Why We Can't Tell Good Wine From Bad (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/you-are-not-so-smart-why-we-cant-tell-good-wine-from-bad/247240/# <comment><USER2> I _can_ tell good wine from bad, I just can't tell the expensive from the inexpensive.

The expectations game is played by pretty much every single product on the market, but it's only working if the product image is something you _choose_ to care about. Most people do choose to care about it simply because it serves as a reasonable filter and this combined with social proof can reduce the problem of choice with minimum effort. People choose a certain "class" they want to represent and they just go along with whatever is on the menu for it.

But it's also important to notice that, while we all might be doing it to varying degrees, this does not necessarily apply to everything you do. If you can live with the stigma of forceful association to these classes, you can make decisions purely on the personal merits of a product, though that doesn't mean it's always worth the effort.

I live in one of the wine-themed states of Germany, close to France. A significant amount of our agriculture is wine, mostly from small family-based winemakers (oh the cliché). Everybody drinks a lot of wine, and there is an _insane_ amount of variants to choose from. I know what I like when I taste it, but I know this applies to my personal taste only. Like the article says, it's not really possible to tell how expensive a wine is by tasting it. But that doesn't mean it all tastes the same. Wines are hugely diverse and everyone would be well-advised to just decide based on personal preference. However, high-profile wines are often designed to offend the least number of people, so they're an easy choice to serve when you're hosting a dinner - as a common denominator they do have a purpose.

<comment><USER3> I imagine the first X covers cost of production, where cheapo brands cut corners to satisfy the quantity crowd. After that, you start to see price heavily affected by market segmentation, and availability. The small batch shop need to sell above a certain price. At some point, it starts to mirror high fashion or art.

<comment><USER4> This may be true in the US but it's not true in Germany and Austria.

In Vienna, you can get a very tasty bottle of local white wine for $3, at any grocery store. Spend $10 and you'll have something amazing. It'll be fresh, crisp, and tasty. You can get giant jugs of wine for $15 or less, again local, again delicious. Maybe not what an expert would consider wonderful, but nothing like the sickly cheap whites you get in the US. (At least, all the ones I've tried.) In many restaurants in Austria, the house wine is the cheapest beverage other than tap water and single espresso.

The thing is wine is both a bigger industry, and a smaller industry, compared to the US. It seems like half the restaurants in Vienna have a house wine (and I don't just mean "their cheap brand" -- but house wine they, or their family, or their friends, make and sell).

There are practically infinite "brands" because making wine is such a tradition. And yet it's not super commercialized. Most of the time you go to a restaurant, you just order "white" or "red". With few exceptions, there's not the worshipping of the brand names or prices.

Heuriger are a kind of biergarten, but for wine; they make their own, that's all they serve to drink, and often you can dine among the grape vines that provide the grapes to make the wine you're drinking.

In the summer, you drink weissweing'spritzt… wine with soda water, with Almdudler (a local herbal soda), apple juice, or elderflower syrup and soda. You order the wine to the table by the liter (it's not coming in bottles), and you share with your friends. This would send a snobby wine aficionado into conniptions and I myself thought it was a bit sketchy at first, but damn, it's delicious (and fun - and cheap).

Every fall, sturm arrives in every lokale -- the fresh, immature wine. Suddenly everybody is selling it and everybody's drinking it (and everybody's got a raging headache the next day).

Wine is part of the cultural landscape there in a way that I've not seen anywhere in the US. Wine is practically like hot & cold running water in Austria -- practically a utility. It's omnipresent and, in true socialist fashion, cheap enough for everyone, all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can recognize good wine versus bad wine. The problem is expensive doesn't always equal good. Often the more expensive aged wine doesn't taste very good to someone who doesn't drink much wine because it's generally very dry.

There's also the matter of degrees. Going from the $1 bottle to the $10 bottle is a huge jump in quality and taste. Going from a _good_ $10 bottle to the $50+ and the changes end up very subtle and not worth the money IMHO. I'm not a wine expert and when I had $1000 bottle before I felt it was mostly wasted on me since I have a hard time picking up on all of the subtle flavors.

The goal for all wine drinkers should be to find the least expensive bottle _they_ enjoy drinking. I often come across these very nice bottles in the $7-$10 range that are great. The problem is as the word gets out their price goes up so I have to start the search over.

<comment><USER6> I saw a very clear illustration of this at a blind whiskey tasting I attended recently. We tried a selection ranging from the standard cheapo stuff all the way up to one that as $150/bottle.

It turned out that the cheapest two whiskeys did tend to get rated the lowest - though interestingly enough most people rated the less popular brand markedly higher than the more popular one. Beyond that though, everything was all mixed. I didn't grind any numbers, but at a glance I didn't recognize any correlation between price and how well people rated it. There weren't even really any clear favorites; everyone had their own taste. The only really interesting thing there was that absolutely nobody had picked the $150 whiskey as their favorite.

<comment><USER5> I remember Mythbusters doing something like this with vodka. An expert came in and IIRC they were able to rank the various vodkas very effectively.

For me vodka (and tequila for that matter) is similar to wine. The cheap stuff I can tell is cheap because it really does taste bad. Once you're into any of the premiums it is all mostly good so it's harder to tell the difference in price bands. I can almost always pick out Grey Goose though because it has a subtle sweetness vodkas like Kettle and Belvedere to not have.

<comment><USER6> Vodka's a bit different because what makes it good is being as close to nothing but alcohol and water as possible. That gives you as objective of a thing to look for as you're ever going to get in this sort of thing.

With whiskey, on the other hand, the picture's a bit muddier. There's a lot of different stuff that contributes to the flavor, which means there's a whole lot of room for stylistic variation and personal preference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And every wine 'expert' who read that will be totally confident that they can't be fooled so simply. Another part of the equation is the fiction we construct around ourselves to protect our ego.

Hey! I re-read it. The wine 'experts' tested were "undergraduates". Now I can legitimately suspect their research. Everybody knows freshmen are idiots. Especially freshmen flocking to a free wine-tasting.

See how easy that was? I can dismiss statistical significance with semantic juggling.

<comment><USER8> They were freshmen studying wine and wine making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried mightily when I was young to figure out how to be a wine connoisseur and appreciate the "finer" wines. All I was ever able to do was start to recognize the ones I liked.

Sideways be damned, one of my favorites is still the $9 Merlot with the kangaroo on the side.

What I did find enjoyable is that with quite a small amount of experience, you can learn to find your way around this little chart(1). You might not be able to taste the "expensiveness", but you can learn in relatively short order to identify different kinds of wine.

(1) <http://winefolly.com/review/different-types-of-wine/>

</comment><comment><USER10> _he asked the experts to rate two different bottles of red wine. One was very expensive, the other was cheap. Again, he tricked them. This time he had put the cheap wine in both bottles._

Funny, these experiments never involve putting _expensive_ wine in both bottles.

<comment><USER11> Using the cheap wine for the experiment means the professor had to drink the good wine to empty the bottle. The worst part about this "experiment"? White vs red. You'd have to be fresh off the street to think they taste the same. This entire article is trash. These undergraduates are as much "wine experts" as 11 year olds are "education experts" just because they attend school every day.

<comment><USER12> > You'd have to be fresh off the street to think they taste the same.

... or have your senses fooled by false expectations. Have someone try it on you. I mentioned this article at work, and one of the more experienced wine drinkers in the office immediately went "oh, yes, I had someone fool me with that".

The thing is, even when we _can_ taste the difference between two things when our expectations aren't being manipulated, a lot of that ability goes straight out the window when someone messes with our biases. Messing with peoples expectations about taste is one of those things childrens TV has been doing for decades for fun, because it's one of those things that always delights, and it's trivially easy to do.

In this case, give these same students a closed container and ask them to distinguish the red from the white wine, and I'd be very surprised if any of them had any problem.

What is being tested here is _not_ their taste, but how taste can be overridden by expectations.

<comment><USER11> Great final point; your explanation and mention of children TV shows casts a different perspective than the article author was able to do. I can see this working now, I just don't like the spin/focus on the price and taste of wine. This is more a study on the brain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Okay, so here is the question... Why don't wine raters, the magazines and such, insist on blind testing?

They go to the vineyards, eat at selected restaurants, and literally make 'wining and dinning' part of the reviews.

<comment><USER14> Because that would reveal that the whole thing is a racket. They're all in on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> one of my favourite wines is cosino macul's _don matias_ \- a reserve cab that costs about $5000 pesos here (chile). they have a vineyard not far from us, that we take visitors to, so i feel it's kind of my "local". and it's an old, established family firm (although what that says in chile isn't necessarily so great).

anyway, they also have _don luis_ , which is similar (and, confusingly, looks very similar), but not aged in oak, and so cheaper (say $3500). one day i was out shopping at the supermarket and saw don luis on offer. so i bought a bottle and, when i got home, cracked it open. it tasted pretty awesome. so awesome, in fact, that i decided to go buy some more.

but before i went out the door i took a second look at the bottle - somehow i had picked up a bottle of don matias (the more expensive reserve). oops. no surprise it tasted so good.

and that, for me, has always been the argument against the idea that you can't taste different wines [edit: more correctly, can't taste the difference between wines and, in this case at least, tell which is more expensive]. _despite_ my expectations, thinking i was drinking a bottle of varietal, i recognised the better quality (or, at least, different taste) of the reserve.

now i'm no expert, and i _can't_ recognise all wines, or the difference between many reserves and "super-reserves". but the difference between a plain and an oaked red (which, legally, is the difference between varietals and reserves in chile) _is_ clear.

<comment><USER16> How is that an argument against the idea that you can't taste different wines? It seems to me that in order to make the case you should have recognized that it was Don Matias without looking at the label. As far as I'm concerned you drank a bottle of cheaper wine and thought to yourself, "wow. This was tasty, much tastier than I expected. Instead of wasting money on the fancy label I should buy this from now on."

<comment><USER17> But he didn't. He drank the fancier wine.

<comment><USER16> I am not sure what you are referring to when you say "he didnt." I am assuming you are referring to the latter half of my comment. Yes he drank the fancier wine. However when drinking it he _thought_ he was drinking the "less fancier" wine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wine experts are in the same class as tarot readers and homeopaths if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not a wine expert, but I do know that wine experts are indeed out there and have to go through rigorous blind tests to earn accreditation. At highest levels you have to blind taste testing to be able to tell what kind of WATER droplets were mixed with different wines.

<comment><USER20> This didn't test wine experts, it tested undergraduates. We can extrapolate, but it's not as accurate.

<comment><USER21> I guess it is reasonable to assume that a wine making undergraduate has much knowledge about wine as I, as a regular wine drinker, might collect in my life. If they cannot tell, I wont get to a point where I would.

<comment><USER20> Definitely, but it doesn't mean that _nobody_ can tell, either. I'm not sure if anyone _can_ tell, but this article gives us no information one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reading through this article it was easy to see that this was all bunk.

There's no way you can tell me that Pepsi and Coca-Cola pretty much taste the same.

The difference between the two is immense. I suspect that this person didn't obtain a sample of properly bottled Coca-Cola from Atlanta GA. Don't go for that canned stuff in cheap aluminum, if it's not in a glass bottle then you lose the subtle flavors of the syrup, as the metal changes it over time. Don't fall for that notion that other bottling plants produce a superior product because of the differences in local water. Every drinker that enjoys a good soda knows that the best location of water for Coca-Cola is where it was created.

Although, New Coke did indeed taste much the same as Pepsi, but that was a misguided attempt to market to a group of people that don't appreciate a fine soda. This was quickly stopped and shouldn't be mentioned again.

In fact, the only location that competes are those fine people south of the border who still insist on using sugar as opposed to corn syrup. I too enjoy a sugar Coke from time-to-time but nothing beats a bottle from the home plant.

I took the Pepsi Challenge back when it was offered and I don't recall seeing this M and Q business. The sodas were offered to me in plain, white cups. That day, I purposely chose Pepsi so that the young person behind the counter would feel good about their work, since they were employed by Pepsi.

<comment><USER23> In India you get Coke and Pepsi in bottles. They use cane sugar, and indeed you can tell the difference between coke, pepsi and thumbs up. Simply put in order from the most acidic to most sweet it's almost like Thumbs Up, Coke, Pepsi. I couldn't tell, but I've tried multiple blind tests on my family and friends and they could. After a few times with them you indeed notice a taste difference.

<comment><USER22> Yes, Pepsi tends to taste more sweet than Coke. While Coke tends to be a bit more carbonated feeling in the mouth, if that makes sense.

If you never had it, New Coke was sweeter like Pepsi, from what I remember.

By the way, what's Thumbs Up? Local brand?

<comment><USER23> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thums_Up>

It was a local brand but was later bought over by Coke. Taste-wise, it's a less sweeter more fizzier, and a bit more acidic version of Coke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A friend of mine used to run blind themed wine tastings: Each of us would bring a Barolo, say. They'd go into numbered brown paper bags and we'd taste, make notes, rate, then reveal and taste some more. Typically these 8-10 wines would range from $25-$200/bottle, and other than the host we'd have no real idea of the selection until they'd been revealed. We'd typically intermix some suitable "matching" small plates so we could try the wines with and without food.

From a half dozen or so of these, my anecdotal conclusions: A good percentage of expensive wines are either very difficult to enjoy or flatly bad. On the other hand, the pre-reveal consensus winners for the night were very rarely bottles costing less than $40-50, and often were among the most expensive.

My guess is that if you asked two expert sommeliers to pair six wines with two six course meals, and gave one a budget of $200 for six bottles and another a budget of $1000, almost anyone with a passion for drinking fine wine could distinguish the more expensive wines and would enjoy them more.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was with him up till this:

>Vodka, for instance, has no flavor

Maybe not if you're doing shots, but on the rocks / straight definitely has flavors. Personally I dislike some expensive brands, and for the one that I like best I don't even like the branding.

<comment><USER22> I don't drink vodka but I'm curious.

Does it have flavors from the natural creation process or is it added in at some point? From the various flavor vodkas I've seen I've always assumed any flavor is added and not a part of the actual process.

<comment><USER25> Vodka can be made from grain, potatoes or even grapes and the distillation process is somewhat different among producers. I'm not saying the resulting flavor variation is huge, but after a while you start to notice it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ (2011 film) was an absolute shitfest. The critics gave it rave reviews. So was the book, and the critics gave _that_ rave reviews.

I'm not sure how critical opinion shapes my evaluation of a film. (My decision of whether to go see it on the other hand, is so shaped; I generally won't go to see movies that have been universally shat on in the criticsphere.) Maybe I would have had less fun seeing _TGWTDT_ had it not been so acclaimed?

</comment><comment><USER27> If your not heavily into psychology but having a passing interest I can highly recommend the book "You are not so smart" [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1851689397/ref=as_li_qf_s...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1851689397/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1851689397&linkCode=as2&tag=efficthing-21) (aff link)

It is an excellent read and very eye opening

<comment><USER28> Agreed, the book has one section on how "fight or flight" is a myth. At least in regards to disasters, everyone needs to read up on that chapter at least. We are a delusional creature is all I can think of after that book.

<comment><USER29> Can you expand slightly? I don't understand what part of "fight or flight" could be mythical, and Googling doesn't seem to bring up anything relevant.

<comment><USER28> Fight or flight was probably wrong, and an example of how bad my own memory is. :)

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

So the particular reference I'm alluding to is the Tenerife Disaster. During a crisis humans do not immediately do sane things to get out of danger. Basically when the KLM plane collided with the Pan Am plane the top of the aircraft was ripped off. There was ample time for people to get out and "abandon ship" if you will. But humans don't immediately react to disasters no matter how immediate without trying to process it and understand it. Most people sat in their chairs in a daze not fully realizing that the airplane is not a safe place any longer.

The people that sprang into action turned out to be the people that preplanned or at least had already planned "what would I do if things go bad?" and noticed, we've just gotten the roof torn off our plane, time to get out of dodge.

What it distills down to, is always have some sort of a plan to spring into action and know what you will do if you need to get out of the airplane alive. It seems like a small thing, but just planning, ok if I need to get off this plane for whatever reason, I am jumping over these people and running out the door to the left or whatever, turns out to possibly be the difference between life and death.

If we aren't prepared for it we try to process it as "the new normal" and that takes time. Exactly when it means life or death snap decisions. It is chapter 7 if you want to read it, but get the book, so much good stuff like why we have so much brand bias, why we can't trust our memory etc... and his references are great for further reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Like many other folks here, I can tell good wine from bad too, in so much as I can tell wine I like from wine I don't like. Even better, I can usually find lots of wines I like that are under $12-10.

I even have regions I know have a higher probability of making wines I'll probably like.

But I've had some pleasant surprises. I don't typically like Virginia wines for example, but I was recently introduced to Virginia Chambourcin wines, most of which I've found great. Likewise I don't typically like most White wines, but the Viogniers from Virginia have typically been to my taste.

More importantly, over the last few years I've gotten to appreciate wines that I may not like on their own, but pair well with certain foods and round out the flavor profile, vs. wines I can just sit with and drink.

The truth is the difference between good and bad wine is not some pretentious expert's objective ranking, but whether you like it or not.

For the record, my three favorite wines at the moment are:

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet - Australia - $10

Cantina Zaccagnini Montepulciano d'Abruzzo - Italy - $12

Santa Rita Cabernet Reserva - Chile - $10

All go well with various foods or just by themselves. And yes I steer towards full-bodied reds.

But context can be just as important, I've also enjoyed cheap house wine while eating just as cheap food at local family eateries in Italy. I probably wouldn't buy that wine, but in that milieu it just "worked".

One rule of thumb I like to use when selecting from wines I don't know is that generally, a deeper punt (the indentation on the bottom of the bottle) on the bottle leads to wines I like better -- it's supposed to help with collecting sediment before pouring. But of course there's always exceptions. Excelsior (South Africa) makes some stupid cheap ($6-7) but pretty good wines with a twist off top and a shallow punt.

There are more "fashionable" wines I just don't like. I've yet to meet a California Pinot Noir I liked for example (the central wine in the movie Sideways).

Just try lots of wines, get a feel for the flavors, start to catalog which ones you like and don't like and you'll eventually develop your own taste. There's no shortage of wines to try, and there's thousands of under $10 bottles you can experiment with.

Just go with that and have fun.

<comment><USER31> As a native Virginian, I can tell you we are proud of our Viogniers -- it's one of the kinds we do best!

<comment><USER30> Growing up in NoVA, I never really cared for the local wines, but I was always trying Cabs and the occasional white. Popular wines to the public, but just not very good to grow in the wet Virginia climate.

I don't typically like many whites, but I'm really blown away with Viogniers that grow here. They really are rather spectacular. For my money, I can't think of another white I've had anywhere with as wonderfully complex a flavor.

If you haven't tried them, Virginia Chambourcins are also really excellent for the most part and really well suited to the climate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't tell $5 wine from $50 wine, but I can tell the difference between red and blue M&Ms blindfolded. Trailer park connoisseur.

</comment><comment><USER33> Freakonomics did an interesting podcast on this, but the conclusion was essentially same: [http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/27/the-days-of-wine- and-...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/02/27/the-days-of-wine-and-mouses-a- new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

*not sure if they referred to the same study or not, but it's possible

</comment><comment><USER34> Why Are All The Titles Capitalized Like This ?

<comment><USER35> Because <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Title_case>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Isn't it a matter of taste? Me and my partner know what types of grapes we like or don't like, and that tends to remain.

<comment><USER37> I do not think the argument is that you can not tell between grapes. Only between expensive and not. Also, it should be noted that you probably can tell between garbage and not. Just once you reach a good state, there is not much improving it. Evidence shows none, actually.

Similarly, I don't think anyone claims you can not tell the difference between tap water and bottled. Since, clearly, the local quality of tap water is very influential to this idea. However, differences between bottled waters is going to be just as crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is a book excerpt from 2011 - the actual book is very well written and documents a lot of cognitive biases.

</comment><comment><USER39> Regarding the Pepsi / Coke test I'm a bit surprised... Apparently the letter 'M' and 'Q' were inducing people in error because people prefer M over Q.

But... From personal experience I can _tell_ if coke is coming from a 20cl glass bottle (or a 33cl can) or a 25cl plastic bottle / 1 liter plastic bottle (tried with friends several times, they're always amazed). I can't differentiate 20cl glass from 33cl can and I can't differentiate small plastic from big plastic. But, simply, coke in plastic bottles doesn't have the "coke" taste. It just doesn't.

There's no way on earth you can make me drink Pepsi and I'll say it's coke. If often happen in restaurant: I ask if the coke they have is real coke. Typically people don't like but sometimes they do and serve me Pepsi. Than I get mean.

: )

<comment><USER22> To be fair, where I'm from when you say you want a Coke you are simply saying you want a brown soda of some type.

<comment><USER40> Mountain Dew is coke as well.

<comment><USER22> Also, where I'm from, Mountain Dew is a mixer for alcohol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's nearly impossible to tell good wine from bad wine instantly. A wine may _seem_ very good but give you a terrible headache the next morning.

Every time I drink some wine and someone tells me it tastes good I answer: _"let's wait tomorrow".

The only wine which I know ain't giving headaches is champagne (unless you _really* abuse it).

<comment><USER41> I always wonder about the 'good alcohol won't leave you hung over' theory.

I mean, if I'm drinking a Jack and Coke or a Jameson Rocks I'm probably at a concert or a dive bar, staying up late and having one too many drinks. Whereas if I'm drinking a high-end single-malt neat I'm probably at an upscale bar and I'm apt to maybe opt-out of that one last drink.

Additionally, a lot of people have bad memories of low end alcohols from college, when they're doing shots of cuervo, popov, or other low end alcohols in excess. Vodka, in particular, has very little differentiation between brands (it's pure grain alcohol). I'd really love to see a controlled study where a group of people drink a high-end and a low-end vodka and describe their hangovers the next day.

<comment><USER42> It depends on the process. A more expensive spirit could use processes that uses less chemicals, but takes longer to filter.

Some wines are filtered using fining agents that contain gelatin, where some winemakers choose to use higher-micron (more expensive) filters. Or they use sanitation 'preservatives' like Velcorin. Any one of these processes could either trigger an allergy or add something that your body doesn't like processing.

The closest example is decaf coffee: how to strip out the caffeine. There is a chemical way (cheap but uses benzene) vs the swiss water process.

<http://www.wisegeek.org/how-is-coffee-decaffeinated.htm>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Swiss_water_proc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Swiss_water_process)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So many people insisting that they _can_ tell the difference between what they like and don't like. No one ever questioned this. It follows from the definition of "like".</comment>


Evolution of the Web  - <AUTHOR> http://www.evolutionoftheweb.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice timeline, though I have some doubts about its accuracy / completeness. It makes it look as if Safari predates Firefox, but I remember that I had been using Firefox (then still called Phoenix) as early as 2002 - 2 years before the 1.0 launch.

Also notably absent is the Mozilla suite that predated Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty but isn't very practical. E.g. why is the 'webfonts' label way off the screen from the point it is first implemented? How do I see what features were implemented in a particular browser version? Why is there a massive text banner in front of the screen shots of different browser versions?

<comment><USER4> What I'm wondering is what the vertical axis is intended to represent.

<comment><USER5> It is a confusing visualization.

I think it's supposed to trace a line between the first implementation of each feature in each browser. Where the colored lines intersect a dot, that's where the feature was implemented. The rest is just flair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most fascinating part about this timeline, for me, is that it's so short. Feels like forever ago I was using Netscape on Windows 95, but it really wasn't. It's come so far in such a short amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look at the MOSAIC v.0.1, thats how simple should be browsers.

<comment><USER7> And I guess Netscape v.0.9 is the design inspiration for latest microsoft office design ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When looking at the screenshot slides, clicking on the top right corner of the image (near where the 'x' is in most of the screenshots) actually closes the slideshow. This is a nice little usability detail.

</comment><comment><USER9> It appears clearly in this timeline that since chrome made its appearance with its fast release cycle, web technologies evolve at a much faster pace.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's beautiful. Love the abstract patterns in the background. Don't serve much purpose but it compliments the look. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is Mozilla Firebird 0.7 missing or Phoenix 0.5

</comment><comment><USER12> It looks like this was using D3? How long would something like this take to make?

</comment><comment><USER13> why is G+ the only way to share?

<comment><USER14> It was made with (or by?) Google, look at the credits.</comment></comment>


The Selling of the Avocado - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-selling-of-the-avocado/385047/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> The Avocados that they can actually ship (Hass) are pretty terrible. If you haven't lived in an area where they grow avocados you probably haven't had a chance to enjoy the other dozens of varieties of avocado.

Did you know that there's an avocado you can eat like an apple? The skin is thin and edible. There's another avocado with much higher oil content than the Hass and so a different mouth feel. Another kind that has a smokey flavor, and avocados that weren't fertilized by insects and so they have no seed - just a solid fatty oily avocado. And many more...

This is one of the things I miss about CA (specifically, I lived in Ventura, CA). (another is the huge variety of citrus, including a strain where they breed the acidity out of an orange and so it tasted like vanilla...)

[http://edibleojai.com/online-magazine/heritage- avocados/](http://edibleojai.com/online-magazine/heritage-avocados/)

(the one in the lower left looks like the edible skin one I remember)

And a small list of CA varieties: [http://ucavo.ucr.edu/avocadovarieties/VarietyFrame.html#Anch...](http://ucavo.ucr.edu/avocadovarieties/VarietyFrame.html#Anchor-47857)

There's even more varieties in Hawaii.

<comment><USER3> I've lived in CA (Silicon Valley), and I agree that the avocados are one of the best things about living there. The other is the weather: that perfect Mediterranean climate with hot, dry (and I mean _no_ rain April-Sept.) summers and mild, rainy winters.

Now I live on the _actual_ Mediterranean. The climate is still amazing, the avacados...meh. Really not very good at all. But the olives! You have _never_ had olives. Not like this. The varieties, the flavor, it's just like you describe for avocados in CA.

It's always struck me as odd that both places could have their own you- can't-find-them-elsewhere specialities that would be so different for what is essentially an identical climate. For olives, I can only assume it has to do with their multi-century lifespan.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the soil has something to do with it also. There are some Mangoes that only taste the same if grown in a certain region of India, and I always heard that was because of the soil + climate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting timing. Just as I started reading this article while watching the superbowl pre-game, a segment offering a guac recipe aired sponsored by avocados. I'm reminded how the Patagonian toothfish was renamed as "Chilean Seabass" and of course "the other white meat".

Edit: before I could finish typing this comment, another commercial aired for avocados.

<comment><USER6> I've done work for the Chilean Avocado Importers Association[1]. One of their selling points is being in the Southern Hemisphere, they're counter-seasonal to North American avos and so sourcing from both gives retailers a year-round supply.

[1] [http://avocadosfromchile.org/](http://avocadosfromchile.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes me wonder about which great fruit or vegetables I've missed out on my whole life simply because they were unknown and badly marketed.

A recent one would maybe be Kale, which has become dramatically popular in the last 10 years.

<comment><USER8> Pomegranates have increased in popularity recently although they're still very seasonal and fairly expensive in pure form (or even as 100% juice).

My perception is that cranberries have also expanded beyond their home territories although they're still seasonal as well. (Don't really understand why you can't buy them frozen as they freeze quite well--something I do every fall.)

There are a bunch of tropical fruits that could potentially fall into this category as well but they're mostly too expensive for the broad market so it probably doesn't make sense to market them more.

<comment><USER6> Another commenter's mention of shipability is one of the keys. Due to the long supply-chains for modern produce, the fruit or veggie has to be picked early, ripen off the vine and stay firm to hold up to shipping. cf. Grocery store tomatoes, etc.

My father is involved with developing the PawPaw (Asimina Triloba) into a commercially viable fruit. It's amazing - as big as your fist with a few black seeds and creamy flesh which tastes like custard. Problem is it doesn't ripen off the tree well and bruises easily in shipping. Various universities have breeding programs and there are some excellent named varieties now but still not quite to a place where they could be commercialized on a broad scale.

Another issue is of course people don't like things they're not used to and are generally reluctant to experiment with new foods. (Generalized to the US.) One way to overcome that is through marketing campaigns. Federal Marketing Orders are what we have in place to do this.[1][2]

[0] [http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/](http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/) [https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropfactsheets/pawpaw.ht...](https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropfactsheets/pawpaw.html) etc. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_orders_and_agreement...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_orders_and_agreements) [2] [http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FVMarketingOrderLandingPage](http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FVMarketingOrderLandingPage)

(Also, frozen cranberries are generally available - but often seasonally because in popular cooking they're limited to Thanksgiving relish and the like...)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. In my part of the world, a pawpaw is what you call a papaya.

<comment><USER6> I hadn't heard that. Wild, in the US they're totally different fruit:

PawPaw: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba)

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

<comment><USER9> I find that mildly annoying :)

The Papaya page on Wikipedia mentions the use of the name pawpaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Colombia they have huge ones:

[https://conquistadorc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/p1050364.j...](https://conquistadorc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/p1050364.jpg)</comment>


The purpose of .PHONY in a Makefile - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2145590/what-is-the-purpose-of-phony-in-a-makefile

<comment><USER2> > _I have gone through this, but it is too complicated_

Really?

4.6 Phony Targets

A phony target is one that is not really the name of a file; rather it is just a name for a recipe to be executed when you make an explicit request. <…>

         clean:
                 rm *.o temp

Since it has no prerequisites, the file clean would inevitably be considered up to date, and its recipe would not be executed. To avoid this problem, you can explicitly declare the target to be phony, using the special target .PHONY (see Special Built-in Target Names) as follows:

         .PHONY : clean

Once this is done, 'make clean' will run the recipe regardless of whether there is a file named clean.

<comment><USER3> > _Really?_

I did not dig up the changelog of the make homepage but the linked post is fairly old (2010) and the make manual gets updated somewhat frequently[1].

Why this was posted and upvoted tho I don't quite understand. It's not some kind of arcane concept barely anybody knew/knows about. The accepted answer doesn't seem to be better than the part in the current manual about it either.

[1]: > _This is Edition 0.72, last updated 9 October 2013, of The GNU Make Manual, for GNU make version 4.0._</comment></comment>


Everything in Sydney is now illegal- including fun - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/would-last-person-sydney-please-turn-lights-out-matt-barrie?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like <comment><USER2> What a well-written article. Even an outsider like me could follow what's happening, the explanation for what's happening seems entirely reasonable, and the references I followed all supported the evidence in a believable way.

The headline of the Tyler Brûlé description "Nanny state rules making Australia 'world's dumbest nation'" seems entirely appropriate.

And, WTF!? Routine strip searches at concert venues in NSW?!

</comment><comment><USER3> So can all those cool tech companies leave all the killjoys up in Sydney and set up shop in Melbourne already?

</comment><comment><USER4> Considering that, every time we have a gun control discussion, every person in Sydney on HN will come out of the woodwork to lecture Americans about how wonderful Australian gun control is and, gee, what a great idea a nanny state is in _this one particular instance_ at least - no I can't say I am all that surprised, disheartened, or sympathetic to the fact that stupid rules and an overbearing legal regime have choked the life out of the entertainment economy in Sydney.

<comment><USER2> That would make sense if the reasons behind both were the same. But it seems to me that you have mostly arbitrarily grouped "restrictions the government does that you don't like" into the category "nanny state"

More specifically, this article suggests the changes in Sydney are partially as a way for "evangelical christians to implement a framework of religious policy" and "actively shutting down any small business that it can find that doesn't agree with its small minded evangelical 1950s view of the world."

As far as I can tell, that is completely different than the reasons for higher gun control laws in Australia. For "nanny state" to be meaningful, it must be able to encompass both movements.

But the article also points to Amsterdam and other places which have an active night life _and_ strict gun control laws. Thus, it can't be that both are the result of some "nanny" tendency by the government.

Which is why I don't understand why "nanny state" makes sense for both cases. Well, other than for some libertarian philosophies where nearly all government regulation is classed as being part of a "nanny state".

<comment><USER4> > _But it seems to me that you have mostly arbitrarily grouped "restrictions > the government does that you don't like" into the category "nanny state"_

Well, _anybody_ is going to do that, even the author of this piece, so your observation does not give you as much insight as you seem to think, even if accurate (which it is not e.g. I would not classify overbroad copyright legislation into the 'nanny state' category, even though I think it makes for shitty policy).

> _As far as I can tell, that is completely different than the reasons for > higher gun control laws in Australia._

No, it is not completely different: both are instances of the governing class adopting policies formed from a mindset that they _know better_ the morality that the people should adopt as they go about their lives. They believe partying into the early hours is _wrong_ , and they give this away with the victim-blaming nonsense and misleading statistics, if not outright lies, they offer regarding crime in Sydney, which this article rightly tears down. Likewise, the Australian government (and most other national governments) would have you believe that owning a gun is _morally wrong_ , and the data they use to support this assertion are generally about as convincing as the arguments made to support these ridiculous restrictions on nightlife in Sydney. Indeed, anyone who has participated in or even observed a gun control "debate" should be pretty familiar with the sort of statistical dirty tricks perpetrated here by the City of Sydney.

At any rate, as an aside, in the future try to keep the ratio of strawmen to sentences in your post somewhere south of 1:1. It's not just that it's irritating to the person reading it - it also weakens your argument: your assertion of what I think makes a nanny state, and your implication about my political philosophy, are both _widely_ off the mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author has a very strong point to make, but ruins his article by being disingenuous throughout. Many of the cited articles say nearly-but-not-quite what he claims them to say. Why not just keep it real, instead of putting people off by trying to manipulate them?</comment>


A guide to using NoScript 10.x - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jeaye.com/2017/11/30/noscript/?o=hn <comment><USER2> Very helpful. The new Noscript is a huge departure and the lack of text for icons makes it much harder to learn it transition</comment>


Why are so many programmers arrogant? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant

<comment><USER2> Young people with a natural affinity for an in-demand skill often are. A hundred years ago you could have written this about pilots. 500 years about painters (apprentices to the great masters in the Renaissance were notorious for it).

As an aside, for every genuine Aspbergers case, there are 10 who simply think they have a god-given right to act like dicks. It's like dyslexics, you can always tell the real ones because they're quietly getting on with it, not making a huge attention-getting fuss.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this, I've worked in health care and programmers have nothing on physicians when it comes to arrogance. I don't know any programmers who would coach a physician on the proper way to design a course of treatment...

<comment><USER4> I think the same rule holds with doctors as with programmers - there are tremendously arrogant people who use their position as a surrogate for competence, and there are people who really are competent and don't have much time to deal with fools.

The only way to tell the difference is to watch their results for a while.

Jacquesm mentions the "save my life" thread. Yeah. Read that. I'm one of the programmers would damn straight coach a physician on the proper way to design a course of treatment - until I know which of the above groups the physician in question falls into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're not really arrogant, they just come off as such. Programmers usually are pretty clever cookies and as a rule are more often right than wrong, even if the subject is not programming, that alone is enough to mark them as arrogant. We also tend to be an opinionated bunch.

Some of them compound the problem by no longer considering other people to be occasionally right and them being wrong and do cross the line in to arrogance.

It's fine as long as people agree on things but as soon as one party starts to ignore the other when they disagree then you have trouble.

For an encore, check 'mathematicians are arrogant', 'physicists are arrogant', 'surgeons are arrogant' and so on.

Anybody that has a job that requires a ton of study and a lot of brain work will tend towards this, it's human, nothing specific about programmers.

That doesn't help you when you're faced with a nice sample of a prima-donna arrogant programmer though, they do happen, just no more than in other 'brainy' professions.

<comment><USER6> A programmer is not a mathematician, physicist, or surgeon - and yet a programmer would put himself on that list.

<comment><USER7> I had Thanksgiving dinner with a brain surgeon once. I said "Wow, your work must be really challenging." He laughed and said, "Yeah, people think that." He went on to tell me that although he was one of the rising stars in his specialty, the truth was his work was mind-numbingly repetitive, he was bored and wanted to find something else to do in life. The surgeries he did required a great deal of precision but zero creativity. He was envious of people who write software.

Your comment is indicative in one interesting way. The challenge of programming is incongruent with its social status. This explains a lot of dysfunction in the software world (e.g. programmers having to choose between going into management or staying low-pay/low-status), but that's another story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a lot of ways programmers can be arrogant:

* Black-and-white feedback. Software is very black and white. Your dietitian can tell you to "reduce your sugar intake" instead of telling you you're fat because you drink so much cola. There's no way to sugar coat "you pressed the _wrong_ button, and now you have to start over", unless you want to point out that the programmer who make the stupid program must have been an idiot. Either way, you look arrogant.

* We read a lot. Hackers usually know about the Milgram experiment, how Easter Island's economy collapsed when they cut down all the trees (peak wood), and why wikipedia may or may not be accurate. People who know it all come across as arrogant.

* We speak another language. No, not C. Programmers often speak a dialect that's a bit like English, but evolved into something a little different over IRC and BBs. That language isn't always rude, but it's different, and different can often come across as rude.

* We need to be intellectually assertive. We will find out why the core got dumped, and fix it. It's our brains against the compiler. If we don't win, our programs won't work.

* Arrogant programmers are still employable. There are plenty of arrogant HR officers, secretaries, school teachers, and shop assistants; but none of them act that way on the job. Sales guys are said to be unbelievably arrogant, but you can bet they will be very polite to potential customers.

* Heck, if we get too passive aggressive when we tell the PHB he's wrong, it can end in disaster. "Getting the team onto a version control system is universally agreed to be an essential best practice. It aids communication, reduces bugs, and keeps the source code safe" just isn't strong enough. He's already heard a similar pitch from a guy selling UML code generators, and look how _that_ turned out. A bit more drama might be needed: "We aren't using a VCS. ANYBODY knows that this is as stupid as [your analogy] to control STDs."

<comment><USER5> If there is one inanimate object that will teach you with great patience and to devastating effect how often you are wrong it is the computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a programmer and someone who has started a small SaaS software business by myself. I can related to this comment. Programmer are the doers. They often pride themselves as the ones who are actually getting things done in an technology company.

This mentality often comes off to "those who manages or lead" as arrogant, and rightfully so. Often the doers don't see the bigger picture. For example, the relationships that is required to have individuals in an organization work together as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I don't doubt that the stereotype exists for a reason (the arrogant, maladjusted programmer) I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working with other programmers (25ys). Perhaps it's more prevalent in non face to face situations like chat rooms or with the less mature.

I've seen the brilliant ones get a little frustrated with "slow" people but they weren't dickheads about it. In my personal experience, developers really go out of their way to help an enthusiastic "newbie" get up to speed.

On the other hand, I have seen situations where a newbie would ask a forum for an answer to his homework assignment and then get upset because he didn't get an immediate answer or someone pointed him to a source for his answer ("here's a link to sorting algorithms") instead of coding up the assignment for him.

<comment><USER11> > I can't really remember encountering any in all the time I've been working > with other programmers

While I don't recall any such encounter with any programmer, I have observed many icon-dragging, button-clicking arrogant pricks that called themselves programmers because lave learned that clicking the third button from the second group in the toolbar turns whatever they mashed together into an executable file.

To the average user, such a beast is absolutely indistinguishable from a real programmer and, so, the confusion is understandable.

;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am a programmer and have had a history of arrogance, but I now associate it with social immaturity. Humility is much more comfortable.

However, one shouldn't reject another just because they exhibit some pride. That is also arrogant. Everyone has their character flaws, and variety is the spice of life.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hmm... would it make more sense if the question used "... perceived as arrogant?" instead of just "arrogant?"?

(disclaimer: I am not a hard core programmer, if I were modest I would call myself a beginner)

I have been long perceived as arrogant and an aloof person, while I think I am not really one. Over time trying to analyze the root cause for this (it is a big problem as it interjects into developing personal relationships) perception and reading books and listening to audio books, I realized that there are some other aspects of me that cause this perception. some of them being:

1) Shyness (one of the reason - shy people avoid eye contact giving rise to the perception to others that they don't care about others and by default tag you as arrogant)

2) bad conversation skills - going into monologues ( when you are not into the habit of back and forth conversation style and go into monologues (being highly passionate about some topics doesn't' help either :)), the other party can think that you don't care to listen to others and can tag you as arrogant)

3) giving unsolicited advice ( I have received a hell lot of great advice over years from so many different people that is simply too valuable to put a price on. sometimes, in a misplaced and idealistic view of returning the favor, I used to go about giving unsolicited advice to friends and acquaintances, sometimes putting the value of 'enlightenment of another perspective' in others' problem solving over my relationship with them. I think it gave me lot of tags of being "arrogant", " What does he think of himself?", "he has got a chip on his shoulder" over the years and drained away many possible friendships)

Good thing I have started working on these three and hopefully should be better off in the future in the social aspects.

But coming back to the point, if the programmers that adn37 had in mind when posing this question are the shy type with poor social skills, I think it is highly possible that they may have come across as being more arrogant than they really are. Just one possibility.

Other, than that, I think the incidence of arrogance among programmers is as likely or not, as in any other professions.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The wild programmer (Scriptus exemplarus aspergerii) is generally a shy creature when in its natural habitat. While some deviant boisterous specimens do exist, they are the oddity rather than the rule.

He is content with spending his life staring at rectangular pieces of backlit canvas, and occasionally bashing on rectangular pieces of polished material. Come to think of it, most of his activities revolve around rectangles: the rectangular nutrient clumps he tends to favor eating, the rectangular primitive communication device he always carries around, the beige or black boxes he is so attached to, even organizing his workspace into cubes."

I was just chewing my favorite _rectangle_ shaped cereal when I was reading this.

<comment><USER15> Rounded Rects

<comment><USER11> That's web 2.0, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have been called arrogant after I politely pointed out that people are driving 300mph towards a wall.

I have been called arrogant when after they crashed I politely pointed out that I warned them in time that they will crash and burn.

I have been called arrogant when I refused to clean up the mess for a 100th time - which could easily be prevented if people took a little bit of caution and tried to understand their own predicament.

I have also been called arrogant when I insisted that something has to be done YESTERDAY to systemically prevent results that have profound negative impacts.

Yup... I guess It has to be us.

<comment><USER17> Man this is even an arrogant way of writing a comment! And with a hero complex thrown in, too.

<comment><USER16> :)

What I find interesting tho - is how before you commented I kept getting upvoted. But then a steady stream of downwotes hit.

So to steer back from tangent - seems like perception of one's arrogance depends more on popular opinion than one's own merit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not really qualified to comment on programmers per se. But I am reminded of a personal anecdote:

In my mid-twenties, I had to have minor surgery on my face. My looks were very important to me. I thought I was quite beautiful and this was upsetting to me. I was concerned I would be disfigured but I really had to have the surgery. Trying to make my peace with it, I commented "I guess I can always have cosmetic surgery later." The surgeon was quite affronted and said "You won't need cosmetic surgery when I am done." The scar is nearly invisible -- less visible than the cyst that was removed. Even people who knew me before the surgery and know I had my face cut on have difficulty finding the scar.

I concluded that if you can bring it, maybe you aren't actually arrogant. Maybe you are just stating the facts, regardless of how it might sound to other people.

<comment><USER19> I agree with this. A lot of people probably consider me arrogant and stubborn. Honestly, I don't care though. Arrogance and stubborn are only flaws when you're _wrong_. On the other hand, being arrogant and stubborn about the truth is a virtue in my opinion.

<comment><USER18> I think there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. And if you know for a fact that you are right, it can be difficult to back down, even in the face of enormous social pressure. I'm not comfortable with saying that arrogance and stubbornness about the truth is a virtue, but I would say that someone who is sincerely devoted to pursuing the truth and sharing it is at high risk of being viewed as arrogant and stubborn.

I used to frequently get accused of being an egomaniac. More recently, I am fairly frequently accused of being a liar. I have concluded that, in my case, accusations of ego indicate people think it can be done, just not necessarily by me. But accusations that I am a liar mean they don't believe it can be done at all, by anyone. Since I have, in fact, accomplished what I claim to have done, I can't bring myself to claim otherwise merely to appease the critics. I do still wrestle with the possibility of whether or not I should simply shut up about it, but that brings up the dilemma that people who are sincerely interested in the information would also be denied. So far, I have been unable to reconcile myself to that route. I still have no good answers. But I wrestle with such questions a lot.

<comment><USER19> You're probably right, but saying that stubbornness can be good is my tactic for dealing with people who think I'm stubborn. It moves the conversation from what they think of me personally to whether I'm right or wrong.

In regards to what other people accuse you of, it's usually them projecting. In other words, the person who accused you of being an egomaniac could be avoiding fears that they themselves are being an egomaniac. Or the person who calls you a liar may secretly be afraid that they're not trustworthy.

Regardless, I've found experience to be the best teacher. I've learned not to be shy when it comes time to say "I told you so". It sucks, but you leave people the option to continue to underestimate you if you don't.

<comment><USER18> I think people called me egomaniacal in part because I am a woman. I strongly suspect I would be considered more humble if I were male. They call me a liar because they find my claims threatening. If I am right, then their doctor is wrong and that has ugly, uncomfortable implications when your life (or your child's life) is on the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've found that when I don't really care about what I'm working on, I can be the most diplomatic and humble programmer around. Tabs vs. spaces? Whatever. This language over that one? No strong opinion.

But in a scenario when what I'm working on is important to me, when I've totally bought-in and care about what's going to happen, I have a much harder time with being properly diplomatic.

Specifically, when I see someone driving us toward a brick wall, I get more and more aggressive as that wall approaches and I'm ignored. When and if that collision happens, I have a hard time not saying "I told you so", if only so people will take me more seriously _next time_ we're headed for a crash.

I once ruined a professional relationship and lost a job because (I believe) my manager couldn't stand the idea of hearing "I told you so" from me one more time.

And yes, it turns out I was right about that last thing as well.

I try to trust my comrades, but I also have to trust my instincts, and when they are at odds over high-stakes things the internal conflict becomes unbearable. Anyone have experience or advice on dealing with this?

</comment><comment><USER21> Why are so many teenagers arrogant? Perhaps it's the same with programmers and is just a phase, as suggested by this fascinating essay:

<http://www.johnbyrd.org/html/bosslevel/ProgrammerModes.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it really more severe in programming than the rest of society? Most of the programmers I've met have been quite nice, the only people I can recall meeting that I actually thought "I never want to meet them again!" have been a pair of young lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most people cannot tell the difference between arrogance and confidence. If you're confident you can't avoid people grumbling about how arrogant you are. And if you are arrogant you can't avoid women sleeping with you because you exude confidence. Although your pastor, guidance counselor and boy scout manuals will suggest the opposite, I've found it's better to err on the side of being slightly arrogant than humble. Just make sure you can back it up.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, a site more inane than Meta StackOverflow. I didn't think it was possible...

<comment><USER25> I think that thread now has an "Exhibit A" supporting evidence ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Depending on your interests and how much time you spend reading, learning and engaging you may end up being knowledgeable on a whole stack of subjects. When you interact with others without this same intensity your bound to come off arrogant.

For programmers many things are complementary, interests in Maths, Physics, Finance can easily stem from loving the numerical and mathematical aspects of programming. Effective programming also requires good communication skills and tends to require more formal written language to precisely explain more complex or abstract concepts that come with programming, this can lead to other interests to.

</comment><comment><USER27> A bit similar to Medical experience, a deep familiarity with computer systems that many fine opaque may come across quite arrogant. Picture someone struggling with a setting and you fly by, "hot key to x menu, third tab, look for option Q, set it to baz", just seems obvious (although it took an hour of goolge-time to discover) but as you rush off the dazed user is still struggling.

</comment><comment><USER28> Also from my experience there seems to a culture of negative motivation going on around engineers/programmers. I've seen a lot of it in open source projects and amongst engineers both professionally and in education. People berate and punish in order to make people understand what is wanted/needed, instead of engaging in teamwork and constructive feedback.

</comment><comment><USER29> Age and arrogance go in opposite directions.

We are young, smart and arrogant. We all are. We are smarter than everybody else. The older we grow, the wiser; we use our intelligence to gain knowledge and to balance our life and make the lives easier for those around us.

We become less arrogant and more humble as we grow older.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've noticed it countless times, from underground scenes' irc chans and meetups, to the office. Each case is different, that's the beauty of it.

At least, they will judge you on ideas, not on appearance. (edit: only if they consider you worth their time, which isn't easily earned.) So are they really to blame?

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. If they make a mistake, don't correct them. Answer them shortly after using the correct form.

2\. If you're right and they are wrong. Shut up and listen.

3\. If they make you feel uncomfortable, be bold.

4\. If they get emotional or unprofessional, steer the conversation into cold- blooded, calculated facts.

5\. When dealing with regular Joe, don't waste time. Extract needed information and get it over with.

6\. If it is a group conversation or meeting, only speak to make a point. Keep it short.

Perhaps this only applies to programmers dealing with other programmers and on occasion managers. One thing for sure, in my line of work, dealing with people is about extracting/exchanging information. Having a personality, being emotional is pointless. The goal is to get shit done. Leave your pride at the door.

However, in my personal life, I try not to be like a human vending machine of information.

</comment><comment><USER31> Because context switching from an interesting problem with hundreds of variables is incredible annoying..

</comment><comment><USER7> Overidentification with the cognitive apparatus combined with a propensity for binary thinking.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am not arrogant. I just have very little patience for incompetent stupidity!

</comment><comment><USER33> Any person who has rational thoughts in this diplomatic world would seem arrogant to some scale.

Example,

Rational:"The education system in India is seriously broken beyond repair. Anyone who succeeds, succeeds despite the system and not because of the system."

Diplomatic:"The education system of India is not really on the right track, but we have a real flow of potential. This is evident by the number of people that succeed"

<comment><USER34> So, how does the Diplomatic track then get to address the brokenness?

"But you said we were on the right track?"

<comment><USER33> The diplomats said we were on the right track, but it was just fancy words for we are totally fucked

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> programmers? ^_^</comment>


Build a Low-Cost, High-End Class-D Amplifier - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/8627 <comment><USER2> Class-D amps aren't a common project for the electronic enthusiast: although the theory of the Class-D amp is beautiful and simple, there are a lot of details in the construction that are hard to master. Using an evaluation board, as the author does, is a good answer to the problem.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The author just picked up a reference design kit. It's a whole different matter to design the circuit itself. Picking the right MOSFETs, gate driver IC, feedback system are crucial to great performance. I'm not an audiophile but I know a great Class D engineer/audiophile who's designed a system with a THD+N of 0.003% (The Zetex amplifier the author chose has a THD+N of just 0.1%). It's cool to hear the engineer talk about the "color of sound".

[Addendum] THD+N is a measure of the purity of the output i.e how well the amplified audio signal matches the smaller input audio signal that's fed into the amplifier (from a CD player for example). So the lower the number the better. Typically, the amplifier circuit itself adds some distortions and noise to the actual audio signal. For example, if you fed a pure 1V 1kHz sine signal into the amplifier, your output might be a 20V 1kHz sine wave but with additional signals mixed in. These signals will include inherent noise generated by the amplifier and harmonics generated by the switching nature of the Class-D amplifer (if you look at your audio signal at the output of the MOSFET switches and before the low pass filter, it will look like a square wave or more specifically, a PWM).

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to say I was a bit disappointed to find that the author "built" the amp by assembling evaluation boards in a case with a power supply.

$500+ is allot of money to pay to "do-it-yourself" when amps like the T-Amp produce similar power output and are available for 1/10th the cost.

</comment><comment><USER5> I bought this kit: <http://tubedepot.com/diy-k-8ls.html> a few weeks ago and planning to start building it this weekend, time permitting. It's got vacuum tubes and requires soldering. I want to run the audio out of my desktop Ubuntu machine through it.

Disclaimer: I do consulting work for TubeDepot.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's cute that this on the the front page of Hacker News. I think it's confusing that it was published in an IEEE publication, rather than a hobby mag. There was no engineering involved in this, nor any real audio knowledge. That's OK. Not everybody can be an expert at everything, but it was puzzling to see it in IEEE.

I think it's great that this guy is building something with his son, and I liked that he linked to Octopart.com, which is an amazing resource that I wish I had known about years ago.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wired had a nice little article on class D amps:

<http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/07/class-d-amplifi.html></comment>


Show HN: Vizontele – A crawler for TV series - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/halilozercan/vizontele <comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by youtube-dl, I decided to make a tool to crawl TV series from various Turkish sites(since I'm also Turkish). These websites are flooded with aggressive ads but they have great archives. Some of them burn subtitles to video, some provide separately. Vizontele CLI offers features like playing with VLC and fast download.

You can find a demo of this application on Heroku.

[https://vizontele.herokuapp.com/<show-name-exactly-in- imdb>/...](https://vizontele.herokuapp.com/<show-name-exactly-in- imdb>/<season-number>/<episode-number>)</comment>


Nim - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim

<comment><AUTHOR> I was rewatching Resnais' "L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad" and I had forgotten that this game figures. I looked it up and was surprised at the winning strategy.</comment>


First reports of a Firefox 3 vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://www.betanews.com/article/First_reports_of_a_Firefox_3_vulnerability/1213889433 <comment><USER2> I wonder if "about:robots" is involved.</comment>


Scouting An Abandoned Cold War Missile Base Hidden In The Adirondacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=4765

<comment><USER2> If you're in the SF bay area and enjoy this kind of stuff, there are lots of cool places to explore. Alameda NAS is especially good, but there are many others:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/sets/56935/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well its not really abandoned, after all someone built a house on top of it and have refurbished the living quarters with additional living space.

That aside, one of the things I miss was not buying a missile silo in Idaho when I had the chance. I don't believe any are on the market any more. My biggest concern was the pumping bill (it required constant pumping to keep it from flooding).

Hmm, actually the one in this article is for sale apparently for 1.7M: [http://www.silohome.com/missile_base_real_estate_investment_...](http://www.silohome.com/missile_base_real_estate_investment_opportunity.htm)

<comment><USER4> Just saw this one: <http://www.missilebases.com/denver>

It was flooded for years (isn't currently), and would be insanely expensive to refurbish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently its for sale for $750k: <http://www.missilebases.com/adironback> ($1.7m for everything).

<comment><USER6> Mmm, that entire silo could be refurbished as a datacenter with a living quater on top to host people who need to come to the center for work. It's in a quiet area and the snow could be use for cooling in the winter. Anyone has money to invest ? ;p

<comment><USER7> That's actually what this datacenter was purchased for, and the company's gone bellyup. <http://twitter.com/#!/AtlasFData>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> sort of reminded me of dexter's lab

</comment><comment><USER9> The 50's were one crazy (but stylish) time.

It is nothing short of a miracle we survived all this ... the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62 almost made certain we didn't.

Cool house, though.

I once lived in a Victorian shoe factory.</comment>


Why it is not possible to regulate robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/apr/02/why-it-is-not-possible-to-regulate-robots

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting article, but it doesn't actually prove its thesis.

The idea that robots are unregulated is untrue. In many industries, they're already regulated. I think it boils down to a great quote from one of the guys at 3DR (paraphrased): "It's a robot until it works perfectly every time, and then it's a tractor or a washing machine or an oven."

All of these things are regulated. General purpose robotics is as far away as general purpose AI; these have more in common and share a regulatory regime (which is to say, none at all).</comment>


Here's A Hosting Provider You'll Probably Want To Avoid - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/06/heres-a-hosting-provider-youll-probably-want-to-avoid/ <comment><USER3> If its RedBus, part of TelecityGroup ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TelecityGroup> ) in London Docklands then I already had them flagged as a provider to avoid.

An ex-colleague quit without notice and another ex-colleague and I had to recover the root passwords from servers at RedBus. The security staff had no record of us and, without confirmation from our boss, issued me with a security pass and allowed me to vouch for my ex-colleague. If we weren't genuine, we could have picked any of the weak locks on the third floor and taken any equipment without question.

</comment><comment><USER4> speaking of hosting services to avoid. Techcrunch's host (or former - <USER2> sure), MediaTemple, had a really overhyped service. Stay away from their Grid- Service plan. It's slow and it's down every other week.

</comment><comment><USER5> Now that's the kind of hardware problem you don't hear about every day. Yikes.

<comment><USER3> An ex-colleague from Sao Paulo had virtual hosting in his home city. Sao Paulo is very improverished and so the hosting facility had snipers on the roof to stop the locals stealing the servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just the thought of that happening makes me want to use cloud computing for everything..

</comment><comment><USER7> tc;dr</comment>


Start-Up Chile: $40k to Live There and Start a Company - <AUTHOR> http://ben.casnocha.com/2010/08/start-up-chile-40k-to-live-there-and-start-a-company.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a chilean entrepreneur and I'm looking for a cofounder. I'm solving graph and scheduling problems for some transport industry. BFS, DFS, Dijkstra, timetables, etc.

We could take advantage of this initiative and get those $40k.

I just updated my profile. ($2k a month is enough to not starve).

<comment><USER3> Enough not to starve?! I'm living in Santa Barbara, California, which is very expensive by the average American standard, and two people can get by here fairly comfortably with $2K.

What's the price of living like in Santiago? More importantly, if the real perk is money and lower cost of living... I could just move to Kansas and rent a room for $200 a month.

<comment><USER2> The real perk are those $40k. I'm living with $350 a month (cost living + food + rent). I'm including the living costs, rent, food, servers, travels, services, etc. in those $2k.

But you can make it with $350 anyway. I agree with Ben that isolation is the biggest downside of Chile and the lack of this kind of entrepreneurship (I mean Hacker News and Y Combinator style), but if you just need to focus on your first prototype I think it's a good deal.

EDIT: But if you are in the stage of looking for investment (Angel, VC, Y Combinator) and getting some press coverage it would be like a suicide.

<comment><USER4> Just curious, could you tell us what the following would cost in Santiago?

      - A 50 sq m apartment in a central location on the 2nd or higher floor
         (including electricity/water/garbage service)
      - An unlimited 1-month transportation pass
      - Groceries for 5 days for one person, assuming you're making breakfast/lunch/dinner
      - One beer in a bar.
      - A pair of Levi's 501 jeans
      - A taxi across town
      - Dinner in a decent restaurant
      - 1 month of high-speed internet access

<comment><USER2> Average costs:

\- Apartment: $320 - $420

\- Transportation cost: $100 - $180 (30 days)

\- Grocery: $20 - $45

\- Very good beer: $3,60

\- Jeans: $50 - $75

\- Taxi: $10

\- Dinner: $20

\- Internet access: $80 (Cable, Telephone, Internet)

<comment><USER5> What "very good" beers do you like in Chile?

I was there recently and found the beers rather disappointing. The wine, however, was superb!

<comment><USER2> Kunstmann (Torobayo) and Austral (Yagan).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone notice that 1) they are reimbursing you 90% of your startup budget rather than giving $40k cash money, and 2) you have to put in the other 10% which is 4k.

I don't know if you can just budget $44k as salary but I highly doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a contest basically, not a state-wide support program:

>The pilot program will select 25 entrepreneurs and offer them a 1-yr resident visa, a USD 40k grant to cover expenses for six months and local network and support.

</comment><comment><USER8> New post on Techcrunch about Chile "Chop-Shop Workers and Bootstrappers: Chile Really Wants You"

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/21/chop-shop-workers-and- boots...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/21/chop-shop-workers-and- bootstrappers-chile-really-wants-you/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't see the time frame for the program -- did anyone catch this?</comment>


Tutorialize.me is looking for beta partners - <AUTHOR>

We've been working on Tutorialize.me (https://tutorialize.me) for almost a year and are looking for a handful of beta sites to help us launch. We think the product is production-ready and pretty swell to use. We'll give you free service and in exchange we'd like your feedback and patience.<p>Tutorialize.me is a service that provides tutorials to your visitors to quickly explain your UI. It's a great way to push visitors down a funnel or educate first time users. Tutorials can be created with no technical knowledge in just a few minutes. <comment><USER2> Quick feedback:

\- Raise your prices or you won't survive the CAC reality

\- Invest in webdesign

\- Too much scrolling on your example tutorial

\- I'm not convinced it's a better solution that screencasts

Good luck with your startup!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for the feedback!</comment></comment>


"Users will only be able to view patents via HTTP. HTTPS will no longer work" - <AUTHOR> https://www.uspto.gov/blog/ebiz/ <comment><USER3> The USPTO databases have to be one of the most torturous services to their users in the whole of internet. The UI of both the patent and trademark search is archaic, but not in a HN way but in a _really_ bad way.

In patent search, there is no "search" box. Instead, the "quick search" forces you to specify two (and exactly two) text queries on the database columns with _obligatory_ boolean operation.[1] Even if you happen to find an interesting patent, good luck linking to it (which should be the _number one_ service they provide - GET individual patent documents). The page showing the patent document has a dozen cryptic query parameters in the URL, some of which relate to the _search query_ you used to find the patent! No "make shareable link" button to be seen, either.

And don't get me started on the trademark search, or Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS), as they like to call it.[2] When you navigate to the front page, you get a private session identifier - in your URL of course! And when you search for a trademark ("simple search" is intuitively known as "New User" here) and select a TM to view, you would be excused of thinking that the short URL in your browser address bar is the linkable URL of this entry. But no - it's just your session identifier along with the document's index in the results of your last search query.

When you leave the trademark site or just click "Logout" (since you're a kind person - they after all ask you "logout when you are done to release system resources allocated for you"), that URL is gone in the wind. If you shared a link to that trademark to your friend, they only get this very helpful page:

This search session has expired.  Please start a search session again by clicking on the TRADEMARK icon, if you wish to continue

So no way to link to individual TM registrations here either.

1: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search- bool.html](http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html)

2: [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/)

<comment><USER4> FWIW, you're often better off not searching, or looking at, patents. If you end up in a patent case, your liabilities will be much higher if they can sufficiently claim you knowingly infringed. Evidence that you searched for patents can weigh against you / your employer. _Even_ if you weren't associated with the infringing product itself.

<comment><USER5> This is largely outmoded advice in the wake of in re seagate. Simply having looked at a patent is not enough to create willful infringement.

<comment><USER5> I've just been informed that in re seagate got over turned last year. Bad news.

<comment><USER6> Did it? Got a link?

<comment><USER7> Just Google "In Re Seagate Overturned".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why on Earth could they possibly feel it necessary to do this? The United States Patent Office doesn't have a complex system of sub-domains or even an EV license, if money were the object then they could just go with Let's Encrypt (not to mention the current license continues until 2018 anyway).

The amount of computing power it takes to encrypt with SSL is minimal, especially if you use some of the newer systems like ECDSA and should not be of concern to a company like the Patent Office.

<comment><USER9> Well if you put on your tinfoil hat - maybe someone wants to track who's viewing which patents, which they can't do when it's encrypted. You're right, it doesn't make any sense to do this, so there must be an ulterior motive.

<comment><USER10> If that were the case and USPTO were in on the trick, why the need to drop HTTPS?

They'd have that data already, so could just share it directly.

<comment><USER11> This will allow ISPs to track who is viewing particular patents and when. That would be very lucrative data to sell in some circumstances. I doubt the USPTO would distribute a list of IP addresses that accessed a patent without some kind of due process.

<comment><USER12> I think this might be gutted out already though as big companies use proprietary databases which have enhanced data on the patents. Also google patents...

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I don't think it's actually their reason for the change. It's just one hypothetical consequence that the decision makers probably failed to consider. Still, the decision makers should be investigated for conflicts of interest because they've made a really fishy-smelling decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fun fact: HSTS

[https://securityheaders.io/?q=www.uspto.gov&followRedirects=...](https://securityheaders.io/?q=www.uspto.gov&followRedirects=on)

HSTS is 1 year at the time this comment is posted. They're in for some pain.

<comment><USER14> Removal of HTTPS is on [http://portal.uspto.gov/](http://portal.uspto.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/06/08/https-e...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/06/08/https- everywhere-government)

Has this been superseded by a new policy?

<comment><USER16> An excellent question. I tried looking up the current policies, but the "IT Policy Library" [1] is provided in an iframe that doesn't load for me ("The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.").

[1] [https://cio.gov/resources/it-policy- library/](https://cio.gov/resources/it-policy-library/)

<comment><USER17> The policy is still in effect, and its supporting home page is here: [https://https.cio.gov](https://https.cio.gov)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To be picky:

>Immediately after the maintenance, users will only be able to access Public PAIR through URLs beginning with HTTP, such as [http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair](http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair). Past URLs using HTTPS to access Public Pair, such as ...

A URL beginning with HTTPS _ALSO_ begins with HTTP

<comment><USER19> To be pickier, they never said that all URLs beginning with 'HTTP' would be enabled, merely that URLs beginning with something _other_ than HTTP would be _disabled_ , and also that URLs beginning with 'HTTPS' would be disabled. They never stated that HTTPS was part of the "doesn't begin with HTTP" group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They have a valid cert in use that only expires in 2019, and it's SHA256. But when you visit over HTTPS, this happens:

      HTTP/1.0 302 Found
      Location: http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair
      Server: BigIP

Why would they want to do this? Seems incredibly dumb to me, huge step backwards.

<comment><USER21> Does TLS termination cost extra for BigIP? Maybe their license expired or something?

<comment><USER22> TLS offload is usually extra on F5 BigIP

<comment><USER23> Does F5 do any special secret sauce that can't be replicated with an equally powerful set of hardware and a good HAProxy config? I know one of our network admins is continually complaining about how shitty their UI is...

<comment><USER24> F5 has some secret sauce to it but it's mostly performance related. They have a good chunk of hardware offloading, all the way up to the TLS layer.

I seem to remember even the entry license includes full TLS offloading so I doubt the poster above is correct that it is a cost issue.

As to if HAProxy can do the job, well, that depends. F5s are complex beasts and they can load balance application specific protocols that can be hard to find elsewhere, with the support contract that goes with it.

<comment><USER25> crypto offloading isn't hard, and can be done on the NIC if you want/need: [https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/10/03/server-encryption- fp...](https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/10/03/server-encryption-fpga-offload- boost/)

<comment><USER26> Can you show us how to configure that on a typical box?

<comment><USER25> Of course, but that is chargeable work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This would be interesting for patent research; you could legitimately say "I looked for a patent that already covers X but since you cannot guarantee the data was not modified in transit, I cannot be certain that I saw what was actually in the patents I reviewed".

<comment><USER28> Even if the courts allowed this to be a valid defense, it could only protect you from willful infringement. Not having knowledge of an existing patent does not stop the other party from claiming damages. If they can prove you knew that your work infringes the patent, they can sue you for treble damages from willful infringement.

<comment><USER29> They might allow it, but in civil litigation liability hangs upon the balance of probabilities rather than being beyond a reasonable doubt as in criminal trials. So a court might well allow it but that doesn't mean a jury would find it persuasive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone looking at creating an IPFS or BitTorrent mirror yet?

Edit: the PDF attachment URL's are very predictable, they're the number of the patent in a weird order + a page number, e.g.: [http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/10/292/096/2.pdf](http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/10/292/096/2.pdf)

Back of the envelope calculations say all PDF's should only take 1 - 6 TB's (assuming 100kb to 600kb in PDF's on average). Seriously, why hasn't anyone mirrored this?

<comment><USER31> Legal issues from mirroring something that's sort-of government property? I have no idea if it is or not, but I'd guess it's some sort of grey area.

<comment><USER30> As in, fear of extra-legal persecution or fear of legal prosecution?

Copyright generally doesn't stop people from copying what they want to copy. Do only BigCo's have a use for patents?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is surprising given that the .gov registrar is requiring HTTPS + HSTS for all new agency websites [1], but they specifically exclude existing domains or _renewals_.

I wonder if 18f can help at all, it seems agencies must contact 18f themselves.

1: [https://www.digitalgov.gov/2017/04/12/dotgov-domain- registra...](https://www.digitalgov.gov/2017/04/12/dotgov-domain-registration- program-to-provide-https-preloading-in-may/)

</comment><comment><USER33> That's regressive as fuck, it's like saying that cars will no longer be allowed, only horse carriages

<comment><USER34> The gap between those two technologies is larger than you suggest.

Horse carraiges: 1400 Automobiles: 1890

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Horses and cars were in use at the same time, just like HTTP and HTTPS; I'm not sure why their invention times are relevant?

<comment><USER34> Gunpowder and ICBMs were also in use at the same time

I'm claiming the technological backstepping is not nearly as drastic as the GP implies.

<comment><USER35> But you listed a completely irrelevant gap. The gap of relevance is the one between automobiles and now, not the one between carriages and automobiles. If automobiles were the transport technology of 1890 and carriages were the technology of 1889, then devolving to carriages puts us back to 1889, regardless of when horses were invented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there any way to find out who originally made the USPTO site? A contract company, government employees, etc?

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone here actually read patent filings?

I've been involved in writing a few and the result was useless drivel. Combined with the fact that there are penalties for willful infringement, I'm not sure what the benefit to reading patents in your field would be.

<comment><USER38> The patent system has evolved in a way that has practically inverted its original intents. You're exactly right, practitioners in a given field (ex: engineers in the tech industry) often avoid looking at patents, because no good can come of it. Most are too vague to be useful for licensing, but it opens one up to willful infringement claims later on.

<comment><USER39> Isn't failure to perform a search with due diligence an equal liability in US patent cases?

<comment><USER38> IANAL, but my understanding is no. Also, software patents tend to be so vague and generic that if you were to thoroughly search for anything that you might conceivably be infringing on, you'll spend a preposterous amount of time doing so, probably find not one single thing that directly applies to what you're doing, and will probably find a few thousand that don't apply but are generic enough that some lawyer might still haul you into court in east Texas, who can then claim willful infringement because of your search. I probably couldn't even write /bin/ls without stepping close to infringing on hundreds or thousands of vague, generic IP land mines planted long ago by unscrupulous lawyers who are just waiting with bated breath for someone to stumble across them so they can drag people to east Texas or (more likely) shake them down for settlement money before it goes to court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Prime example of a government function that could benefit from the open source community. If all this patent data were dumped today, in whatever format it's stored in, I guarantee we'd be seeing a bunch of cool ShowHNs within days and all of us would be better off for it.

<comment><USER41> Not sure if it's everything, but the USPTO provides this [http://patents.reedtech.com](http://patents.reedtech.com)

<comment><USER40> Does seem like I spoke too soon, though the above link is not everything. I downloaded it and it's a CSV file with three fields -- a patent ID (I think), a date, and some other number.

This however seems to be everything:

[https://pairbulkdata.uspto.gov/](https://pairbulkdata.uspto.gov/)

Looks like people tend to be satisfied with Google Patent as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is this a joke?

<comment><USER43> HTTPS Everywhere*

* except uspto.gov

Are there any other .gov sites doing this? Can anyone shed more light on this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Quite a tricky incident or a tendency ... One day, it will make you look at the problem more creatively. This is an increase in the risks of MITM - <USER2> information can be distorted or other manipulations with it are possible. But this is good as a whole. Will help create more sophisticated and safe technologies for viewing information in these networks.

Fortunately, there are quite a few workarounds and opportunities that minimize all the associated risks ...

</comment><comment><USER45> Also, at the bottom of the page "This page is owned by Service Desk." What does that mean?

And it's legal to publish a .GOV site using Drupal?

<comment><USER46> Drupal is all over government sites. So is Wordpress. Do you expect them to be using closed source CMSs or something? (I get that Drupal is insecure, but no, it's not "illegal" to use Drupal...)

<comment><USER47> "Drupal is insecure", why?

<comment><USER33> [https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2387/Drupal- Drupal.html?v...](https://www.cvedetails.com/product/2387/Drupal- Drupal.html?vendor_id=1367)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I bet 10$ that "errors" were reported by people who still run iexplore on Windows XD which doesn't support modern https.

</comment><comment><USER49> As far as I know, this is illegal because of this:

[https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/06/08/https-e...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/06/08/https- everywhere-government)

Does anyone have any experience with their support system? On Monday I will be calling them in an attempt to understand why they are exempt from the HTTPS Everywhere federal directive.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't use the word "illegal" \- it's a directive of OMB (the White House's management and budget office), not a law or a regulation or an executive order. The only true enforcers are OMB themselves.

But to answer your other question, as part of the Department of Commerce, a "CFO Act" agency, USPTO would not be exempt.

<comment><USER49> Thank you for clearing that up. Are you aware of what kind of consequences might be incurred at the expense of disobeying the OMB as a government entity?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> claimparse.com at least shows recent patents that have issued.

</comment><comment><USER51> There has been a XSS vulnerability in the USPTO site since 2008 I reported. It still worked in 2014. Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it.

<comment><USER52> > Meatspinned quite a few coworkers using it.

Don't do this.

<comment><USER53> Please provide rationale showing that the associated risks outweigh the immense fun of "meatspinning" coworkers.

"Don't do this" is probably not very convincing.

<comment><USER54> [https://it.slashdot.org/story/08/06/18/2213232/man-fired- whe...](https://it.slashdot.org/story/08/06/18/2213232/man-fired-when-laptop- malware-downloaded-porn)

Don't be the person that gets someone fired, arrested, jailed, and in lifetime legal trouble because some asshole thought it would be hilarious to display porn on their computer at work.

(Yes, I'm equating "meatspinning" to malware. Argue if you like about that, but the main point stands: If you meatspin someone, you're taking a chance of ruining their entire life. Don't be That Guy.)

<comment><USER55> > Don't be the person that gets someone fired, arrested, jailed, and in > lifetime legal trouble because some asshole thought it would be hilarious to > display porn on their computer at work.

Not to defend "meatspinning" (first time I've heard the term), but don't you think the real problem here is that people can be fired/jailed/etc without due process is the problem here? This was just some drive by malware, imagine what you could do to someone's life if you intentionally targeted someone?

<comment><USER56> Also worth adding that it was kiddie pr0n that got the guy fired in parent's story. Quite a lot of people tend to overreact to this for either CYA or moral high horse reasons.

If he was fired for meatspin or lemonparty, he would publicly accuse them of homophobia on twitter and things would be different ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> claimparse.com

</comment><comment><USER57> The answer to just about every question posed on this thread is the same: "it's the government!"

</comment><comment><USER58> it seems like most of the pro https arguments are asserting the right to anonymous public patent inspection. it is fundamentally impossible for the uspto to provide this access* (free speech traps ahead). if you don't want data about access patterns tracked the burden is on the consumer not the provider for public resources

*[https://thestack.com/security/2017/04/12/netflix-found-to-le...](https://thestack.com/security/2017/04/12/netflix-found-to-leak-information-on-https-protected-videos/)

<comment><USER59> Never mind that HTTP can easily be man in the middled and tampered with and I have no way to ensure I am communicating to who I think I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > beginning at 12:01 a.m., Friday, April 21 and ending at 2 a.m., Friday, > April 21 ET.

<comment><USER61> > Immediately after the maintenance, users will only be able to access Public > PAIR through URLs beginning with HTTP, such as > [http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair](http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair). > Past URLs using HTTPS to access Public Pair, such as > [https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair](https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair), > will no longer work.

So it seems that the maintenance will turn of HTTPS, not that it's unavailable during the maintenance.</comment></comment>