Hashrocket execs (not Obie) charged in $425 million mail fraud case - <AUTHOR> http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/401574/abel-harding/2010-07-02/hashrocket-executives-charged-425-million-mail-fraud <comment><USER2> Wow, busted.

Appears their DBA was "Yellow Pages United" - hah!

Their fake-directory was called "The Business Book" and members also received submission to <https://www.yellowpagesunited.com/>.

Compare that logo to the one at <http://www.yp.com> and you can see the beggining of the problem.

These guys had a true pump model - they're even a testimonial for a high- volume FAX website - [http://www.faxcomanywhere.com/customers/united- directories.h...](http://www.faxcomanywhere.com/customers/united- directories.html) \- which you can be sure was used to fax-spam the country.

<comment><USER3> yellowpagesunited.com is down now. Anyone with a mirror of the logo?

<comment><USER4> Take out the <https://> and you're redirected to <http://www.bizyellow.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> What's technically interesting:

<http://www.bizyellow.com/> looks at first view like a .NET app (.aspx) but after a closer look it's definitly a Ruby on Rails app.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what makes that look like a .NET app to you? The cross- domain links to ASPX pages or something else?

Not disagreeing, just interested.

<comment><USER6> .aspx is to ASP.NET what .php is to PHP and .cfm is to ColdFusion.

<comment><USER5> Right, but it isn't an ASPX page. It just has a couple links to ASPX pages on another site/domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Importantly:

1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty

Now if you're interested in this case, read on...

There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United) that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages>

My partners have been doing direct mail and publishing a real, actual, yellow pages "Business Book" for something like 10 years. I've personally known them for almost 4 years and they're not crooks. They are important figures in the community and employ a few dozen people here. Their legal counsel for compliance with postal regulations is some of the best in the business and they have been operating without ever having any fear of being subject to criminal fraud prosecution.

Their detention hearing was today. After 5 hours of testimony the federal judge from Florida's Middle District decided to release Mark, Marian and Chris on bond, basically disagreeing with the Atlanta court's request. What I witnessed during the hearing was political grandstanding, a run-amok federal prosecutor trying to make a name for himself and sheer cluelessness on behalf of the government. A ton of "facts" in the criminal complaint simply don't make any sense. For instance, they claim that the FTC consumer complaint database has over 100,000 issues in it related to United Directories. That is plainly false and we heard testimony in court today that the FTC regularly investigates companies once they exceed 5-10 complaints. That the FTC would ignore 100 thousand complaints over the course of 5 years is complete bullshit.

Also, the $425MM figure being widely quoted in the news is based on deposits figures from United Directories' (UD) sweep account. SWEEP ACCOUNT. They summed up all the money ever deposited into the UD sweep account and spent hours claiming that the money had disappeared. It hadn't disappeared -- it never existed in the first place!

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

In an almost funny episode, the federal prosecutor admitted he did not know what a sweep account was, later calling the explanation "trickery" on the part of the defense.

There's so much more to this case than what the media is reporting and we're going to do our best to make sure that our side of the story, the truth, is heard. All of Hashrocket is pretty distraught, but we'll do our best to soldier on and support our friends in whatever way possible.

<comment><USER8> _1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint_

If the people named in the complaint are executives of Hashrocket, then it has something to do with Hashrocket, however indirectly.

 _2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty_

In the US criminal justice system, there is a presumption of innocence. That doesn't have much to do with whether one is actually guilty or innocent, in the USA or anywhere else.

<comment><USER9> _If the people named in the complaint are executives of Hashrocket, then it has something to do with Hashrocket, however indirectly._

This seems pretty pedantic. If a VP at Google gets arrested for domestic violence, that hardly means that it "has something to do with Google".

<comment><USER8> It is, only if you make up an example quite unlike the one at hand. If an exec of a firm gets charged with fraud, it's not a piece of information you'd ignore when doing business with that firm, even if the fraud charges are regarding another venture. Suppose you're negotiating a deal with some company and in the process they tell you 'Oh, a couple of our key executives were just charged with fraud. But, really, this has nothing to do with us'. Your business partner mumbles 'Hmm, I'm not so sure about this...'. Do you reply 'Oh, quit being pedantic!'? Probably not.

<comment><USER9> I concede the point :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This bit from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shares more details on the case:

"From June 2004 to December 2008, United Directories deposited about $425 million into bank accounts -- all of the money from businesses submitting payments for ads, Johnson said. The company did in fact publish an advertising directory. In 2008, the company received payments from about 162,000 businesses, yet its directory contained only about 55,000 business names, Johnson said.

According to the criminal complaint, United Directories also misled businesses into thinking they were paying to renew advertisements in the actual Yellow Pages directory."

<comment><USER11> Wow. If the association with Hashrocket continues, Hashrocket's name is toast. I feel sorry for Obie.

The scale of the operation is impressive, though. If some of those accounts were personal, they made some serious bank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The facts of the case are being skewed far from reality. It is sad that innocent until proven guilty seems to have been lost in the rumor mill. Even in a court room at times today that seemed to be the case. Mark and Marian provided seed money for Hashrocket and founded the company with Obie. They also own a separate company called United Directories that provides a paper and online business listing service. The companies are completely separate entities. None of this has anything to do with or any impact on Hashrocket. Hashrocket is a stand alone, profitable consultancy. That being said, I have always known Marian and Mark to do everything they engage in with the utmost integrity.

Hashrocket and United Directories are in the same office building. I was in the conference room next to the United Directories space when the police came to serve their warrants to United Directories. The police officers proceeded to tell the United Directories employees, "You no longer have a job. This company does not exist anymore. You will not be receiving a paycheck." Again, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Then came the bail hearing today. It lasted 5 hours. I was shocked and disheartened at how few actual facts were presented by the prosecution in order for them to drag someone into court. I was further disturbed when there was almost no basis provided or facts provided to how they were making the jump from what information they did have to trying to accuse Mark, Marian and their employee Chris of the allegations against them. The prosecution then further showed a total lack of ability to understand a basic business banking account or simple math. The judge made the decision at the end of the day to release Mark, Marian and Chris on bond but the prosecution forced his hand with a legal technicality to delay the decision.

At the end of a very long and tiring day I have no reason to doubt my friends' character. I am saddened at what I saw transpire in our law enforcement and legal system over this past week. Hashrocket is self-sufficient and will continue to build awesome web applications for our clients. We would appreciate everyone's support in promoting facts over rumors.

Thank You,

Adam Lowe

<comment><USER13> Well, Adam, the facts are that your friends are running what can best be characterized as a shady business. Perhaps they didn't break the law, but I find it saddening to see Hashrocket folks fall over themselves to defend business practices such as these. Makes one question what kind of business- ethics Hashrocket encourages, doesn't it?

I think it's a bit much to suggest that your friend's business is just an innocent victim of an overzealous and incompetent law enforcement system. The complaint has enough facts contained in it to at least suggest that there is something shady going on. The very nature of their industry is suspect.

Defend them all you want, but consider that it only encourages people to associate the accused (and their ethics) with those with the people at Hashrocket.

<comment><USER12> My goal was simply to relay some of the facts that came out of sitting through a round of court proceedings. One of the main things being that a lot of what was put in the complaint seemed to be just plain wrong. That being said my intent was not to defend the industry or the business model. I got out of recruiting early in my career because I couldn't tolerate all the shady practices and lack of ethics in that industry. I simply ask that everyone give them the courtesy of due process and not condemn the hardworking employees of Hashrocket for something they had nothing to do with. We are a separate company in a totally different industry. We are self sufficient financially and have been for some time now. We have always and will continue to pursue the highest level craftsmanship in our development and complete transparency in working with our clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is most disturbing is that these weren't far-away investors of Hashrocket. One was the CFO and they were directly funding Hashrocket since its inception. As Obie's business partners, that's pretty shady. And whether its determined that they were within their legal limits or not, we've all been made aware of how sleazy the whole operation is. Hashrocket would do well to distance themselves from this stuff as much as possible, and declare that they will no longer receive money from an operation that survives on scamming people out of their money. The more Obie shouts to the world, "These are my FRIENDS", the worse he looks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Obie is probably right and wrong.

He's probably right about the prosecutor being a grandstanding twit with little interest in justice, but only concerned about his own political career. I've been involved in (though not a party to) two criminal cases and neither case left me with much admiration for prosecutors. I realize they are just doing their job, but it's clear their own interest are placed far above the needs of justice.

But Obie is wrong about the nature of these types of directory businesses. As a business owner, I've come in contact with these type of companies and the most gracious description of them would be "ethically challenged". While they may operate under the letter of the law, they rely upon naivete and/or lack of scrutiny. They are no better than those companies that add a charge to your phone bill and hope you don't see it.

I can understand why people are disappointed to learn that Obie has decided to associate himself with people that are involved in these types of shady businesses. I also see why people would be concerned that Obie has partnered with these kind of people in building Hashrocket.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't really care if a company wants to be "hip" or whatever, but title's like "Chief Morale Officer, in charge of alchohol and fun activities" just make you look like idiots.

<comment><USER16> Eh, not really. Companies like Zappos has titles like this, but nobody thinks the author of "Delivering Happiness" is an idiot.

<comment><USER17> I dunno about that. They just sold to Amazon because they were running out of money.

Exactly how much revenue does a competent CEO need to accumulate before they can turn a profit and become solvent? Tony marketed his way to $1 billion with borrowed money, but it's shameful to have the much revenue and run out of funds.

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/201...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2012109500_btzappos14.html)

<comment><USER16> Well, to be fair, most of the borrowed money came from his own pocket, which is why he ended up owning more than 40% of zappos (probably more that 50% if you include venture frogs' 36% involvement).

Most boards hate companies who spend extravagantly on their employees. For example, even though Google is doing great, quite a few of their board members hate how Eric Schmidt feeds Google employees so well. According to a few I know at google, they had to pull back a few items on the menu to keep the board happy. Most boards are just after profits and don't really see the connection to employee happiness.

In fact, there was a YC company board who rejected the purchase of an expensive espresso machine just because the employees wanted it... that destroyed employee morale for the next 2-3 months, and also caused traffic to go down. Eventually the board gave in and bought the company the espresso machine and it really paid off -- employees were happy, traffic rebounded, and board members actually stated that they wished they knew this earlier. Won't say which YC company, but it was a talk from one of the YC dinners during my round.

tl;dr: Boards are always after the cash and rarely see the connection to keeping employees happy, yet time after time they make the same stupid mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the claim of _HALF A BILLION_ dollar fraud is true it seems unlikely that Obie would not know something about it. If my buddies and business associates made that kind of money I sure as hell would know everything about it. HOWEVER, this does not diminish HashRocket or Obie's work-- the Rails Way is THE book that taught me Rails. Hashrocket has contributed so much to the ecosystem I sure hope that doesn't change.

edit: It seems quite plausable that HashRocket people actually helped developed the "fraud" site... If they can pull off a _HALF A BILLION_ dollar scam just think that they can do for my company! The line between innovation and fraud is often very thin.

<comment><USER19> I believe that's the relevance of the sweep account issue. If you're using the "deposits" into a sweep account as the basis for measuring the supposed & claimed "fraud", its an incredibly overinflated figure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is an extreme demonstration of brand value and why some companies are so quick and determined to cut out trademark misuse.

Selling listings in a "directory" at $300 a pop isn't easy. Stick the phrase "Yellow Pages" and a YP logo on it, however, and you can clearly clear millions of dollars over several years.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here in Europe there's a company that sends out something similar. For example in Italy it's called "Registro italiano delle imprese in internet". I mistakenly registered with them and they started sending me invoices of more than $1000 dollars each (which I never paid).

I did some research and they have been declared illegal in many countries but somehow never got charged. If these guys are doing the same thing, then I don't know if it's illegal or not in the USA but it surely is something unethical with the only goal of spilling money from people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obie tweeted about this:

"Hashrocket is NOT connected with any wrongdoing. The gov is doing its best to railroad my partners but they are fighting back!! (PLS RT)"

<http://twitter.com/obie/status/17608288414>

<comment><USER22> And as I said on Twitter... If I were in his situation I would keep my mouth shut and would be directing all questions to my lawyer. Otherwise you run the risk of increasing the guilt by association. This kind of stuff can ruin a company.

I understand the desire to publicly defend your biz partners, especially if they're your friends. So if you trust your friends enough to put your name and business on the line for them, then I guess ignore my advice. IAMAL, so what do I know? :)

<comment><USER7> I talked to my lawyer and he was fine with me publicly commenting on it, especially since the mainstream media is doing its best to turn this into a huge story.

AND

I do trust my partners enough to my name and business on the line for them. They are innocent.

<comment><USER23> There is a huge difference between innocent according to the letter of the law and innocent in a real-life sense.

See the OJ Simpson case for a nice example of the two.

Your friends may be 'innocent' according to the letter of the law - when all is said and done. But meanwhile they look guilty as hell in the eyes of the general public of maybe not scamming half a billions worth of dollars but still a significant amount out of the pockets of hardworking people and corporations.

It may be 'legal' but it certainly isn't 'right', and by associating yourself so strongly with these people you are not helping yourself or hashrocket.

Your lawyer has no stake in your public image but you do, your interests are not aligned and I think you've been given some bad advice.

<comment><USER24> _There is a huge difference between innocent according to the letter of the law and innocent in a real-life sense._

Definitely. As a matter of fact, courts in the United States don't even claim to determine innocence; rather they determine guilt. You're either "guilty" or "not guilty" beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I visited Hashrocket's Jacksonville office for a couple days earlier this year, just to watch and learn from the programmers there. They seem like a good group of people, and I'm sorry to see them getting caught up in this.

The alleged fraud in this story was by some Hashrocket execs as part of a separate company. If all of this turns out to be true, I still wish the best for the programmers at Hashrocket.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Hashrocket (Rails) execs (not Obie)"

Can someone explain this? What is Hashrocket? Who is Obie? I assume this is related to ruby on rails?

<comment><USER27> Hashrocket is a well-known Rails consulting company, and Obie Fernandez is a founder and is pretty well-known as well.

<http://hashrocket.com/>

<comment><USER28> He's particularly known for writing The Rails Way published by Addison-Wesley (<http://www.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Obie-Fernandez/dp/0321445619>) which he did just prior to founding Hashrocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think reading any/all headlines with the mindset of "interesting if it's true" is worthwhile here. The facts need to materialize before declaring fraud or any other type of malice. $425 million makes for a wonderful headline.

<comment><USER30> Did you see the actual advertisement?

Illegal, maybe not...but malicious? Certainly. An advertisement just doesn't come out accidentally looking like it's an invoice from the Yellow Pages (the real ones), that takes effort. The intent is crystal clear, it's not to convince someone that they would gain something from your service, it's to trick them into thinking that they already owe the money.

Really, now - can anyone honestly imagine any plausible scenario by which this "business model" could have been devised other than "Hey, I've got a great idea, Yellow Pages is not a trademarked term, let's print up an ad that looks like one of their bills and send it to millions of small businesses, some of them probably won't read the fine print and they'll pay up, thinking that they'll be removed from the Yellow Pages if they don't!"

If you really think this was more innocent than that, I've got a bridge to sell you. Even if it's legal, this is some shameful shit, and that Hashrocket is associated with (let alone founded by) these douchebags casts a long dark shadow over its image...

<comment><USER31> _An advertisement just doesn't come out accidentally looking like it's an invoice from the Yellow Pages_

Of course not. They sent out almost 20 million pieces of email over the years, so what were they doing?

Testing all the f*cking time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Read for yourself.

<http://bit.ly/united_dir_filing>

And while I wish I could say I was a super L33T hacker, I'm afraid these docs are public record if you are set up to look.

<comment><USER32> So on taking a further look at the court filing I think what we have here is your basic "real world spam" business model. Unfortunately these things are all over the place as they are a proven way to generate money by sending out a firehose of solicitations for an essentially useless "service".

Looking at the solicitation it clearly covers it's ass with all sorts of disclaimers, despite looking deceptively like a bill at first glance. I don't think the solicitation itself will hold up in court as being fraudulent alone. What they are alleging is that they did not even bother to put all the names in the book, and they did not send out as many books as they said they would.

You might ask yourself how such a mailing could be successful. Well, it is a sad truth that there are many aging business owners in many small towns across this country who are not quite on the ball enough to read the fine print anymore. Who falls for all those Nigerian emails? Obviously someone. Basically what these guys are doing is vacuuming up small checks from old man Higgins who is still running the ole' TV repair shop in downtown Podunk, even if nobody much bothers to fix their VCR anymore and the new Wal-Mart has got em for $49 anyways.

At some level this is along the lines of those "Who's Who" books that select you to be in a book of awesome people, and wouldn't you like to buy a copy? That kind of thing is pointless and deceptive, but not illegal. There seems to be more going on here.

A few questions: Why get mail at a PO Box in Atlanta if this business is in Florida and it is so legitimate?

Illegal or not, do you really think this is the kind of ethics you want in your CFO? Or was it a deal with the dark side that had to be made?

<comment><USER19> After reading the complaint, I came to a similar conclusion. Was it fraud & money laundering? That's for the court to decide and they have a presumption of innocence.

Regardless of that outcome though (and assuming United Directories doesn't dispute that Exhibit A is one of their advertisements), its pretty clearly a shady business in my mind. While technically (probably) legal, its a spammy business model that adds very little value.

Its not really fair to Hashrocket employees that this will taint Hashrocket's reputation, but it unfortunately will to some extent.

Oh and totally agreed about the whole -- if your brother's already been indicted for the same exact thing and is currently a fugitive you might want to rethink the business model -- thing. That just shows a complete lack of common sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Deceptive marketing is not illegal per se, but intent to deceive (a question of fact, based on the type of marketing used) is illegal. However, this is difficult to prove.

</comment><comment><USER32> No comment. <http://twitter.com/li0n/status/17199037259>

</comment><comment><USER32> A summary of how United's "business" works:

1) Design an "order form" that looks deceptively like a renewal form for the regular local yellow pages. The goal is to confuse the recipient that this is a renewal for your local yellow pages that you already subscribe to. Make the return address of your company say "YELLOW PAGES." Take advantage of the fact that the term Yellow Pages and the walking fingers logo are not copyrighted.

2) Have your shady lawyer review your order form and add enough disclaimers to cover your ass and comply with postal regulations. Everything is spelled out in the fine print. This is not a bill. You are ordering a service to be included in our book. We are not affiliated with your local phone company. We are not even going to send this book to anyone except other "subscribers" and a few libraries, etc. We will also put you on a website.

3) Mass mail this "Order Form" to your database of business names across the country. The response rate is small. But as the $300 fee is relatively high and your actual cost is negligible, the payoff is worth it. Note that by ordering you are set up to auto renew your $300 order. The book is published twice a year.

4) Send customers a bill. Charge credit card, get a check. __Note that this could be an area where the prosecutor vastly overestimated the dollar amounts involved __The total count of incoming mail was for _order form_ replies. A smaller fraction of those recipients would actually have paid the bill which presumably arrived later. -If customer uses a credit card to pay, set up auto renewal, per terms of order form.

5)Have book of names printed. How many to print? Well, you actually aren't obligated to print more than a handful, per the terms of the solicitation. Here is the crucial number to optimize because printing those books actually costs money. You need to print just enough to send to customers to show they got something. Did they send one to each customer? The prosecutor is alleging they did not based on records from the printer. Again though, they never said they would publish any specific amount or that as a subscriber you would get a copy yourself. Assuming they did actually send a book to each subscriber, then the scope of the dollar amounts involved would be much smaller than alleged, though still quite lucrative. So why print and mail books at all? Two reasons. One is to maintain some defensibility to the business in case you ever end up in court (cough.) The second is so you have something to show the smaller subset of your customers who pay but end up complaining. When they try to file a credit card chargeback you can send them a book and prove some service was provided.

Now. Up to this point, we could be within the bounds of legality. But the prosecutor seems to be alleging something more. Specifically that the number of names actually printed in the book was far below the number of paid orders. This would clearly be fraud. But maybe they did print every paid customer's name in the book. Maybe the prosecutor indeed has his accounting wrong and maybe United was hyper careful to keep their records in order. This is where the crux of the case will probably lie. To get access to the books though, the prosecutor had to get the indictment, and that's why he filed with the information he had.

6) Test, optimize,repeat. Mailings aren't cheap. You've got to try to keep that response rate up. Which zip codes do you mail to? Which customers can continue to be charged year after year? Are repeat mailings worth it? How many chargebacks can you handle before your credit card processor dumps you? Some database work is required to keep that mailing list optimal.

7) Build a website so you can provide additional "service" to your customers to increase response rates and cut down on the need to pay for all those expensive printed books. Hell, maybe even creating a web directory for small business might actually provide some value. Start looking around for people who can help you build a website.

8) So now you've got this cash cow, but the problem is it is a deceptive business at best. You want to be a respected member of the community, and flash some cash out on the beach. No one can know what these mailings of yours look like. So you put your PO box in one state under one name, and you put your office in another state where you live under a name that sounds impressive. United Directories. You can tell everyone at cocktail parties that you are the premier publisher of B2B directories for specialized verticals, yada yada.. But that's not enough. You want to be part of something really fun and sexy, so you invest in this new software consultancy. Despite having very little to add to the business other than cash, charisma and perhaps innovative bookkeeping skills, you get to be Chairman and CFO. Finally. Respect.

<http://hashrocket.com/people/view/mark-smith/> <http://hashrocket.com/people/view/marian-phelan/>

9) Everything's cool. Ignore those letters of inquiry from the FTC. You can make this work. Your brother was an idiot and got too sloppy. Maybe it's time for a new Porsche.

10) Somehow despite that fact that you are a total sleazeball, you've managed to fund a great company and stand back enough to avoid destroying it. When the shit hits the fan, it's time to call in some favors.

ego can help build empires but it is often their downfall.

Just my interpretation.

Here's the indictment. Guess I'm good at hacking something.

<http://bit.ly/united_filing>

</comment><comment><USER34> RIP Hashrocket

</comment><comment><USER35> Mark Smith funded and funds Hashrocket. Hashrocket isn't profitable without Mark Smith. If Obie had no knowledge of this scam then I feel sorry for him and this situation. I guess "The Rails Maturity Model", the Hashrocket Way and BizConf includes taking scam money and pretending to be profitable.

<comment><USER36> You're confusing Hashrocket, the web development company, with United Directories, the company being charged. The people being charged are essentially initial investors. Pointing a finger at Hashrocket in this scenario is not unlike blaming every startup that was invested in by an angel or VC that later ended up involved in fraudulent activity. None of this means that Hashrocket is not at all at fault, but based on the news that we all have, you're drawing unreasonable conclusions. If however you have other sources, please share them here, otherwise you're just trolling.

<comment><USER37> Aren't those people charged executives of Hashrocket as well?

<comment><USER36> On second look I have to concede that I could be under-rating their authority. To be fair major investors will often sit on boards, but there's no need for me to make further conjecture.

A fellow who comments here [http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories- federal-court...](http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories-federal- court-indictment-d) makes a similar claim from a much more advantaged position of knowledge.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GridMathematica 8 drives GPU hardware remotely - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2011/07/14/driving-cuda-over-the-grid/

<comment><USER2> Have to like this---it is a requirement if you own all of their T-shirts...</comment>


Ask HN: Inbound marketing - Publish and they will come? - <AUTHOR>

My startup is in the b2b social commerce space; we are building an onsite widget for retailers to thoroughly socialize their storefronts. Basically, access your social graph while shopping to obtain advice and recommendations and view archives of your friends activities on the website (likes, reviews, comments, purchases, contemplated, etc.).
We are approaching the public Beta phase and would like to create some awareness early on. We have a blog, we published slides, datasheets, white papers, looking into eBooks as well, etc. Then we tweet about them, post on Facebook, Digg, Slideshare.
Would this be sufficient? Is this what inbound marketing is all about? Anyone who has had success with inbound marketing, mind sharing your experiences?
P.S.: We're totally bootstrapped, just a bunch of college kids hacking away at stuff. We just want some highly-qualified leads for Beta testing; paid advertisements are quite beyond our needs right now. Even AdWords makes us think twice. <comment><USER2> I'd suggest starting conversations via email and twitter with influencers or possible customers in your market. Show you have something interesting and unique worth writing a blog post or tweet about.

For additional advice, this would be a good question to post to Quora.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the tips. When you say "influencers", do you mean bloggers/tweeters with a lot of followers?

<comment><USER2> Followers / readers is one metric that contributes to their level of influence, see klout.com regarding this. But I was speaking of Influencer Marketing in more general terms. see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influencer_marketing></comment></comment></comment>


There and Back Again: The Soul of a Commuter (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again <comment><AUTHOR> This article is a useful companion to the discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9922700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9922700)</comment>


Culture of false positives: why I left academia (Maria Stone) - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/culture-false-positives-why-i-left-academia-maria-stone/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found it interesting that Maria Stone is an engineering manager at Apple who has also spent time at Google, Yahoo & Microsoft - thus comparing industrial R&D environments that many here are familiar with to particular type of academia.</comment>


What is a Russian website like wikipedia? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I don't like wikipedia, as it's not clear and the information may be right, but the way it's put is usually not informative.
So, what is a Russian website like wikipedia? and if there isn't, what is an English one? <comment><USER2> Have you tried the Russian Wikipedia? <http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/></comment>


Show HN: Top news from HN in your Slack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/standuply/sample-custom-requests <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! We at [https://standuply.com](https://standuply.com) built the feature that enriches standup reports in Slack with any data collected from a 3rd party tool via custom endpoint.

Here's example how to get top stories from HN in Slack. Looking to have your feedback what other useful use-cases may be.</comment>


Serving 6.8M requests per second at 9 Gbps from a single Azure VM - <AUTHOR> http://www.ageofascent.com/azure-cloud-high-speed-networking/ <comment><USER2> They had me until the moment where I read "While our game servers are built more like HFT Quant trading servers" yet they are in the cloud... They clearly have no idea what they're talking to regarding finance, where latency matters a whole lot more than throughput.

"HFT Quant Trading Servers" optimize things down to the micro and even nanosecond level from the hardware to the bios all the way up to the networking interconnects and applications + c libraries. Optimization to this level is simply impossible from the cloud, where even with VT and SRIOV, the performance penalty is simply far too high (and measurably so!).

Disclaimer: I'm a technologist who has worked in the "HFT Quant / Electronic Trading" Industry the past 8 or so years. I literally build infrastructure like this for a living.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the analogy to HFT trading is a bit clumsy - sorry - what we're saying is that we've borrowed techniques from HFT (especially at the decisioning end) rather than saying our system is suitable for HFT (which it absolutely isn't).

Disclaimer: Author of article

<comment><USER4> its probably fair.

gamers "flip their shit" when ping is not steady, and are only happy at ~50ms response times. a 200ms response in video games is usually considered "unplayable".

<comment><USER5> In any split-second game (and this article literally advertises "real-time twitch combat"), 200 ms is unplayable. With two players of equal skill, it comes down to "who can react quicker", and the 30 ping player will win every time.

<comment><USER6> Totally depends on the type of game and how the design is structured to deal with latency.

See my reference to SubSpace farther down, it's a highly skilled game that can be easily played on a ~250ms latency. The large majority of the game is predicting where the other player will be in ~0.75s and setting things in motion ahead of time to intercept them.

Any game based on prediction and designed for smooth re-integration of the game state can be done on latent connections. Heck there's even been some really impressive stuff in the fighting game space involving re-winding gamestate to resolve hits ~0.25s in the past(the original Counter-Strike does this as well, although not as well which is why you'd sometimes see people rubber-band back around a corner when hit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TCP for twitch game? Ugh.

Cool that you're getting a ton of throughput but you don't use UDP for throughput, you use it so that the one dropped packet doesn't back up all of your time-sensitive data. You _want_ to drop packets that are out of order since you're using dead-reckoning to keep the game state psuedo-in-sync.

Seriously, there's a reason everyone uses UDP(or IPX!) since the days of doom.

<comment><USER3> Its a constraint of the browser technology stack; not only do we have to use websockets for real-time (TCP/IP) but we also have to go over SSL/TLS as intermediary hardware/software (routers, proxies etc) still routinely break websocket connections otherwise.

(Disclaimer: Author of article)

<comment><USER6> I really hope your game designers know how to mask latency. If you're going over TCP/IP then expect to need to resolve a game model that can sustain at least ~750ms of latency.

I totally understand the browser constraint part but you're going to hit some serious issues once you start having real-world clients that have >3% packet drop.

It gets even worse when you start adding different discrete layers on a single TCP connection(chat, larger game state not related to twitch parts, etc). Each one of those channels has the chance to drop a single packet and then your whole world comes to a stop until you can roundtrip that single packet that's unrelated to the realtime info you care about.

FWIW most stacks end up implemented channels over UDP with unreliable+unordered, reliable+unordered and reliable+ordered for the different latency needs of the specific channel.

I've done a fair bit of this stuff in a production environment and have to echo my original comment. TCP is great for lockstep but if you're doing dead- reckoning it will fall apart on anything other than a LAN.

Edit: I also don't mean this as a dig, just that I've seen many teams go through this and it's usually at a point where it's too late to make any changes.

<comment><USER3> Not saying its easy and we have discovered the reason most MMOs have long wind up animations for actions...

The other layers (chat, non-space game state) are handled by discrete microservices on other connections to other hosts - to keep the space flight data slim and connection dedicated in use.

Can always give it a try, our next public playtest is on Saturday 6 Feb 8pm GMT/UK | 12pm Pacific | 3pm Eastern US at [http://www.ageofascent.com/](http://www.ageofascent.com/)

Just don't try it on a phone; give us a chance with the latency ;-)

<comment><USER6> I wish you the best of luck but I really think you've got a poor technology fit for what you're trying to do.

Games like SubSpace/Continuum were doing 300+ player twitch based on UDP based connections over 56k dialup back in '97\. Any sort of packet loss(and subsequent TCP exp backoff) is going to weak havok on your latency.

<comment><USER7> Holy cow, talk about a flashback. I played the crap out of that game for about a decade.

<comment><USER8> Add me to the HN/Subspace club: I played quite a bit of it starting from the end of beta (~'97) and also got pretty involved in the bot/modding/development scene that rose up after VIE left the picture. Some of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, and I learned a lot on the development side too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article has small bits of useful info but the article and site reeks of submarine (Microsoft Azure) advertising for me..

Their homepage has a testimonial/review-blurb of the game as the very first thing from a Microsoft "White paper".

Below that there are 2 videos, one of which is an "Interview Rob Fraser - Microsoft".

And of course the article itself focuses on Azure with another 12 mentions of Azure and how it runs Windows, .Net and C# so well (I'd hope so).

Also, the 7 mill requests/second aren't real world numbers but just a software benchmark.

Oh and the benchmark was run on an instance that has 16 cores, 3TB of SSD storage, and _224 GB_ of RAM. That's more like a dedicated server than a single cloud server instance (and waay more expensive than dedicated at _$3061 per month_ per instance).

<comment><USER10> Microsoft may have given them free or heavily discounted access in exchange for being able to use them to advertise. That was apparently the case with TitanFall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The actual code they're using

[https://github.com/benaadams/benchmarks/blob/managed-rio- exp...](https://github.com/benaadams/benchmarks/blob/managed-rio- experimental/experimental/ManagedRIOHttpServer/RIOServer.cs)

</comment><comment><USER12> If possible - they should try and fix the C#/windows techempower implementations which are not anywhere near their results.

<comment><USER3> (Author of article) Working on it, currently the #1 contributor to AspNet Core's new webserver, and it is doing about 2.5M rps on equivalent techempower hardware

[https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer/graphs/contribut...](https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer/graphs/contributors)

<comment><USER12> It looks like they are freezing techempower's next round in a couple weeks. And congrats on the awesome work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting post.

I love that they could have the resources and time to explore using safer languages for their use cases.

</comment><comment><USER14> So wait was this all just serving Hello World?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's basically an echo server, which is a standard networking test. Leaving out the overhead of actually processing the payload means you're able to see how well the networking stack (and the parts of your program which interface with and manage it) can perform. Getting a clean number from a benchmark like this also makes it easier to estimate how much performance overhead is induced by the other parts of your program.

<comment><USER14> I think it is just a fake number. Everything has running code also what if the VM you spin up is in a different part of the data center or next to another heavy network app? To me this seems like a waste of time to look at because depending on the logic it will not matter if the server can do twice as many hello world requests when it has to wait 30ms for business logic anyways. I want to see a real running system and the change out the web server as well as the hosting vm and see who comes out ahead with real systems. This just shows use this web server for making a CDN, nothing more.</comment></comment></comment>


The Tech Bubble of 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZB_FfhiOKY <comment><USER2> Sometimes the best place for your shipping boat is not out at sea making money but moored in the harbor staying safe.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: 80% of software companies which IPO do not make profit (higher than in 1999), too much cheap capital has distorted the market.

<comment><USER2> It's worse than that, though...</comment></comment>


Physics tweak solves five of the biggest problems in one go - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2110591-physics-tweak-solves-five-of-the-biggest-problems-in-one-go/ <comment><USER2> Headline: Single theory solves 5 physics problems including 2 of my favorites, dark matter and inflation

Reality: Some scientists invented fields/particles to fit what we already know about inflation and dark matter

Prediction: Neither of these two particles will be found

<comment><USER3> I agree. It sounds like epicycles to me. [ [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Dubbed SMASH, the model is based on the standard model of particle physics, > but has a few bits tacked on.

That sounds very familiar... [https://xkcd.com/793/](https://xkcd.com/793/)

<comment><USER5> Uh, not really. To start with, it's physicists on both sides in this case.

<comment><USER4> I'm saying it seems to validate the joke about how physicists approach theory problems.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, because _that 's how physics is done_. Bringing up how that approach fails when applied to other fields is a non sequitur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >"The best thing about the theory is that it can be tested or checked within the next 10 years or so," Ringwald says. "You can always invent new theories, but if they can only be tested in 100 years, or never, then this is not real science but meta-science."

Is that a dig at climate research?

Also, I don't see why kugelblitz* are not invoked more often in these theories about the early universe. You could go

      EM-radiation-only universe
         --fluctuation above density threshold-->
      EM-radiation + BH universe
         --pair production with BH as momentum sinks-->
      EM-radiation + BH + matter + antimatter universe

I do not claim to really know what I am talking about, just a vague sketch.

      *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelblitz_%28astrophysics%29

Edit: I forgot to add, where does all the antimatter go? Clearly some small proportion of matter/anitmatter generated will get incorporated into the BH soon after creation, but what is the probability of this happening in _exactly_ equal proportions at all times? I don't know what is supposed to determine the direction and momentum of these newly created particles, but if it is "random" then that would be essentially zero.

So from that you get a tiny imbalance and annihilation will take care of the rest.

<comment><USER7> The "meta-science" comment is a strange one. By that definition, gravitational waves, Bose-Einstein condensates, Higgs bosons, genes, and dark matter were all "meta-science".

<comment><USER8> What is so strange about it? If a theory is not and cannot be tested, it is not science by definition.

That doesn't mean the theory is not valuable, just that you need a different word to describe it. If a theory may become testable in the future, but is not currently, meta-science seems as good as any other term.

<comment><USER9> "Speculative science" is the normal way to describe that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Apple can win & Samsung can save face, like Microsoft in 1998 - <AUTHOR> http://neomac.com/post/23491570339/how-apple-can-let-samsung-save-face-the-way-it-let

<comment><USER2> Is there more info about the Microsoft investment in Apple regarding the OP's claims that the brilliant and merciful Steve Jobs allowed Microsoft to spin the deal in the press? By all accounts, it seems extremely out of character for Jobs to just allow something like that. I'd also be more willing to believe it if the article source wasn't macrumors.com and the post itself didn't ooze a strong pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft bias.</comment>


Realsense T265 tracking camera - <AUTHOR> https://markku.ai/post/realsense-t265/ <comment><USER2> Nice project! Your 3D printed case for the stereo pair removes a lot of potentially useful information for the feature extraction algorithm. If it can help, I have an old project where we mounted a realsense (R300 if I remember well) on Hololens.

You can inspire from our 3D printed mount, the CAD is available here : [http://vision.gel.ulaval.ca/~jflalonde/projects/hololens3d/i...](http://vision.gel.ulaval.ca/~jflalonde/projects/hololens3d/index.html)

<comment><USER3> This looks great! In reality, our casing only covers really small area, but we are always looking to improve :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case you're wondering - it's $209 from Mouser: [https://www.mouser.com/new/Intel/intel-realsense- camera-t265...](https://www.mouser.com/new/Intel/intel-realsense-camera-t265/)

<comment><USER5> It's also available for $199 right from Intel's site[0].

[0] [https://www.intelrealsense.com/tracking- camera-t265/](https://www.intelrealsense.com/tracking-camera-t265/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I wonder how it compares in capability to these algorithms, which are in Nvidia's Redtail SDK:

[https://youtu.be/T7-IxCW1UlA](https://youtu.be/T7-IxCW1UlA)

<comment><USER7> Neat, thanks for linking this, I hadn't heard about Redtail before.

This camera only tracks its own pose - it doesn't output a full depth map, according to the FAQ.[1]

The visual odometry algorithm ("Elbrus") in that video can supposedly be run on an NVIDIA Jetson board (unclear which one) at 30fps.[2] It seems like this runs on the CPU, which is pretty impressive.

The Elbrus demo app uses the $450 ZED stereo camera[3], compared to the $200 T265[4], though there's probably nothing stopping someone from using Elbrus with cheaper cameras, including possibly this one.

      1. https://www.intelrealsense.com/tracking-camera-t265/#fl-accordion-5c70b553f2112-tab-0, "Is this a depth camera?"
      2. https://docs.nvidia.com/isaac/isaac/packages/perception/doc/visual_odometry.html
      3. https://store.stereolabs.com/products/zed/
      4. https://store.intelrealsense.com/buy-intel-realsense-tracking-camera-t265.html

<comment><USER6> I have a Jetson Xavier and dual $50 PS4 stereo cameras on my robot and will be trying the Nvidia algorithms.

[https://youtu.be/crHUGLr-JMI](https://youtu.be/crHUGLr-JMI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I bought an Intel Realsense last year (2 generations ago) and this is much more powerful, esp. in localization . If you buy this, expect it to be obsolete in about 6 months

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there a "hobby scale" way to do SLAM?

</comment><comment><USER10> Why does Intel make a product like this ?

<comment><USER2> Those cameras were developed by an Israeli startup that Intel bought a few years ago (Omek Interactive). Making these sensor low power could enable devices to have 3D reconstruction and tracking. This opens the door for more robust AR/VR applications and cheap devices for robotics. Not only that Intel is in a good position to sell/produce those sensors, but they probably sense that it could be a good market to conquer.

<comment><USER11> That's half of it. The other half is that Intel has pushed the RealSense API as something that is independent of the exact technology used.

So this could be something that uses a projected dot matrix like the Xbox 360 Kinect or a time-of-flight sensor like the Xbox One Kinect or multiple conventional cameras or...

There are many neat things you could do with depth cameras in principle, in particular make computers into "sessile robots" that appear to understand the space we live in the same way we do. Unfortunately the market hasn't made this into reality yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does that look like micro-USB? Like, is it really 2019 new Intel tech being released with micro USB and not USB-C?

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminded me of the Microsoft Kinect with the 2 cameras for tracking

</comment><comment><USER14> Back up a bit... what exactly is a tracking camera?

<comment><USER15> It's a 'Simultaneous Localization and Mapping device' (SLAM) that will give you its position, velocity and acceleration in 3D. There's quite a large [1] literature on the subject.

[1] [http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/search?q=slam](http://www.arxiv- sanity.com/search?q=slam)</comment></comment>


Force Facebook sharing by scaling like buttons - <AUTHOR> http://anton.trollback.se/blog/force-sharing-by-scaling-like-buttons/ I feel like I should tell people about this. Or maybe not.. <comment><USER2> Definitely unsettling but this has been a part of Facebook you could hack since they opened up those features last f8. I think the Facebook team does a pretty good job following up on spam reports and shutting down pages/developers that abuse their system. What I usually do to protect myself as a user is connect to Facebook in one browser when I want to use Facebook features and use another browser for most other web browsing.</comment>


I graduated and found out I'm $200,000 in debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/01/student_loan_crisis_at_its_ugliest_i_graduated_and_found_out_i_owe_200_000.html <comment><USER2> It is the ultimate responsibility of the person taking out these unsecured loans to figure it out. The school (UConn) may made it available, and can certainly be better about educating their students for success, but the author is the one who took out the loans.

The problem, as I see it, is they cannot "give back" their degree, because they've already gotten the learning out of it. Should the lenders eat the money because the lendee didn't pay enough attention?

Ultimately, this is a structural issue. However, the colleges are indeed catering to people's money and desires. We all only have ourselves to blame for this, because we buy into and develop the "American dream" of college and a picked fence in front of a house we own.</comment>


Ask HN: which companies to invest in? - <AUTHOR>

I've got some basic group investments (mutual funds, etc.), but the chart from the NYT showing what a crapshoot investing is over the long term, and my general lack of knowledge about where to invest (and lack of time to research it), and the stories I read from people who correctly predicted that Apple stock would do incredibly well, etc., have me wondering if perhaps there are some companies that people here would recommend investing in.<p>So - where should I put my money? <comment><USER2> First of all. What are your goals?

Is this play money or is this real money that you'll need down the road?

If it's play money, then invest in whatever you want. I've had really good luck by buying stocks of consumer goods that for some reason or another I feel a weird attraction too. Coach, Ford, Verizon, etc.

If it's real money. Put it in a low-fee mutual fund like something vanguard has with a target date fund.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you don't have time to actually be active in your research and investments, why bother? Its like playing poker and not knowing anything about the game.

Luckily I have an uncle whose an investment advisor and handles my money. He's done well for me and has had growth in the double digits. Its nice to leave it in the hands of a professional.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bidu - Chinese google.

<comment><USER5> I believe it's Baidu actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Go for growth companies in emerging technologies coupled with stocks from already strong institutions like GE, GM, NVDA, etc.

Check out free stock forum type pages during market hours for ideas. I like this one: <http://www.stockrants.com>

Good luck =)</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any startups using Java? - <AUTHOR> I don't have enough insight into the larger startup world, but had this discussion with some coworkers and was curious of the HN opinion.
Are there any startups using Java, not the JVM, today? Say any in the last year or two of YC classes?
If so, and you're at one of the startups, do you feel it has affected your ability to bring in development talent for the better or worse? <comment><USER2> First, almost all Android apps are coded in Java. But this is Java for heap sizes in the 10s of MB. Java with a component model that aggressively claws- back memory. Java with tasks that can wake up with a new PID. Java with RPCs you actually would use. Java with a rich UX stack. Server Java brains have evolved in a different direction.

Secondly, Google App Engine seems like a huge convenience for stuff that needs to scale and teams that don't have time to spend on the scaling problem. I don't hear much about it. I wonder why.

<comment><USER3> Sssh...it's a secret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realise I'm not answering this question directly (although I am using Scala and Java 8 in my own startup project), I thought it might be applicable to leave these here:

[http://www.wired.com/2013/09/the-second-coming-of- java/](http://www.wired.com/2013/09/the-second-coming-of-java/)

[http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/if-java-is-dying-it-sure-looks- aw...](http://www.drdobbs.com/jvm/if-java-is-dying-it-sure-looks- awfully-h/240162390)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hard to call Twitter a startup :), but yeah by the articles own admission they're using mostly Scala with some Java.

Can you elaborate a bit on why you're using Java8 in your startup project?

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'm mainly using Scala now with the Java 8 JVM. Regardless though, the reason for either Java 8 or Scala for my current project would be because of what I was building. I am a polyglot and will in most cases assess the languages, tools, libraries, etc. that will get the job done well and fast. In my particular case, I primarily build backend/platform applications. Java/Scala, and more importantly, the tools and libraries that come along with them (especially since for the most part, they are interchangeable, but more so Java-to-Scala), have proven to help me get stuff like high throughput REST APIs, large scale data processing tasks (i.e. batch, scheduled), and pretty much non-front facing web applications running. That's probably the gist of what I'm doing at my current startup. I haven't yet used Java in the frontend (e.g. Play, JSF, etc.) and understand that they work, but prefer server scripting, and more recently, Javascript, for that kind of stuff.

What it comes down to is: you just got to find what works for you and the thing you're trying to do. Honestly, never ask just one developer how he or she would do something. Ask a varying bunch with different backgrounds. If they happen to intersect in opinions, that might be a good place to start. As for finding developers; I haven't had to do that because I work within a small group (I also have a day job doing Java, but it isn't a startup). But I'll tell you this, there has got to be a demand for JVM developers, because recruiters, including those from startups, seem to like doing LinkedIn queries for JVM-related buzzwords. I can't tell you if it's working for them though, but it at least shows other startups are using Java and the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, using Java for a distributed job system. Haven't hired yet, but I don't think it'll be an issue as its only part of our stack.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am using Java with Jersey for building a super easy and fast REST backend

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes.

No.</comment>


Hey HN, I made a PlayBook app that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXqXpwyBI1k

<comment><USER2> Awesome, do you plan developing Android version?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah I'll probably port it to Android and iOS at some point.</comment></comment>


How to hack your way to the top of Google Rankings in 2 Months - <AUTHOR> http://blendah.com/post/37787050142/how-to-get-a-top-google-ranking

<comment><USER2> Not sure why my vote isn't being reflected.

The interwebs are broken!!

<comment><AUTHOR> haha... it's a conspiracy!</comment></comment>


Most of us have a finite supply of willpower - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006569.html

<comment><USER2> Link to the full article bypassing blog spam.

[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/mu- rda092409....](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/mu- rda092409.php)

The blog leaves out the bottom part where it mentions:

"Willpower is like a muscle: it needs to be challenged to build itself," she says.

</comment><comment><USER3> Studies have shown that willpower is linked to blood glucose levels, i.e. that sugar is the fuel for willpower:

<http://psr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/11/4/303>

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost- your-w...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost-your- willpower/)

<comment><USER4> "Study subjects who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade, which raises glucose levels quickly, performed better on self-control tests"

Great. The diet for willpower (grazing) makes me fat.

<comment><USER5> Not really. Eat honey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The study escapes me at the moment (it might be from a Dan Gilbert TED talk), but people who've just spent time on a difficult puzzle/task are also shown to have less willpower. It's not so much that we have a finite amount of willpower that we have a finite amount of cognitive resources that we can devote to various tasks, willpower being one of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Roy Baumeister has done a lot of the early work on ego depletion. Wikipedia has a good background of reading material:

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I also believe in an amendment to this hypothesis. Some actions that require will-power unlocks more will-power so you might gain will-power after the action.

For instance, going for a run boosts energy and will-power that allows you to work harder in the office.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a sometimes follower of GTD, I also find dumping my to do's from my mind onto paper is remarkably energizing/motivating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you've really been working on a startup in your free time from your regular job then you'll be painfully aware that this is true.

Every friday, I try to plan a well balanced weekend so that my willpower to work on my startup is kept topped up after my regular job workweek. I do this by:

1\. Planning for one activity during the weekend which I absolutely love to do: kiteboarding or watching football. Its usually good to have this on sunday so that you look forward to it during friday night and saturday. (Yes I've stopped going out on friday night.)

2\. Recapping who my most likely paying customers are going to be. And writing out a list of bugs and features that I will work on to be able to acoomodate those users.

3\. A list of UI (simple) and fun features which I can do when I start to get tired working.

The system seems to work but is not procrastination-proof. I think I still need to add:

1\. A well stocked fridge.

2\. A little more face time with my friends. (This is a great willpower rejuvenator.)

3\. More time in the gym. Right now this is at 0.

</comment><comment><USER10> I often think of my willpower like mana/eve/whatever in a video game. It's dreadful to watch it deplete so quickly at the 9-5.

<comment><USER11> Use your gold to buy some potion then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The will to complete a task is a state of mind. Talking about a "finite supply of willpower" implicitly treats willpower as a substance, rather than a computational state. It's like claiming that a computer has a "finite capacity to run emacs," and you're using this precious capacity up by playing video games.

<comment><USER13> See Perceval's comment above that links to studies showing that glucose levels influence willpower. In other words, it _is_ basically a physical substance on some level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a blog post [http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/08/akrasia-as- reveale...](http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/08/akrasia-as-revealed- preference.html) , partially in response to a Less Wrong thread, where I wrote "Complaining about akrasia, the lack of will-power, to get done what you want to do, may show that your real preferences are not those you are claiming." So maybe what the research shows is that the participants have a limited amount of BS they are willing to put up with; they just want it to get over with rather than focusing on the rest of the study.

</comment><comment><USER15> _After we used this cognitive task to deplete participants' self-regulatory capacity, they didn't exercise as hard as participants who had not performed the task._

This is science?

They used a subjective test of questionable applicability as a measure of a subjective metric of questionable importance to determine that a test group didn't perform as well (whatever that means) as a control group.

The only willpower needed here was to make it to the end of this pseudo- scientific article. Now that I have, I probably won't be able to complete any work for the rest of the day :-)

<comment><USER7> The Stroop test is a fairly standard and well-respected test. To claim otherwise takes a post with a lot more substance than the one you have offered.

Care to explain why the test or metric is subjective or questionable, or why you are qualified to declare such?

Until then, refrain with your indignant declamations.

<comment><USER15> _Care to explain why the test or metric is subjective or questionable_

OK, let's start with the fact that OP never defines "willpower", whatever that is and for which each of us probably has a different definition. This alone places all further study on a solid foundation of quicksand. Then, OP never explains the applicability or purpose or reciting color words in different colors.

 _why you are qualified_

You mean any more than an "associate professor of kinesiology". I hold my years of experience completing projects in the trenches against her psych lab any day.

 _refrain with your indignant declamations_

Not "indignant declamations" (whatever that means), just my opinion. Are you suggesting that people with opinions should refrain from expressing them in a discussion forum?

Honestly, if this was a wiki, this study would fail horribly in the "citing needed" test. And if it was in physics, biology, or any hard science, it would be laughed off the board. Are you suggesting that since it's psychology related, it deserves a free pass?

It took a lot of willpower to refrain from responding to your reply, but I had none left. Oooh, maybe OP is onto something after all.

<comment><USER7> "Cognitive tasks, as well as emotional tasks such as regulating your emotions, can deplete your _self-regulatory capacity_ to exercise,"

A distinction made more clear by the non-blogspam linked in the comments here, but perfectly evident in the words of the lead author.

 _I hold my years of experience completing projects in the trenches against her psych lab any day._

"This is science?"

 _just my opinion_

If your opinion is that science isn't science until it satisfies your intuition, it's not wanted.

It's obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the blogspam of a press release isn't going to have the citations of a study. I don't suggest psychology gets away without citations, but a cursory knowledge of the field would let you know the Stroop test _is_ science, and that an examination of the actual study, should you care to put any effort into something other than your denigrations, would inform you that your flippancy is unfounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The thing about these studies is that while you can discover that one thing that is commonly thought-of as requiring willpower might indeed interfere with another such thing, the question of what that whole class of activities is has not been answered and indeed varies from person to person.

For one man, for example, approaching an attractive woman might require willpower while for another, it might just be a habitual response.

On the other hand, it's likely solving a difficult puzzle would requires resources on anyone's part.

This is a crucial concept and I hope that question of definition is worked on...

<comment><USER16> And so why does this deserve a downmod?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't ALL of us have a finite supply?</comment>


TATS – A new term sheet for startups - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/26/draper-associates-collaborates-with-lawtrades-to-help-private-companies-achieve-liquidity/ <comment><USER2> On first reading I thought this was a way for employee's to cash out without requiring the company to go public, which I think most people who have worked for a startup in the past 10 years would agree is sorely missing.

> The new set of documents explicitly state that the investors' shares can't > be subject to restrictions on transfer (with minor exceptions) after the > earlier of five years or a $100 million valuation.

But I guess its not...

> Ahmed adds that TATS does not have an impact on the common stock that > founders and employees hold, as such stock is subject to a right of first > refusal in favor of the company and the largest investors.

So I guess this just lets investors but not employee's get out of illiquid companies? I guess this is good for a very, very, very small set of people, but doesn't help the most vulnerable group, the employees.

I know its not fair to expect Y Combinator to have to solve every problem in startup land but at some point you'd think they'd look up and realize that they are making money, the founders are making money due to early cashouts, VC's are making money but the employee's of Y Combinator startups are still getting very little of the value compared to everyone else.

At some point employee's are going to realize that working for an early stage startup isn't a great idea.

<comment><USER3> > At some point employee's are going to realize that working for an early > stage startup isn't a great idea.

I suspect it's always been the case that as one demographic of employees gets wise to this another comes pushing and shoving through the door to fill the seat.

<comment><USER4> Why else the focus on young new college grads? :)

* Enthusiasm & Energy

* Naivete

* Lack of family to keep them away from work

* Lack of understanding of how startup comp works

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems eminently sensible to me: (esp seed) investors want to have a reasonable prospect of exit in a reasonable timeframe. This help with that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yesterday, HN was flush with posts on blockchain technologies. For employees holding mostly worthless options, it seems like joining a startup that is financed via token offering might be attractive.

<comment><USER7> Why? Now instead of a stock cert, I have a token subject to the same restrictions, with fewer possibilities for redeeming.

<comment><USER8> If the token is tradable on public markets they're immediately redeemable. However, if a startup does an ICO and actually issues the tokens before they launch the platform that uses them (for example, an Ethereum-based ERC20 token), the SEC has said they'll consider that a security.

<comment><USER7> "If the token is tradable on public markets"

Why would they be? And if they could do that, why bother with the added complexity of that, and just make their stock tradable on public markets?

<comment><USER8> _> Why would they be?_

Almost all of the Ethereum-hosted ERC20 tokens are. Instant liquidity, according to @balajis:

[https://medium.com/@balajis/thoughts-on- tokens-436109aabcbe](https://medium.com/@balajis/thoughts-on- tokens-436109aabcbe)

 _> why bother with the added complexity of that, and just make their stock tradable on public markets?_

It's far less complex to write a basic whitepaper and copy-paste ERC20 into an Ethereum smart contract than it is to list a traditional stock on a public stock exchange. You don't even need revenue, or even a working product.

[https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard](https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's silly that this is being treated in the article as if it's some kind of invention. Structuring a deal like this has always been both possible and easy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do they also have a bridge they want to sell me?

This is a textbook version of "what you eat don't make me shit."

<comment><USER11> The problem with a comment like this is that readers can't learn anything from it. Instead of venting, please explain.</comment></comment>


The Rise of Privacy Tech (for privacy innovators and investors) - <AUTHOR> https://riseofprivacytech.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Join our community of privacy tech innovators, investors, experts, and evangelists!

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. I love the field of privacy and it's great to see it gaining traction, and it's more pertinent to know about privacy than ever before now that everything is becoming more connected and Big Data gets more fierce and powerful.</comment></comment>


Why we discontinued products that generated $6m in revenue per year - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/why-we-discontinued-products-that-generated-6m-in-revenue-per-year-5431f2cb3154#.c22l45wno <comment><USER2> wonder why they didn't sell the other business?</comment>


Make Money: Don't Raise Money - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@garyvee/make-money-dont-raise-money-24a92dde76c5 <comment><USER2> It .. depends. But I agree that most startups could benefit from a stronger emphasis on creating and growing cash-flow. The better you do at it the better your valuations will be if you do raise money. And if you can do so well that you don't ever need to raise money, all the better.

I'm working on my latest idea and what's most attractive about it to me is not that it can grow into a very large and very valuable world-wide business, even though it has that potential. But that I can bootstrap it myself into a small business with significant cash flow, and possibly grow it without ever taking funding. That's really attractive.

<comment><USER3> Any details you can share? I'd love to hear how you discovered your niche and whether you have product-mkt fit.

<comment><USER2> i'll be posting something here soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked for both private and public companies. Public companies try to raise money by selling stock, and private companies have partners who want to find new ways to raise money.

For example I worked at a private company in 2002, I was hired because every employee they had failed to make the project faster and more stable. I did more in a few months than any of them did. Reports that ran in 15 minutes now ran in 15 seconds. The program no longer crashed servers and workstations. I converted the database from Excel and Access to SQL Server and used a backup Access database on the hard drive in the the main database was down and can sych when it is back up.

The company was bleeding money before they hired me, and earned 3.5 million after my changes. But I was fired after I made all my changes, I got Zuckerberged or whatever they call it when they use you to get to the next level and then fire you so you don't get rewards, etc.</comment>


Christmas should be more commercial - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Holiday-Food-for-Thought-Christmas-should-be-2545126.php <comment><USER2> I can't tell of there's a bit of satire in this article or if it's serious. Certainly there must be room for both commercialism and religion in how people chose to celebrate? Perhaps the core problem is people dictating how others should celebrate the holiday.

I'm an American writing this from Jakarta right now and visited the Bay Walk Mall last night on Christmas Eve just to see what it was like. It was as gaudy of display of Christmas commercialism as I've seen anywhere in America. Carols, including those of the birth of Jesus, Santa was there with his elves, displays, shows, etc...

My impression prior to coming was that this was a Muslim country and I should "beware". So I was totally shocked at the amount of Christmas imagery at first, but after seeing people in hijab's taking pictures with Santa, I realize it's this horrible non-compromise narrative those with the megaphone are espousing that's are problem. All sides seem to be doing this of late.

Let people celebrate the day how they want to, and let people have there opinion on how to celebrate the day. The holiday is big enough for both!</comment>


Bethesda suing Mojang AB for "Scrolls" - <AUTHOR> http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8519901309/bethesda-are-suing-us-heres-the-full-story

<comment><USER2> Well, hopefully this HN thread won't be filled the comments like "you can't trademark dictionary words" (you can) and "do I infringe if I use the words scrolls in this posting?" (no). But just in case, in an effort to get some facts in:

1) The aim of a trademark is to protect the consumer.

2) The infringement standard is "likelihood of confusion" i.e. might consumers perceive Scrolls to be related to The Elder Scrolls? (IMHO I think that's a valid question)

3) Trademark owners MUST -- in order to preserve their mark -- defend against cases of infringement. In other words, Bethesda and their lawyers aren't just "being jerks." They have no choice but to act if they think there might be consumer confusion that dilutes their mark. (IMHO there is, and thus they are doing what they have to do).

<comment><USER3> I'm clueless - and teasing. But..

If 'The Elder Scrolls' leads to problems if someone uses 'Scrolls', what about the other parts? 'Elder'? 'The'? If the latter is too ridiculous, what is the difference between them?

And - _why_ can you go for single words? I mean - I understand the reasoning if they are stopping notch from creating 'The Elder's Scrolls' or something. But - right now, it looks like a farce to me..

The 'will consumers be confused' part is imho completely weird and not applicable unless the artwork is shared. You don't buy a game as a string of text, you look at reviews, a cover (if you buy physical..) and game design. I don't conflate my SNES 'Super Mario Brothers' with 'Super Metroid' or 'Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30' on a PC, just because they share a word..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So are Bethesda's lawyers taking a page from Monster Cable's play book, even up to the point of attacking a small indy developer who's games would never be mistaken for any of Bethesda's games?

Hopefully this is just lawyers being lawyers, and the Internet backlash gets someone's attention at Bethesda quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> > So are Bethesda's lawyers taking a page from Monster Cable's play book

So far, it reads like Langdell's book more than Monster's.

<comment><USER4> I had not known about Tim Langdell, yes this is definitely closer to his shenanigans than Monster's.

For the others who don't know Tim: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games>

<comment><AUTHOR> > I had not known about Tim Langdell

You've missed out. I recommend browsing the archives of ChaosEdge[0] to get the backstory. It's really quite amazing. In gaming communities, Langdell is the One True Trademark Troll.

[0] <http://chaosedge.wordpress.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Notch is playing the PR game here very well by publicly outing the case. Even if Bethesda has a valid claim (which is debatable) Notch has public opinion on his side. Someone at Bethesda should pull the plug on this suit before the Internet turns on them.

</comment><comment><USER6> In other news, Blizzard sued Mojang for using the word 'craft' in 'Minecraft'

This is ridiculous.

I'm going to trademark the letter 'E' and sue every company whose's software product includes it in its name.

<comment><USER7> Next, Game Designer's Workshop suing Blizzard for using the word "war".

(Never mind that I bet that GDW _has_ to have some agreement / settlement with Blizzard, known or unknown…)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I have never ever considered that series of (very good) role playing games to be about scrolls in any way, nor was that ever the focal point of neither their marketing nor the public image._

I've played since Daggerfall, and I don't really even remember if scrolls were part of the games at all. Anyone remember?

<comment><USER9> The Elder Scrolls are ancient texts of prophecy in the TES universe. They foretell various major events in the game history (many of which are the player's doing, of course).

So they are important in an overarching plot sense. But that doesn't mean Bethesda has a case against anything with 'Scrolls' in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bethesda this is not looking good at all. There's already enough silly fights over patents. Shall we now argue who owns what word? If you trademark my first name will you then sue me so that I have to change my name? This is going too far. Someone must stop this madness.

<comment><USER11> Trademark applies within a category - they have the right to The Elder Scrolls as it relates to video games. If they made a video game that was called your first name, and they trademarked that, you couldn't make another video game called your first name, but they have no rights over the word in the context of person names, etc.

It's not as insane as it might seem at first glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it be possible to trademark the world scrolls alone?

<comment><USER13> Yes.

But it would have to be restricted to a specific type of product - i.e. you aren't really trademarking the "word", but particular uses of it, for particular purposes.

e.g. "coke" is trademarked.

<comment><USER14> Would they have to use it? Even if they had the trademark, they currently don't seem to use only "Scrolls" anywhere. It's always "The Elder Scrolls". I'm guessing (but don't know) that a trademark has to be used to be upheld.

(This is obviously separate from the issue of whether a trademark for games called "The Elder Scrolls" also covers games called "Scrolls".)

<comment><USER15> I think the requirement is that it is not confused with an existing product, but confusion is open to interpretation.

<comment><USER14> Well, that's obviously separate. The issue at hand is whether you can trademark a single word in your trademark and, without using it anywhere on its own, keep it as a trademark (ignoring, for the moment, whether or not there can be confusion).

It's a bit off-topic, really, since there only seems to be a trademark for "The Elder Scrolls", not "Scrolls". This is all about the possibility of confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't that exactly the reason why there is a mandatory period for objections to trademark applications? In this case, both are in the same business sector and the names sound indeed confus-able to me. Bethesda is probably right.

<comment><USER16> So Rockstar should have sued the makers of Thief because it's awfully close to "Theft" in GTA? If someone came out with a game called "Auto" then they should be sued, too?

This is just silly. Nobody's going to confuse a game put out by Mojang for anything in the TES series. I'm all for protecting trademarks when they're legitimately threatened (see Notch's example of the iOS Minecraft clone), but this is stupid.

<comment><USER15> I think it's still open to interpretation. The world theft is much more common than "Scrolls" and it's all about the possibility of confusion.</comment></comment></comment>


EU court: Reverse engineering OK, API not protected by (c) and more - <AUTHOR> http://jan.wildeboer.net/2012/05/breaking-european-court-decision-oracle-and-google-should-note/ EU court of Justice decides: Program language, API free to be reimplemented. Reverse engineering also OK, cannot be stopped by license terms. Interesting when compared to Oracle v Google. <comment><USER2> Assuming the US court does end up ruling (even partially) in Oracle's favour, this would serve to make the U.S. an even less attractive location to start a startup than it already is due to current and proposed violations of basic human and civil rights by the government in order to protect content copyright holders (i.e. the interests represented by the MPAA and RIAA)[Citing Kim Dotcom/Megaupload, SOPA/PIPA/CISPA]. I postulate that this might result in a perfect storm of conditions that result in the shifting of the centre of gravity of the startup, and eventually wider entrepreneurial/financial worlds off American shores for the first time in more than a century, perhaps to Europe, due to a more conducive legislative environment, or, more intriguingly, to India or perhaps Brazil (assuming they get their governments in order). The advantages of the Silicon Valley ecosystem are still massive, but they would, in such circumstances, erode over a (not necessarily very long) period of time.

Edit: The page appears to be down, so I've posted the full text on pastebin - <http://pastebin.com/6G5vqLj5>

<comment><USER3> The opposite could happen too. If you want to make sure your APIs are copyrighted then you would stay in the US.

For example it would make it harder for someone to offer a drop in replacement for your cloud based service by replicating your APIs exactly.

Personally I doubt APIs could be copyrighted, but some would find an advantage if they could.

<comment><USER2> Right, but I suspect those who would find advantage would be the incumbent market leaders in their respective fields. The truly disruptive startups, the innovators, would be weighted down considerably by such legislation, since they might unknowingly replicate an obvious part of a copyrighted API. The situation would quickly spiral out of control. If that were the case, the copyright-ability of APIs might result in the stagnation of software development itself, in the absolute worst case, though I suspect, as I have previously stated, that people would get around that by relocating to more friendly legislative environments.

<comment><USER4> I think this is the bigger risk. Copyrights are even more numerous than patents and are _potentially_ much more difficult to avoid infringing. You could infringe an API in a totally different industry and never know it, and there are so many of them that checking first would be basically pointless.

At least with patents you can do some reasonable due-diligence (e.g. when building an audio codec, check for audio processing patents). You're not in the clear just by doing so (obviously, look at all the lawsuits) but it's at least some protection. API copyrights _could_ end up being much more deadly IP landmines.

<comment><USER5> Unlike patents, you can't accidentally infringe Copyright. You can have 3 photo's of a buss that look vary similar, but only 1 was infringing because it tried to recreate another picture.

<comment><USER6> Referring to [1]? That's already a huge step worse than copyright, and just starts on the path to "Well look, I published an API to upload files with a progress callback. And you clearly wanted to do the same thing and even named it Upload, but you just moved the parameter orders around."

1: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/10515817552/uk- cou...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/10515817552/uk-court-says- you-can-copyright-basic-idea-photograph.shtml)

<comment><USER5> What I think your missing is that picture was as common as a the coke logo. If they where a random coffee shop somewhere the 'I have never seen that photo' defense would have worked just fine. Patent trolls work because they can lie in wait for people to 'infringe' but unpopular API's that few people use don't have the landmine effect. If you never saw them they don't exist.

<comment><USER6> That wasn't quite my point. Copyright should cover the expression only. Right now, I could go write my own book that's clearly inspired by Star Wars or Harry Potter. This sets a precedent that even creating a _similar_ book, photo, or API is infringement. This directly goes against the idea of copyright: to generate more works for society.

<comment><USER7> The case is quite unique in some ways because the alleged infringer disclosed that they had intentionally instructed a designer to design around the original.

Copyright, at least in the UK, has for a long time granted protection for copies which are not necessarily identical, but similar where they are a substantial reproduction of the original.

Admittedly in the case above the line between protecting an idea and the expression was pushed towards the idea, however, as stated, the specific facts of the case (in the sense that it was a blatant attempt to mimic but not infringe the original) made it more likely that the judge would find infringement.

<comment><USER8> They should have used the law on 'passing off' rather than copyright.

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

<comment><USER7> Why do you say that? They were successful in the instant case and in my experience, passing off actions are far harder to prove than simple copyright infringement actions. There was no misrepresentation here designed to divert custom, just a good old fashioned desire to use someone else's image.

<comment><USER8> Because the case was more suited to the law of passing off.

How much experience do you have of passing off cases versus simple copyright infringement? Because to me this looks like a bad decision, as whatever the intent the same image was not used, just one that was similar in content and execution.

And it certainly looks like misrepresentation to divert custom.

<comment><USER7> I have experience of acting for clients on both sides of passing off and copyright infringement claims.

There was clearly no passing off here in the way you tend to frame a passing off action as per Warnink (in the UK at least). What misrepresentation are you referring to?

The defendant was a tea company looking to use an image, the claimant was a gift company so it wasn't a case of a customer going to the tea company when they meant to go to the gift company. This is the misrepresentation which generally has to be in place for a passing off action to be successful.

Copyright infringement does not just cover identical images but substantial reproductions. The correct question is whether the copy was a substantial reproduction or whether it simply borrowed elements from the original, that is to say whether the line between inspiration and copying had been crossed.

\edit I would also add that in general passing off actions are far harder to prove than copyright infringement. To my mind, if a copyright infringement action is available this would always be preferable to bringing a passing off action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice to know, as I'm currently reverse engineering API calls for a few organisations in the UK who don't supply their data in easily parsable formats. It's not for anything malicious; I'm actually trying to drive traffic to their sites and help them gain more visitors. Try explaining to non- technical people the benefits of an open API and why they should pay for one :\

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120502083035371>

</comment><comment><USER11> Since the blog is down here [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=122362&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=132624) is the judgment and some commentary: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t- blo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t-block- software-reverse-engineering-court.html)

most important bit:

 _Consequently, the answer to Questions 1 to 5 is that Article 1(2) of Directive 91/250 must be interpreted as meaning that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression of that program and, as such, are not protected by copyright in computer programs for the purposes of that directive._

<comment><USER12> That's interesting because it goes even further than I'd have expected: that file _formats_ themselves aren't protected. I guess that isn't surprising, since you'd want a market where programs could all compete to operate on the same files, but I don't remember that being talked about before (at least in reference to Oracle vs Google). And that does go to the format of the Java .class files.

I wonder what the EU courts would have to say about an encrypted file format...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The key thing to remember is that the case in front of Judge Alsup in the US Northern District of California is a jury case. It'll be up to people who have no idea how computers work to decide this. Having just served on a jury, I see the value, but in this sort of instance, I am frightened by the possible result.

<comment><USER14> No, the jury will not be deciding on whether or not APIs are copywriteable. Judge Alsup is deciding on that, if necessary. The jury will be deciding on Google's fair use arguments etc.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the correction - though, quite honestly, having met Judge Alsup, I'm not sure this is any better. He hates technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So this is interesting. What happens if national (eg. polish) law specifically disallows reverse engineering? Which law takes precedence?

<comment><AUTHOR> The rule is simple. EU directives _must_ be implemented in national laws of all EU member states. If Poland fails to implement the directive by such an action a EU violation case would start ultimately leading to consequences.

OTOH this is a tested way to get stuff in laws that are hard to find national support for. Make it an EU directive and explain to your people that "Sorry, but even if we don't like it, we must implement this now." - see EU data retention directive etc.

<comment><USER15> What if the law in question has existed before Poland joined the EU?

<comment><USER16> Part of the process of joining the EU is to make your legislation compatible with the EU legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am trying hard to keep the site up, but you guys and gals are hammering the sh*t out of my little vServer ;-)

<comment><USER17> Throw CloudFlare in front of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the ramifications, if Oracle win in the USA but isn't protected by EU legislation?

<comment><USER7> I'm not fully conversant with international copyright treaties, but the Berne Convention to which both the US and various EU countries are signatories to, provides that a work that is protected by copyright in one signatory country will be protected in another country, so the ramifications in terms of creating a divide between the US and non-US countries may not be overly significant.

</comment></comment><comment> excuse-me Oracle (and Sun) knew this - that's why these are patents.

The law allowing reverse engineering of APIs and interconnects is well established in the US and Europe and has been for decades. In the US it goes back to Amdhal making plug compatible peripherals for IBMs and the right to reverse engineer is enshrined in an EU directive.

That's why the Oracle case isn't about copyright. They claim to have patents on various concepts of the language. So you are perfectly at liberty to implement a 'while' command with the same function template - you just aren't allowed to use it to do a loop !</comment>


Really? $4.3 Million for That Photo? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2011/11/really-4-3-million-for-that-photo/

<comment><USER2> Sorry for being naive, but what about that photo makes it worth that much?

I've seen landscape photos that illicit an emotional response from me but I just can't see what makes this worth that much. It just looks like a drab, overcast day in any place in the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Accordingly to article, such a price comes from:

\- It's not uncommon for this photographer to sell his photos for huge money.

\- There are only few prints done.

So this is mostly about who do it. And why his photos? I would say, luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen steeper prices for crappier paintings

<comment><USER4> Considering that painting set a record for the amount it sold for, I'd say you haven't.

<comment><USER5> The item set a record for a _photo_ , not a _painting_. gcb may have seen a crappier item, a painting, sold for more than this item, a photo.</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung's Android browser hits 1B downloads, more than Firefox and Opera - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/02/11/samsungs-android-browser-hits-1-billion-downloads-more-than-firefox-and-opera-combined/ <comment><AUTHOR> Installing a browser by default that cannot be uninstalled or even disabled then claiming it's the most installed browser, is a a little bit exaggerated. It's like Microsoft claiming that IE was the most installed browser on PCs, even if a great number of people only ever used it to download Firefox or Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER2> Samsung Internet is great. It has built in support for content blockers, uses the Blink engine and everything renders well. I'd like to use Firefox on Android, but the performance and rendering on some sites is abysmal.</comment>