The shutdown of library.nu - <AUTHOR> http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings-reloaded/2012/02/the-shutdown-of-library-nu/ <comment><USER3> We here in Iran have an extra problem. I'll explain:

Apple's App store, does not work in Iran, you cannot download anything from the app store (you get the famous 1009 error). But many people like myself have iPhones and iPads. Is it okay to pirate iOS apps?

Mathwork's website will not load if you try to access it from an IP address form Iran. Neither they sell their widely used software (Matlab) in academics to Iranians. I wonder am I guilty to pirate Matlab?

Also many other services including Paypal, Google's Android Market and Amazon are the same.

I wonder what if I want to read the famous `Art of Computer Programming`? Am I guilty if I pirate it?

<comment> muuh-gnu > I wonder am I guilty to pirate Matlab?

If you otherwise support the concept of intellectual property, you are. If you believe that Matlab is MathWorks "property", MathWorks is not obliged to sell you their property, and if you take what you believe is their property against their will, you are guilty. If you dont believe in intellectual property, then everything is allright.

<comment><USER4> The world does not work like that; it's not easy to judge other people's actions unless you step into their shoes.

I guess if it took you 45 minutes just to send an email, or 3 days to download Apple's new OS to develop/test on (Mountain Lion - around 4GB), then you wouldn't see the piracy issue (in countries that there are absolutely no alternatives) black and white anymore.

<comment> muuh-gnu I am nut "judging" him. He didnt give enough information to answer his question. My answer was that whether he should feel guilty or not depends on whether he supports intellectual property or not. I, for one, do not support the concept of intellectual property at all. If you ask me, copying Matlab is perfectly OK.

But if he does support intellectual property, then he should accept the fact that MathWorks doesnt want to sell to him because he is an Iranian. He can not both support intellectual property _and_ simply make the excuse to steal because they refuse to sell. If that worked, he could also argue that it is ok to pirate because they refuse to sell for $5.

<comment><USER4> Actually it was clear that your post was not _accusational_ , but rather a genuine question. I didn't mean to respond with a bad tone... sorry about that.

If MathWorks didn't want to sell something to me (because they don't like the looks of roots of me), I wouldn't buy it even if my life depended on it (an ego thing) – the problem here is that MathWorks, Google, Apple, Amazon and other companies _want_ to sell to me (it's their job, and I don't think they are any more racist than the average American!), but their it's government that prevents them.

This is where you and I differ slightly: I support MathWork's IP, but at the same time I know that they can't sell to me _only_ because of US sanctions. I copy Matlab (not really - I use Mathematica) and I see no moral dilemma here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article points out the valid complaint from people who do not have access to legitimate ways of obtaining books/information, and makes a point of saying he does not endorse the way library.nu operated.

I'd disagree. We're presented with a technology which is slowly replacing the institutions we take for granted and made a great improvement on society. I'm thinking about both libraries and radio.

As Neil Young said, piracy is the new radio. Except that it is better and easier to access. And library.nu functioned as my library, except that it is better and easier to access.

If the music I was interested overlapped with the mainstream, then radio would probably be good, and if the library had the technical books I like, then that would too. Alas, they don't, and both internet and library.nu are (latter: were) my substitutions. I've downloaded all the books I've purchased after graduating a year ago (which is around 5). Even after owning a book, I've downloaded the same at work and shown it to a colleague, who also ended up purchasing it. When I look for a book on a topic of interest, I search amazon, read a few reviews, then download it on library.nu. The decision to buy it is done after going through the book and see if I like how the author writes, how the example code is, and especially how it covers my specific topic, before buying it. Usually, if it is a broad topic, I do this for about 3-5 books, and decide on which one to buy.

I'm going to go further than the author, and endorse library.nu for all its worth. Both as a library and for those who cannot afford, or don't have access. As for the freeloaders, or more precisely the _actual_ losses: I believe they are small enough that it outweighs the cost. And honestly, if they _didn't_ , the marked would adapt.

<comment><USER6> _The decision to buy it is done after going through the book and see if I like how the author writes, how the example code is, and especially how it covers my specific topic, before buying it_

You're basically saying you'd walk in to a restaurant, have a bite of every dish and then maybe decide to pay for it.

 _I do this for about 3-5 books, and decide on which one to buy._

Now you walk into three restaurants, eat a bit at every one of them and then decide to pay for the one you liked the most.

I agree with the original article and I think there are times where piracy is valid, but let's not think that a valid solution is to pay for what we think we should pay and nothing else.

<comment><USER7> No. What he's saying is that he'd want to listen to a band on the radio or from a friend before maybe buying their album. Which is completely reasonable.

Drawing parallels between physical property or services and information can be misleading--the real issue with the restaurant example is the restaurant's loss in both time and opportunity cost. Since copies of information are not naturally scarce, this is not an issue. It's really more like he looked at the food and cooked the same meal at home before coming to the restaurant and paying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can we just agree that it's wrong to do market segmentation for electronic goods based on geographic location? It's an anachronistic model that has no justification other than for padding BigCo's(tm) profit margins.

If the big media companies actually cared about piracy they would abandon this system and see piracy drop significantly overnight. Then again I think we all know that's just an excuse to try and hang on to the overinflated profits they're accustomed to for just a little bit longer.

<comment><USER9> With a 8x difference in wages [1] the price of the book in India should surely be $4 if it is $32 in the U.S. Are suggesting it should be $4 everywhere? which means it's _still_ cheaper in the U.S. compared to salaries.

[1] see top item on (Sr. Software Engineer...): <http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Country=India/Salary> and [http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Country=United_States/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Country=United_States/Salary)

<comment> guard-of-terra 1) Market can figure it out. At which price would you gross more money? I guess the answer would be something like $10. Books are overpriced anyway in the USA, and there's no reason to pay $30 for an ebook.

2) You can still make promo prices for different regions, but the service should be available everywhere.

<comment><USER9> TBH, $30 and not sell it in India due to the risk of cheap imports. At $10 it's not going to sell 3x as many as at $30 in the U.S.

<comment> guard-of-terra Okay, but then again: Making conscious choice to not sell in India and then bitching about piracy in India is immoral.

You can still set the price to $30 but you have to actually sell worldwide to have any moral grounds against worldwide piracy.

<comment><USER10> UK estimated total of University students: just under 2 million (BBC figures, 2009) and shrinking slowly

India estimated total of University students (or at least places): just over 12 million, government policy to increase by factor 2 over by 2025 (BBC 2011 article)

I think you could discount heavily to something close to local wage rates and still make a handsome profit in India, especially with electronic distribution reducing the distribution costs.

Does anyone else remember/use the Indian editions? I remember Tata/McGraw Hill having a series of Indian printed editions of popular texts. Local production and typesetting, lower price. Some of them even made it to the UK in the 1980s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IP laws exist to _promote_ publication, not reduce it. If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP?

Oh, wait, there's an international treaties, and pro-copyright UN organization administering it. That UN can't ban the execution of children, but can enforce 70 years plus life of the author says a lot about the power of vested interests.

<comment><USER12> Agree with your sentiment but not the underling logic.

 _If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP_

Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use, e.g. in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me. On the other end if Merck or Pfizer were to get pissed off at say Libya and deny its people certain drugs I would support suspending their property rights.

I agree that this situation is ridiculous and that the black market is often a solid incentive for legislators to re-consider ridiculous regulation. But the suspension of property rights is something that should be thought out meticulously before implementation; in this case it fits into the greater debate on the nature of IP as a "true" property.

 _Pro-copyright UN organization administering it_

I don't think the UN was actively involved in any of these decisions nor overtly in their enforcement _any more than it is in other issues_ \- the author was simply quoting UN statutes to underline how this is an evolving debate.

<comment><USER13> > Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use

IP rights are not property rights. They are a temporary monopoly enacted by society as a means for more works to enter the public sphere. If the copyright holders don't exploit their works in a certain country, the bargain is not upheld.

And some IP rights _do_ vaporize automatically due to lack of use, namely trademarks.

> in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after > illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me.

To me it seems right - property is a scarce resource. If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time, then why is it in the interest of society to acknowledge that property claim? But it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, exactly because property is a scarce resource - <USER2> arguments that apply to property largely don't apply to copyright.

<comment><USER14> "If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time"

Then you get into different people having different ideas of what it means to "use" something.

A person buys a tract of land and doesn't develop it, because she thinks it should be a nature reserve. Another person wants to build a golf course there. Should the second person be able to just waltz in and build a golf course, because the land isn't being "used"?

Also, in the case of IP, a piece of IP can be "in use" without being publicly available yet. Consider a book being turned into a movie. That can take years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I completely agree.

I would gladly pay $100 for K&R's C Programming Language, but sadly I can't do that (It's against US export laws to sell to me). Yesterday I spent almost an hour trying to find an _offset_ copy of Dragon Book (Compilers), but I couldn't find it (there are none), so I have to bury myself in ebooks on my iPad (which is not a great experience).

<comment><USER15> _It's against US export laws to sell to me_

Really? How? why?

<comment><USER16> Because they are in Iran

<comment><USER4> yep.

A few months ago I wanted to buy a Mac app (that wasn't available through Mac App Store). Obviously I couldn't buy it with credit card, so I offered the developer $15 iTunes gift credit, but he was afraid to do business with me (it is illegal, he said) :)

Also, Google Code & SourceForge block Iranian IPs, so it's hard even to _download_ free stuff!

<comment><USER17> wow! Not being able to _buy_ K&R is tough.

If I may ask, what is the software/hacking scene in Iran really like? Do most computers use Linux? (And if trading with Iran is illegal how would you buy an Apple or Dell machine anyway?). Can you have gmail/blogger/twitter accounts or are US companies forbidden from giving you free accounts? What languages are popular? Is there a large internal market for software?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER4> > _what is the software/hacking scene in Iran really like?_

For indie developers and those who want to use cutting edge technologies (think of a web service created on Node.js + MongoDB), pretty grim. People use those kind of services, but it's hard to make a living making them (because of lack of widespread payment systems).

But the government invests heavily on software technologies (security/blocking/MITMing!), and all corporations/big businesses have to rely on home-made _solutions_ (banks, hospitals, universities) Those areas are usually dominated by Microsoft technologies (.Net and SQL Server).

> _Do most computers use Linux?_

Absolutely no. It's easy to crack Windows, Photoshop and Microsoft Word! And many (including myself) don't consider it unethical, as you can't buy them in any other way (I buy a lot through Mac/iTunes App Store, but mainly to support fellow developers and not because I consider it more ethical for my situation).

> _And if trading with Iran is illegal how would you buy an Apple or Dell > machine anyway?_

I think it's called _black market_ (though I'm not sure if it applies to our situation or not). What I mean is that a guy buys 25 MacBooks in Hong Kong and ships them to Iran (they're all registered under his name) and then sells them _independently_ of Apple, usually with a tasty premium (Apple products are really popular, but also more expensive than other brands.

> _Can you have gmail/blogger/twitter accounts or are US companies forbidden > from giving you free accounts?_

You usually can use them, but you can't register from Iran (you have to choose another country). But in case of most social things it doesn't matter, because they are blocked by the government anyway. Stuff like sf.net, code.google.com, and like of Oracle are more problematic; as they block Iranian IPs.

> _What languages are popular?_

C#, ASP.Net, PHP, Java (for businesses). Hackers and hobbyists use whatever they feel like.

> _Is there a large internal market for software?_

For end users? No. But for corporations and businesses (those I mentioned above), I don't think it's different than other places.

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I totally agree with the comment on the OP's blog: "books have basically been my singular source of investment, more because of the site than in spite of it." I can't seem to remember how many books I've purchased after downloading them from library.nu. Being in India, library.nu was a gem when a substantial number of books aren't available at Rupee prices.

<comment><USER19> I also bought the books which I would never had I not had library.nu. Don't tell me about the preview in Amazon, for these particular books I had to see more other pages than "legally" available to make a decision.

I really mourn the loss of library.nu

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I buy a lot of books in english. Currently I live in South America. Last book I bought from Amazon-US (Thinking Fast and Slow) _took 2 months to arrive_.

I love _ebooks_ but those cost almost the same as hardcopy and you _lose the right to lend or sell_. Also, the quality of the content is usually very inferior. Recently I did ebook management software so I know the ins and outs.

The _temptation to use unpaid electronic copies_ is bigger than ever. Specially after noting the higher _management on publishing businesses is usually in the 55+ age range_ and repeat how they only want to keep the status quo until they retire.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was a big fan of library.nu. As a student in Mexico, you just cannot get some of the books that were available in there, so it was incredibly useful. I no longer used the site so much, but I'm still grateful that this site was live when I went to university. It kind of marvels me how artificial are the limits that humans put on knowledge that can be useful to others, I hope we can solve this problem someday.

<comment><USER22> Not completely true. It is trivial to buy dead-tree books from Amazon.com (US) and send them to Mexico (books do not pay taxes when entering Mexico). I have done it for more than 10 years.

The real problem is the cost. Imagine that, if people in the USA, earning it US dollars think that a text-book ([http://www.amazon.com/Marketing- Management-14th-Philip-Kotle...](http://www.amazon.com/Marketing- Management-14th-Philip-Kotler/dp/0132102927/ref=pd_sim_b_1)) costing USDd$168.72 is crazy. Imagine what people in Mexico (where the average _yearly_ income is about USD$7,300) , India, China or other development countries think.

Quite simply, a lot of the people who pirate books are not a market for the publishers simply because it is impossible to pay.

Are they entitled to get such knowledge for free? legally, they are not. Morally... it is subjective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whenever anyone talks about copyright and piracy they seem to include a sop "Obviously I'm not against piracy and don't support breaking the law". Why do they always do that.

I'm in favour of piracy when it's for the greater good.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps because if they don't, the discussion tends to gravitate towards "you are breaking the law if you are pirating", instead of focusing on the main point they are trying to make.

<comment><USER15> I presume that, were they to not say it, that someone could accuse them of condoning piracy and breaking the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This hits closer to home than I thought it would.

Let's leave aside the fact library.nu was illegal under current laws, but for many books it was the only reasonable option to obtain it.

library.nu offered extreme convenience for those outside of US especially in the education sector.

When I lived in US, it was quite inexpensive to order physical books. I used to order older editions of university books for a few bucks each and shipping was very inexpensive (think Amazon Prime now).

Now in Europe it is quite hard to bargain shop for books. Perhaps anyone have any tips?

Shopping on Amazon is physically painful, when you see how much you end up paying for extra costs.

Then there is the matter of buying experience for e-books.

Buying e-books on O'Reilly feels the best out of all current e-book sellers, you actually feel like an owner of the e-book(even though of course you really are not).

Still the ideal would be that e-books would be inexpensive to purchase and that buying a physical book would qualify one for e-book version.

<comment><USER25>
        > Shopping on Amazon is physically painful, when you
        > see how much you end up paying for extra costs.

That's not my experience. I recently bought a stack of ancient machine code and assembly books and paid 2p for some, with two pounds of shipping on top of that. The books are practically free to me.

        > Buying e-books on O'Reilly feels the best out of all
        > current e-book sellers

Nostarch are pretty good. You can go in and download your books when you like from them. If a book you already own subsequently gets a new electronic format release, they open up access to that to you automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whenever I read anything about piracy I often think of Gabe Newell's ubiquitous speech which underlines one single thing: Piracy is a service problem. And books are not an exception.

<comment><USER15> It is a service problem with a service, not legal, not technical, solution

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems to me that, especially with India, there's a big question which nobody is asking. When foreign companies can't or won't supply the market at a suitable price, where is the local replacement? Why isn't this being fixed by local competition? India outpopulates the US four to one - is it credible that Indian engineers and publishers are somehow incapable of producing output that is to the same, or better, standard as that from the US at a price more commensurate with the local market?

<comment><USER28> We do have something called "Indian Low Price Edition" [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22indian+subcontinent%22+%22low+pr...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22indian+subcontinent%22+%22low+price+edition%22) but not all titles are available for whatever reason. Mostly, these are books used as texts in schools & colleges.

Another note: An LPE of a book that is available for INR ~500 would cost anywhere from INR ~4000 to ~6000 if the original publication is ordered. Generally the original is not stocked so there is a wait period of ~5 weeks from placing the order.

<comment><USER27> Sure, but that's imported content again. It's reliant on the foreign publishers deigning to think it worthwhile. Is the existence of LPEs enough to prevent the growth of a market in indigenous content?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like there's an opportunity for some kind of middle ground.

Books are emotive. Why not embrace the community's desire to make titles available in different markets, but manage it in such a way that the publisher is involved in the process and has ultimate approval over a digitized version? Active community members get books for free based on the degree of their participation. Everyone else gets to buy designated "community editions" of titles with a proper cut going back to the copyright owner. The community platform takes enough money to keep itself ticking over, including a cut for partner services that make it possible to sell in hard-to-reach global markets.

Sounds crazy, perhaps, but only because publishers still want a one-way relationship. A deep participative relationship with their global community of readers would only be a good thing. And it's less crazy for the publishers / authors than not making any money from these markets at all.

<comment><USER30> I really think (and hope) open source textbooks are going to solve this. While it might be difficult for OS books to catch on in places where there are market pressures from textbook publishers, in the countries this post mentions where the information just isn't available, there's going to be very little pushback/meddling. I'm really excited to see what this open source initiatives can do outside the US.

You might be right about publishers taking a smaller cut and thinking it's better than nothing- but my guess is that the publishers would rather get no cut (while shutting down anyone who monetizes by pirating their content) than let the information be available in places that can't afford it at their inflated prices (and for other reasons, I'm sure - not trying to oversimplify the complexities of this market). Publishers are already mad enough that they don't get their cut everytime Amazon sells a used version of their textbooks. But this is part of what Apple will solve in their textbook initiatives.

<comment><USER28> Which is why I really like what Zed Shaw is doing and I hope his series extends to "Learning X The Hard Way", where 'X' can be anything. <http://learncodethehardway.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> List of alternatives to library.nu (see first comment):

[http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/hrgmv/tracker_with...](http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/hrgmv/tracker_with_pdfsebooks_of_college_textbooks/c1xrq44)

</comment><comment><USER32> Same pain, there is always times that I wanted to buy an old book from amazon, but told me it is only available in US. Then I always turn to library.nu for help. Sad it is gone.

The only complaint I have about copyright protection is they should try to make their work accessible. Otherwise, there will be another library.nu given time.

</comment><comment><USER33> <http://gen.lib.rus.ec/> <http://en.bookfi.org/> <http://pastebin.com/LTZfu2DX></comment>


Google Responds To PayPal Lawsuit: People Have The Right To Seek Better Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/27/google-responds-paypal-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> Google has issued a pretty tepid statement to what appears to be a highly problematic situation.

In its complaint ([http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC...](http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC.pdf)), PayPal alleges in meticulous detail how its chief negotiator over some two years on a major deal with Google for mobile payments on Android brought the deal between the companies to within a hair of signing and then, at the end of the process, did a series of interviews with Google to take a position working on its mobile-payment system. Not only was this person the chief negotiator on that deal, he was also PayPal's senior executive in charge of this area for his employer. On the eve of the anticipated signing (October 31, 2010) after two years of negotiations, Google told PayPal it wanted a restructuring the deal even while it was giving the negotiator a job offer. The negotiator accepted the offer, notified PayPal and was confronted about how this step was seriously problematic from a legal standpoint. He then changed his mind and told Google no. The parties once again revved up the deal and got to a signing stage for the second time by February, 2011. At that point, Google changed its CEO and, with Larry Page back in that role, Google killed the deal and hired the PayPal executive to lead its work in the mobile-payment area.

In the midst of all this, you also have a second PayPal employee who had been hired by Google in 2009 and was under a legal restriction not to solicit PayPal employees for a period of one year. With that restriction still in effect (or so PayPal alleges), she was actively soliciting not only the senior PayPal executive mentioned above but (according to the allegations of the complaint), a series of other PayPal employees who were part of the mobile- payments group.

It is way too early to tell what happened here, but here are a few thoughts:

1\. The complaint is incredibly detailed, with much specific evidence of communications and events that do not look good for Google or the individuals sued. This level of detail is _highly_ unusual for a complaint of this type and suggests to me that this is a very serious case, well-prepared and meticulous (and, of course, when the lead attorney is named G. Hopkins Guy III, as he is, you just know you are in trouble).

2\. Employees owe a fiduciary duty to their employers to act in the best interest of the company and playing both sides of the fence at the end of a major negotiation is almost certain to raise serious issues about whether such duties were breached. This is possibly an even more serious problem here than is the trade secrets case.

3\. California does not recognize the "inevitable disclosure" doctrine by which a former employee can be enjoined from taking a position on grounds that it will be "inevitable" that he would need to disclose important trade secrets in order to perform his duties. That said, any such case involves highly problematic issues and it would not take much evidence for a court to look at the whole picture and say, "what the hell is going on here." Google may be treading on thin ice here.

4\. This sort of conduct usually evidences a cynical power play by a major company along "might makes right" grounds. Here, though, it is hard to believe that Google would be that cynical. Nor is PayPal a small company without resources. This part remains puzzling.

5\. The real test will come if, as I assume, PayPal seeks to get a preliminary injunction blocking Google from using its mobile-payment technology because it allegedly based on a misappropriation of PayPal's trade secrets. This is where the evidence on both sides will come out and it will be much clearer whether Google did in fact commit wrongs as alleged. Until then, it really is hard to tell.

<comment><USER3> Well stated. as always, just a question is there any potentially criminal actions here either on the part of Google or the Paypal/Google Exec?

<comment><USER2> There is federal law that defines theft of trade secrets as a crime.

The federal Espionage Act of 1996 provides: "Whoever, with intent to convert a trade secret, that is related to or included in a product that is produced for . . . interstate . . . commerce, to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner thereof, and intending or knowing that the offense will, injure any owner of that trade secret, knowingly . . . steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception obtains such information . . . shall . . . be fined under this title [i.e., up to $5 million] or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both."

That said, it would be highly unusual for the authorities to attempt to prove a criminal violation in this sort of case. I think the overwhelming odds are that it will be treated as a purely civil case.

<comment><USER4> Is there any sort of time frame attached to something like this? Perhaps something along the lines of a non-complete agreement? If you worked for someone like PayPal, could you never again work for a company that has a payment service or does this only come into play if you're hired to help -build- a payment service?

<comment><USER2> In general, every employee in California may freely work for a competitor after leaving a job and may do so right away.

 _But_ \- in doing so, he has no right to pilfer his former employer's trade secrets and either use or disclose them in the new position. An employee can use his general skills and expertise freely in any position, as these are not tied to misuse of confidential, proprietary information. The tension lies between your right to work freely using your skills and restrictions placed on you to the extent you learn confidential things in your old position.

Thus, the general answer to your question is that, yes, you can work for another company doing a payment service even if you have worked for PayPal, but you can't use or disclose trade secrets from your former employer in your subsequent job. Do gray areas come up in such situations? All the time. Usually, they don't lead to lawsuits. In extreme cases, they do; in abusive cases, they also do, though these are not justified (i.e., where a former employer wants to chase and punish an employee just for having left employment). In the vast majority of cases in California, nothing happens and the former employee freely moves on - at times immediately, at other times after some delay. (Results may vary in other states where the law may be different and particularly where non-competes are enforced).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the detailed explanation. I had forgot we were talking about California where non-competes are not really enforced (from what I've heard). I can definitely see how there are some grey areas, but it's good to know that generally the employee is free to move on to other employment in the same field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I have read in the lawsuit, PayPal doesn't seem to be complaining that people have the right to seek better jobs, in fact that statement from Google comes across extremely childish. Their argument is that Bedier used trade secrets from PayPal to create Google Wallet, and used his knowledge of secret and upcoming PayPal products to sell it to the retailers (comparing an unfinished PayPal product to the finished Google Wallet).

<comment><USER6> That just doesn't sound very convincing. If PayPal had an unfinished Wallet product before Google even started, what happened to PayPal's product? Did PayPal shelve it and now it's taking out its frustration on Google?

EDIT: Wow, lots of down votes just for asking a question?

<comment><USER7> In America we believe ideas are property, and that companies can call dibs on ideas to bully people who use this idea later. It's a really good idea, and also why we need to censor the internet so that our property isn't stolen.

<comment><USER8> This sounds like kind of a sarcastic comment, which it probably is, so I'll just point out that I don't think they're using patent or copyright law here to sue Google, but rather the domain of trade secret law, which SHOULD be there - not just to protect large companies, but smaller ones as well.

If I come up with a really great idea, and we're bringing it to market, then you decide you don't like me and run off to a potential competitor with larger resources to get it to market sooner (and assuming we have non-compete or NDA clauses in our mutual contract), I absolutely have a right to sue you and your new employer.

This is well established and I don't know why there is such a fuss about it - its pretty black and white issue when it comes to ethics and morals, rather than the patent/copyright issue which most certainly has its grey areas.

<comment><USER9> > _This is well established and I don't know why there is such a fuss about it > - its pretty black and white issue when it comes to ethics and morals [...]_

I disagree, it's not a [necessary] natural conclusion based on logic axioms.

Aside from that consider this possible opposition: Patents are a contract of disclosure in return for a time-limited monopoly. I can well imagine that patents are a greater benefit to a society than industrial secrets; the knowledge is released in to the public domain and can be built on. Thus industrial secrets create a detriment, they hide knowledge that the society has spent resources on discovering (creating?).

Having briefly thought on this matter I think that forcing people to use patents to protect their IP instead of shackling inventors is probably the greater good. In any case presenting it as a done deal that needs no discussion is wrong IMO.

One could look at this from a Kantian perspective - if everyone hides their industrial/technological progress is that better or worse than everyone disclosing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Native Google products are far and few between. They are the Mountain View Raiders. Sometimes they buy a company, other times they buy the developers. For example even Chrome was created by ex FireFox developers. It's just that Mozilla is too weak and too dependent on Google's revenue to put up a fight.

In the payment business it's often the relationship with the merchants and processors, understanding how they work is even more important than the code or even the hardware. People are key in that business.

Forget about the industrial espionage, just hire a person who knows all the trade secrets. If PayPal and Google were a country there would be dead bodies on the streets of San Francisco.

<comment><USER11> It's not just Blake Ross and Chrome - Apple's Safari/WebKit team is led by Firefox co-creator David Hyatt. And long-time IE platform architect Chris Wilson left Microsoft to work on web platform stuff for the Google TV team...

(BCM43 is right that none of us at Mozilla have any reason to complain about ex-Mozillians and others helping to increase competition on the web.)

<comment><USER12> FYI, it's the other Firefox guy, Ben Goodger, who now leads the Chrome team at Google[1]. Blake Ross is apparently doing things unrelated to browser development, at Facebook[2].

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goodger>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found Google's response humorous in light of the fairly draconian (and according to my attorney unenforcable) employment agreement they ask you to sign when you go to work there. But that is all part of the 'game' here.

If you read this as Paypal negotiating to get some return out of the two years they paid their employees to negotiate a deal (which didn't close) it makes more sense. Lets say for the sake of argument that they pay them 200K/yr ($300K if you include benefits) and that they each vested 50K shares of Ebay stock, so maybe a $15/share gain on the stock over 2 years. That is $600K + $1.5M of 'cost' for the two execs ($2.1M) so settle out of court for $6M pay 2M to the lawyers and net $4M for the 'effort'.

Really sounds more like positioning to be paid off rather than a serious complaint.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess it's to the point that what is in your head is no longer yours. Never had to deal with those kinds of issues personally but if someone told me I couldn't get another job somewhere else for a few years to keep what's in my head safe I'd be baffled.

<comment><USER15> I'm still baffled that I agreed to exactly those terms when I hired on where I'm at now (3 years non-compete, including all competitors, vendors, and customers (which is essentially everyone)). But the job prospects were weak, especially for someone with no legit programming experience and a hardware- focused degree (and no hardware firms were interested). It's our stance that since we "train" folks from nothing, if it's in your head we probably put it there.

Don't know that we've ever enforced such an agreement, but it is in ink just in case it's needed.

<comment><USER16> Disclaimer: This assumes you're in the US...if not I have no idea how it might apply in other countries.

Depending on where you live it might not even be enforceable. Even large companies will put employee agreements in front of you that they KNOW aren't enforceable in a particular state but will do it since they know that most people don't know any better.

I had a particular instance when a company I was working for got acquired by a Texas based company and they sent us the employee agreement they use in Texas to us in California. There were no less than 4 completely unenforceable clauses in that contract. And this was a public company doing this.

If you live in Texas, though, you're screwed.

<comment><USER15> I not only live in Texas, but we did exactly what you describe to a small group in MountainView. We're private, though, so it (presumably) wasn't your group. I'm fairly certain none of them are still around, if they even came along after the acquisition.

I figure when it comes time for me to move on it'll have to be to a "safe harbour" state that views such agreements as unenforecable.

<comment><USER17> It would be relative to where you signed the agreement wouldn't it?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, you're probably right. Or maybe where I was a resident of when signed, or where we were headquartered when signed, or something along those lines. Depends on the wording of the agreement, which I don't have on hand.

I'm not overly concerned about it regardless, as should I leave it wouldn't be to a direct competitor (or likely anyone that could possibly benefit from my industry-specific knowledge) - it'd be somewhere completely out of our industry. And if they want to make an issue over someone as small as me, then I'll just find a new line of work for a few years. There's no way they could claim a "training investment" or "trade secret protection" if I was a programmer and left to become a carpenter or a roughneck or somesuch.

<comment><USER18> No, the law goes according to the headquarters of the purchasing public company. If they are headquartered in Cali, and you're in Colorado then your contract is according to Cali law. Also, Non-competes are non-enforceable in Cali - just FYI. However this is different from the trade secret situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In order for something to be a trade secret, don't you have to protect whatever 'it' is?

Maybe I'm missing some key aspect to PayPal but what part of their tech/system is unique to PayPal, such that they can claim it is trade secret? I mean, if they aren't doing anything innovative and are just using existing technology in obvious ways (online payment processor), what could the trade secret possibly be? Something related to how they scale?

<comment><USER20> Paypal's whole anti-fraud system is trade secret. Also, their mobile payment system hasn't even launched yet, so there's no way for us to know what's in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "People Have The Right To Seek Better Jobs"

Seeking to hire a bank employee...as long as he/she empties a few bank safe boxes and brings them to me. Pay depends on the loot...

</comment><comment><USER22> As a entrepreneur do you want your ideas, intellectual property and key employees stolen?

No.

If google sitting on a cash pile can't build or innovate, let them perish, what they have done is stealing</comment>


An Implementation and Analysis of a Kernel Network Stack in Go - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05636 <comment><USER2> Interesting project, but the conclusion seems off:

> The GoNet code is more readable and generally performs > better than that of > its C stack counterparts. From this, > it can be concluded that Go with CSP > style is a viable > alternative to C for the language of kernel > > implementations.

"It worked for part of the problem, therefore, it will work for all of the rather complex problem." That seems specious.</comment>


Dell Patents the Weirdest Laptop You Have Ever Seen - <AUTHOR> https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-dual-screen-laptop-patent <comment><USER2> it may be crackers but id argue still not quite as mental as the Thinkpad W701DS, a rare 9 year old 17" thinkpad that packed a 2nd slide out screen in the lid

[https://gizmodo.com/5477571/lenovo-thinkpad-w701ds-pairs- bea...](https://gizmodo.com/5477571/lenovo-thinkpad-w701ds-pairs-beastly- specs-with-an-integrated-secondary-screen)

<comment><USER3> Or the extending keyboard: [https://youtu.be/SLj3aCfqzOM?t=10](https://youtu.be/SLj3aCfqzOM?t=10)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That looks pretty awesome</comment>


Legal fight over Quibi's mobile technology gets ugly - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-03-10/lawsuit-could-delay-quibi-launch <comment><USER2> What a great PR beat for Quibi. Makes it seem more like they're the next big thing, if someone is going after their patents.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://archive.md/3wBuC](https://archive.md/3wBuC)

</comment><comment><USER4> "These claims have absolutely no merit, and we will vigorously defend ourselves against them in court," Quibi said in a statement Monday. The company declined to comment on Eko's lawsuit.

I know that this is far from the first time I've seen it, but does anyone else find it unnerving to see these statements be presented as coming directly from the companies? As if there is an entity called Quibi that literally vocalized that sentence, instead of it being presented by a lawyer representing Quibi. How long ago did the absurdity of "corporate personhood" worm its way into our very language?

<comment><USER5> This kind of language is not remotely new. It makes sense too, as a statement issued by a company in written form was likely authored by many people (who may or may not individually share the views in the statement) for the benefit of the company.

<comment><USER4> Which is fine. But no one cares to humor the notion of a link between the lack of accountability for individuals within companies, when wrongdoing is apparent, with the way we scrub individuals from company interaction with the public? I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that the way we talk about companies influences how we regard and treat them.

<comment><USER5> We do the same for all groups of people, not just companies. And the conventions aren't much different in other languages.

<comment><USER4> When we do, it's largely for the negative purposes of extending blame to all within a group, not obfuscate or diffuse blame, as is the case here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to turn off auto-refresh on techcrunch? - <AUTHOR>

Lately, techcrunch has added auto-refresh on their website. I understand it must be for increasing pageviews, however, I simply hate it. Can someone help me on how to turn it completely off? <comment><USER2> When sites try to increase pageviews artificially it pisses me off.

They could've easily implemented a ajax solution to update only the headers section of the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're using Firefox, there is an option under "Tools->Options->Advanced Tab->Accessibility" - Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload web pages

You could use that I think. I've not tried it (and I don't want to visit TC)

</comment><comment><USER4> You might be able to get it turned off for all of us if you're willing to contact their advertising networks and tell them about it :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> This caught my eye in the source: setTimeout('location.reload(true)',1200000);

The simplest way is to disable javascript.

<comment><USER6> Or use their RSS/ATOM feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about a greasemonkey script ?</comment>


Tesla needs to fix Autopilot safety flaws, demands Senator Markey - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/01/tesla-needs-to-fix-autopilot-safety-flaws-demands-senator-markey/ <comment><USER2> Autopilot safety flaws are one sided. Think about the people who lose their mind/focus after seeing no driver/driver not paying attention and hence is no less than distracted/drunk driving.</comment>


More Privacy, Less Latency – Improved Handshakes in TLS v1.3 - <AUTHOR> https://timtaubert.de/blog/2015/11/more-privacy-less-latency-improved-handshakes-in-tls-13/ <comment><USER2> 0rtt is going to make a huge perceived difference on high latency (mobile) links. Don't forget however that the syn/ack tcp connection setup also still has an additional 1rtt overhead. For this reason, I'm still rooting for Google's QUIC to get towards standardization and mainstream adoption.

<comment><USER3> QUIC is indeed nice. As a Chinese who frequently browses Google with a VPN and therefore high latency, the difference between loading Google in Chrome and in other browsers is palpable.

But I have not seen any adoption of QUIC either in clients or servers, outside the Google's circle.

<comment><USER4> I'm hoping once QUIC matures that Google will release some open source Apache / nginx modules to support it. Development without any commercial incentive seems to happen very slowly otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regarding more privacy: have they found a way to keep the SNI information private?

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is possible. I can have different TLS configs for each vhost I set up on a single HTTP instance. And until the SNI is sent the server has no way of knowing which vhost to use.

Also SNI needs to match the hostname specified in the X.509 part of the cert. Certs are issued based on DNS names which need to correspond to SNI.

I'm not sure how much hiding the SNI would get you in terms of privacy. You could always just look at the destination IP address of the packet.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not sure how much hiding the SNI would get you in terms of privacy. You > could always just look at the destination IP address of the packet.

Destination IP will be the same for all sites on the server, SNI tells you exactly which site was asked for. Not meaning to be pedantic, sometimes the distinction isn't clear.

But in order to encrypt the SNI name, you'd first need to verify a certificate tied to a bare IP address. You'd also need to trust DNS completely. RTT would inflate significantly.

The CA system is a mess, but DNS is worse. Tying certs to bare IPs would create a deployment nightmare as well.

SNI is imperfect, but it is a big improvement over the previous status quo, which was single-IP per https host, which obviously did nothing to obscure the site hostname either.

<comment><USER8> > But in order to encrypt the SNI name, you'd first need to verify a > certificate tied to a bare IP address.

Why wouldn't a DH exchange be enough?

<comment><USER7> You're right, DH might be enough, depending on goals.

The DH exchange would be MITMable, but not passively collectable. TLS is (ideally) neither, so DH wouldn't provide an equal level of privacy.

Still, it would be a beneficial extension of the protocol. At the cost of an additional TCP RT.

<comment><USER8> Right, however, the MITM attack would also come at the cost of causing the rest of the connection to fail. You could also do fun stuff like sending the sha256-mac of the hostname using the DH key as the MAC key. There are lots of fun ideas!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if the 0-RTT mode brings any issues with DDoS attacks. Since the request is sent in the initial TLS request, the server must buffer it, or create a response before it finishes the handshake. Admittedly it's not UDP, so you still need to successfully perform a TCP handshake (ie: verify the reverse path).

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't proper application design just wait to read the actual content / request from the socket? As in, this will most likely be buffered somewhere in the kernel TCP stack, and not in the application, making the situation comparable to 1rtt from a DoS perspective.

<comment><USER9> Where is "somewhere", the kernel only has a finite amount of memory. It's still a denial of service, whether it occurs in the kernel, or a user-space program. The point is that in order to service legitimate clients, the initial request must be buffered somewhere.

For the 1rtt case, the request isn't sent till the TLS connection has been established. The attackers would have to keep track of these TLS connections, so this doesn't seem like a DoS vector.

For 0rtt the attackers might not need to keep track of state, allowing them to simply send TLS 1.3 requests, and overload the server's memory. My question is whether this is a legitimate concern.</comment></comment></comment>


Emacs' "old" regexp syntax - <AUTHOR>

I've been using emacs recently, and I had a bunch of code editing I needed done. Figured I'd use emacs for the regex heavy lifting.
I failed miserably. My capturing groups didn't work. Then my digit character classes didn't work either. I was stunned.. what was I doing wrong?
Then I stumbled on Steve Yegge's emacs reg-exp post, where explains all of those limitations:

    *  You have to escape the (, ), {, }, and | metacharacters. That is, they're not metacharacters by default — without the backslash, they match themselves.

    * There's no '\d' shortcut for the [0-9] character class.

    * There are no lookahead or lookbehind assertions.

    * There are no direct equivalents for Perl's {n}?, {n,}?, {n,m}?, /i, /m, /s, /x, \G, or (?# ...) constructs.

 So, one of his examples matches: \(public Relative \)\(\w\)\(\w+\)
while usually you'd match: (public Relative)(\w)(\w+)
I really must say that I was surprised that, being such a killer editor, we as a community never got round to implementing a modern regexp syntax for emacs.
Is it that hard? Do many people miss this? ..or you eventually get used to the old syntax and skipping everything?
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/06/shiny-and-new-emacs-22.html <comment><USER2> see rx.el in (i think) the emacs-lisp directory

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do. Thanks for the tip.</comment></comment>


Uber Stockholm throw a PR-tantrum when refused unfair advantages - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalmcgyver.com/professional/digital-pr/uber-stockholm-throw-a-pr-tantrum-when-refused-unfair-advantages/ <comment><USER2> Reading their press release (the Swedish one, I'm a native Swedish speaker) I get a feeling that they are, quite frankly, not a serious business. It's filled with paranoid tinfoil hattery where they claim the Big Nasty Government is out to get them without actually pointing out what rules they're asked to comply with.

Sweden is fairly big on consumer protection, and price comparisons is generally a mandatory part of that (all groceries are mandated to list price per weight/volume/appropriate other unit so you can find out, say, which bag of rice is cheapest per kg, for instance - the same goes for taxi services and price per km). That they're being asked to follow those rules is hardly government bullying - in the eyes of most everyone here that definitely counts as "consumer protection".

It doesn't get better when they start spouting complete lies - the gibberish about certain unmarked taxi like services being exclusive to "royal families or prominent business leaders". Not related to reality at all.

To be honest, I'd never heard of this story before I saw it here. It certainly hasn't been covered by mainstream press. I don't live in Stockholm though, so it might be bigger there.

<comment><USER3> >all groceries are mandated to list price per weight/volume/appropriate other unit so you can find out, say, which bag of rice is cheapest per kg, for instance - the same goes for taxi services and price per km

That's actually really interesting and I had no idea that was the case. In a supermarket, would such a list be in the isle next to the food? Or would it just be available from management or something like that?

<comment><USER4> I don't know about Sweden but here in Germany it's on the price labels that are attached to the shelves.

You have a price per unit. Say a 0.5l bottle of beer costs 0.78 EUR and then you have the price per 100ml or 1l below it (1l = 1.56 EUR). It's marginally useful if you compare the price of rice to the price of Coca Cola but it's really useful if you want to know what's cheaper: Buying a package of 6 1.5l bottles of Coke or buying a crate with 18 0.33l bottles.

I'm a sucker for saving pennies ;)

<comment><USER5> We do this in the US. However, not being standardized on the metric system, it can end up being pretty useless. It's _usually_ good, but every so often you come across something like:

        Item A: $3, $6/pound
        Item B: $4, $0.30/oz

Which defeats the whole purpose of the per-unit price. Occasionally drives me bonkers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more I hear about Uber, the more it seems to be a tea-party style paranoid right-wing anti big evil government organization instead of a disruptive start-up.

This kind of thing might fly in the US, but in most of Western Europe we take a slightly more nuanced view to the role of government regulation.

Doesn't mean there isn't anything worth disrupting, hell no (somebody _please_ disrupt the Amsterdam taxi market), but in cultures where simply sitting down and figuring out how to remove the obstacles is the custom, hyperbolic scream fests by an American company is not going to work.

Especially not an American company that thinks it's a good idea to conquer Europe with a name like _"Uber"_...

Both the company name and their PR strategy scream "culturally insensitive American douchebags".

<comment><USER7> Far from it. Uber is a remarkably professionally run company that has transformed transportation in the US cities where it operates.

I'm surprised (or more precisely, dismayed) that a comment with such comically excessive language received so many upvotes. This is how a forum turns into a self-caricature.

<comment><USER8> It seems purpose built to garner upvotes from many of those who frequent HN - insults the American right wing while praising European level-headedness and rationalism. Add in a final parting shot at American stereotypes and I'm not surprised at all I found it at the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They did the same thing in USA. Here's a series of articles penned by Paul Carr documenting what Uber did in the US.

<http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/31/assholes-shrug/>

[http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/17/whos-the-real-bully-uber- or...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/17/whos-the-real-bully-uber-or-new-york/) [written by Nathaniel]

<http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/>

[http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/02/a-final-word-on-uber-and- th...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/02/a-final-word-on-uber-and-their- ghastly-attempt-to-spin-their-way-to-sainthood/)

[http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/04/shock-uber-scores- victory-a...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/04/shock-uber-scores-victory- against-dc-lawmakers-by-actually-negotiating-with-dc-lawmakers/)

[http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/13/what-a-difference-six- month...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/13/what-a-difference-six-months-can- make-the-consistent-and-in-no-way-disingenuous-messaging-of-travis-kalanick/)

<comment><USER10> regarding the first link, in which Uber jumped fares during Hurricane Sandy - People who think price gouging have obviously never given the consequences more than a moments thought. He even mentioned that Uber reported the supply of drivers went up 50%. Isn't that a major, important factor. The author just blows it off and calls the Uber evil. fuck that. I'd rather know that a service is going to be available, but at a higher price than to not have the service available at all. Supply and demand is economic law, bitches.

Price "gouging" is actually a public service, it __LITERALLY SAVES LIVES __. It ensures that needed materials find their way to the people that need them the most. If I'm reasonably well stocked on batteries, and a business isn't allowed to raise prices during a hurricane, I have no dis-incentive from clearing off the shelf and buying all of them. However if the prices get jacked up, I won't buy them if I don't need them. It also provides an incentive and encourages people to be well prepared.

[http://mises.org/daily/1593/Price-Gouging-Saves-Lives-in- a-H...](http://mises.org/daily/1593/Price-Gouging-Saves-Lives-in-a-Hurricane)

<comment><USER11> _Price "gouging" is actually a public service, it LITERALLY SAVES LIVES. It ensures that needed materials find their way to the people that need them the most._

Seriously? The lower income people living on Staten Island during Sandy would like a word with you. Price gouging ensures that things are only available to people with excess income to absorb the gouged price.

The whole point about price gouging during Sandy is that it was an exceptional event, and maybe not one we should leave to market forces. If every grocery store tripled the price of bottled water and essential supplies then many people would be unable to afford them and starve. How is that a good thing?

<comment><USER12> If every store tripled the price of bottled water you would have truckloads of water arriving within 24 hours with absolutely no government intervention at all.

It would also mean that smart entrepreneurs would pre-stage needed supplies in anticipation of the price increase. With strong 'gouging' laws, there is no incentive to spend money on preparing the supply chain or in spending more money to overcome supply difficulties (i.e diverting supplies from elsewhere, rushing delivery, etc)

Price 'gouging' contains the seed of its own destruction because it encourages over-supply and subsequently lower prices.

<comment><USER13> > If every store tripled the price of bottled water you would have truckloads > of water arriving within 24 hours with absolutely no government intervention > at all.

In natural disaster scenarios, this is likely impossible as delivery infrastructure usually goes down for some period of time. This is why price gouging is successful for the businesses raising prices in first place.

> It would also mean that smart entrepreneurs would pre-stage needed supplies > in anticipation of the price increase.

Businesses do not do a good job of stockpiling resources for exceptional events that happen once in many years and many businesses view this as a cost that is not worth paying.

> With strong 'gouging' laws, there is no incentive to spend money on > preparing the supply chain or in spending more money to overcome supply > difficulties (i.e diverting supplies from elsewhere, rushing delivery, etc)

There is no incentive in general since there is an very low probability that work on on delivery and supply channels will actually pay off as it is a low probability that a disaster scenario will happen in the first place.

> With strong 'gouging' laws, there is no incentive to spend money on > preparing the supply chain or in spending more money to overcome supply > difficulties (i.e diverting supplies from elsewhere, rushing delivery, etc)

Most historical examples of price gouging never worked out this way. On a logic basis, this doesn't make sense as the point of price gouging is to maximize revenue from sale during a short window of time while new supplies and materials cannot make it to the area where you are selling the now highly priced goods.

<comment><USER12> The utility of 'price' (whether it involves "gouging" or not) is to signal the entire marketplace regarding the current state of supply vs. demand. The market is dynamic and responds to the signal.

If you attempt to legislate the rules regarding price you are making it illegal to respond to the signal. This just leads to oversupply and legally enforced profit (the price is too high) or shortages and legislative enforced queues and delays (the price is too low).

<comment><USER13> > The market is dynamic and responds to the signal.

W.r.t to price gouging, this is the thing that doesn't happen or doesn't happen quickly enough and means people who can't afford the new high price go without. For essentials like food, water, batteries in a no power situation, etc. that is a huge problem.

<comment><USER12> How 'quickly' is not quick enough for you? Companies like Walmart and Home Depot are getting pretty darn good at responding to disasters, especially for things like hurricanes where there is considerable lead time.

Smaller events like tornados are much easier to respond to because they are localized.

Price gouging laws negate any sort of systemic planning to take advantage of short-term price spikes. Eliminate the laws and you open up opportunities for creative businesses to plan and respond to these short-term opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find it odd that Uber is constantly fighting various countries' laws to be considered "a taxi service, but not a taxi service", when they could just change their business model a tiny bit and fall straight into the middle of the "limousine service" classification.

Why _not_ charge just-time instead of time+distance? Would it screw over the drivers?

<comment><USER15> Sometimes it would screw over the drivers, sometimes the customers, and depending on how it was priced you could force that to one side or the other.

Distance + time is the most fair solution, as if there's no traffic and you get there super fast the driver still gets a fair fee (unlike if it was time only), if there's lots of traffic and it takes ages to get there then the customer doesn't have to pay a huge fee (like if it was time only).

Personally I'd never use a taxi service that charged only by time. I'm OK with time+distance, or with distance only (which is also used in some places).

<comment><USER16> It's worth noting that with Uber's current price structure, if you get there super fast the fee is small, and if it takes ages it's huge. So it sounds more like worst of both worlds.

<comment><USER15> That's the way most taxi services work - if it takes longer you pay more because the driver is spending more time getting you there, however it's not as bad as if the price was just time and not distance.

<comment><USER16> Yeah - just saying that if the goal is to have a function that's medium for both high and low speeds, m+s is not it.

It definitely makes sense to pay more for longer distances, but I for one do not want to pay extra for slower travel. Something like m-s or m+s^-1 would be better.

<comment><USER15> Of course you don't _want_ to pay more for a slower trip, but taxi drivers don't _want_ to have their hourly profit reduced by being stuck in traffic.

At the end of the day, they could reduce the time cost so that going slower doesn't cost more, but they'd have to also raise the distance cost, so that drivers (and taxi companies) still make the same amount of money on average.

But combining them, the way it works now, makes the most sense, as when you use a taxi service you are paying for the technical costs of getting somewhere (fuel, etc.) and the cost of your driver's time, so why shouldn't it be calculated that way.

<comment><USER16> I'm not paying for the driver's time - the taxi company is responsible for that. I want a transport that takes me from point A to point B in the shortest time possible, and paying for the driver's time (at a higher rate, no less) is actively against my interests, since it disincentivizes speed.

You could make the argument that chauffeurs are paid for on a time-only basis, but then we're talking about a driver who I can tell to wait for me outside the store or party, a driver who can tell me about the sights on the scenic route we're taking, or a driver who will take me all over the county on business. Then you could add a basic wear or fuel surcharge per m, but again it should be decreasing (and small).

I haven't used chauffeur services myself, but a quote I found charges less per hour than Uber and nothing per km and no starting charge. They do have higher minimums, though. So I guess Uber could be presenting themselves as a chauffeur company for shopping trips, with 50%-150% markups when moving. As the article points out, they've failed to make that case.

<comment><USER15> > _I'm not paying for the driver's time_

Of course you are - whether you do so directly or through a company is irrelevant, either way the driver needs to get paid.

They could change it so that you don't pay more for slow trips, but in return fast trips would become more expensive to even it out, otherwise all you're doing is taking money away from the company/drivers. Then people who travel at peak traffic times are being subsidized by those who travel when the roads are empty.

(Personally I actually prefer non-metered trips, where I know that A to B always costs £x regardless of traffic, but there's certainly a lot of logic in charging by both distance and time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was on Uber's side for a long time initially. But with what's have been going on in the past few months, I am more than willing to believe the author. Especially after that protest by some drivers, outside their office in SF. "It was only a handful of drivers", you might argue. But the fact that none of the company officials came down to listen to them, just points out their "we don't give a fuck" attitude. And it is this arrogance, that brings down corporates and even empires.

<comment><USER18> I don't think their failure to attend the protest was necessarily "we don't give a fuck." If only for self preservation reasons they almost certainly do care. They likely didn't attend because they didn't want to increase the likelihood of the protest becoming a larger story on the media. They're much better off only engaging drivers in private meetings.

<comment><USER17> Having been part of student protests in the past, I believe this is one of the worst ways to handle a protest.

<comment><USER18> I agree that it's imperfect, but what's the alternative? How would you envisage that alternative playing out for each of the parties?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> this approach has worked well for uber in the usa. wonder if they've made a mistake by assuming that anti-govt sentiment in other countries is similar? or by simply copying the technique without thinking?

but this is from a single english-language post. what is the rest of the local reaction like? [ah, see reply below - i missed "response was huge" (in the sense of support for uber)]

<comment><USER20> I suspect the angle of an Ayn-Rand-quoting American who sees himself as Galt won't play quite as well in Sweden, either...

<comment><USER21> There are strong libertarian strands in several swedish parties so there are some comrades in arms. Quoting Ayn Rand in parliament has happened.

But even as a libertarian leaning swede I find myself quite annoyed by Uber. In the 1990s, IIRC, the taxi market was striktly regulated and finding taxis where a problem. Now in Stockholm there are many, many taxis all over the place so I personally don't get what problem Uber is really trying to solve here.

<comment><USER22> The problem of how to cash higher in an IPO and be hailed by the media as the next next Zuckebergs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So what exactly is their model?

I found it hard to figure out from their website how they differ from any other taxi service with online ordering and payment.

Also, if there are rules in Sweden about meters and price displays, there's probably a consumer-focussed reason for them.

<comment><USER20> In the U.S., one difference is that they have more convenient and reliable dispatch than regular taxis, focused on virtually "hailing" a nearby car through their mobile app, rather than the two traditional options of: 1) trying to flag down a taxi on the street, or 2) booking one over the phone or internet and then waiting for it to come.

I think that's less novel in Sweden, though. Taxi apps are already common, and "virtual hailing" is how most younger people already hail taxis. In addition, there are a number of taxi companies, each of which can set their own prices and position themselves in different market niches, so you can choose one you like. In that market, Über may just be another taxi company with an app, and not have enough differentiation: [http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/bostonblatte/2013/04/26/stockho...](http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/bostonblatte/2013/04/26/stockholm- taxi-wars-uber-fail/)

Starting in SF probably helped them, too: SF's taxi system is worse than most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand it. Why the constant drama around their every (lack of) license? Can't they just obtain ones just like the rest of driver services or do the authorities owe them something?

<comment><USER25> > Why the constant drama around their every (lack of) license?

I don't know about Sweden, but here in Germany licenses are limited, i.e. there is no infinite amount of taxi license per city.

<comment><USER26> Sweden deregulated its taxis in 1990. There is now no limit on the number of taxis (though drivers do have to pass an exam), and no restrictions on what they can charge. The deregulation did produce a big uptick in the # of taxis in Stockholm.

There are now some complaints in the other direction about the deregulated prices, especially because some less scrupulous drivers are trying to deliberately trick tourists into paying outrageous prices. Prices have to be posted in windows, so of course no Swede or tourist paying attention would take a taxi that charges $200 for what would normally be a $20 trip. But you only have to trick a handful per day to make it a profitable scam. Just need to get some tourists who either don't realize that rates are unregulated in Stockholm, who didn't see the rate sticker, or who did but didn't mentally convert the SEK to something they understand.

A bit on that: <http://www.thelocal.se/16868/20090112/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a odd pricing model. 50 SEK + 175 SEK/10 km at moderate speeds, with a jump discontinuity to 50 SEK + 600 SEK/10 km and above at low speeds - such as traffic lights.

Taxi Stockholm charges 45 SEK + 246-280 SEK/10 km, which looks like more, but it's hard to compare without knowing how much of the time is spent at low speeds. Taking the pessimal estimate of 15 minutes in a standstill to charge the hyperdrive, followed by a 10 kilometer spurt at lightspeed, we get an upper bound of 50 SEK + 445 SEK/10 km, or 165% of the article's index fare. I honestly can't tell if that's competitive.

I imagine that's why they don't want to make a sticker.

Oh, and then there's the much higher fixed price for city center travel. I trust that doesn't get added on to a trip that crosses the boundary.

</comment><comment><USER27> Uber loves operating by "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" proverb. But what they fail to realize or discount its importance is that the squeaky wheel is also the first one to be replaced.

</comment><comment><USER28> >>Also, they finally answered my question about how many cars they have in Stockholm by saying "Like all companies we have numbers we don't give out".

And unlike other companies our press releases are written by children.

<comment><USER29> Fixed: >> And unlike other companies our press releases are written by pubescent teenagers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Taxis tend to be locally regulated. Regulations are good and bad. In some places, they ended up with plainly stupid rules. In some places the are about protecting drivers' revenues. But, they also protect consumers. IE, some of these regulations are not net bad, even if they are inconvenient or have some bad side effects.

Even good regulation creates inflexibility. It's just a cost. It takes into account the way things are now and makes it difficult to allow new business models to develop. It makes it difficult for companies to operate in multiple regulatory regions. They can lock in revenue streams and/or profit margins for companies, drivers or taxmen.

Uber's a new player threatening income streams. That will rattle cages. But they are also a global company and an innovative^ one. Being innovative means they clash with existing rules and policies by not fitting into existing classifications. Being multi-regional means they have a hard time being flexible themselves. They want to be able to drop in their system in every city they operate in.

They want to represent themselves as on a collision course with bad/corrupt regulation. But, they are really on an unavoidable collision course with all taxi regulators everywhere.

<comment><USER31> > But they are also [...] an innovative [company].

Not really, at least not as far as Stockholm is concerned. Unless by "innovative" you mean that they innovate in their ignorance and refusal to comply with regulations not matter how sensible those are (or, according to TFAA, how people attempt to help them: it was noted they could get their application certified as a meter and people have come forward to help with that, it would seem uber didn't even try doing that).

<comment><USER30> Innovative, in this context, means they are doing things in a way that was not previously done. IE, you use you mobile phone to order the taxi or pay. The current system is built around (presumably) people calling or waving & paying with cash or CC.

<comment><USER31> > IE, you use you mobile phone to order the taxi or pay.

Except you already did that in Stockholm, at least for the ordering part (not sure about payment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "... such a qualitative, safe and modern mode of transportation should be available for everyone"

This is such a BS. Stockholm is one of the best capital city to live in, and one of the reasons is that the car traffic has the lowest priority there. You actually need to pay to enter the city centre by car, which I would consider much more modern approach than giving everyone an easy way to drive a limo.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some quotes from the article:

"The market is unregulated, meaning that you can set any price for your services."

"You can safely say that there's healthy competition on the market."

"You do need a permit to have a taxi service."

"The fact is that Uber are asking for an exemption to be able to compete on unfair grounds"

Notice some contradictions here?

Author claims that market is unregulated and competition is fair, but then admits there is regulation and legal requirements (that cost real money). If you want to make a nice private taxi service with 2x lower prices, you cannot because you have to pay local government for all licenses and whatever taximeter _they_ provide you, not the one you design for your own company and your customers' safety.

When talking about "unfair advantage", author makes presupposition that existing regulations and licensing are "fair". Well, that needs to be proven. Saying "somebody voted for it in a democracy" is not a proof, sorry. Try that with a scientific study: "scientists voted that P != NP with 58% majority".

<comment><USER33> I don't know about Stockholm, but in US and France taxi drivers must buy a taxi license for many thousands of dollars/euros that effectively allows them be a part of a monopoly. The price for the license is market-defined because there is a limited number of licenses and few restrictions on trading them. But the interesting point is that licenses were initially created many years ago by some taxi mafia and lobbied to be enforced by police.

Now, put aside "fairness" issues, just imagine if someone comes up with Uber or similar service to work around these licensing requirements. And at the same time provides superior service. They will be able to ask lower prices, which will endanger every taxi driver who's invested already to be a part of a monopoly.

Now imagine that something like Uber moves to bitcoins and become almost anonymous. You won't be able to shutdown the central organisation - it's outside the country and has no bank account. You'll have to fight with individual "illegal" taxi drivers that use the system. But how would you prove that they get paid? There are no credit cards or cash. The person who gets in the car only tells the driver a short pin code to authenticate himself. Or says nothing at all. The driver just gives a friendly lift.

Suddenly no one needs taxis and every taxi driver has lost tens of thousands of dollars invested in his license and can do nothing about it. Customers win, other drivers win, mafia loses. Is it fair? Is in unfair? If you cannot avoid this outcome, does it really matter?

<comment><USER23> Completely unregulated and unregistered cab services have a history of very bad things happening in them in the UK.

Customers do not win, customers get assaulted and raped.

<comment><USER34> This is a complete fallacy. Any black market, by definition, will have a higher incidence of other criminal activity, because people who are willing to violate one law are often willing to violate others.

This is no different than arguing that we should continue drug prohibition because there are a lot of violent incidents that occur during transactions. That violence exists precisely because the activity was forced underground.

Moreover, even if those services weren't illegal, it nevertheless is true that lower cost services will always bear a higher degree of risk. The same thing applies to practically any business. Being poor sucks, but pricing such people out of entire industries won't help them.

<comment><USER23> _"This is a complete fallacy."_

What's a fallacy? That the unregulated market resulted in a lot of rapes and assaults, and now it's more regulated (and parts of previous practice are illegal) there are less?

Because that's what actually happened, whether you think it's a fallacy or not.

<comment><USER34> As you pointed out, the rapes and assaults are ongoing. By making the bottom of the market illegal (by making it uneconomical), you haven't stopped these crimes from happening, you've simply forced them to occur in the black market where there is even less of a chance to prevent them.

Again, the analogy with drug prohibition is clear. There is an incredible amount of violence occurring, but that isn't a justification for continuing its illegality. To the contrary, its illegal nature is the primary reason the violence occurs, because there is no way to settle disputes in the court system.

Similarly, someone operating a black market taxi cannot call the police when someone refuses to pay. Instead, they must resort to threatening (and engaging in) violence to get payment. The customers may engage in violence against these underground drivers for the same reason. Making it illegal serves nobody, and only increases danger for all parties.

<comment><USER23> _As you pointed out, the rapes and assaults are ongoing. By making the bottom of the market illegal (by making it uneconomical), you haven't stopped these crimes from happening, you've simply forced them to occur in the black market where there is even less of a chance to prevent them._

Except the numbers are now smaller, less people are put at risk and less people see that risk realised. It demonstrably has made the situation better, not worse.

 _Again, the analogy with drug prohibition is clear. There is an incredible amount of violence occurring, but that isn't a justification for continuing its illegality. To the contrary, its illegal nature is the primary reason the violence occurs_

Except that turns out not to be anything like what happened with cabs when the violence was worse when the illegality was _not_ present. So no, it's not a good analogy and it doesn't work.

 _Similarly, someone operating a black market taxi cannot call the police when someone refuses to pay. Instead, they must resort to threatening (and engaging in) violence to get payment._

This is their lookout for running an illegal service.

 _The customers may engage in violence against these underground drivers for the same reason. Making it illegal serves nobody, and only increases danger for all parties._

Except it has actually reduced the danger.

Look, you can argue the prohibition line all you like but it doesn't match what has actually happened out in the real world.

<comment><USER34> Since the article doesn't get into your purported statistics, I can only speculate as to what you are referring to. People in the U.S. often try to retroactively justify tougher drug laws by pointing to lower crime rates, when in fact often times people are simply less likely to report being victimized because they were engaging in an illegal transaction.

Moreover, reality has a way of resisting controlled experiments. It is essentially impossible to control every variable that might influence reported crime rates, so the mere fact that there may be fewer reported taxi-related crimes after regulation increased than before would be an unconvincing argument.

This is really an epistemological argument. Due to the inherent uncontrollability of every variable, the only way to accurately understand the effects of a government policy are to look at the economic incentives it creates. Simply asserting that economic incentives that underly the drug market don't also apply to other black markets is arbitrary.

<comment><USER23> And you simply asserting that the economic incentives that do underly the drug market apply everywhere is every bit as arbitrary!

Drugs are not like cabs. You can't get a licensed drug after five minutes wait. Nobody actually wants or needs a specifically illegal cab, they just want a cab. The analogy simply does not work.

What's unconvincing is you calling my argument a fallacy and then falling back to "oh but it's hard to measure!"

\--edit-- also FFS you think anyone's put off reporting assault because they were in an illegal cab? What the hell are you on? It's not illegal to be a customer, it's illegal to run the service.

<comment><USER34> It isn't arbitrary to assert the universality of economic laws -- no school of economics holds otherwise. In fact the entire point of this science is to discover principles that exist in all circumstances.

Moreover asserting the difficulty of empirical measurement isn't a cop-out; it's one of the most fundamental debates, not just in economics, but in philosophy. This is Plato vs Aristotle, or Kant vs Hegel. It's an incredibly important issue and not one to dismiss so nonchalantly.

Regarding the likelihood of reporting assault, I was specifically talking about drugs. You are probably right about the unlicensed taxi customers, but nevertheless the statistics for taxi assaults don't tell then whole story because there is no way to account for assaults that occurred elsewhere that _would_ have occurred in taxis has they been more readily available. Even if that data were available, the uncontrollability of other factors would continue to burden your attempts at empirical proof.

<comment><USER23> _It isn't arbitrary to assert the universality of economic laws_

But it is arbitrary to assert that it works identically for all commodities and services. Demand for some things (a ride home) is easily sublimed from one solution (unlicensed cab) to another (licensed cab). Demand for other things (heroin, weed, whatever) does not work the same way because the demand is 100% aligned with the illegal item and therefore far more likely to set up a much larger black market.

I think you would have a very hard time proving that the crime levels stayed the same and the crime had just moved. Allowing unlicensed, unregistered cabs that pick (mainly drunk) people up from the side of the road, was putting vulnerable young people at risk. At least some of this demand has been shifted to traceable, regulated businesses.

<comment><USER34> Of course a fully-illegal thing will create a larger black market than a partially-illegal thing, but that's only a quantitative difference; the economics of the resulting black market remains then same. As long as they are outside the legal system, they will experience more violence, and unscrupulous people will continue to falsely claim that this justifies further marginalizing and regulating such activity.

<comment><USER23> Except when you talk about something like drugs it's easy to show the total violence increases, and when talking about something like unregulated taxi firms you can't make any such claim because it's easy to see how that market is killed dead with little to no black market, because nobody particularly wanted the product in the first place, it was just there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Disruption for the sake of disruption.

Some of the taxi regulations are there for good reasons. If Uber cannot provide better, cheaper and safer service at lower price with the same rules they do not have right to exist. And if they want to bring a regulation down they should do it for the whole industry if it is already obsolete.

<comment><USER35> A cheaper price for goods and services is not a necessary precondition to existence. People are free to pay more than absolute rock-bottom if they feel the more expensive goods/service are superior. Unless you intended your list to be disjunctive and I read it as conjunctive, if so, apologies.

<comment><USER22> Sorry ... I meant in Stockholm. There the market is free (as few swedes here comment) with no artificial barriers on entry like medallions. There are rules but they are for everybody. So if Uber cannot make their model work they should not operate there and not whine for exceptions. So they should just find ways to make money or seize to operate there. They could bring efficiency - cheaper, quality - faster response time etc or better cars or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Really long post claiming, basically, that Uber needs a sticker and to charge a certain way for consumer safety. Neither really makes any sense. I know how Uber charges when I call a car, I don't need a sticker on the window. It's useless. Taximeters are also useless with Uber, it takes care of all the payments and tips for you automatically. I hate it when I have to cab with someone who insists on paying then takes ten minutes digging through their wallet and screwing around. With Uber I just hop out of the car and it's done. I wonder if the writer has ever even used it.

</comment><comment><USER37> One would think a company that has success in mind would have the brains/motivation to actually learn about the culture they're setting up in. [A pattern could emerge if one were to draw parallels to wars in far-away Asian countries, though.]

They can't have that good of a grasp of Swedish culture if they thought this would work. I'm struggling to find a hypothetical country in Europe where "obnoxious American" is the preferred type of American.

</comment><comment><USER38> Entrenched taxi industry suppresses competitors in the name of "protecting" the consumers who choose them, claiming that it's "unfair" they're operating with a different business model... Oldest story in the book.

Bureaucracy. I hope you choke on it.

<comment><USER39> FUD. What different business model? It's fairly similar to what's already being offered by other companies (nice cars, phone app, good service) and all they have to do to comply is a price sticker and a meter.

<comment><USER40> Dynamic pricing is a different business model -- it's kind of incompatible with a sticker.

<comment><USER39> Unless you use a screen. They could probably get away with showing the price in the app, it just have to be in the 10 km in 15 min format. They would still have to have a meter or their app certified. Or provide a fixed price option in the app based on from and where you're going like the other companies do, in which case I imagine they would be covered by the exemption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> wow</comment>


Porsche Design P'9981 BlackBerry - <AUTHOR> http://ae.blackberry.com/devices/p9981/features.jsp#

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh RIM, its sad to see this is where you've ended up.</comment>


Box.net giving away 50 gigs to iOS users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.box.net/2011/10/12/were-giving-ios-users-insane-amounts-of-free-storage-box50gb/

<comment><USER2> It looks like the blog is getting hammered right now. But 3 notes: 1)the limit of 100 mb per file is a weak way of limiting the promotion. 2)a lot of people are gonna be pissed of that you don't get it unless you install and create your account after midnight. 3)finally this is a shot across the bow of dropbox. 50gb for life for free is a big deal even with the file size crippling.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seeing how Google is going to launch Google Drive soon, and will possibly be integrated with Android 4.0, shouldn't Box.net offer that to Android users as well? Or are they going to completely cede the market to Google?</comment>


Empirical Analysis of Programming Language Adoption [pdf] (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/docs/asr-oopsla13.pdf <comment><USER2> The observations in this paper mostly seem to back up reasonable, yet rather depressing, assumptions we might have made.

The choice of programming language for a project seems to be driven primarily by the size of the surrounding ecosystem and developer familiarity, rather than by any sort of technical merit in the language itself.

Also, at least among the studied population of developers interested in creating SaaS, programmers appear to be far more interested in the ease of bundling together other people's work to get something built quickly and cheaply than they are in features that would promote attributes like robustness, security, performance and scalability.

This may be due in part to a generally low standard of education and understanding. Many developers indicated a desire for characteristics like good performance and expressive power, yet then placed little emphasis on language features that could actually achieve those things, and a lot of them didn't even understand the most basic properties of and relationships between some of the language features they were commenting on.

The most positive observation to me is that there remains a long and heavy tail in most of the results, meaning objectively better languages can become successful within a niche even if they aren't widely appreciated and may never make it into the very small group of languages that dominate mainstream software development.

<comment><USER3> Who cares about the "technical merit" (which is a completely arbitrary measure) of a language? There IS no "objectively better" language. Not everything is on a scale ranging from 0 to LISP.There are different tools for different jobs, each has performance characteristics along different dimensions.

There is only one question that matters to developers: Is this productive?

By that measure, the language itself is a small part of the equation which includes tooling, libraries, community, documentation, etc etc etc. This is completely normal and not depressing. It's sane.

<comment><USER2> _Who cares about the "technical merit" (which is a completely arbitrary measure) of a language?_

Anyone who wants to produce good software efficiently, one would hope.

 _There IS no "objectively better" language._

Of course there is.

Language A and language B let you write identical code to solve a problem correctly, but language B does not admit a certain class of programmer error where language A does.

Language A and language B let you implement identical designs, but in language A you can do so concisely with direct semantic support, while language B requires 5x as much code and a load of boilerplate idioms.

There _are_ different tools for different jobs, but sometimes there are also better tools for doing the same job.

 _There is only one question that matters to developers: Is this productive?_

I'm not sure I agree with that, but in any case, it is purely the developer's perspective. There are many other questions that might also matter to someone who uses the software. Does it give the right answer? Does it run efficiently? Is it safe? Will those things still be true next year? These things all affect the value of the software, and if nothing else, that should make any commercial developer consider whether a better product would be worth more in the market.

<comment><USER4> _There IS no "objectively better" language._

 _Of course there is._

I agree that that there are objectively better and worse languages. (brainfuck is a kind of proof of conception for this, right?)

I think, however, that comparing languages is much more complicated and difficult than most people allow for. Most comparisons are made on the basis of a few issues that the comparator happens to care about, ignoring many other possible methods of comparison.

We've all experienced this when advocate of language x completely misses the point in his critique of our own favorite languages. These reductionist comparisons naturally lead to distrust of all comparisons of languages.

Knowing that there are better and worse languages does not necessarily give us the ability to determine which languages are better and which are worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure their sources were that much better than what I had with langpop.com although they certainly go more in depth.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an analysis of adoption from 2000-2010.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't buy the claim that older developers "forget" languages. Instead, our standard for what it is to "know" a language goes up and the number of languages we claim to know remains constant.

I've known some engineers to argue that the number of languages on a CV is negatively correlated to the quality of the candidate.

<comment><USER2> I've been reviewing CVs recently, and there is a striking negative correlation between a candidate's amount of experience and the number of specific languages or tools they choose to highlight.

It's also quite striking how the younger and less experienced candidates often have a first page that is pure keyword stuffing now, while older and more experienced ones tend not to. My suspicion is that the younger candidates expect to have to get past a computer and then HR before encountering anyone who knows what they're talking about technically, while stronger candidates tend to start from the technically competent end via a contact in their network and only expect to deal with HR right at the end of the process to dot i's and cross t's.

<comment><USER8> > My suspicion is that the younger candidates expect to have to get past a > computer and then HR before encountering anyone who knows what they're > talking about technically

As someone who is currently reworking their resume, I can say your suspicion is correct. If I don't know someone in or around a company I am interested in, or I don't have a target company, I expect to be treated like a random person off the street. That means submitting my resume to some email / web form; then having it parsed and stored in their applicant tracking system until HR does a search using the job description keywords. Only after a sufficiently high percentage keyword match would I expect someone from HR to begin their process with some kind of form letter email.

It's like what happened with automated phone systems and ATMs. I no longer expect a person to answer.</comment></comment></comment>


A Mysterious Infection, Spanning the Globe in a Climate of Secrecy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida-auris.html <comment><USER2> This url maybe:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant- can...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida- auris.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> active discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590180)

</comment><comment><USER4> You forgot the URL.</comment>