Is the Toilet Free? - <AUTHOR> http://madebymany.com/blog/is-the-toilet-free <comment><USER2> From [http://www.npr.org/2012/03/19/148777350/how-creativity- works...](http://www.npr.org/2012/03/19/148777350/how-creativity-works-its- all-in-your-imagination):

"[Jobs] insisted there be only two bathrooms in the entire Pixar studios, and that these would be in the central space. And of course this is very inconvenient. No one wants to have to walk 15 minutes to go to the bathroom. And yet Steve insisted that this is the one place everyone has to go every day. And now you can talk to people at Pixar and they all have their 'bathroom story.' They all talk about the great conversation they had while washing their hands.

" ... He wanted there to be mixing. He knew that the human friction makes the sparks, and that when you're talking about a creative endeavor that requires people from different cultures to come together, you have to force them to mix; that our natural tendency is to stay isolated, to talk to people who are just like us, who speak our private languages, who understand our problems. But that's a big mistake. And so his design was to force people to come together even if it was just going to be in the bathroom."

</comment><comment><USER3> These kind of projects are awesome. They may seem "pointless" or "a waste of time" to some PHB-types but they're a wonderful showcase of a great, true- hacker culture and I bet they do a ton for morale. I hope that any future startup I'm involved with has this sort of culture - it's a goal I'll aim for.

Well done guys.

<comment><USER4> shameless plug -- if you like "pointless" projects, check-out Pointless Corporation -- [http://www.pointlesscorp.com](http://www.pointlesscorp.com)

<comment><USER5> Related concept: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember, about 25 years ago, a HUD on each an ever train carriage would indicate whether the toilet was occupied. The HUD was located above the baggage section at the end of each carriage. Occupied was red, and unoccupied was blank. No Raspberry Pi was involved, but through careful social engineering, everyone in the carriage know what the sign meant, There was a physical hardware based fall-back also, which was an indicator on the 'toilet room' with not both red but 'OCCUPIED' displayed on the door, the operating process of which consisted of one locking the door.

This is not to discredit train bathroom engineers decades ago. Ensuring a piece of bathroom machinery operates consistently for up to thousands of miles per day with usage analysis certainty included is a very admirable achievement.

Decades later... the same efforts but in a small scale static environmental setting are posted to a website called Hacker News.

<comment> T-hawk Good observations, but let's also review what this does accomplish. The train system is reliant on mechanical linkage and line-of-sight, so can serve only a limited audience. While the Pi-powered version scales, making the toilet status accessible to everyone everywhere in the world by leveraging the connectivity of the Internet.

<comment><USER7> >While the Pi-powered version scales

It scales but the endpoint probably doesn't scale ( I don't know if 1 toilet can easily serve 100 people)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Random Hall (a dorm at MIT) has/had a `bathroom server' that did exactly that and also a `laundry server' that tells you whether the laundry machines are busy. The bathroom server used to be at [http://bathroom.mit.edu](http://bathroom.mit.edu) (seemingly offline now) and the laundry server is at [http://laundry.mit.edu](http://laundry.mit.edu)

<comment><USER9> I don't know the current status of the bathroom server, but when I was living in Random, certain bathrooms would be taken offline on Jewish days of rest (since activating the door switch could be considered prohibited work). So it's possible that the server is offline today for Passover.

<comment><USER10> > activating the door switch could be considered prohibited work

Unless the operators meant it as a joke, this is absolutely ludicrous.

<comment><USER11> IANJ, but electronic switch = spark = fire = work, as I understand it. This is pretty common (along with removing light bulbs from refrigerators, which to me makes no sense unless you also disable the temperature sensor).

<comment><USER8> Does it also apply to solid state switches actuated by a capacitative touch sensor? I wonder why this or something of a similar nature isn't a solution to most of these issues.

<comment><USER12> Well, the decision to make electricity forbidden was a mix of building (by closing a circuit, not relevant to 100% capacitive systems), spark (ditto), heating and adding power consumption. There is some debate as to whether those last two still always apply to 100% capacitive devices (as this is important to Israeli soldiers and hospital workers).

But ultimately, most Rabbis know that these reasons have mainly been brought up to avoid making those "holy days" look like other days by allowing the use of computers, microwaves and so on, so it's not just going to go. Every practicing Jew has thought about it. Many hope our Rabbis change their mind one day, seeing how hard life without electricity has/will become and how plausible solutions may exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like the real problem is that you don't have enough toilets.

<comment><USER14> My thoughts exactly. Kudos for geeking out on the problem, but that shouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, building new bathrooms or expanding existing ones can be a long and expensive process, so improving the efficiency of existing resources can be a smart way to go.

<comment><USER16> One of the easiest ways to do this is to declare the bathrooms unisex, especially if you have a serious gender imbalance at work. I worked at a startup office that had a (typical) 80% male to female ratio, but the building was designed with two male and two female toilets.

These were the types of bathrooms that had a single toilet, a single seat, and a door for the whole thing, much like a bathroom in your home. Having such a bathroom be assigned to one gender only doesn't really make much sense, but it was especially apparent when there was frequently a line for the men's bathrooms while both womens were empty.

<comment><USER17> The video/gif on the article shows both men and women entering and exiting. There is only one LED. There is only one website. The diagram only shows three stalls. I venture to guess that this bathroom is _already_ unisex.

<comment><USER18> All three cubicles are indeed unisex. (I used to work there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me a bit of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot)

<comment><USER20> Note that the HTCPCP protocol has recently been extended to fully handle teapots (instead of just returning an error) - [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7168](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7168) I think that adding toilets is a very reasonable next step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Add a yellow light for when there are stalls available but all free stalls have recently been used for more than 2 minutes.

So basically, yellow would mean "You could, but unless you really need to, you probably don't want to" ;)

<comment><USER22> Oh I get it, you're saying that it would probably smell like shit in there. wink.

<comment><USER23> I don't know about you, but it always smells heavily of strawberries after I've been there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is actually immensely useful. Imagine I'm Disney, New York City or the National Parks Service.

This could tell me:

1\. Which bathrooms are used and when?

2\. Which bathrooms/stalls are being avoided by people?

3\. Which bathrooms are out of toilet paper or paper towels?

Could literally save millions of dollars, improve location choices for bathrooms and have way fewer dirty bathrooms. It's the same point as those sensors in garbage bins/dumpsters.

</comment><comment><USER25> Prone to race conditions, unfortunately. What's more frustrating than seeing Yes and then finding the door closing in front of you.

<comment><USER26> Maybe they could add a reservation queue to the bathroom as new functionality. That would probably be unnecessary blocking if people abandon their place in line.

<comment><USER25> Maybe the bathroom lock could literally be a mutex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here are some more ideas for you to use the data

* What's the most common pattern for two occupied toilets (from the frequencies, it appears to be the classic occupied-free-occupied, to allow more space between users) * What's the day of the week that the toilets are most used? And less used? (it would also be nice to cross-reference that with the menus from nearby cafeterias) * Check if there's any correlation between the frequency of people going to the toilet and issues on you bug tracker. What about the average duration? * If you extend your system to a coffee machine, correlate the coffee consumption with the toilet's usage.

Actually, with this, you could use most of this data and train a decision tree with it. Then, you could warn your co-workers with "In 10 minutes it is expected that the toilets will be occupied, maybe you want to go now?".

On the other hand, maybe you just want to keep this functionality to yourself, otherwise everyone will just go to the bathroom 10 minutes earlier.

</comment><comment><USER28> Loved this line:

 _For now we'll keep collecting data to see what other worthless knowledge we can assimilate._

On one hand, we want to lighten up and acknowledge that not everything we do is to "save the world".

On the other hand, we shouldn't forget that some of our greatest achievements came from something that seemed worthless at one time.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was totally expecting an article discussing the politics of toilets.

</comment><comment><USER30> Seeing zero referenced arrays in the detailed data output warms my heart. Looks like no one likes the middle stall. At current employer, no one uses the first stall because the flush mechanism is partially broken and no one is motivated enough to figure out how to get it fixed. A maint dude could find this data useful to find problems requiring repair.

I will admit that looking at the headline I initially thought this was a geolocation app for urban bathrooms. To discourage the homeless most local retail establishments either supposedly don't have a bathroom or you need to explain to the front desk why you need a key and they need to think your appearance is adequate, or you need to buy something to be allowed entrance into the area at the back of which are the restrooms. This could be useful. Where I live and shop is 20 miles away in a much nicer area, but where I work, if you're out for a walk at lunch time, and you have to go, you pretty much have to use an alley just like the homeless, so an app like this to find the nearest free toilet (free as in don't need reservations and seating at the restaurant, or rented office space, etc) would be occasionally convenient.

<comment><USER31> The middle stall is the smallest ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> While the hardware part of the job is nicely done, I think there still remains the problem of how to convey the information to the users.

Once a toilet becomes free, everybody waiting will try to aquire the ressource (ie: do a costly walk to the bathroom).

There must already be some gaming theory or performance modelling result that solves this issue, though.

Just a simple idea would be to add a random delay for propagating the information to different users.

<comment><USER33> One of my friends built software to track use of the two washers and two dryers at our local dormcubator. It relied on students to report that they had started a cycle by email; so long as students did this then the website could tell you when the cycle ended because the machines had fairly consistent cycle times.

While he built a virtual queue into the website (type in your email address and we'll send you an email when the last load is done) it turns out that people are really bad at picking up their laundry right when the machine finishes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> ThoughtBot did something similar with a Arduino. [http://robots.thoughtbot.com/arduino-sensor- network](http://robots.thoughtbot.com/arduino-sensor-network)

They had done a podcast episode as well on this although I can't remember which episode that was.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does your office violate Osha standards for employees per toilet?

[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-2...](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2013-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-2013-title29-vol5-sec1910-141.xml)

<comment><USER18> Well, theirs doesn't: it falls outside the purview of OSHA via the loophole of not being in the US :-) In fact, the relevant UK legislation is marginally stricter, and permits up to 50 people at work for 3 unisex toilets: [http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/toilets.htm](http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/toilets.htm) . That's five fewer than the US Labor Code.

I did note with amusement this line in the US code:

 _(2) Construction of toilet rooms. (i) Each water closet shall occupy a separate compartment with a door and walls or partitions between fixtures sufficiently high to assure privacy._

US toilets gave me quite a culture shock: the partitions and doors are so short, high off the floor, and full of gaps that they certainly did not "assure privacy", at least not compared to what I'm used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Shameless plug: A few co-workers and I hacked together the same thing not too long ago, using an Arduino: [http://www.command- tab.com/2013/07/23/gottago/](http://www.command-tab.com/2013/07/23/gottago/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Just give each stall its own Instant Messenger id so I can check their status via my client

<comment><USER38> That would be a privacy invasion, as users, by polling, could figure out who is on each stall, and, from there, how long everybody spends there. It also allows everybody to recreate the detailed log that this system logs.

I would be careful deploying even the original indicator because of concerns that it might break some employment/privacy law. It is hard to prevent systems from leaking personally identifiable information, especially in cases where data is grouped over a relatively small number of persons, as appears to be the case here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love projects that have a hardware and a software piece like this one does!

The features seem to have gone through a progression based on the hardware available.

The initial thing, a red/green light, could have been done entirely through simple logic built just with transistors and passives. The next iteration, a web-based yes/no, could have been satisfied with an Arduino and Wifi/Ethernet shield, or maybe an Electric Imp. The final phase, tracking duration by toilet, the menu bar helper, etc, requires either some backend infrastructure (if using an Arduino or Electric Imp) or the Raspberry Pi.

The animated header, giant video, and annoying spinning model almost lost me though.

</comment><comment><USER40> Love it!

I made something very similar with a Spark Core ([https://www.spark.io/](https://www.spark.io/)), lots of wire, some paper clips, post-it notes and gaffer tape. I should really get round to writing that up. Same single purpose site design (albeit only on our Intranet) but it has mobile apps and desktop notifications. Time for a pull request.

I was inspired by [http://www.frisnit.com/telemetry/](http://www.frisnit.com/telemetry/). Seems like this is a pretty common problem. :)

</comment><comment><USER41> I would even go as far as "booking toilet". Sometimes when you need to take #2 and you absolutely want privacy (because that's a multi-tenant restroom) and isolation, you can pay for the next toilet by "paying". How to pay? Could just be a drink, or say thank you aloud to your coworker. Something fun.

</comment><comment><USER42> A little torn about this. Reading through the comments, and kind of agree that the project is an interesting representation of hacker culture, and certainly stimulating/ morale-boosting to work on...

But on the other hand, I'm just a little bit sad that some clearly intelligent people have put time toward this problem instead of pressing issues like hunger or violence or any other number of social problems that are present all over the Valley and the US, not to mention the rest of the world. Secondly, every time I read an article about "using the bathroom for 1 less minute will save in total X years of your life!" I think about Wall-E and how much I don't care for that level of efficiency.

Alright I'll get off my box, because I'm sure this was a harmless and fun post, but this was just an honest statement of what I thought. I wrote about this (i.e., and get up on the soapbox with a loudspeaker) much more in-depth in case anyone is curious (or thinks I'm crazy) FYI: [https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and- more/64d...](https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and- more/64d6b091c455)

<comment><USER42> Was the downvote because this opinion, expressed in a hopefully respectful way, was just… not welcome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I hope the data that comes from the toilet is inaccessible to anyone until the end of the day.

Otherwise it would be easy to infer from real-time data how long a persons bathroom break is and maybe infer what they were doing in there, which, while obvious, I think people would be uncomfortable with others knowing.

</comment><comment><USER44> "For now we'll keep collecting data to see what other worthless knowledge we can assimilate."

I see what you did there.

I love these kinds of projects though. "Pointless" is only in the eye of the beholder, and if I worked there, I would probably find this pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER45> When I see projects like this, I always remember that that's how webcam was invented.

</comment><comment><USER46> Great! But you need a status update that's more mobile I think. Because the status is quite likely to change when you (and all your colleagues) see the green light and head for the door ...

</comment><comment><USER47> " ... thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for [the loo]." -Douglas Adams

</comment><comment><USER48> I have no experience with hardware. Can someone give some suggestions on where to start if I wanted to do a simple side project like this to gain some experience? Thanks

<comment><USER49> I'd recommend that you not start with the rpi if you have zero experience.

If you're in the USA (edit: at a local RadioShack), you can buy an Arduino, a breadboard, wire, some resistors, switches, and LEDs for less than $60 -- the cost of a typical newly-released video game.

Take it home, read the online getting started guides, and start learning how to get basic circuits working.

Start reading [http://hackaday.com/](http://hackaday.com/) to get an idea of what's possible. Bookmark projects that look interesting and proceed from there.

<comment><USER50> I find hackaday inspirational, but not informative enough for newbies.

In no particular order, I suggest:

Check out makezine.com.

Find a local makerspace[1]

Work through tutorials and references for beginners (great hands on electronics book [2], more in-depth info to augment an electronics tutorial [3], arduino [4])

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=makerspace](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=makerspace)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Make-Electronics-Learning-Through- Disc...](http://www.amazon.com/Make-Electronics-Learning-Through-Discovery- ebook/dp/B00D7O2JH8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398096651&sr=1-2&keywords=arduino)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors- Third-...](http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Third- Scherz/dp/0071771336/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398096651&sr=1-3&keywords=arduino)

[4] [http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Workshop-Hands-- Introduction-P...](http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Workshop-Hands--Introduction- Projects/dp/1593274483/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398096651&sr=1-10&keywords=arduino)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> We did something similar last year [http://briiiiian.com/bathroom-f- graf/](http://briiiiian.com/bathroom-f-graf/)

</comment><comment><USER52> It is easy to mock the OTT solution that has gone on here, however...

I had the pleasure of working with a deaf guy that would spend an inordinate amount of time in the loo. There was just the one loo.

45 minutes could pass by with him occupying the loo. Being deaf it wasn't as if you could knock on the door and ask him to hurry up - he would not be able to hear you, and, even if he could hear you he would be able to pretend otherwise. Like Schrodinger's cat there would be no way of knowing...

You couldn't complain either, for all one knew he might have been using that time for something more important than one's own toiletry needs. Perhaps it was the batteries in his hearing aids, not being deaf one would not know, or even know if speculating about such a thing was morally inconsistent. Or maybe he had another medical condition that one was not privy too. Or maybe his body jewellery needed to have puss and inflammation cleaned out if it on a regular basis. One can only imagine...

It wasn't as if he took the newspaper in or his phone, so it wasn't a really good book or jolly exciting porn collection that took up his time there. None of the micro-managers really thought it a problem that he would spend such a long time in the loo, even if other staff and visitors had to go to a nearby Starbucks due to being caught short.

So we had a 'is the toilet free' messaging system of our own. There would always be euphemisms, it wasn't as if we would message 'finally [x] has finished having a poo and you can now use the loo'. Anyone shoulder surfing our screens would not realise that that messaging conversation in the corner about 'that report being delivered', 'the printer having finished', 'those files uploaded' or 'desperate for that CSV file' was about the status of the loo. However, through such messages, those two floors away from the loo would be able to find out if it really would be possible for them to relieve themselves or not.

In our case, of a small team with inadequate toilet facilities, we really should have moved to a proper modern office with all of those Philips controls in the toilets to know what the occupancy situation is, whether the loo needs to be flushed, whether the water in the hand basin needed to flow and so on. But we were not going to do that. So we had our own system, a system that manager types were not privy to. It worked well for us and it was fun.

Had we gone a bit further, hooked up that free Raspberry Pi nobody knew what to do anything with and implemented something similar, I don't know how it would have panned out. Someone other than the loo-hogger would have been sacked for wasting company time and not prioritising their work, the politics of disability would have got ugly and it would not have happened. So, even though the solution of the Raspberry Pi is OTT, in getting it done and having fun doing it, I think that this team have got something out of it a lot more valuable than their 'Heath Robinson' toilet status indicator.

Personally I like the simple solution they have on older trains - a light that shows 'vacant' or 'occupied'. There is no internet to break down, there is no TCPIP settings to get wrong, just a lightbulb to change and a switch to keep clean. I am sure that for multiple stalls the series/parallel could be worked out for the switches without too much difficulty.

</comment><comment><USER53> Tie the data in with people's lunch calendars and you can start forcasting peak toilet demand!

</comment><comment><USER54> Your office is absolutely beautiful. I hope one day our company will inhabit a space that nice.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wish I had the type of job that involved enough free time to do something like that.

</comment><comment><USER56> reminds me of this: [http://www.sanbornmediafactory.com/portfolio_pieces/bum/](http://www.sanbornmediafactory.com/portfolio_pieces/bum/)

design firms love to know when their toilets are free

</comment><comment><USER57> It should have a gas alarm on it to at least add 10 minutes after a flush.

</comment><comment><USER58> Could actually provide life saving information in fire situations

</comment><comment><USER59> Wow.. How a simple random thought could build into something...

</comment><comment><USER60> Free as in beer or free as in speech?

</comment><comment><USER61> This website gave me motion sickness. If it's some art project, good on them. If they're trying to communicate information, -1.

</comment><comment><USER62> That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

<comment><USER63> Can we stop with the nitpicking meta bullshit on every freaking article, please? I don't care about the things you dislike about a random webpage. It wasn't submitted because of a header. In order to read the article that we're actually discussing, you have to scroll down to where you can't see it anymore. It's a 10-second-at-most mild irritation. I would understand if it was an epilepsy warning o something, but it's not.

The fact that these comments get made wouldn't be a problem, except that people, since they agree with the complaint (as I happen to do in this case) keep upvoting the damn things. At this point, there's a good 20% chance that any given comment thread is gonna start with the same boring arguments we've had four hundred thousand times on this site already that I have to scroll down past to talk about actual article we're discussing.

These kind of comments are cheap, effortless, and do nothing but degrade the quality of discussion and make participation a PITA for people who want to actually talk about the relevant article instead of random web design complaints.

<comment><USER39> This kind of "nitpicking meta bullshit" is valuable feedback to someone, like a startup, who might be marketing a product and hoping to not turn away customers. Sure, this particular thing isn't selling a product, but how many people would be turned away if it was?

<comment><USER63> Like you said: "this particular thing" isn't selling a product. "This particular thing" didn't ask for this feedback, doesn't need it, and may very well never see it. The fact that there are a few rare exceptions where this kind of discussion is helpful doesn't change the fact that, 90% of the time, it's a low-quality, useless waste of time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple granted broad mobile patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.co.uk/apple-business/news/?newsid=3370881 <comment><USER2> > _We can't take all of our energy and all of our care and finish the > painting, then have someone else put their name on it._

What a load of shit. What happened to "great artists steal"? Great art must be stolen to inspire new, greater art.

The iPhone is awesome. May a thousand devices like it bloom.

<comment><USER3> _"What happened to "great artists steal"?"_

That's because the inverse isn't valid. Not every thief is a great artist. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook apparently didn't consider Android to be great art.

The original quote, to put in context what Jobs was referring to:

"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest." —Philip Massinger

[http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets- borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great- poets-steal/)

NB: Jobs mistakenly attributed it to Picasso, who never said such a thing. Jobs probably read Richardson's biography of Picasso, in which the text is misquoted and attributed to T.S. Eliot.

<comment><USER4> "NB: Jobs mistakenly attributed it to Picasso, who never said such a thing. Jobs probably read Richardson's biography of Picasso, in which the text is misquoted and attributed to T.S. Eliot."

The quote you have above is in fact T. S. Eliot's words, in reference to Massinger, from his selection "The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism", 1921.

If you re-read the citation, you will see her intention that _neither_ T. S. Eliot nor Picasso specifically said "Good artists borrow, great artists steal" but a "bastardization" of Eliot's original writing.

Eliot's intention, "A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest." would discredit every technology company or figure that has been defended by the cliche.

<http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw11.html>

<comment><USER3> Excellent find, thanks for sharing. It's nice to read the paragraph in its context. From the blog post, I understood that T.S. Eliot quoted Massinger, and that it wasn't his own opinion. Now I see they were Eliot's own words.

 _"Eliot's intention, "A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest." would discredit every technology company or figure that has been defended by the cliche."_

I don't believe so. For example: Jony Ive's designs for Apple have been said to be copies of Dieter Rams' vintage designs for Braun. Ive himself has openly acknowledged that he is inspired by Rams, and that he tries to follow Rams' 10 design principles [1]. I believe that, by Eliot's standards, makes him a 'good poet', given that Ive took from a designer remote in time (50 years a go), from a different product category (computers instead of home appliances), and using different materials (aluminum and glass instead of wood and steel).

[1] <https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/about/good-design>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not entirely sure why this is surprising news to anybody; in the original iPhone announcement, I believe Steve Jobs said, "...and boy have we patented it."

Let's be frank: Apple is not the only major technology company with a massive collection of questionable patents that they _could_ use to stifle their competition. The system, as it is today, basically forces companies into these patents because if they don't patent it someone else will. To put it colloquially: "Don't hate the player, hate the game."

<comment><USER6>
        "Don't hate the player, hate the game"

If you find your arguments relying on catchy phrases like this, you should reexamine them, because they're probably lacking.

I especially dislike this one in particular because it's used as an excuse to avoid having to justify harmful actions. "Everyone else was doing it too" is not a valid excuse for doing something wrong, especially when you are--as Apple is--a large enough "player" that your actions help shape how the "game" is played.

In any case, your presentation of Apple's actions is a lot more benign than reality. It's one thing to acquire questionable technology patents to help you defend yourself against litigation. That's unfortunate, but doesn't really actively harm anyone. It's also not what Apple is doing: Apple is using its patent portfolio offensively to try to shut out competing products.

<comment><USER5> Attempting to inject a little humor does not invalidate an argument. I'm not really attempting to defend Apple; I'm simply saying, "this is the state of affairs and Apple is not the only offender."

We can dislike that excuse all we want; but, why are we faulting for-profit companies for working within the legalities of the system to do what they're supposed to: grow their business and maximize their profits? It's a flawed system, to be sure; but, it's the system we have at the moment.

<comment><USER6> It's obvious Apple isn't the only offender, but they are a big and, lately, very active one.

I fault them for their actions because I think what they're doing negatively affects a large number of people. It being legal and them being able to make money because of what they're doing doesn't make it okay.

To be clear: I will say the same thing about any company using using frivolous patents to suppress competition. It _is_ a flawed system, and the people in the best position to oppose the system are the people in charge of large tech companies. Apple is _not_ doing the best thing possible within a flawed system, and they are _not_ trying to change the state of affairs. They are using their patent portfolio aggressively to try to suppress competition, and I think that's a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Apple decides to use them it'll take _years_ for it to litigate, and they'll probably be proved invalid in the process.

Don't fear poor Android phones, you're safe for now.

<comment><USER8> You know, I actually think it would be better if the patent was upheld. Imagine the fiasco it would create. It would put the spotlight on the absurdity and abuses of the patent system when applied to technology. Might even get non-technical folks interested.

Ultimately I think the solution is going to be one of the ones Judge Posner outlined in his editorial, but it might take a big shakeup like this to turn patents into the issue-of-the-moment for the populace and get something done (you know, in the usual rushed, nobody-read-this-legislation way).

<comment><USER9> Especially if the patent were found to be invalid elsewhere, and Android gets banned only in the US. _That_ would cause people outside our industry to stop and think.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't get that far - they could demand a $20 or $30 royalty instead, so consumers won't be directly confronted with the insanity; Android phones would just start being closer in price to iPhones.

<comment><USER10> Well, the Galaxy Nexus was (temporarily) banned only in the US. That ban got people to stop and think, but few of those people noticed that the ban didn't mean anything for the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The hyperventilating in this article is ridiculous. First, patents always issue on a Thursday - and any large company usually has a number in the pipe. There is nothing unusual about a company the size of Apple getting 25 patents issued in one release.

Now, I haven't read all of the 25 patents issued to Apple, but this article makes the classic mistake of confounding the specification (which describes lots of stuff) and the claims (which describe what is protected). Here is what this patent is _actually_ about:

1\. A method, comprising: at a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display: displaying a portion of an electronic document on the touch screen display, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical position in the electronic document; displaying a vertical bar on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document, the vertical bar displayed proximate to a vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein: the vertical bar has a vertical position on top of the displayed portion of the electronic document that corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed portion of the electronic document; and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar; detecting a movement of an object in a direction on the displayed portion of the electronic document; in response to detecting the movement: scrolling the electronic document displayed on the touch screen display in the direction of movement of the object so that a new portion of the electronic document is displayed, moving the vertical bar to a new vertical position such that the new vertical position corresponds to the vertical position in the electronic document of the displayed new portion of the electronic document, and maintaining the vertical bar proximate to the vertical edge of the displayed portion of the electronic document; and in response to a predetermined condition being met, ceasing to display the vertical bar while continuing to display the displayed portion of the electronic document, wherein the displayed portion of the electronic document has a vertical extent that is less than a vertical extent of the electronic document.

Translated from patent-speak, this just means that the little position indicator along the side of the display indicates where you are in a document. Further claims indicate that the position indicator disappears when you don't do anything for a minute. Anyone who has seen iOS (or Mac OS X Lion) has seen it.

If I were Google, though, I wouldn't care about this patent. Why not? Because of the words "and the vertical bar is not a scroll bar." These words were added to get around prior art. All Google would need to do is allow its position indicator to _also function as a scroll bar_ and this patent doesn't apply.

I am annoyed by patents as much as the next guy - more, even, because I deal with them every day - but this kind of breathlessness helps absolutely no one.

<comment><USER12> Today a lot of mainstream media published articles along the same line on how Apple's new patents will kill competition; which makes me think, they do it to push the aapl share price higher in the lack of any major apple product announcements in the current quarter.

<comment><USER3> _"the lack of any major apple product announcements in the current quarter."_

Apple fourth fiscal quarter of 2012 started in the last week of June and will conclude in the last week of September.

WWDC usually falls in FQ3, one month a go Apple released new notebooks during the event. That was good timing, it means Apple will be able to keep up with demand when the Back to School crowd starts shopping.

Mountain Lion will be released within the next two weeks, which will also boost Mac sales.

The next hardware announcement will be no earlier than September (new iPhone), but that will probably still be in FQ4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apple fanboi that I am, freely admitted, my Nexus 7 is wonderful, and I think the granting of this entire patent is insane.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't really trust anyone to properly interpret patents.

<comment><USER15> No kidding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone who thinks this is a death-knell for Android (especially any time soon) doesn't understand how patent law works in practice.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't be silly, that would mean that something would change in the patent system.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Android won't be killed off. There will always be an Android.

"If you outlaw Android, only outlaws will have Android." - Anon.

</comment><comment><USER18> >"Steve Jobs, former Apple CEO, may finally get his wish and see Android devices ... completely taken off the market."

Was the author not reading the news last October?

<comment><USER19> What are you referring to?

<comment><USER20> that SJ passed away and the author is using the wrong grammatical tense.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps I'm being dense, but what is the proper tense?

Nothing in that sentence reads to me like the author thinks that Steve is alive (okay, 'see' maybe).

<comment><USER18> Personally I wouldn't have used that sentence at all. If I needed something along those lines, I would have written "Steve Jobs' longtime wish may finally come true ... to see Android devices taken off the market."

Just the wording "get" and "see" imply that he could still receive these benefits.

<comment><USER22> I guess that would depend on your interpretation of the afterlife. There are plenty of people in the world who believe that he is still here, just on a different plane of existence...

<comment><USER18> I don't want to get into a spiritual discussion, but I would seriously hope an afterlife would have more interesting things to do that watch your previous world continue on without you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hoorah for us all, even less viable products for us to choose from! I don't understand why people look up to Jobs, but still hate Bill Gates for his business practices during the 90's.

"Picasso had a saying - 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." - Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, that seals it. My next Tablet will be based on 100% open sources. I will now proceed to build an Ubuntu-based tablet to replace the iPad form-factor.. _boots up laser cutter and 3d printer_ .. </dream>

</comment><comment><USER25> "It could kill off Android completely in the US and not anywhere else."

Granted, the US is a major market for Android but these patent disputes will get laughed at in the UK courts and others as we have seen so far.

</comment><comment><USER26> So, my question is: given all the controversy in the (tech) media over patents lately, how is the patent office able to rationalize granting (what appears to me to be) a very bad patent?

<comment><USER27> There is no rational thinking at all going on at the patent office. They reject your initial application a few times to make sure you're good and rich and then grant it figuring the courts will work it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I honestly believe that this is the beginning of the end for the patent system. If this was granted and enforced we would see something along the lines of the advertising mantra: "good advertising the the fastest way to kill a bad product"

</comment><comment><USER29> Competition is what drives companies to create better products. Without that there would be very little progress in innovation. I am an Apple fanboy and still hope nothing happens to Android.

<comment><USER30> Trouble is, broad patents effectively outlaw competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hmm.. brb patenting the process of applying for a patent.

<comment><USER32> I think IBM actually have a patent on "patent trolling."[1]

[1]: [http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/02/1534223/ibm-files-the- pat...](http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/02/1534223/ibm-files-the-patent-troll- patent)

<comment><USER31> doh! foiled again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like a reprise of the Apple vs. Microsoft "Look-and-feel" lawsuits of the mid 80s, only with patents, not copyright.

</comment><comment><USER34> Ridiculous headline (the submission simply mirroring the original article) that is the sort of hysterical end-of-times interpretation of patents that has yielded so many nonsensical, time-wasting discussions before.

<comment><USER35> It's entirely possible the submission was originally made with a better headline, and then mod-edited to match the article.</comment></comment>


This Former Victoria's Secret Model Has Founded a Company to Help Freelancers - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.co/tycoon/ <comment><USER2> Cached version [1].

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://astartupaday.co/tycoon/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link: [http://www.tycoonapp.com](http://www.tycoonapp.com)

What other tools do freelancers on HN use for CRM/dealflow?

</comment><comment><USER4> Website flattened? Getting DB connection errors.</comment>


Prepare Yourselves: Facebook To Be Profoundly Changed - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/prepare-for-the-new-facebook/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher <comment><USER2> An announcement of an announcement. This has added nothing to HN or my day.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the Battlefield 3 announcement earlier this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I have seen what Facebook is launching on Thursday, and it's going to change the world of social media."

"On Thursday, developers will be elated, users will be shellshocked and the competition will look ancient. On Thursday, Facebook will be reborn. Prepare yourselves for the evolution of social networking."

These are some pretty bold quotes. It certainly caught my attention. I am pretty anxious to see what they will be launching. The music tweet from earlier I think is a neat idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> joke journalism. out.</comment>


FCC formally declares Huawei, ZTE 'national security threats' - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/30/fcc-huawei-zte-national-security/ <comment><USER2> Meanwhile Tencent gets a free pass and basically buys into as many US tech companies as possible

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that's a problem for CFIUS, not the FCC, to handle.</comment></comment>


Scheme in a Grid (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://siag.nu/siag/?version=new <comment><USER2> The one shot http sharing is very interesting:

[http://siag.nu/siag/canyour.html](http://siag.nu/siag/canyour.html)

<comment><USER3> Well the argument is pretty solid, however the last time I heard FLOSS Weekly, LibreOffice developers mentioned building document sharing over XMPP relay. That sounded amazing, and a pretty interesting modern analog.

[https://docs.libreoffice.org/tubes.html](https://docs.libreoffice.org/tubes.html)

Still, siag is amazing in how far ahead it was/is. Gzip archives make it seem like development slowed to a standstill in 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I gotta say, for all the talk I heard of the years about Scheme not realizing anything practical, this seems insane to me.

I am definitely checking the code out over the next few months during my down time.

</comment><comment><USER4> the source code link seems to be down :( i remember being pretty impressed by how clean and readable the c code was.

<comment><AUTHOR> This link from the Siag.nu homepage was up:

[http://siag.nu/pub/siag/](http://siag.nu/pub/siag/)

<comment><USER4> thanks! the code still looks pretty nice to me; i'd have no complaints if this were legacy code i'd inherited on a job, e.g.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple, anonymous collection of awful (or awesome) wedding stories - <AUTHOR> https://hellofawedding.com/10 <comment><AUTHOR> To keep creativity flowing, side project marketing is something I'm trying to do more of.

With the free-flowing open bars and late nights, weddings are ripe with legendary tales. Our side project, Hell of a Wedding, is our fun way of engaging the wedding crowd, giving them an outlet to share their wedding "war stories".

You can vote on each story in the list, or submit your own!</comment>


City of Vancouver Opens Up City Data - <AUTHOR> http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/index.htm

<comment><USER2> In case you missed it (I did), so has San Francisco - with so many local hackers this can only be a Good Thing. <http://datasf.org/> \- it was posted on HN a month ago but sank without comment, so give vijayr his overdue karma: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772966>

</comment><comment><USER3> Jason Birch, with/for the City of Nanaimo has led the way here for a few years:

<http://www.jasonbirch.com/nodes/> <http://maps.nanaimo.ca/nanaimomap/>

</comment><comment><USER4> not nearly enough information on it as I would like, but it's a start. For now it's a bunch of csv on stuff like Community Centres and Schools. I'd like to see hours of operation, directory of phone numbers, link to pictures, link to maps, link to transit grid...and other things that are useful. But it's a start.

Locations of public washrooms, fountains, banks, and where one can purchase transit tickets would be handy for any good-sized city.

<comment><USER5> It's great to see multiple open data formats being supported. But I expected more "meaty" data, such as:

<http://crimemapping.edmontonpolice.ca>

The cynic in me believes that the police will use this somehow to increase their funding. But it is great information to get into the hands of citizens. And it's worth visiting just to see the "don't sue us" click-through agreement!

But why is it so painful to open up transit data? Are there any good examples of accessible transit data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anybody else in Vancouver suddenly worried that our infrastructure will be messed with now? Hey World, you know those Olympics in Feb, well here are some electrical conduits you can fuck up for the event! WTF?

<comment><USER7> One could make a similar argument that open source operating systems are inherently less secure as malicious hackers would know all the weaknesses.

<comment><USER6> I think it's a matter of perspective. Obviously a product that has a large open source volunteer base will be more secure because of their ability to mobilize against security threats. So the City of Vancouver is Open, but not Open Source because they are not allowing masses amount of people access to change things. I guess you could say that if we could real time vote to change city decisions, then it would be open source.

<comment><USER8> Most open source projects have a leader who decides what additions and changes to commit. I don't see the City of Vancouver being any different - as long as citizens have the ability to push changes that the city can then decide to commit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.caranddriver.com/the-surprisingly-modern-tech-inside-an-amish-horse-drawn-buggy/ <comment><USER2> The Amish attitude towards technology is a pretty good model of what an eventual Mars colony will need.

When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vigilant not to be too dependent on outside goods.

This is the same as the Amish attitude. Every item from outside is regarded as suspicious; it MUST be rejected if it produces a dependency on the outside. Best if it can be made inside the community; perhaps acceptable if it can be repaired and used indefinitely even if it only comes from outside.

So a Mars colony will evaluate imports. Anything that can be made locally on Mars is best; things which can be repaired and reused indefinitely are okay; things which increase the dependency on the outside world will be shunned.

<comment><USER3> There's no wood on Mars. A great deal of our infrastructure (not just Amish infrastructure) is wood-based, and the first Martians will have to find a substitute for it. The typical substitute for wood is plastic, but that comes from petroleum, and there's none of that on Mars either. I suppose one of the first things we'll have to build on Mars is greenhouses -- not just for food, but for plant-based plastic to build things with.

<comment><USER4> Or we'll just make a lot more things out of metal.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious. What happens when one starts a fire on mars to forge a metal?

We can't ship metal, it's much to heavy. So we have to consider that beneath the fine powdery surface of mars there lies basalt rock. Is there a type of concrete that can be constructed from basalt material?

<comment><USER6> Well, you can't start a fire in the atmosphere. So either you have one inside, or (more likely) you'd use induction heating to do the forging.

Concrete requires some rather specific calcium chemistry. But basalt is quite a good building material on its own, especially if you adopt Inca building techniques of mortarless flat-surface construction. Then all you'd need to do is construct interior insulating airtight shells to live in.

There's plenty of iron on the red planet, and from the red dust comes oxygen. Nitrogen will be harder to obtain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Despite what you may have heard, the Amish aren't against technology. Communities adopt new gadgets such as fax machines and business-use cellphones all the time—as long as the local church approves each one ahead of time, determining that it won't drastically change their way of life.

This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceived notion of what it's like to be Amish. I still don't know much about Amish life and culture, but it's fascinating to see where my assumptions are wrong (and what else I may be wrong about!)

<comment><USER8> In the area I grew up, inflated rubber tires and bicycles were not allowed, but wooden tires on scooters were fine. Reason being, inflated tires made it too easy to travel far from home, which was generally discouraged.

So many people I grew up with seemed to think that Amish were being hypocritical by paying for taxi drivers to drive them around. That's an over- simplistic view. To an Amish community, taxi fees are a tariff intended to encourage finding a job close to home - or if at all possible - in your backyard. The ideal Amish are taught to strive for and desire is to have a farm and provide for your family with your hands.

Here is a great documentary about an Amish couple that gave the rare opportunity to be filmed and interviewed. It's not about the Amish that I grew up with, however their flavor of Amishness is philosophically equivalent [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtNXvE_rLoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtNXvE_rLoE)

<comment><USER9> Normally I wouldn't make an off-topic comment on region locking, but the irony of this one amused me (emphasis mine):

This video contains content from BBC _Worldwide_ , who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

<comment><USER10> BBC worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC, responsible for licensing TV programmes abroad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of people think the Amish are against technology. In fact, they carefully consider the technology's effect on themselves and their community. Will it really help, or is it just a new thing which will cause unintended consequences? For instance, some Amish groups accepted cars, and their community disappeared - when anyone can drive anywhere the community collapsed. Now there are no Amish who allow cars. The same thing would happen with the internet. Tech people like ourselves automatically assume that technology is some advance, or improvement. Our peers tell us this, our incomes depend on us believing this. In fact, technology does not improve the human condition in most cases. It erodes it. We would be better making careful decisions like the Amish, but our civilisation is locked onto this myth of 'progress'.

Technology should be for us, not the other way around. Unlike the Amish, we put the cart before the horse.

<comment><USER12> Cars give freedom to those who don't have it. It's easy to have a rosy pastoral view of the Amish, but the reality is grim for many young women subjugated to that culture. The ability for such people to see that the outside world can be far less harsh than the one they are used to will necessarily (and in my opinion _should_ ) lead to the collapse of those communities.

<comment><USER11> The Amish are happier than almost all Americans: [http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness- wealth-a...](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and- the-amish/)

You want those communities to collapse, because you see no other solutions except more tech, more greed, more 'progress'. That's the hamster wheel you've been given. What other life could there be?

<comment><USER13> Making people happy is surprisingly easy; all it takes is a couple of electrodes inserted into the brain. So if that's the only bar that you have, the Amish are way overthinking it.

<comment><USER14> In theory yes; in practice, it's beyond our technological capabilities at the moment. A better alternative would be drugs. And honestly, it's our "universal culture" that's more susceptible to this failure mode.

<comment><USER13> I recall reading about such experiments done on rats, and that was at least a couple decades ago. Is it really beyond our technological capabilities? Note, I'm not talking about electrodes to induce dreams or some such; just a simple direct electric stimulation of the pleasure centers. Presumably, the resulting sensation is that you wouldn't know _why_ you're happy - you're just happy.

<comment><USER15> Direct electric stimulation of brain (implanting electrodes) is simple only if you don't care if the subject has a risk of fatal infection, and if performing literal brain surgery is cheap and routine, as it is for mice/rats (again, because a risk of death or brain damage is acceptable).

Yes, we can do that, but that would be _complicated_ to do it safely on humans - compared to that, a lifetime supply of drugs is cheap and simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Whenever a discussion of Amish comes up, I have to link to _my_ favorite hard core Anabaptist sect, the Hutterites. Unlike th Amish, the Hutterites _love_ technology. They choose what technology to use as part of a very strict church system, like the Amish, but are very much into diesel engines and the internet and the like (note the link below). See [1] and [2] below.

They also live communally in farming colonies of about 80 people (half Dunbar's number) in very remote parts of Western Canada and the Northwestern US. Historically, the Hutterites have pissed off the local non-Hutterite farmers because the colonies are successful and can buy up local land from the non-communal/ religious/ pacifist local farmers; they were run out of South Dakota for their success combined with their pacifism in the early 20th Century.

They are pacifist, just like all Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish, etc). Unlike English variants of Anabaptism (Quakers, etc), Hutterites and other German derived sects drink quite a bit of alcohol, I think. I think they have a great a-capella singing ritual tradition. I bet their food is great, too. I heard they like hockey.

The ~1900 Hutterites are also famous among population theorist/ demographers because their historical data provided the baseline of the highest possible, yet realistic, human fertility society. They married early (probably with quasi-arranged marriages), had lots of babies (much cheaper to raise in a communal setting), were healthy with relatively low mortality, and kept great records (German heritage...).

They are very much a going concern today, continuing to found new colonies even a few years ago, one in Oregon 14 years ago [3] below. I have always wanted to visit a colony, but I live in the urban Puget Sound and the closest colony is about 3.5 hour drive away. I have read that they are quite welcoming, as long as you are quite respectful in return (a fair trade, to my mind).

[1] [http://www.hutterites.org/](http://www.hutterites.org/)

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

[3] [http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...](http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030308&slug=hutterites08)

<comment><USER17> I knew rural BC was an outpost for Mormon offshoots that still polygamy, but this is actually much cooler. It's weird I've never run into any, I spend a lot of time in eastern washington.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Buggies are the original self driving vehicles. Many stories about drunk guys getting into their buggies alone, falling asleep, and waking up at home!

</comment><comment><USER18> >There was actually an alternator system attempted in the last five years," he says. "It worked about 60 percent, but it never took off.

Generator hubs for bicycles are mature technology at this point. Including capacitors in the taillights so they stay on when the bike is stopped. Buggies could easily adopt them, but I guess it's not worth the bother if batteries mostly work.

<comment><USER19> Generators or alternators driven off the wheels are not free - the horse is now powering your lights as well as your wagon. The relatively high efficiency of LED lights helps a lot, but your horse still with thank you for using batteries.

The article discusses the higher efficiency of steel tires compared to rubber tires and the emphasis on light weight. Tens of Watts of generator load on the horse is probably more than the difference in steel vs. rubber tires.

<comment><USER20> If a guy that rides 1200km on a bike in 50 hours prefers a generator vs batteries based on drag vs weight I'd say that the generator + lights is pretty much solved technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My state has cut rumble strips down the middle of many roads. The Amish are up early and travelling around on Sundays in buggies on the shoulders. It use to be easy to give them room; no traffic that early so you swing out across the line and keep away from the horse. Now if you do that you hit the rumble strip and the horse will panic; rear up and try to see what terrible thing is coming up from behind.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I worked for a Wal-Mart in Indiana in the 90s, the Amish would come into the electronics department and buy country music cassettes and battery-powered players. And also, I kid you not, Gameboys.

<comment><USER23> I grew up near Rush county in Indiana and the Amish there loved Wal-Mart and all the younger ones all wore Reeboks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How do Amish people generally make money? I know there are markets that sell Amish goods to non-Amish, but there must be more to their income than that.

<comment><USER25> I live in Lancaster PA and most Amish can't afford the farm land here anymore (its become housing and malls) and have moved west. Lots of Amish now work in the trades (construction/electrical/roofing/etc.) Someone picks them up and takes them to their job sites. Their general low standard of living (no car payments or electronics budgets) allow for that to be a very solid income for most.

<comment><USER26> Minor point, but you meant 'cost of living', I believe.

<comment><USER27> It's inter-related. If you don't have a lot of needs you don't have a lot of expenses.

If you're prepared to live in a cardboard box you can save a fortune on rent. It's also a deliberately low standard of living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Amish are a very interesting people, I respect them very much. I wouldn't want to live that way, but you have to have some admiration for people who can hold on to their principles like that in the face of modern conveniences.

</comment><comment><USER29> Original link: [http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/technology/a24666/how-t...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/technology/a24666/how- the-amish-build-a-buggy/)

</comment><comment><USER30> All this tech, and no pictures of them anywhere in the article.

<comment><USER31> Graven images, you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Its all about self-sufficiency.

<comment><USER33> I'm somewhat confused. As the article says, buggy components are often manufactured off-site (e.g. fiberclass body), how does this make them self- sufficient?

<comment><USER34> It's self sufficiency _after_ purchase not before.

They don't mind buying things they can't make, as long as they can repair or do without them afterward.

They won't buy things that need constant connection to the outside - like grid electricity.

They will buy a generator as long as they can take it completely apart and put it back together. But if they can't do that they won't.

LED's seem unexpected to me, but I suspect they are OK with them because the lights are not for _them_ they are for the outside world. As far as they are concerned they don't need them (so can do without).

Note: Things (such as buying a generator) vary by community.

<comment><USER35> Is the vastly lower energy consumption of LEDs perhaps a virtue that makes them preferable to incandescents, even though they are far more complicated to manufacture?

<comment><USER34> They can't manufacture either of them, so complexity of manufacture doesn't enter into it.

So I assume they like LED's for the same reason you do, less battery.

If they _did_ make incandescents (I suppose if they tried they could), then the comparison would be harder for them, and I would expect some communities to go one way, some the other.

<comment><USER36> I would imagine they could manufacture incandescents if they so chose. Glassblowing seems like something they'd be OK with. And otherwise it's just a bit of wire and a vacuum.

<comment><USER34> That wire is pretty special though, it's a coil of coil, with extremely tight tolerance. i.e. if you look at it it looks like a coil, but actually the wire that makes up that first coil is itself an even smaller coil.

You have to wind it such that no part of the wire touches (or it will burn out at that spot).

It's titanium which is not an easy material to make wire out of without special industrial equipment. And not pure titanium either, but has special additives.

You have to make it without _any_ variation in thickness! Even a 1% variation will cause it to rapidly overheat and burn out.

It's also not a vacuum in there, but a mixture of nitrogen and argon, which needs special equipment to gather.

In short they could make a bulb like what Edison made, but without an industrial base not anything like a modern bulb.

And despite all that, those bulbs sell for pennies.......

<comment><USER13> Isn't incandescent bulb filament made of tungsten, rather than titanium?

<comment><USER34> Yes, sorry, that's a typo. The high melting point is what I was thinking of, and that's tungsten.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System and a Compiler (pdf) - <AUTHOR> http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/ProjectOberon.pdf

<comment><USER2> Oberon highly influenced the Plan9 team.</comment>


Liquidation Preferences and Participating Stock - <AUTHOR> http://carried-interests.com/2016/04/24/preference-and-preferred/ <comment><USER2> I once asked a few angels whether higher preferences increase the startups valuation, surprisingly they told me no.

I'm guessing they view it as more of a reactionary tool against the founders desired valuation

Also... is it just me or does participation and preference combined seem a bit sharky?</comment>


The Concept of 'Cat Face' - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n16/paul-taylor/the-concept-of-cat-face <comment><USER2> A friend of mine did his PhD thesis on automated music synthesis and as a subproject came up with a model to study music transcriptions that he got from the Peachnote corpus [1].

One of his preliminary results was that his algorithms successfully "discovered" 4 big classical music movements on their own, i.e. without any prior labelling or classification, by using clustering algorithms. He posted about it on his blog with a link to his paper [2].

I always had a hard time explaining to non-computer people how amazing that seems.

[1] [http://www.peachnote.com/](http://www.peachnote.com/) [2] [http://pablozivic.com.ar/post/51774763596/perceptual- basis-o...](http://pablozivic.com.ar/post/51774763596/perceptual-basis-of- evolving-western-musical)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem all _that_ amazing to me.

Humans have to be trained to perceive the differences in complex streams of information; by default, they just perceive the low-level features—a "wall of noise."

Machine-learning algorithms, meanwhile, can use general techniques to notice _information-theoretic_ properties of various pieces of data. Effectively, computers can "do statistical aggregation" about as effortlessly as humans "do hierarchical knowledge representation."

And, in an information-theoretic sense, the different "trends" throughout the history of music _look_ different under statistical analysis. They're complex in different ways; they have different "lumps"; different aspects of them can or cannot be compressed together as redundancies.

If you would like to see this for yourself, simply feed a raw melodic note- structure (not embedded in XML or anything) to any modern dumb compression algorithm, and then look at the result in a hex editor, while also having the source still open. You should quickly be able to recognize the "transformational signature" that characterizes something like a chaconne, vs. something like a sonata.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are the computers/AI already smarter than us?

My eight year old son is enamored with "Ok Google" on my phone. He can ask it questions until we tell him "that is enough, let google rest"... and it is very interesting to see where it takes him.

He has learned to tailor his questions to elicit a voice response in addition to the actual google search. The questions must use keywords to achieve this desired response. It is like a new form of boolean search logic, just used verbally. Not only that, but "Ok, Google" according to him "knows everything"...

We call it searching the internet to learn something, an eight year has decided that "Ok, Google" already knows everything. He just has to ask it to see a video of the Puff adder eating its prey and it will show him. In fact, there are not many things that have stumped "Ok, Google" and my son assumes the problem was with his question, not with the machine.

So to circle back to my original question, I didn't know about the Taipan snake or smallest person in the world, or seen videos of Puff adders eating prey... If all I have to do is ask, isn't the machine already smarter than I?

<comment><USER5> Is an extremely large and well-indexed encyclopaedia smarter than you? It certainly contains more information than your head does, so you could say it "knows" more. Look at it from the other direction, though: If the machine were smarter, would your son have to learn how to structure queries, or would the machine learn how your son asks questions?

Put another way, if I can tell you (verbatim) what some person wrote about quantum mechanics, but I can't rephrase it into some other form to help you understand the information, then how smart am I? I can repeat rote information without any analysis (just like a sheet of paper could), but I can't tell you what it means. On the other hand, if I tell you enough information, you're likely to connect it together meaningfully, and come to your own conclusions and explanations about it. That seems like a fundamentally different kind of "smart" than what OK, Google can do.

<comment><USER4> > Is an extremely large and well-indexed encyclopaedia smarter than you?

Kind of... I mean, is it useless trivia or is that information that can be used? I can't use information that I don't know exists. The only way I learn what I don't know is by using energy to search, read, do, to hopefully comprehend.

What if "Ok, Google" had some kind of RNN or other ML technique that learned my sons questions and thought process based on how he use the service. Who is to say they are not already doing that? The ads from Google are downright frightening with respect to the accuracy of what I am currently contemplating/researching.

To take this a bit further into "silly, not so silly" land...

With ML techniques; Deepmind, Watson, and others are showing that computers connected to this "encyclopedia" are besting their human counterparts. Is it a giant stretch to say that everything requires some input or energy to learn? Therefore, the only thing we are really missing is the wiring... that is, and I hate to use the "skynet" aphorism, but one day "it" will just turn on and there will be no looking back.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

>On the other hand, if I tell you enough information, you're likely to connect it together meaningfully, and come to your own conclusions and explanations about it. That seems like a fundamentally different kind of "smart" than what OK, Google can do.

We still have a problem of accuracy. Why should I trust your perception and/or your explanation of the concept? I realize this is a problem with computers as well. However, anything outside of emotional arbitrage should be easy to verify.

My own conclusions are biased as hell. I fully admit that is a problem, but it is a problem shared by humanity. I am not saying Wikipedia isn't biased... but it is 100x better in most cases than one single person's perception simply due to scale.

I am rooting for advanced ML/AI... I also hope that "going analog" is always a viable option.

<comment><USER5> In my opinion, information storage and retrieval isn't "intelligence" on its own. A system that implements it can't be said to be "smart". You could argue "knowledgeable", but that's not the same thing.

Imagine that no web page on the internet says what happens when you mix red and blue paint, but there are results for classic color wheels, the results of mixing red+yellow, blue+white, blue+yellow, red+black, etc. Google will see that the page has a bunch of color-related words and words about mixing and paint, so you'll get a page result about that, if you ask it about the red+blue combo. Google's awesome at that kind of thing. But it stinks at the kind of reasoning that humans excel at: Opening that page, seeing "blue+yellow=green", seeing that green is between blue and yellow on a color wheel, and concluding that purple is between red and blue...then maybe continuing on and learning about additive vs subtractive color, and such. The human reader synthesized new information: red+blue=purple. Google organized existing information.

> We still have a problem of accuracy. Why should I trust your perception > and/or your explanation of the concept?

That's not the point. The point is that a thinking person can process information in ways that we don't know how to make computers do (yet). We're still distilling the concept of human intelligence down to its core.

I think Google and Watson are still at the level of using and presenting already-generated information effectively, but not generating and organizing their own new information, and not really "understanding" the things that they're retrieving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the bit about cats:

 _If this [huge google] network had been fed thousands of images labelled as 'contains cats' or 'doesn't contain cats' and trained to work out the difference for itself by iteratively tweeking its 1.7 billion parameters until it had found a classification rule, that would have been impressive enough, given the scale of the task involved in mapping from pixels to low-level image features and then to something as varied and complex as a cat's face. What Google actually achieved is much more extraordinary, and slightly chilling. The input images weren't labelled in any way: the network distilled the concept of 'cat face' out of the data without any guidance._

<comment><USER7> The problem is that this network-contained concept of "cat face" is still a symbolic representation. It's a much more complex algorithmic symbol than the rules found in something like 1960s Eliza, but its understanding of the world is on the same level.

You can't ask the "cat face" neural network anything about cats. It has no idea what they actually are in relation to the world. A two-year-old human can usually tell you more about cats than you'd care to listen.

<comment><USER8> You can't ask a child's visual cortex to tell you anything about cats, either. But connect that visual recognition ai with something like Watson, and you have what you're looking for, no?

<comment><USER7> I just don't know. I'd be happy to see that be the case...

But I'm afraid it's going to be the equivalent of this cake recipe: "Take an egg and a packet of sugar. Break the egg over the packet."

You certainly need eggs and sugar to make a cake, but on their own and combined without understanding of the whole, you're not getting very far.

<comment><USER8> The human brain is mostly a bunch of ugly wetware hacks, not a single coherent 'intelligence' that does all the thinking. If you attach enough single purpose AIs together you might get something much more human like than trying to create a single neural network that does everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a hope I have, that I see many others have too, which is that our human intelligence is somehow special. That somehow the leaps in logic we can perform somehow make us unique. That we won't be outdone by a computer a million times faster or smarter than us because we have something else that we can't replicate in transistors and circuits.

I love AI, but I have that hope too. That somehow we won't be made irrelevant by our own creations. Makes me think of our autonomous vehicle fun taking over the trucking industry. Millions of people made irrelevant through no fault of their own.

<comment><USER10> I would guess a number of people have that in the 'fear' category, that should it not be special then somehow people will feel diminished.

It would make a good punchline for a fictional story of people researching brain disorders and intelligence. It would work like this; The researchers in the story develop the means to 'cure' someone of all known neurological disorders. They try it on their test subject and the result is someone who perfectly happy just to be there, has no ambition or curiosity, and requires no entertainment or outside stimulus. The researchers recognize that the person is acting like an intelligent but non-sentient species, and they realize they have "undone" what ever happened to humans according to the garden of eden story in Genesis.

<comment><USER11> See Peter Watts' Blindsight.

<comment><USER10> Ok then, added that one to the queue. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my favorite things to anticipate is "How are these hard-nosed rational materialists going to cope when the AIs discern ghosts?"

What I mean is, some of the "cat faces" they identify will correspond to things that are "real" but that also violate our assumptions about reality. When this happens the typical reaction is to shut the door and burn the room.

<comment><USER13> We're always bad at knowing what to do with unknown data, because, by definition, when you don't know about it you don't know what to do with it.

Quite often it's just assumed to be error.

Those errors have traditionally led to great discoveries though, (such as the Mercury wobble [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury)) so if they are repeatable, then such "ghosts in the data" could turn up great fundamental truths.

Every bit of this is speculation though. I am not so sure that anything so profound is going to turn up in AI datasets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A great read. Well written and fascinating.</comment>