Nasdaq Index Reaches 5000 for First Time Since 2000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-02/nasdaq-composite-index-reaches-5000-for-first-time-since-2000 <comment><USER2> I don't think this is correct. Sure, it reached the "same number" but I don't think the indices are inflation adjusted, so the value isn't the same.

Edit: Here's a brief explanation using the DJIA as an example [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/05/173515767/the- dow-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/05/173515767/the-dow-isnt- really-at-a-record-high-and-it-wouldnt-matter-if-it-were)

<comment><USER3> On one channel it was asserted the inflation adjusted number would be 7000. And of course had you been an a NASDAQ index 'fund' it means you would still be negative from 2000 as you're 15 years of fund fees would still have been subtracted. Mostly it is a pretty robust signal that the 'stigma' of Tech has largely past. So we're ready for another bubble!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been really interesting watching the media constantly trying to predict the "End of America" over the last 7 years since 2008.

As far as I can tell, the only reason this saga continues is because of the marketing hype it builds. Most of the people I know who watch only mainstream news all believe that we are going to have a massive crash that will completely kill our country in a few years.

When you actually ignore the hype and look at purely the numbers you'll see that the US is doing incredible compared to the rest of the world right now. The Euro is crashing, Russia is in ruins, Saudi Arabia's OPEC squeeze is now hurting all of the other "US enemies" while the net effect of the oil crisis on the US is mostly zero-sum.

I'm incredibly bullish on the US right now. Sure we'll probably have another small crash in the next few years but we'll recover quickly and keep on surging for the foreseeable future. That's the nature of market cycles! It's super easy to be negative and for some reason that's the cool trend for people to take right now but frankly the macro-view of the facts say differently.

<comment><USER5> The US will be fine until the promises of the governments, more state and city oriented, come to fruition. The pension debts are so high; think Greece times almost a hundred; that cities will have to bankrupt to avoid them and even then some may not be able to without changes to state Constitutions. (estimates are near four trillion dollars)

All this happens in the background as the can gets kicked down the road again and again but courts are starting to push back forcing cities and states to pay.

Then you have the Chicago experiment, where the public unions are ganging up to put one of their own into the mayor slot so they can pay their members what they are "owed". As in, the power of the public employee unions may come to the point where they run their cities top to bottom and the payout will damage the economy.

So be bullish, Europe is already suffering through their own pay the piper with Greece as the first in line. Liberalism will collapse like communism for the same reasons, you cannot promise people everything and not pay up.

A market crash may or may not happen on its own, there is definitely some very overvalued companies out there; Uber and Tesla come to mind; but watch carefully the play in courts as the tax man will be coming hard and businesses are the first to pay because they are easy to brand as evil

<comment><USER6> The public unions are just a tip of the entitlements that need to be paid out. Public union retirees were people with steady employment for 20+ years, they probably have houses and other investments. What about all the other people hitting retirement age who were bounced around many jobs and never even got a pension?

This is how basic income will begin, a critical mass of retirees who either lost pensions through company fraud, municipal bankruptcy, or who never even had a pension in the first place. All it takes is a few southern populists to throw off the chains of fiscal conservatism and the money will flow.

Greece will never happen here, because we can print as much money as we want. We have spent trillions in Iraq and interest rates haven't even gone up. We could easily put trillions into the hands of the poorest Americans and the Fed would still be able to sell debt below 5% interest.

<comment><USER7> > We have spent trillions in Iraq and interest rates haven't even gone up.

That's because they're set by the Fed and not allowed to fluctuate according to market pressure. Surely you knew this?

It's the same reason why, some argue, the Fed _can 't_ raise rates now (because of leveraged derivatives).

<comment><USER8> Rates, and more importantly inflation, haven't soared because the US controls the global reserve currency, and printing a trillion dollars is barely relevant to that scale.

The rest of the world absorbs a sizable portion of US inflation because of that reserve standard. Fair or not, that is how it works and will continue to for at least several decades. Every other country on earth is partially subsidizing US fiscal irresponsibility.

The Fed can raise rates, and the US Govt can afford to pay another $500 billion on interest that would be incurred. It wouldn't be pretty, spending would either have to be frozen for five years to allow tax revenues to catch up, or the Fed would have to pay the bill for an extended period of time (again, at part cost to the rest of the world reliant on the dollar).

<comment><USER7> Yes, this is correct. This system is called Petrodollar (if anyone wants to understand why the USD is the global reserve currency).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't want to ruffle too many feathers here but people often ask why someone would invest in alternative investments like a hedge fund or private equity fund rather than hold an ETF.

This is one of the reasons, and there are many more. If you held a Nasdaq ETF from 2000 until now, you would have had to wait to 15 years to make back most of your gains. The Nikkei has been even worse... [http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NKY:IND](http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NKY:IND)

That doesn't mean everyone should try to add alternative investments, I think most people should hold ETF's. But rather most people should not blindly follow the dogma of holding an ETF that represents the market regardless of market conditions.

I can't believe I'm going to recommend a Tony Robbins book, but his latest book on investing is actually pretty good, actually you just need to read chapters 5 and 6 to save you some time.

I'd recommend most people check out his "All Seasons" portfolio that he got from Ray Dalio. I mean if you can get Ray Dalio's expertise working for you, you've got a great chance of having things work out for you!

[https://www.pwlcapital.com/en/Advisor/Ottawa/Cameron- Passmor...](https://www.pwlcapital.com/en/Advisor/Ottawa/Cameron- Passmore/Advisor-Blog/Cameron-Passmore/November-2014/Stories-over-Science- Tony-Robbins-Financial-Adv)

 __EDIT __Wow, based on the downvotes this struck a nerve. I don 't think I said anything wrong here, do people just not want a balanced view?

<comment><USER10> This is picking a bad time horizon and acting like that's the only way to invest.

If you'd been investing let's say starting 2000 in a 401k, you put in money at regular intervals. So you were buying the whole way down and up.

You wouldn't simply have "held" a NASDAQ ETF.

<comment><USER11> It is indeed the worst time horizon.

However, when evaluating a course of action, I think looking at the upper and lower bounds of possible outcomes is a very wise thing to do, so in that sense it's relevant...

<comment><USER12> It's not the worst time horizion as you can oviously do worse than break even ex: 1999:2002.

There are many stratagies where you would have gotten significant returns over that time period. EX: If you held say 50% nasdaq and 50% cash and then rebalanced your portfolio you would have been well ahead of the curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a reminder, back in 2000 Facebook, Google, Tesla, Baidu, Alibaba, et al. didn't exist nor traded in the Nasdaq.

Add to that the fact that Apple's share price has exploded to become the largest company on earth... and voilà, the Nasdaq reaches the 5000 mark.

<comment><USER13> Alibaba is listed on the NYSE, so it isn't included in the NASDAQ composite index.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> QE -> inflation.

<comment><USER15> To expand on that, QE means Quantitative Easing:

>An unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. Quantitative easing increases the money supply by flooding financial institutions with capital in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity. Quantitative easing is considered when short-term interest rates are at or approaching zero, and does not involve the printing of new banknotes.

So if suddenly, a new player shows up in the markets buying trillions of dollars worth of securities, due to the law of supply and demand, one can expect price of stocks to go up. You can check out the Feds balance sheet here [1]. Check out "Securities held outright" [2], yeah, that's 4.3 trillion with a "t". This figure used to be on the billions before the financial crisis [3], which means that the Fed flooded secondary markets (stock exchanges among them) with more than 3 trillion dollars, to put this into perspective, this the value of all the goods and services that the US produces in 2 months, or two and a half years in the case of Mexico.

So yeah, the causality between QE and inflation of stock prices seems very plausible.

Disclaimer: Central banking operations is not one of my main strengths, so you are more than welcome to fact check, correct or complete my comment.

[1] Web: [http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/) PDF: [http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.pdf](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.pdf)

[2] The amount of securities held by Federal Reserve Banks. This quantity is the cumulative result of permanent open market operations: outright purchases or sales of securities, conducted by the Federal Reserve. Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act defines the securities that the Federal Reserve is authorized to buy and sell.

[3] [http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/WSECOUT](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/WSECOUT)

<comment><USER16> > a new player shows up in the markets buying trillions of dollars worth of > securities, due to the law of supply and demand, one can expect price of > stocks to go up.

> which means that the Fed flooded secondary markets (stock exchanges among > them) with more than 3 trillion dollars

QE does not involve buying stocks. QE decreases bond yields making stocks relatively attractive vs. bonds.

<comment><USER15> You are right, however, the Fed did buy almost 2 trillion worth of mortgage- backed securities which trade on the open market.

<comment><USER16> The Fed virtually always buys and sells securities on open markets.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but as far as I know, they are usually repo agreements, buying MBS is something new.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lawsuit Claims SAT, ACT Are Illegal in California Admissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/12/10/786257347/lawsuit-claims-sat-and-act-are-illegal-in-california-admissions <comment><USER2> The SAT actually overpredicts the performance of minorities in college, as discussed in a College Board report "Nine Facts About the SAT That Might Surprise You" [https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562751.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562751.pdf) and an essay "The Underperformance Problem" [https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/09/02/the_underperform...](https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/09/02/the_underperformance_problem/) .</comment>


Scientists Watch Thoughts Form in the Brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-aglow-scientists-watch-thoughts-form-in-the-brain/ <comment><USER3> For all the hype surrounding AI, virtual reality, and augmented reality as being the next big trends in tech, I really feel like brain/computer interfaces are what is really going to change our world in unprecedented ways. The technology is still a long, long ways from having a visible impact for most people, but I am more interested/excited/scared about this technology than anything else going on in the tech world right now.

<comment><USER4> There are some very difficult challenges in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), some of which involve huge barriers presented by human biology. It's rather depressing.

Presently, there is no good way to read data from the brain to a device. You can drill a hole in your head and patch-clamp some electrodes to your brain tissue, but this procedure is only recommended for treating debilitating diseases like Parkinson's. Furthermore, there is the issue of scar tissue developing over time as a small region of your brain is being bombarded with electricity / contact with foreign metals that trigger immune response.

I do think a spinal tap of some sort might make more sense (rather than patching directly into brain tissue like in the Matrix), but you still get scar tissue.

Non-invasive methods don't have scar tissue, but it's unclear whether measuring the surface activity of the brain yields sufficient information. Furthermore, they are highly noisy due to ambient static and muscle activity. You shouldn't move much if you want o.k. readings.

The BCI dream is to have a lightweight headset that you put behind your ears like in Iron Man 3 or Big Hero 6 (and then you control robots with your mere thoughts). However, I think that kind of technology is _really_ far away, short of some huge breakthroughs in compressed sensing and possibly superconductor physics.

Even more difficult than reading data is writing it back in. There have been very early results with getting monkeys to telepathically control each other's muscle movements, but my understanding is that it's not very reliable.

A reasonable survey can be found here: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110866515000237)

<comment><USER5> Optogenetics possibly provides a solution to the interface problem. When you can use light to read from and send signals to neurons, you don't have to worry about scar tissue at all, as far as I know.

<comment><USER4> I don't think optogenetics is feasible for human BCI. Optogenetics requires one to express channelrhodopsin proteins in the neurons of interest - <USER2> means you need to genetically modify the human at birth. We know how to do this in mice, but not humans since the gene expression pathway for neural proteins in humans is poorly understood (unlike mice and zebrafish). Even with optimal designer baby scenarios, there's no hope for us adults; gene-editing therapies for adults is way harder and we'll likely be long dead before we see anything close.

<comment><USER5> CRISPR techniques allow us to modify gene expression in organisms long after birth; it has been heavily used in adult animals, but I don't think it's been used in humans just yet.

<comment><USER4> CRISPR is cool, but isn't the challenge of adult genome editing bottlenecked by the delivery vehicle? Last time I checked it's still hard to deliver viral vectors past the blood-brain barrier. Does CRISPR have a unique solution to that? I also would imagine that a "BCI" optogenetic adapter would be so massive that payload size alone (never mind electric properties) would never make it past the BBB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nature write up: [http://www.nature.com/news/brain-s-chemical-signals-seen- in-...](http://www.nature.com/news/brain-s-chemical-signals-seen-in-real- time-1.20458)

And paper without paywall from kleinfelds lab: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/neurophysics/publications/nmeth.3151...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/neurophysics/publications/nmeth.3151.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> To add to ericjang's comments elsewhere in this thread, here are my thoughts on the two most popular BCI (although I'm used to seeing BMI -- brain-machine interface) technologies:

* Optogenetics advantages: don't need to insert things into tissue. Disadvantages: requires genetic engineering that is not approved for human use. Difficulty reaching deep brain targets. To image many neurons, might need to pump lots of light into an area, causing heat and cell death. Bulky.

* Microelectrode arrays ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multielectrode_array](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multielectrode_array)) like the Utah or Michigan array advantages: direct electrical recordings, relatively compact. Disadvantages: low density, invasiveness.

It is worth noting that most behavioral studies are done with MEAs are due to their convenience/form factor.

It is also important to note that these two technologies measure different things: an MEA can record extracellular voltages, so it's a relatively direct measurement of neural activity, compared to optogenetics, which relies on ion channels fluorescing, which is not exactly what most people really want to measure.

A word about invasiveness: when you insert large (>1um) things into tissue, you elicit a foreign body response, starting with inflammation and ending with scar tissue or gliosis. The issue with invasive probes like MEAs is that even if you manage to avoid major blood vessels and you control bleeding and inflammation, ultimately scar tissue forms around your probes. Scar tissue is a much worse electrical interface than plain tissue, and thus the effectiveness of your BCI/BMI implant diminishes.

Disclosure: I run a company (Paradromics, www.paradromics.com) developing next-generation microwire technology for brain-machine interfaces. Also, my strength is in software so while the gist of what I'm saying is probably mostly correct, I can't give details as well as others can.

<comment><USER8> Just to add clarification points, the term optogenetics is generally supposed to refer to any gene transfection that involves optical access, but in practice there are two separate categories:

* optogenetic stimulation: using light-activated ion channels to modulate neural activity

* optical imaging: using genetically targeted fluorescent proteins (mainly GCaMP) to observe the activity of neurons

This article is more the second kind, and the novel aspect is that this technology couples dopamine release to calcium rises, enabling imaging of the calcium signal to be used as a proxy for the neurotransmitter's release. It's more likely to be quite useful for investigating specific scientific questions about neurotransmitter signaling than a general purpose readout for BMI.

Multielectrode arrays pick up spikes or action potentials from individual neurons directly, so you get high temporal resolution but from a sparse sample of cells. This sample turns out to be enough to do a lot of interesting things, such as controlling a mouse cursor or a robotic arm. This is already in clinical trials at a few sites, including (my lab at) Stanford.

Imaging approaches are really powerful, but the signals are often slower. This has to do with the kinetics of the proteins themselves and the signal that is being detected (calcium is slower than voltage transients). But you get to see the activity of lots of neurons. There are voltage sensitive channels that you can image, although the signal to noise ratio isn't nearly as high as yet. It's not immediately clear how this could be used for a BMI in humans, mainly because you would absolutely need optical access to the brain to image, so you'd either be opening up a window or implanting some kind of imaging sensor. The less invasive approaches you were hinting at are mostly in the first category (stimulation), where for longer wavelengths of light you wouldn't need something as invasive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to clarify, optically recording neural activity from ensamble of cells ("thoughts") has been done in neuroscience for many years using voltage / glutamate / calcium indicators + imaging. CNiFER is a breakthrough is because it provide ways to measure the "hormone" of brain, these are often molecules in tiny amount that modulate how cells in an area fire.

A not-so-good analogy is before we can measure electrical current in wires, now CNiFER allows us to measure electromagnetic field. This will help to explain why some headphones nearby will beep when your cellphone received a message.

</comment><comment><USER10> Calcium imaging is currently a better method for realtime imaging of neural activity.

[http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n12/full/nmeth.1398.h...](http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n12/full/nmeth.1398.html)

The CNiFER innovation is the ability to visualize neurotransmitter activity.

<comment><USER11> strictly speaking, this is calcium imaging

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I expect this to be streamlined and used by law enforcement as an alternative for polygraphs.

<comment><USER13> There seems to be a huge push against using _any_ type of nuero-tech to build "ultimate" lie detectors, which I often find puzzling.

<comment><USER14> Lie detectors do not have a good track record for making things better. If you want to catch criminals there are many other ways. If there was a murder near you would you want people trying nuero-tech on you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The technique described here -- that of the CNiFERs is impressive. But the hype is way over the top.

> When many [neurons] fire together, they form a thought.

Is that a definition, an observation, a hypothesis or a result?

<comment><USER5> I think that depends on where you believe thoughts originate. If they originate within the brain, the ensemble firing together (in some sort of organized manner) is a thought. If you believe that they don't originate from within the brain, then the answer is unclear. More of a philosophy problem at that point, I think.

<comment><USER16> If you don't believe thoughts arise in the brain, then you're ignoring thousand year old results in basic physiology

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article on the CNiFER method: [http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n1/full/nn.2469.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n1/full/nn.2469.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think it should be called "digital hallucinations" \- non-reproducible (but not totally random either) visualizations, renderings of some data gained from a device build according some biased and grossly oversimplified models. It might have strong correlation with micro changes in blood flow or biochemistry, etc. but obviously have nothing to do with thoughts.

<comment><USER19> Did you read the same paper?

<comment><USER18> I have got some rather superficial knowledge of _how_ the state-of-the-art brain imaging works from a couple of free MIT courses.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've never understood how these guys managed to get a billion dollars to fund this horseshit Brain Initiative in a time when NIH funding has been declining for decades. There is probably some serious graft/nepotism behind this.

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes me think of John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades. I wonder how far it is between mapping thoughts to being able to map someone's memories and consciousness. If such a thing is even possible at all.

<comment><USER22> In current MRI images of the brain, a million different data points are reduced to a single pixel in the image. Absent some kind of dramatic breakthrough in science, we are a long ways from being able to resolve individual data points inside of a person's brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Did they test this method on a dead fish just to be sure?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how they distinguish thoughts from feelings?

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm scared. The Valley is gonna "disrupt" stuff in a lot of nasty ways armed with a more developed version of this...

</comment><comment><USER26> While reading I was distracted by that awesome scrolly thingy at the bottom.</comment>


Seed Fund Reject Still a Ne'er-do-well - <AUTHOR> http://foundersblock.com/articles/seed-fund-reject-still-a-neer-do-well/

<comment><USER2> haha, i like the perseverance

<comment><USER3> Haha, yeah, and I liked this quote: "But, as that old saying goes, 'A quarter million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A web startup which makes the apartment rental process happen online."</comment></comment>


Blog comment correcting startup gets $25m funding - <AUTHOR> http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=68 In a little-noticed deal that closed yesterday the Silicon Valley startup apostrophree secured a $25 million first round with Bolus Venture Capital of Palo Alto. apostrophree received seed money from Paul Graham's Y Combinator earlier this year. <comment><USER2> I like this bit: "It also looks at articles that contain flags like (sp?), which is the author telling us that he or she failed high school English."

The poor spelling found on the Internet creates a positive feedback loop that makes it increasingly difficult to spell words properly.

Before wide acceptance of the Web, most written words appeared in magazines, books, newspapers, and other sources which were, hopefully, reviewed by professionals with more knowledge of spelling than the average person. If you were unsure of a spelling you could write out the word and easily recognize if the word matched the ordering of letters that you had seen so many times before.

Now, for some words, you've probably seen the improper spelling more often than the correct spelling. That makes it more difficult to recall or recognize the proper spelling. For children subjected to this misspelling onslaught at an early age, it must be worse. I suppose many of these spelling problems would not even exist if English were a more intuitive written language. However, I expect this all to go away as grammar checkers are embedded into web browsers.

</comment><comment><USER3> "In a typical company a small but significant number of employees read blogs and comment threads every day, sometimes several times in a work day. I say a significant number because the people who read comment threads and post comments of their own are very often among the most highly-paid people in the organization. The time apostrophree saves goes right to the bottom line.

Most people either don't recognize or don't care when they encounter a misspelled word or incorrectly-formed plural. But some people do notice, and there's a personality type that will spend a lot of time demonstrating their superior English skills online."

\---

So the target customer is someone who wants to not be so hung up about spelling mistakes and grammar, and wants to save time? This just seems a ridiculous answer to me. I can see it being very useful, and a great feature in something else...

</comment><comment><USER4> For those that have not got it. This is a Joke

apostrophree is not a YC startup. Presumably its completely made up (its or it's??).

<comment><USER5> Don't bait people! Think of the time lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That had me going for a while.

<comment><USER7> Me too. Well done, and not a bad idea. The spelling Nazi in me was already rejoicing.

Loved this line: "We observed that non-technical staff with Internet access are more likely to use their computers to view and collect pornography than to post spelling corrections."

The "clue gate" in the last paragraph is the final giveaway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm an apostrophree beta tester. When I read your comment I saw "The spelling Nazi in me was already rejoicing." It really works!

<comment><USER7> This thread is great, it proves the fundamental premise of apostrophee correct ;-)

P.S. If you could, please send me an invite for the beta. Thx!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok, I totally fell for that. I came to this thread hoping to celebrate an end to useless spelling/grammar flamewars. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER9> My first reaction was "how the f--- did they raise 25 million dollars ?", after reading I see their use but still, why 25 million dollars? Do they need that kind of money to expand? How many are they? Do founders ever get a large sum of such money as their own money or is it always purely investment money?

I guess YCombinator make money when their companies receive funding?

Anyway, congrats and good luck!

<comment><USER10> It's _expensive_ to build the necessary infrastructure -- the conjunction junctions alone can cost millions.

<comment><USER11> As Steve Yegge wrote about earlier, determining the function of a conjunction junction can be difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the name 'apostrophree' a typo itself? There are no hits on Google besides this article.

It seems way more efficient to have something like this running server side by whoever is hosting the content. This is something like charging for a spelling/grammar checker to read documents. As long as the publisher had a good editor I shouldn't have to pay for one.

<comment><USER11> I think the post is a joke. That would explain a lot.

<comment><USER12> That does make more sense, but there are so many stupid ideas that get funding it makes it tough to spot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > ... a Russian company that is working on what they call a "clue gate." The > idea is to identify and filter out postings from newbies...

This has got to be an April fools joke that is just 231 days early.

</comment><comment><USER14> If only something like this was real... or there was some other way of correcting the general butchering of the English language that occurs.

Maybe there should be some sort of law that requires everyone where some sort of modified electric dog collar so that every time someone types in "lol, wut r u sayin" - they get 10,000 volts.

This kind of technology should probably also apply to trolls, spammers and politicians.

<comment><USER15> Don't be cruel; 50 volts should be enough

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> ok people I just corrected my estimate of the average intelligence of HN users...

</comment><comment><USER17> That wasn't even close to being funny. And why drag YC into it?

</comment><comment><USER18> this would probably work as an ajax plugin to blogging/commenting platforms, which probably already exists.

</comment><comment><USER19> This joke should only be read through an edit-for-length proxy.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Programmers seem to divide into two groups when it comes to writing: nearly > illiterate on the one hand, and pedantic on the other.

They shouldn't say it _seems_ that way, they should say it is or it isn't. This is weak writing.</comment>


Google's BBR fixes TCP's dirty little secret - grey-area http://everythingsysadmin.com/2017/07/googles-bbr.html <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the Discovery Science explanation.

Annoying plug though: >Subtext: another feature of Google Cloud that doesn't exist at AWS or Azure. Nothing to turn on, no extra charge.

I get it GCP has TPUs and BBR, but are we really implying that it is more feature complete? I don't agree.

</comment><comment><USER2> What happens when some people are using BBR and some people are using a standard algorithm? Does it still share the pipe fairly?

<comment><USER3> The article answers this question pretty clearly

 _" Wait! Even more amazing is that it doesn't ruin the internet if some people use it and some people use the old methods."_

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I missed that the first time.</comment></comment></comment>


Filmmakers fighting "Happy Birthday" copyright find their "smoking gun" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/07/filmmakers-fighting-happy-birthday-copyright-find-their-smoking-gun/ <comment><USER2> One cannot discuss long-term copyright without mentioning the mickey mouse graph.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090811/0123105835.shtml](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090811/0123105835.shtml)

Copyrights have been extended so many time that the legal system has forgotten how to deal with expiration. The concept of profitable works "falling" into public domain is strangely foreign to most IP lawyers.

<comment><USER3> It's not exactly "forgetting":

 _" Actually, Sonny [Bono, Congressman who pushed the Copyright Extension Act] wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."_

\-- Mary Bono, speaking on the floor of the United States House of Representatives

<comment><USER4> Strange that a recording artist would do this. :-) Makes one very cynical about his reasons for running for congress. And also very cynical about Mary following her father's footsteps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _The 1927 songbook referenced above was found in a batch of 500 documents > provided by Warner /Chappell earlier this month. That cache included > "approximately 200 pages of documents [Warner/Chappell] claim were > 'mistakenly' not produced during discovery, which ended on July 11, 2014, > more than one year earlier," Nelson's lawyers write._

> _The new filing comes as US District Judge George King was just two days > away from holding a hearing_

> _That important line of text published underneath the song 's lyrics was > "blurred almost beyond legibility" in the copy that Warner/Chappell handed > over in discovery. Plaintiffs' lawyers note that it's "the only line of the > entire PDF that is blurred in that manner."_

Hide the needle (and then obscure it too) in a big stack and dump it at the last possible moment. Can the judge hold them in contempt for this sort of thing? OTOH, I'm amazed they handed it over at all.

<comment><USER6> "Hide the needle (and then obscure it too) in a big stack and dump it at the last possible moment. Can the judge hold them in contempt for this sort of thing? OTOH, I'm amazed they handed it over at all."

Sounds like business as usual to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > even if the work had been published in 1922 with proper notice, and even if > that copyright had been renewed in 1949 (which the plaintiffs say it > wasn't), the song still would have become public domain at midnight on > December 31, 1997.

75 years of copyright protection is ridiculous; imho, this should have been 10 or maybe 15 years.

<comment><USER8> Today copyright protection is in fact much longer than 75 years in the US.

For personal works, it's life of author + 70 years. So if you write a poem today and live another 60 years, your poem will enter public domain in the year 2145.

For "works made for hire" (which includes most commercial works), the term of copyright is either 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

So the movie "Ant Man" will enter public domain in 2110... Assuming that the US Congress doesn't extend the deadline indefinitely (which the Supreme Court has permitted).

Law text: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/302)

<comment><USER9> Patents I can understand needing often to be shorter than they end up being, but personal copyright I'm not so disturbed by. When should people be able to publish derivative copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls on self-published Amazon accounts without royalties going to Hemingway's estate?

Works made for hire, 100 years feels like a really long time.

<comment><USER10> Because the idea that one individual - who is now long dead - can create a work that then should be protected for several generations of descendants is a wealth stratifier.

What implicit societal value are it's modern beneficiaries creating that entitles them to that revenue?

<comment><USER9> It's social status and worth are that value. At creator's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations.

Should I be able to take his bibliography, self-pub it on Amazon with flashy covers and take the profits from it? I'm not sure.

<comment><USER3> _At creator 's life + 75 years, the existing law is the lifetime, sort of, of the creator's offspring, not several generations._

No, not at all. That would only be the case if authors generally died immediately after the birth of their children.

If you live to see your grandchildren, which isn't exactly uncommon, they'll still have your copyright inheritance long after their parents have died.

With the recent increase in lifetimes, it'll be common for great-grandchildren to have the inheritance of copyright over works for almost their whole lives.

<comment><USER9> It will still run out after 75 years... So, sure, the grandkids will manage the estate for a decade before it expires. It doesn't say "the lifetime of the copyright holder at expiration," unless I've missed something.

If we're going to get silly, recent increases in lifetimes are also being followed by lower birth rates and parents having children older, so no it doesn't follow that three full lifetimes will be covered by these copyrights. I know copyright isn't popular here so I'll leave this be, but let's not get hyperbolic, please.

<comment><USER11> Hmm, It's not uncommon today for grandchildren to be in there 30's when a grandparent dies. Thats around children having age also.

I could easily see it being common already for an author to die at age 90, leaving children (aged ~60), grand children (aged ~30) and great-grandchildren (aged ~1)

That gives all of those people 75 more years of income from the original authors work. Which leaves us with grandchildren (aged ~105), great grandchildren (aged ~75), great-great-grandchildren (aged ~45), great-great- great-grandchildren (aged ~15) once the copyright expires, if it is never extended.

I'm not sure i see why the great-great-great-grandchildren of an author deserve the income from that work into their mid to late teens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if the copyright expires wouldn't you be forbidden to use eg. the "Mickey Mouse" name for your own mouse-stories? Because of trademarks, which don't expire?

<comment><USER13> Yes. Copyright does not stop you from using the name "Mickey Mouse" for anything. Trademark does.

<comment><USER14> Well, kind of a gray area. If I wanted to write a story or song about Mickey Mouse and sell it, that would be okay. If I wanted to start a line of T-Shirts based on that story or song, that would be an issue.

If enough people got together and started making public domain art featuring Mickey Mouse - so much so that it became generic - that could potentially render the Trademark no longer valid, from what I've seen of the law/intent. Very large curve to overcome, but possible in theory.

<comment><USER15> The art will also have to use the characterization of Mickey Mouse _as he appeared in Steamboat Willie_. More modern depictions would still be protected.

I have noticed that Disney has recently started using an actual clip of Steamboat Willie as a trademark for Walt Disney Animation Studios. This seems to be a hedge against expiration of the copyright.

It's a grey enough area that the better lawyers would win in any dispute. And Disney has the best.

It's much safer to simply shove Mickey down the memory hole, and create an original character that isn't going to draw so much high-caliber, high- explosive, armor-piercing fire.

<comment><USER14> As I mentioned in a related response, I do see the reasoning in the 'Steamboat Willie' distinction, but that's why I mentioned a story or a song. Those don't actually have visual depictions of Mickey Mouse...the character itself of Mickey Mouse as a concept would be invoked, and the audience's imagination would have to fill in the visualization. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a hypothetical avenue whereby having Mickey Mouse in the Public Domain actually has downstream artistic applications, and ones that Disney's own lawyers would hopefully look at and say, "Well, shucks, this totally skirts our protection avenue" because, well, if they're the best lawyers, then they'd be obligated to avoid frivolous lawsuits.

I think it's important for artists to continually needle and wrestle with commercial enterprises for the sake of art and entertainment. Mickey Mouse just so happens to be the most visible target, well, other than Happy Birthday. And, furthermore, I'd argue that RIAA (WB) lawyers are easily as skilled and talented as any that could be found at Disney, and if this case goes the way of the Plaintiffs, it'll show that yes, it is possible to challenge and win.

Giving up just doesn't sound like very much fun to me.

<comment><USER15> Have you ever seen _Sergeant York_? No? The film, which is based on historical accounts from World War I, describes Sgt. York's technique for taking down an entire flock of geese, as applied to German machine-gunners.

You never take out the leader first. If the leader goes down, the rest of the flock scatters. You shoot the one furthest back. Then second from the back. And so on, from back to front, until they are all down.

It isn't fun to undermine every last little support before attacking the central pillar, but if you want to accomplish your goal, that's the most certain way to do it. So when those first Disney Bros. 'toons go public domain, you don't go after Mickey right away. First, you take back Pete. Then, you take back Minnie. Take back Clarabelle and Horace. Then, just when it looks like you might take Mickey, too, you plop Oswald down in his place.

In fact, it might be funny to just edit Mickey out of Steamboat Willie entirely, and replace him with a digital Oswald. Every time another Mickey Mouse short goes public domain, stick Oswald in there. Erase Mickey from history, from back to front. If the trademark isn't there, there's no possible trademark claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Warner will win and keep the copyright. Evidence has little bearing on this sort of thing - all that matters is money. The lawyers will want to spin it out for more billable hours, the judge will too, as having that he found in favour of Warner on his cv will help him get more lucrative work from corporations.

<comment><USER17> By your logic there is no justice system, and I'm not sure that everyone agrees with that.

<comment><USER18> We have a justice system, it's just hopelessly corrupt and biased in favor of those in power.

<comment><USER19> So you could say that you have the best justice system money can buy?

<comment><USER20> Do you by any chance read the blog of the German blogger fefe? xD

He does make this joke "the best XYZ money can buy" about governments, judges and police in europe and the US quite often.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, but no.

The joke is old. I first heard in the early 90's, applied to government. It was old then.

I honestly would not be surprised if it could be traced to the early days of the Renaissance :)

<comment><USER21> I'd suspect Ancient Greece at least. I would not be surprised if a variation of it was sarcastically uttered within the first week of money encountering law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Hollywood Reporter had the scoop apparently and has a few more details.

[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/happy-birthday- laws...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/happy-birthday-lawsuit- smoking-gun-811144)

</comment><comment><USER23> Copyrights are so stupid sometimes. In France there was this class (children) that sing a song to their teacher retiring. Guess what? There fuckers came and ask for money, what a world we live in.

Source (in french of course, sorry): [http://www.maitre- eolas.fr/post/2006/07/21/403-adieu-monsieu...](http://www.maitre- eolas.fr/post/2006/07/21/403-adieu-monsieur-le-professeur-bonjour-madame-la- sacem)

</comment><comment><USER24> An interesting insight into (I assume) US culture in the comments that I've certainly never come across before. Do restaurants really have their own proprietary versions of the "happy birthday" song over there? I've only ever heard the "proper" version in restaurants and other social gatherings here in the UK.

<comment><USER25> Yes, generally along the theme of the restaurant. I've actually never heard the traditional song in a restaurant.

<comment><USER26> Chains seem to never do the original, but small, locally owned restaurants often do, at least in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Warner/Chappell has built a licensing empire based on "Happy Birthday," > which in 1996 was pulling in more than $2 million per year.

Leeches on society. Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Warner/Chappell has submitted a response arguing that it's not quite a smoking gun.

Copyright divestment by failing to put a proper copyright notice must happen with the "consent of the copyright owner". The song in the 1922 songbook said, "Special permission through courtesy of The Clayton F. Summy Co." without the appropriate copyright notice. The lack of proper copyright notice would have released it to the public domain (proper notice was included on other songs in the songbook). However, Warner/Chappell claims that Summy didn't own the copyright in 1922: the songbook asked the wrong people for permission.

"There is no evidence that the Hill Sisters (Jessica or Patty) granted anyone the right to publish the Happy Birthday to You! lyrics until 1935. The evidence instead shows that Summy sought and obtained a license to publish the Happy Birthday to You! lyrics from Jessica Hill in 1935."

As circumstantial evidence, Warner/Chappell also points out that in earlier court battles in the 30s and 40s the copyright holders never indicated that there was any authorized publication before 1935.

Warner/Chappell doesn't address the filmmaker's claim that a 1922 publication would put the song into the public domain in 1997. I'm confused here: Would the publication have to be authorized for the 1997 date to hold?

Filmmaker's request for summary judgement: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/272751583/Birthday- Evidence](http://www.scribd.com/doc/272751583/Birthday-Evidence)

Warner/Chappell's response: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/272870978/Warner- Chappell](http://www.scribd.com/doc/272870978/Warner-Chappell)

</comment><comment><USER29> Why is this in the Apple News section of Ars?

<comment><USER30> CEO of Disney sits on Apple's board (probably related to the infamous Micky Mouse law)</comment></comment>


Can You Really Build A Great Tech Firm Outside Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/can-you-really-build-a-great-tech-firm-outside-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only person that's _alarmed_ that some VCs whose supposed expertise in the world of tech startups qualifies them to invest millions of dollars may be incapable of acknowledging the success or potential for success of anything beyond a 30 mile radius of Sand Hill Road

<comment><USER3> No, you're not.

<comment><USER4> I feel the same, I think most of VC's badly bias themselves

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes. But you might not get the Silicon Valley buzz like some "answers" websites are getting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do people still start real technology companies in Silicon Valley? It seems like everything coming out of there these days is some variety of web mashup. The semiconductor launched the original Valley ecosystem, the Internet launched the current one. Where is the technological foundation for the next wave?

<comment><USER7> <http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of great companies have come from outside the Valley and Mark does a good job of outlining all the advantages ...

</comment><comment><USER9> Mark is right to point out that each geographic region has its advantages. Places like Boston may not be known for home runs in the consumer space but because of MIT, it's been known to produce some heavy tech winners (A123 systems, ITA, kiva)

There's also a reason why Google has offices in Seattle, Boston, NYC, and soon, Pittsburgh. Hiring is tough in the valley and there's an abundance of talent elsewhere.

If you want to innovate on web technology, the valley is the place to be. If you want to innovate on business models, content, or heavy technology (to name a few) there are other places where you can thrive.

<comment><USER10> Google has had a small office in Pittsburgh for a few years. They moved into a much bigger space recently and are hiring pretty ferociously out of CMU.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I heard they were heavily targeting CMU. Here are some pictures of the new offices.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pittsburgh- office-2011...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pittsburgh- office-2011-2#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure if I agree with this article. None of the LA companies he mentions have been home runs or anything even close. And NYC is a different story altogether - there's one VC (USV) basically trying to run the entire show, with a supporting cast here and there and even their biggest "success" to date (Twitter) is really based in Northern California. Other companies like 4square are proving to be succesful, but even they finally had to open operations in the SF/Valley area because they couldn't get enough talent in NYC, and ones like drop.io flopped cause they just couldn't get traction despite having a talented team.

I think when it comes to developing pure tech companies - like hardware (although that's moving to Asia, except for "Design") and hardcore software, the Valley will always be the place for those companies. Places like LA/NYC, etc. will use this technology to enhance whatever industries are a dominant part of their respective economies.

I say this living in the NYC metropolitan area. Personally I would love to see the Wall Streeters vanish and be replaced by tech companies doing cool, interesting stuff. But I know it won't happen.

<comment><USER12> Union Square Ventures is only a small part of the NYC funding landscape. First Round, Betaworks, RRE, DFJ Gotham, IA Ventures, Starvest, SAVP, Softbank, Rho, Greycroft, and that's just off the top of my head (I know I'm missing some), in addition to firms like Spark / True / Kodiak / CRV that often come here to invest and Sand Hill Road firms that are newly opening offices here like Canaan and Accel.

Don't get me wrong, USV is a great firm to work with, but you can comfortably do a round in NYC without ever having to talk to them. Don't let the fact that Fred has a popular blog blind you to the rest of the ecosystem.

I also think you're underestimating how much interesting technology there is in NYC. Yes, a lot of it is related to advertising or the financial sector. But the type of scale many of these companies are working with requires 'hardcore software' by anyone's definition.

I do agree that recruiting is hard here, but recruiting is hard everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, the part that says "young engineers who want to make $200,000 or more" in the Valley, will only make engineers want to move to the valley... Who has the name of a recruiter? Maybe it is time for me to move out of LA and to the Valley!

<comment><USER13> So, you know, those comments don't help his cause...

<comment><USER14> Comments are meant to enrich a discussion and provide alternative views and corroboration, not support the article under discussion's POV slavishly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you've got a good idea, and you're passionate for it, you don't need Silcion Valley.

</comment><comment><USER16> This may be naive, but other than the local talent pool, why does it matter where you're located? It's relatively cheap to fly around the continent. On top of that, communication has never been so cheap and easy.

When I visit a website, as a user or customer, I could care less where that site was designed or is hosted.

<comment><USER17> It does matter, culture, infrastructure, proximity to events/meetups etc. Walk to see customers, competitors, etc. Can't go to a bar without ending up debating which key value store to use for high throughput write operations, or which python library is better for imap attachment handling, or which ruby gem works the best for hooking up facet search to your app.

Add to that, its also just really beautiful here and we don't spend half the year buried under snow or sweltering in heat. And of course SF women are the best in the country :)

<comment><USER18> > SF women are the best in the country

Yeah, all 218 of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a high potential for the first VCs/Angels who search opportunities outside SV and USA, main cities of Europe, Israel, etc.

I find it the most obvious <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage> situation.

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems that TFA is answering a slighty different question: "Can you find a great VC investment company outside of SHR". The difference is important, as there are certainly a few Tech Firms in, oh, Chicago, and Japan, New York who are bootstrapped. That is, their goal is more "how do I get my first paying customer" than "i need millions of eyeballs".

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember dealing with this in 1998 or so, at a company located just outside Philadelphia.

The new sales director, and the marketing director, were from SV and made it clear they were in a backwater - they may as well have told us that traveling through hyperspace wasn't like dusting crops.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting, something of a successor to the classic Paul Graham essay, "How to Be Silicon Valley" (May 2006): <http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> The headline makes me think Arrington's first earnout calculation from AOL is close at hand and he needs a few extra pageviews to make it.

<comment><USER13> I don't think so, this was a subject at last weeks Twiistup8.</comment></comment>


Rx – Extensible pixel editor implemented in Rust, inspired by Vi - <AUTHOR> https://cloudhead.io/rx <comment><USER2> I find this very interesting. This is the first time I've seen a developer provide a AppImage for Linux and a build-it-yourself for Mac and Windows. Not sure if the dev owns any computer that runs Windows or Mac, but that seems reasonable. Also is there a reason for using Metal rather than MoltenVK for macOS?

Other than that, great project, spot on license choice, and best of all, Rust!

<comment><USER3> > Also is there a reason for using Metal rather than MoltenVK for macOS?

Let me ask it the other way: is there a reason to use MoltenVK if we have a Metal backend?

<comment> Const-me In OP's corner case maybe there is, to have a single GPU API and single shader language across all platforms they support.

This doesn't apply to commercial software. Even if MoltenVK works flawlessly (I don't have experience with the technology), the only GPU API which does on Windows is Direct3D. For cross-platform stuff you want to support multiple GPU APIs, or you'll have to spend a lot of money supporting users with broken/missing/nonexistent GL/VK drivers.

<comment><USER3> They do have a single GPU API (wgpu-rs) and only one version of the shaders - SPIRV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a bit puzzling that the GitHub readme has more information about how to use the tool than the website. I don't know what to take away from the single screenshot. Maybe it would be helpful to record an animated GIF or a screencast to demonstrate it in action?

<comment><USER5> The GH readme file is alot easier to fix than a website. It likely evolves naturally as people open issues to complain that a command doesn't work or that instructions for platform X are missing. The author reads the issues on GH, commits fixes on GH. It's easy to forget the website part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty much this - I copy stuff over from the README once in a while. I guess the website could benefit from having some of the usage instructions though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what the overlap between pixel artists and vi users is.

And perhaps for this overlap a tutorial is not needed, but it would be interesting to me to see it in action.

<comment><USER7> Single person game developers who don't want to hire an artist?

<comment> Const-me I think vast majority of game developers, no matter single or not, use visual studio. Tools like GPU/CPU profilers/debuggers are easier to use when part of the IDE.

<comment><USER8> > Tools like GPU/CPU profilers/debuggers are easier to use when part of the > IDE

Says you. There is reason vim is not "dead" and it's not just cause "old people" still use it. Also, there are plenty of IDEs besides VS.

Finally, "vast majority" doesn't matter for shit with open source. One developer with an itch is enough. If there's a handful of others with same, all the better.

<comment> Const-me > There is reason vim is not "dead" and it's not just cause "old people" still > use it.

Developing videogames is not one of these reasons.

> there are plenty of IDEs besides VS.

How many of these IDEs are supported by mainstream 3D engines, or current-gen console SDKs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been noodling about this concept for several years. I could never quite figure out how to make it efficient, but it's super appealing as a vim user. I'm excited to give this a go!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, please send me any feedback you have!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When did everything become extensible instead of extendable. Do they mean different things? Is it a case of while vs whilst?

On a more related note, I find it interesting that the GUI doesn't appear to be a toolkit like QT, but lower level, like a GUI designed for in-game use.

<comment><USER11> Only one of these, extensible, was a word at all until the 1940s[0], and extendable is still the less common word.

This is the not-uncommon case where the irregular form is slowly losing ground to the regular form. It's possible that in a century, 'extensible' will be considered archaic.

[0] [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=extendable%2C+...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=extendable%2C+extensible&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cextendable%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cextensible%3B%2Cc0)

<comment><USER10> Wow, that's fascinating. Thanks for thinking of using google's ngram tool. I have played around with it a few times but it completely slipped my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be interested to try this but it fails to boot from the app image for me.

      Error of failed request:  BadDrawable (invalid Pixmap or Window parameter)

On Ubuntu using i3 with vulkan drivers installed.

<comment><USER3> Do other Vulkan samples work for you (e.g. vkcube)? I was getting this issue on a laptop with both NV and Intel. Problem can be worked around by forcing the Vulkan loader to use Nvidia GPU (by providing `VK_ICD_FILENAMES=<path_to_nvidia_icd.json>`).

<comment><USER12> This is a problem I did not even know I had. Thanks for pointing it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> would love to see a video of it in action :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why would an image editor need Vulkan?

<comment><USER15> Why wouldn't an image editor need Vulkan? It's gotta render something somehow.

<comment><USER14> It just seems like an overkill and unnecessary requirement for a pixel editor. The first one I used ran just fine with software rendering on a 25Mhz CPU.

<comment><USER16> It's not about power, it's about portability. As far as I'm aware there is no simple, low level, software based, portable, 2D graphics stack.

The software you ran on a 25MHz machine was in all likelihood written in assembly, directly interfacing with the hardware of your machine, without even touching your windowing system (if you even had one, maybe you were running DOS). Modern operating systems frown on that sort of thing with extreme prejudice.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand your comment.

How is Vulkan more portable than a software renderer? And if you need hardware acceleration, OpenGL is more portable than Vulkan.

<comment><USER17> Today, it seems that Vulkan is really the most portable engine available. OpenGL support has kind of stagnated.

I would have thought SDL is probably a better target for this type of application. However, I'm happy to see developers use what they like and push the envelope how they like.

Just upgraded to Linux kernel 5.3 and beta mesa & vulkan so I can drop in my rx5700xt, which I still need to do.

<comment><USER18> The problem is that vulkan was specifically designed to throw away an amount of portability in favour of allowing lower level access to hardware features. If said hardware features don't exist on a platform, you're stuck. Note the "The Vulkan Portable Subset" having to throw away a number of features to have it work on a number of underlying platforms [https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/portability- initiative](https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/portability-initiative) .

The advantage that opengl has is a number of software implementations that can be used as a last ditch on unsupported systems. Efforts for software vulkan implementations are taking a long time to appear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is exactly a kind of project I was looking for to get some inspirations from.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool!

Speaking of Rust and UI, has the story moved beyond "DIY GL / Qt bindings / website backend" or are those still pretty much the options?

<comment><AUTHOR> Imgui is quite common these days: [https://github.com/Gekkio/imgui- rs](https://github.com/Gekkio/imgui-rs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting but why would you need Vulkan?

<comment><USER15> Why not? This is a bizzare thing for people to get hung up on.

<comment><USER22> Because for being such a minimalist editor, it requires something that a lot of hardware out there doesn't have and that often requires proprietary drivers.. even though it doesn't need it.

<comment><USER23> > often requires proprietary drivers

I think it's just Nvidia and GPUs for ARM SOCs. You need GPU drivers to use desktop anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Curious about what Rust GUI library they used.

<comment><USER25> Looks like winit: [https://docs.rs/winit/0.20.0-alpha3/winit/](https://docs.rs/winit/0.20.0-alpha3/winit/)

This is based on the cargo manifest: [https://github.com/cloudhead/rx/blob/master/Cargo.toml](https://github.com/cloudhead/rx/blob/master/Cargo.toml)

If you're interested in this space, there's also a lot of effort going into druid: [https://github.com/xi-editor/druid](https://github.com/xi- editor/druid)

Edit: actually just see this sibling comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115680)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Rx has a bit of a "namespace collision" with the functional reactive programming library ReactiveX, which has implementations in many different languages. Often these libraries are called Rx(Java|Swift|Ruby|PHP|js|$LANG).

Paradigm: [http://reactivex.io/](http://reactivex.io/) Implementations: [http://reactivex.io/languages.html](http://reactivex.io/languages.html)

That being said the editor looks very cool! Congrats on shipping!

<comment><USER27> people bring this kind of thing up in every thread as if it's a useful comment for either the reader or the poster (presumably project author). it's almost as common as "this page sucks on mobile".

who cares? we all know how to use Google by now to narrow results by adding qualifying keywords to the query; it's not like I'm just going to search "rx" or even "rx rust" when I'm looking for this project (probably "rx rust pixel"). it's a complete non-issue.

<comment><USER28> I care. Also it's a potential legal issue for any given project if there's a registered trademark involved.

Plus first result for "rx rust" lead me to [https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxRust](https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxRust)

<comment><USER29> > Also it's a potential legal issue for any given project if there's a > registered trademark involved.

At some point we will have to generate random strings for the name of our projects because all the "good" (or even "bad") ones are taken. :P

<comment><USER28> Already a thing: [https://namelix.com/app/?keywords=poop+scoop](https://namelix.com/app/?keywords=poop+scoop)

Highlights for a "poop+scoop" related startup include: Flingo, Trash.ly, Fastpoop, Stinkere, Guunk, and Spoop

<comment><USER30> I'm surprised it didn't come up with Scoopr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How is "implemented in Rust" relevant for anything but bragging rights for using some obscure programming language.

Your software has not more inherent value just because it is written in Rust.

<comment><USER32> Rust is far from being "an obscure programming language", and I'm pretty sure there are people here on HN that may find useful to browse the source code of a real world application in Rust (and who don't give a shit about the software per se).

Such comment would have made sense if this software was promoted in a more general board/website, but HN audience is mostly compound by developers, so technical aspects matter. On top of that, it also gives an idea about the popularity of a programming language.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to file a patent? - <AUTHOR>

I am developing a mechanism that I would like to file a patent for.  Does anyone have any useful references they could point me to regarding the process?  I am trying to avoid hiring a lawyer. <comment><USER2> Do hire a lawyer. I have spoken to many patent examiners and they agree that applications not written by professionals are very difficult to work with. You might still get a patent granted, but your claims won't necessarily have the optimum scope. The language is extraordinarily difficult to learn and it will take you an enormous amount of time to become competent - time you could spend more profitably elsewhere.

I would also recommend you get a search done before you go through the whole process of trying to get a patent, so you can see whether what you are trying to patent exists before you go through all the work (and cost) of getting an application written.

Also, beware: the patent gives you nothing unless you are willing to defend it. Seriously. If someone violates your patent you will need to sue them to get them to stop. And you'll need a lawyer for that too.

<comment><USER3> I used to be a patent examiner.

I'd agree that there are a few pitfalls to it, but to get a decent patent _submission_ is no more arduous than writing a technical essay IMO.

If you've read a lot of patents the format will be clear. There format is pretty strict and consistent across jurisdictions. The spec has to support your claims, showing how to implement your invention, the claims have to be one sentence and demarcate the legal monopoly. You can claim hugely broad (normal technique) and then narrow them down later; if you claim very broadly however the examiner may just issue generic citations for the search which won't help you get a patent with strong validity.

Search, yes. Again, it's not rocket science but patent examiners do have access to dedicated technology databases including relevant journal databases, things like IBM techical bulletins and often their own internal libraries, as well of course as better search tools for the publicly available patents. Espacenet is a pretty searchable db, Google have a patent search, IBM used to have a good one and their TDB were often useful. Use the USC, IPC, EPC classifiers to speed up your search.

Caution: IIRC in the US you're required by law to submit the findings of any search you make, if you do a really good search and find decent prior art that can come back to bite you doubly if you fail to disclose it.

Mechanical tools may be better protected using other IP like industrial design, also trademarked shape can be good to prevent direct ripoffs.

As for nudges last point - what it does give you is some measure of protection against being sued for performing the invention in your granted patent. But it's likely that tech you're building on is patented too in which case you may need to attempt some sort of cross licensing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A good starting point is the Nolo book "Patent it Yourself". Best reference book for this matter I can recommend.

</comment><comment><USER5> A provisional patent application or a real patent? PPA has less requirements and are cheaper to file to get temporary protection. Eventually you still need to file the real one after 1 year of filing PPA or 1 year of offering for sale... Read "Patent pending in 24 hrs" for PPA...</comment>


Stephen King's 'On Writing' applies to software as well - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/322-excerpts-from-stephen-kings-on-writing#extended <comment><USER2> I've discovered that writing MIDI music is eerily like writing software. The whole process feels almost exactly the same. You compose (code), you listen (run), you make corrections (debug), you polish (optimize), you add sections (modules/features), which leads to more correction and optimization. Sometimes, changes cascade throughout the piece (refactoring).

In the end, you have a hideous progeny that's not as good as you'd like but you know you can't work on it forever.</comment>


Videos and Presentations for Web App Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/17/seven-must-see-videos-and-presentations-for-web-app-developers/

<comment><USER2> I'm just getting my feet wet with jQuery and found Paul Irish's "10 Things I Learned From the jQuery Source" is hilarious and very informative.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I do? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I feel stuck in a rut and don't know what to do. I am working as an IT personnel right now, I code in c# but do know Java, Ruby (rails and sinatra a little bit, I mean I got some training but never did a proper project with them), SQL, Python... you name it probably I dabbled in it.
The kicker is I got my bachelor of arts from Philosophy and did a Master's on Sociology. Wrote a thesis on Organized Crime Groups even. But because I couldn't find tenure, I became a coder.
But... after spending 3 years in coding it started to feel like work. I mean my current workplace is good, nobody is harassing me about anything but... I feel like I could do something different, better maybe?
Any suggestions?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Wow, 3 years is a long time for a coding job. I bounce around a lot due to boredom. If you are sick of coding, there is always managing coders as a change of pace. But if you like to code, you might just need a new project or company to re-ignite your passions. Coding for a b2b company is a lot different than a consumer app, or even games.

There is a coding meetup group where I live that I like to visit sometimes to see if I am tired of my project or coding in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I feel like I could do something different, better maybe?

The challenge is to be self aware. Can you come to grips with what stands in the way of understanding yourself and your passions?

Robert Kaplan has authored an excellent book on this very subject. Here's his Talk @ Google> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sY- qwEYjs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sY-qwEYjs0)

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you have in mind? Do you want a new job somewhere else? Do you want to code any longer?

If you want to stay is software development you can maybe try to do some freelancing projects which will give you a nice change of pace with new clients. This is working awesome for me. I have a full time job but freelance as well in my free time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually want a new job somewhere else, as in another country. I live somewhere in the Middle east and the recent developments quite made me afraid as an atheist, to be frank.

And coding... I think I am burned out. I think I want to write about it, maybe teach about it but I think my days of creation has passed.

Thanks for the reply anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps you're not doing what you really love?

This essay ([http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)) might inspire you to do something with Philosophy [check the last section: "A Proposal"]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will check it as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take a break!

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately I cannot do that... but thanks for the suggestion!</comment></comment>


DigitalOcean now asks for customers to upload photos of their ID via imgur - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/very-bad-service-f

<comment><USER2> This is from over a year ago. Is it still the case?

I'm an American with a BofA credit card living in Taiwan right now. I would expect that to trigger a check for this. But I signed up yesterday and haven't had to verify anything.

Also, it's worth noting that the process of ID verification is not uncommon for hosting companies. FDCServers is a big hosting company that requires all new accounts to provide ID verification. Of course you're free to blur out sensitive details, and they let you send the images directly to them instead of uploading to imgur, but it's a practice nonetheless.

In businesses with high fraud rates (like hosting), it's a good idea to require customers who are creating an account from an IP address more than 100+ miles from their billing zip code to provide ID. It will reduce your chargeback rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> "singing up for DO was a total disaster."

"Fix you workflow."

"the sending in my ID the asking for another"

"still noting being able to sign up"

"There is now way"

"Maybee for a small blog"

"trying to compare to lindode"

And they have the cheek to suggest that DO have "a totally untrained offshore support center"?

</comment><comment><USER4> As others have pointed out, this question is from a year ago. To be clear, DigitalOcean does not ask anyone to upload scans of their IDs to imgur.

We do occasionally ask customers who have set off our abuse filters to verify their accounts by emailing us scans of their ID. We agree that asking anyone for ID isn't an ideal situation, but unfortunately we deal with a large amount of abusive and fraudulent signups.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have never needed to do this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Old question, probably a bad suggestion by the rep. Might have been handled internally and there is now training not to repeat. We use DigitalOcean and love em. Not perfect, but pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER7> DO didn't ask me for any kind of ID, I just used a plain old credit card to pay for their services ...

</comment><comment><USER8> This is bullshit. Get it off the homepage.

<comment><USER2> Why is it bullshit? Requiring your customers to upload sensitive documents to Imgur is a pretty ridiculous practice. Seeing as Digitalocean gets so much love from HN, this seems like a good place to talk about it.

That said, as I mentioned in my previous comment, this is from over a year ago so let's see if it's still the case.</comment></comment>


The Man Who Makes the World's Funniest People Even Funnier - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/magazine/the-man-who-makes-the-worlds-funniest-people-even-funnier.html

<comment><USER2> The comedy cartoon Archer, which is incredibly fast paced uses no improv what- so-ever, since the writer is apparently doing the script so tight.

I'm not sure what is most impressive. Writer such a tight script as Reed does for Archer, or assembling a movie from already shot pieces like White does.</comment>


It's time to support Wikipedia people! Go! Now! - <AUTHOR> https://payments.wikimedia.org/index.php/Special:PayflowProGateway?_cache_=true&uselang=en&masthead=none&form_name=TwoColumnLetter5&text_template=2010/JimmyLetterA&language=en&utm_source_id=18&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=100test1110&utm_source=2010_testing50_1step&country_code=PA

<comment><USER2> Gee, some sock puppet wreaking havoc on Wikipedia induced some Wikipedia administrator to block thousands of IP addresses, one of which my home IP address (at least it was within the banned block). I'll gladly donate once they lift the ban.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just donated $50USD.</comment>