your stomach when you think of a politician you don't like? A lot of republicans feel that way about Google.

This hatred doesn't come out of nowhere. Google's leaders could have chosen to make the company neutral and tolerant. Instead, they bred a culture of political zealotry from top to bottom. The partisan hatred that the company engendered then leaked into the outside world. The inevitable result? Half of the United States power structure sees Google as an irredeemably biased political project masquerading as a tech company. Is it? Maybe not. But whether this judgement is true _doesn 't matter_ \--- what matter is the perception that the company allowed its internal activists to create. It was an unforced error, and it's one that I think will become an infamous cautionary tale in the coming decades.

Lesson to corporate leaders: don't encourage politics at work; don't encourage a culture of demonizing a political faction in your home country that wins about half the time; and especially don't hold a company-wide all hands election after this faction wins the election and lament that "we lost".

<comment><USER28> I'm really skeptical that Republicans know or care about politics in Google's work culture. I think the only big story to come out about it, the James Damore one, mainly got discussed from a gender angle and most Republican politicians would prefer if that conversation didn't happen at all.

<comment><USER29> They're acutely aware of the power big tech holds and how politically devastating it would be if Google, Facebook, et al started to regulate their platforms in a politically biased way.

That's why the idea of regulating social media and search products as public utilities arose, and why Facebook is currently walking on eggshells to appear neutral and apolitical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For those commenting on the thread how Google hates Republicans, their PAC donates equally to both parties (technically a bit more to Reps):

[https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623](https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wouldn't allowing weaponization of APIs via copyrights throw interoperability out of the window?

If this is a part of "Making America Great Again (TM)" campaign, they may be shooting them in the proverbial foot with a BFG9000 breaking down all interoperability in _their own_ tech sector.

</comment><comment><USER32> WSJ had an interesting piece a week ago: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracles-man-in-washington- fans-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracles-man-in-washington-fans-the- flames-against-rival-tech-giants-11581615873)

TLDR: Oracle has a lobbyist (who was on Trump's transition team) that has gotten the ear of the Whitehouse and been pushing against Amazon and Google.

<comment><USER33> Google can still get Trump's endorsement, just write him a check and he'll back Google instead.

Worked for a pardon, Paul Pogue's family just wrote a $200k check and voila, he's pardoned.

The office of president has never been more transparently for sale (ahem, "open for business") and there's absolutely no chance the Senate will perform any accountability here. He could literally murder someone on 7th avenue and there would be 51 votes against conviction.

Sad that it's come to this, but if it's $200k vs an industry-destroying precedent getting set, well... google should suck it up and write the check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "The best democracy money can buy!" -Larry Ellison

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/oracle_trump_google...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/20/oracle_trump_google/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Bribe the president: Definitely not ok. What sort of backwards ass country would allow that sort of thing?

Host fundraiser inviting a couple of your friends to all donate huge amounts to the president: What on earth is the problem? That's completely fair game and I don't see any issues at all.

It seems the US Democracy is morally bankrupt at this point.

</comment><comment><USER35> I so fear the law suits over every tiny interface. push, pop, insert, remove, put, get, post, delete, open, close, read, write, send, recv, begin, end, next, prev, find, filter, sort, groupby, start, stop, sqrt, log, exp. Synonyms not allowed.

</comment><comment><USER36> > The Trump administration brief came Wednesday just as Oracle founder Larry > Ellison opened a campaign fundraiser for President Donald Trump at his > southern California estate. Tickets ran as much as $250,000, according to an > invitation obtained by the Desert Sun.

Is this the same Trump that doesn't need anyone's money and isn't beholden to anyone? (Sorry for using Breitbart as a reference).

[https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/06/16/peak-trump- i-d...](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/06/16/peak-trump-i-dont-need- anybodys-money/)

</comment><comment><USER37> seems to me google should be brown nosing more if it wants a fighting chance. else they will lose once trump is reelected.

</comment><comment><USER38> > At an earlier stage in litigation, the Obama administration took a similar > position, urging the Supreme Court not to accept Google's appeal.

It seems the Trump administration position is not really all that different than the previous administrations.

<comment><USER39> So to reverse the Trump administration's support, everyone should just start tweeting how Trump agrees with Obama and supports the Obama administration's position on this issue...

<comment><USER40> Given how much space Twitter seems to occupy in Trump's head, maybe this is the only possible channel of control... maybe lock his feed up in some sort of info bubble just like politicians want to do to us.

<comment><USER41> I would love to see his twitter browsing history. I'm genuinely curious how he came to find some of the stuff he posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Haha of course it is, the guy is organizing a fund raiser for Trump's campaign

</comment><comment><USER43> To be fair How much has Google contributed to the Trump campaign? Sick and tired of media blaming everything on DJT.

<comment><USER44> Probably not as sick and tired as most people are of DJT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does the Trump administration understand what this kind of law will do to all of tech?

<comment><USER46> Oracle winning will not destroy the tech industry, bring innovation to it's knees, or any other crazy apocalyptic concept people have.

It'll mean Google will pay a huge penalty for very willfully stealing Java when they knew they were supposed to license it, and other companies will be a little more explicit about getting licenses squared away. Reliance on open source APIs and platforms will probably go up, and license compliance with terms of GPL and the like will be taken more seriously.

<comment><USER47> Riiiight. Because no lawyers have ever smelled a new ambulance to chase kicking off dozens of harassment suits when new precedents are handed down. Oracle has already threatened OSS databases, Samba was once threatened by Microsoft aggressively, and whose to say WINE and other OSS API reimplementations won't be under legal threat the way Unix reimplementations were.

Any precedent that establishes clean-room API reimplementations are subject to copyright infringement is bad for everyone.

You're willing to risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's possible.

But patents are already just as powerful, actually much more so. They cause a lot of problems but haven't caused the tech industry to collapse in a MAD Mexican standoff of lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Complete and utter madness. I think they're simply doing this to be contrarian.</comment>


Search for the creator of Bitcoin just took another weird turn - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/10/the-long-perplexing-search-for-the-creator-of-bitcoin-just-took-another-weird-turn/ <comment><USER2> Nothing new. An overview and recent history.</comment>