Former Google VP Kai-Fu Lee Got a Nickname, Start-Copy Lee - <AUTHOR> http://jyorr.com/post/4622300101/former-google-vp-kai-fu-lee-got-a-nickname-start-copy <comment><USER3> Tumblr's not alone -- Innovation Works also has a pretty decent copy of my last start-up, Flurry, called Umeng. (For the curious, compare the product at flurry.com and umeng.com.) I've been watching Umeng for a bit and the services have slightly diverged, presumably because Umeng's learnt a bit more about the Chinese market and adapted its product. But the initial product was just a straight-up clone.

I _am_ a little surprised to see this from as respected a person as Kai-Fu Lee, who I'd expect to be innovating, but you just have to shrug. This sort of thing happens in business, and it's not worth getting too excited about.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't remember where I got this quote from, but early on I learned that there are basically three ways to beat the US in technology:

1\. The Japanese Way - Innovate By Leapfrogging. 2\. The Indian Way - <USER2> By Piggybacking. 3\. The Chinese Way - Innovate By Copying.

Looking at how things have been over the years, China isn't going to stop a strategy that has worked across industries.

<comment><USER5> "I can't remember where I got this quote from, "

probably this paper?( by the Lemelson-MIT program - warning pdf) [http://web.mit.edu/invent/n-pressreleases/downloads/sustaina...](http://web.mit.edu/invent/n-pressreleases/downloads/sustainable.pdf)

 _"Innovation to help achieve the goals of sustainable development can start in many ways, including: "copy-catting" (i.e. Japan, Korea and China first mimicking manufacturing techniques and then becoming world leaders.); "piggy- backing" (i.e. India performing service work for rich countries and adapting information technology to local needs); and "leap-frogging" (skipping over technologies that are inappropriate in a given place and time and adopting more sustainable solutions).

....................

"Copycats" imitate ideas, technologies and techniques from other countries and improve and adapt them. During its first few decades, the United States took the key secrets of the Industrial Revolution from England, Scotland and France and launched its own industrial economy. Two centuries later, Japan and then Korea developed by adapting American manufacturing, raising the quality and lowering costs. These days, China is doing it with much success, moving up the innovation ladder at a rapid rate.

"Piggybackers" ride on the backs of rich nations by doing more and more of their manufacturing and service work at far lower costs. India is practicing the art of piggybacking right now, using advanced computing and communications technologies to perform software development, tele-services, and even high- level innovation at a fraction of the labor costs compared to performing the same jobs in the United States or Western Europe. A recent study showed that one in ten U.S. software jobs will be exported to places like India and China over the next five years.

Finally, "leapfrogs" skip over inappropriate technologies and embrace new ones, such as Finland's sudden break from Soviet domination and its rapid adoption and development of new inventions like wireless networks.

"_

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While this example is a little extreme in its similarity with the original, copying a startup idea and implementing it in another market than an English speaking is not just done in China. Here's an article about a bunch of european startups doing the same:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and- gro...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and-groupon-have- in-common-these-guys-cloned-them-and-got-rich-doing-it-2011-1)

<comment><USER7> I've often wondered if one of the (many) reasons why there are so few successful startups coming out of Europe is due to the copying.

I visited Berlin a while back and my buddy was telling me about a bunch of guys who've built a successful business (dozens of engineers) just cloning 'hot' American products.

It's got to reduce the number of people working on brand new ideas. (I'm not suggesting that you can't build a great business by copying somebody else's work, but you won't build a world-changing, super innovative company doing so)

<comment><USER8> Heh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd _better_ have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have the right certificates and diplomas... The activation energy is just so much higher in Europe, two guys hacking in their garage can't just go for it without a lot more preparation. If you fail you won't starve of course, the State will look after you but that's a two-edged sword - not only is it harder to get started, there's less hunger to succeed, and everyone will be used to working only 35 hrs/week...

<comment><USER9> Wow. Is this "everything I need to know about Germany, I learned from Fox News"? Let me pick apart the pieces

1) 20k minimum for startups

You're confusing a few things here. The costs to form a company depend on what kind of legal form you want it to have. What you're talking about is the GmbH (basically a LLC), where you actually need 25k of capital. This is by far not the only form a company can take. If you just want to make sure that every founder gets its part, you've got a name for the company etc, you can form something like a UG. If you don't have more than three founders, you can use some standard forms and everything's done within a few days at most. And even if you want limited liability and don't have the capital, you can choose from several other legal forms available in Europe. The British limited company is quite popular, as you need less capital.

This is hardly a problem for most IT-based startups, who rarely have a lot of founders or actually trade something (where limited liability is quite welcome).

2) Diplomas/certificates are required

There are several cases where this is true, but I don't see any that would affect startups. Yes, if you want to become a hairdresser or want to open your own carpentry shop, you need to have the proper papers. For a web-based startup? What kind of papers would those be?

3) 35 hrs/week

That's France. Never mind that the difference between a regular job and startup hours doesn't _have_ to be that different. And even if you're doing the stereotypical 100+ hours a week, the difference to a regular job in any country will be quite high (well, South Korea excluded).

4) Less hunger because of welfare

Hows is that particular to startups? If this were true, people would drop out of almost any job because it would be easier otherwise. Germans on the dole don't live in limitless luxury.

I'm not saying that there isn't a tendency to copy things here. The whole Facebook vs. StudiVZ affair is pretty embarassing. But that's basically one market niche some companies are filling, it's not really representative of the whole German startup scene.

Yes, there's no equivalent to the venture capital-backed silicon valley startup scene. But that's pretty unique in the US, too.

<comment><USER10> Concerning the 35 hrs/week: it is the legal duration for work above which you are supposed to pay a higher hourly rate. It is NOT a maximum, and many people work more than 35 hrs/week (the figures for working hours are pretty similar between France, UK and Germany, with UK having the lower on average IIRC, but I cannot find the figure ATM).

<comment><USER9> There's some data on "Eurostat"[1]. It gets quite complicated, depending on whether you consider full-time, part-time employees, the self-employed, family workers, sick time, maternity leave etc.

But yes, it seems to hover around 40 hours for most countries. Strangely even for France, where this is bordering on the illegal... Found an old page where the Brits are complaining that they're working more than the average, don't know how they filtered the results to get to that conclusion. The Swiss do seem to live up to their industrious stereotype, though...

Never heard about a 35+ pay hike in Germany, though. Considering that there's no minimum hourly wage and most people are paid fixed salaries anyway, this wouldn't even get you very much. Sounds more like a result of collective bargaining than a federal law.

[1]: [http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_...](http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/dataset?p_product_code=LFSA_EWHAIS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some other important look-and-feel clones:

Windows (copying MacOS)

Lotus 1-2-3 (copying VisiCalc)

GNU/Linux (copying Unix)

Gosling Emacs (copying ITS and Multics Emacs), which eventually became GNU Emacs

Excel (copying Lotus 1-2-3, to the point that VisiCalc slash commands still work in Excel last time I tried them about five years ago)

OpenOffice (copying Microsoft Office)

C compilers everywhere (copying the original Unix C compiler)

Compaq's clone PC (copying the IBM PC, and giving rise to the entire IBM- compatible market)

Friendster (copying Sixdegrees)

Facebook (copying Friendster, somewhat less faithfully)

Every modern IDE (copying Turbo Pascal)

Every modern search engine (copying Google)

MS-DOS (copying CP/M and a little bit of Unix)

MercadoLibre (copying eBay)

Intel's current x64 CPU line (copying AMD)

Netscape (copying Mosaic)

Internet Explorer (copying Netscape)

Wordpress (copying Movable Type) (I'm not sure who to credit with the modern blog, with its comment threads, "after the jump", and permalinks. Pyra?)

Being able to copy the look and feel of competing products is crucially important to allowing innovation to continue. If Personal Software Inc. still had a monopoly on spreadsheets, it's a good bet that the spreadsheets we use today wouldn't have progressed much from where we were in 1984. The interface designs that seem innovative and unique today are either faddish crap or the baseline from which tomorrow's innovation begins.

<comment><USER12> Though there is something wrong with directly copying UI elements with just a text change - that should be completely frowned upon and called out imho.

Other than that - competition is good, and imitation should be seen as you are doing something good, now just make sure you can keep up or do it better consistently unless you want your competition to take over the market share.

<comment><USER11> > Though there is something wrong with directly copying UI elements with just > a text change - that should be completely frowned upon and called out imho.

Almost all of my examples could be accurately described that way in their first version. Maybe not Windows 1.0, not Facebook, and I think not Wordpress, and there may have been a couple of other exceptions. MercadoLibre _still_ looks exactly like eBay to me.

<comment><USER12> That's because it's eBay's Latin American partner and eBay has a 19.5% ownership interest in MercadoLibre - not to mention eBay sold off iBazar to MercadoLibre in that process.

<comment><USER11> No, that's not why. It looked like that from the beginning, long before eBay bought into them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not against stealing ideas and methods from other companies, internalising them then IMPROVE upon them. That's part of innovation.

But blatant copying?! Even the UI?! C'mon Kai-fu, I'm sure Innovation Work can do better than that. The whole purpose of Innovation Work (which is itself a copy of YC, for those of you who don't know) is to spur entrepreneurialism in the region, but all I see is setting up a very bad example. I can't imagine how the founders feel OWNERSHIP in their startups. It's more like a gold rush.

<comment><USER14> I'm disappointed with what Kai-Fu Lee is doing; I guess I expect more from him.

Disappointment aside, though, this strategy works. Take something that works, and apply to the China market. Why reinvent the wheel? But I'd argue that they should do a better job with "copying" -- you don't really want to invite criticism for no gain, unless the blatantness of copying is part of the strategy (to show investors that they literally and successfully cut-and-paste working startup businesses, like an assembly line).

Hmm, now that I think about it, perhaps that's the whole point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ironically, Sequoia Capital invested both in DianDian and Tumblr. Great Firewall is really good for copying and monetizing startup businss.

[http://fan.renren.it/a/ITxinwen/hulianwang/20110325/79864.ht...](http://fan.renren.it/a/ITxinwen/hulianwang/20110325/79864.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Something that we tend to forget is that we learn by imitation — and industries are no different than individuals. Chinese firms will start to evolve their software to local tastes and will slowly set themselves apart from mere clones that don't translate well. That will be followed by free form borrowing of the best ideas from multiple sites — and that will be followed by local innovations. And at that point China will begin to export their software as the world wants to talk to them (much the way you'd join LinkedIn from abroad if you wanted to do business with Americans).

</comment><comment><USER17> As much as it pains me as a person who values intellectual property, I have to admit that copying is a valid and important strategy. At least half (anyone know of a more educated number?) of the development in Asia since the Meji Restoration consists of pasting Western ideas.

I hope this means that all startups take the internationalization seriously from the beginning. Hopefully we can get some sort of solid services / startups / processes that can help internationalize companies much earlier on.

The current crop of localization services are frankly inadequate.

<comment><USER18> > _pasting Western ideas._

There's a difference between ideas and the expression of those ideas; that's why patent and copyright are separate. What's being complained about here goes beyond copying ideas, into copying expression.

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Many Russian internet businesses (can't call most of them startups) copy parts of interface, ideas or business models from American [ex]startups.

They never seem to copy the whole experience as a whole, as it seems to be with Chinese ones - but useful bits here and there.

On the other hand, when they don't copy they are accused of that anyway because for some reason Russians value precedence in tech highly.

In all the world the problem seems to boil down to: If there is a business model that works and the niche is vacant in their market, why innovate?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm kind of surprised that anyone is actually surprised or offended by this kind of stuff. The US would be a backwater farming colony if it hadn't wholesale stolen the technologies that allowed New England to compete in the textile industry. That is only the most obvious example.

</comment><comment><USER20> In general cloning is pretty bad. If I ripped off a popular iphone app, threw it on the app store, I'd be dilution the profit of the original creators and confusing users. I profit at everyone else's expense.

But there is a pretty good chance that Tumblr and Quora will soon be blocked in China. (All it takes is one blurb by one user on a sensitive issue, which is how Posterous and blogspot got blocked).

So if we assumed that

1) A product like Tumblr creates value for it's users 2) Tumblr will never be able to profit from China without the government/network connections

then cloning Tumblr seems like a win win scenario for everyone involved.

If doing a startup is about creating something users want(that doesn't exist yet or is not accessible for whatever reason), and the spirit of startups is to do things as efficiently and cheaply as possible, then isn't Diandian(the Tumblr clone) doing exactly what they are suppose to?

Disclaimer: I founded a startup in Beijing a few months ago, and actually received seed funding from Kaifu's Innovation Works. I don't work for them, nor am I trying to defend anyone's actions(Come on guys... even the ICONS?). Just offering a different perspective from the other side of the the great firewall of China. ^^

</comment><comment><USER21> These copy cat sites (and similar ones in Europe) are an interesting test to the "idea" vs. "execution" argument. I bet that there are other nearly perfect clones of Tumblr in China yet this one has risen to the top. I'm sure Kai-Fu Lee is looking beyond the ideas and at teams behind them.

Cloning might not be the most ethical way of building a product but clearly DianDian identified a market that wasn't being served in China and had the ability to bring a product to that market.

I love that the discussion of cloning was happening on "Zhihu, a clone of Quora".

</comment><comment><USER22> _> His first open letter in year 2000 to students titled About honesty and integrity._

This is the author's big conclusion? He just had to go snarky with it? The guy once wrote about honesty and integrity. That was TEN years ago; it's not some big scandal that he has now taken a couple products that were not available in the Chinese market and brought them to market as quickly as possible.

If you can get away with it, why not make your minimum-viable product a near- clone of an existing product that works but not in your market? That seems like a very sound strategy to me. Once he gets some traction and begins to see what improvements he should make in the context of his market, the product will begin to diverge.

If Tumblr wants to localize to China with an all-new Chumblr, then we can start fighting over IP theft. Until then, the guy is simply doing a service.

Blogs used to be superior to mainstream media because they gave the straight facts while avoiding the sensationalism that plagues modern day media. It's too bad the latest wave of bloggers are all wanna-be journalists.

</comment><comment><USER23> Tumblr will have the last laugh here. There's practically no market for tasteful online advertising or paid software in China. So, while he might rack-up users it will be hard to monetize this.

<comment><USER24> Tencent is the second largest Internet company in the world, and it monetizes primarily through virtual goods, including blog themes. Chinese users don't buy software, but they do pay for online services.

<comment><USER25> Tencent is... unbelievable. I saw that huge piece of crap IM client on the PC of basically every Chinese grad student I knew. I also recently found out that their QQPlayer media player violates the GPL by including code from ffmpeg without any attribution or licenses; combine that with the way their IM client used to, and still may, censor messages, and I'm wondering what the hell else they're up to! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interestingly, the Chinese word for learning, 学 (xue) also means to imitate/to mimic.

<comment><USER27> I am confused, how else can you learn by NOT imitate?

<comment><USER28> The recent post "Teaching binary to 3rd Graders using the Socratic method" is a good example of a non-imitation teaching/learning method.

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2446316>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The entire Chinese startup scene fascinates me - we don't peer into it often enough

</comment><comment><USER27> Now Kaifu-Lee's <http://innovation-works.com> itself got copied

<http://aodaren.com/copy-works>

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Why is Google mentioned in the headline? They have nothing to do with this story. Might as well list all of the schools this guy attended in the headline as well.

<comment><USER30> I have never heard of Kai-Fu Lee, and I gather he made his name via Google, so the context was useful for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You've got to love their name: "Innovation Works".

<comment><USER32> Innovation works, but genius steals.

<comment><USER33> Do you really believe this.

<comment><USER34> In China, I really believe this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Bad Hackers Copy, Great Hackers Steal...? ( <http://vimeo.com/4763707> )

</comment><comment><USER36> my understanding may be wrong and whoever knows better please correct me if so. The copying in Chinese culture isn't a "vice of stealing", it is more like a "virtue of modesty and respect to the masters". I.e. taking a clean canvas and trying to paint something original is like an arrogant statement that one can come up with something better than using that canvas to make a good copy of a great work of a great master. And only when the one has perfected his skills and craft, it is appropriate to make original contribution, say add/modify a couple of details to the copy of the great work.

</comment><comment><USER37> Idea for a weekend project: A social directory for copycat websites.

</comment><comment><USER38> One wonders if the likes of Google and Microsoft employed Kai-Fu Lee so that he would be less inclined to fund / promote clones of their products in China.

</comment><comment><USER39> One of the points missed by the HN knee-jerk crowd:

by Kai-FU funding knock off clones rather than investing in something new that takes VC money away from other potential successful startups in the startup scene in China.

</comment><comment><USER40> This guy was formerly at MSFT. The same guy who when quit, Ballmer threw a chair at him. Not sure if he was worth the chair now.

<http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2005/09/1106.ars>

<comment><USER41> did you read that link? Balmer went nuts when <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lucovsky> quit

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well I'll certainly look at Sequoia a little differently now. The legality and there's ethicality, I look for both in business partners.

</comment><comment><USER43> MS Windows 'borrowed' alot from Mac's UI, and nowadays most smart phones are copying iPhone's concepts. I feel the hidden interest in this thread is more on Chinese/China bashing rather than intellectual property.

<comment><USER44> Did Windows clone the Mac UI right down to the color and pixel and then replace the Apple logo? I think the bashing here is well-deserved, above and outside the discussion of whether China has a demonstrated economy of copying (it does).

Also, there's a special place in hell for people who can't just come out and call a clone a clone.

<comment><USER45> I agree with your first paragraph, but "a special place in hell"?

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure why the question mark here.

Are you questioning the meaning of this phrase or its applicability? If the former, then it is a reference to Dante's The Divine Comedy. If the latter, then in The Inferno, there is a special place reserved for thieves and betrayers. In a way, if you are a hacker and you blatantly rip-off the work of another member of the community, you are betraying said community. So the innermost circle of hell is reserved for you with Brutus, Cassius and Judus.

<comment><USER45> "In a way", yes. We're talking people who killed their own families, and both Christianity's arch-betrayers (Judas and Satan).

Wikipedia: "The traitors [who are suffering in the deepest circle of Hell - me] are distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent in that their acts involve betraying a special relationship of some kind. There are four concentric zones (or "rounds") of traitors, corresponding, in order of seriousness, to betrayal of family ties, betrayal of community ties, betrayal of guests, and betrayal of liege lords. (...) the traitors are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus, with each group encased in ice to progressively greater depths."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you blog in 2018? - <AUTHOR> What do you use to blog in 2018? Ghost? WP? Something else? <comment><USER2> I use Medium sporadically, and I think it's a good platform to use if you don't already have an audience, since it's easy to repost to larger publications and gain distribution.

Once you gain an audience, or if you already have one, then using an open source platform is the way to go.

WordPress is probably the best choice, since the ecosystem is just so much larger than anything else out there. I would really suggest finding a managed service over deploying it on an ec2 instance or something. Security is a constant battle on WordPress sites, and it's just better to have someone else deal with that.

If you don't care about distribution or growing an audience and are just blogging for fun, then something like Hugo might be a good choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I write my posts[0] in Org mode[1], export them to Markdown using ox-hugo[2], publish to HTML using Hugo[3], and deploy the site over HTTPS using Netlify[4].

[0]: [https://scripter.co](https://scripter.co)

[1]: [https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/)

[2]: [https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/](https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/)

[3]: [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)

[4]: [https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> We use self-hosted WP. I find it's the most flexible option.

</comment><comment><USER5> Self-hosted Apache Roller.

</comment><comment><USER6> also curious on this!!!</comment>


Monitoring PubMed retractions: a Heroku-hosted Sinatra application  - <AUTHOR> http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/monitoring-pubmed-retractions-a-heroku-hosted-sinatra-application/ Link to ApplicatioN: http://pmretract.heroku.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to application: <http://pmretract.heroku.com/></comment>


Bank's severance deal requires IT workers to be on call for two years - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2994787/it-careers/bank-s-severance-deal-requires-it-workers-to-be-on-call-for-two-years.html <comment><USER2> Reasonable means £1000 a day even assuming my now employer allows outside side jobs.

or "why yes ill help you clear the problem just need to login as root and type rm --no-preserve-root -rf /?

</comment><comment><USER3> Banks are losing their minds more and more everyday as they deal with a world that doesn't trust them or respect them.</comment>


Show HN: IRentAway – Romantic message suggestions for your spouse every 3 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.irentaway.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I am Izu, and I created irentaway (wcky domain name i know).

Background story: We all find love in unexpected places don't we? Recently in law school, I met this really amazing girl who loves sending me text messages (SMS) and always insists I do same. Generally I have no idea how to come up with love texts messages and this usually led to some friction.

Why not use others: Using all the message apps out there is really cumbersome because you have to search through to find a decent enough message. Same also with googling.

Why you need this: Serendipity is the beauty of life. Receiving text message suggestions without actively searching could make you that spontaneous lover your partner has always dreamed about.

</comment><comment><USER2> Haha, this is bad. So very bad.

I'd rather send myself little prompts. That urge, motivate and inspire me to remind my spouse how much I care about them. Nothing wrong with using automation to remind yourself to focus on them, to remind yourself what's really important.

But automation to outsource your affection? _PUKE_

<comment><AUTHOR> I do respect your method but consider the fact that "composing Romantic messages" is not the strong suit of lots of people.

<comment><USER2> If that's the case your spouse should be able to figure it out. "Why is he so romantic and poetic with SMS but can't bring me flowers?"

And you don't need to be poetic really, something like. "I was thinking about your wavy hair on my face" from a prompt like "Think about something you really care about her"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey Izu, it would be great if there were a handful of example messages somewhere on the site(if there already is I couldn't find it). Also, the learn more link at the top of the page is unresponsive. Using desktop Chrome latest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. Thanks for mentioning. The messages will be sent to you first so you send it yourself to your spouse.

This is a bare bones project right now. Would add more features asap.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Developers, Kill Passwords today with LaunchKey. - <AUTHOR> https://blog.launchkey.com/2013/07/01/public-beta-launch/ The LaunchKey API has moved to Public Beta and the team formally invites Developers to begin implementing LaunchKey on your systems and projects.<p>LaunchKey eliminates passwords by providing physical authentication through the devices you  already own. <comment><USER2> Possession of an iPhone or other device as a system of authentication is actually less secure than even a fingerprint which at least takes some degree of skill and tools to lift off of a surface.

Sorry but the core of your idea is not a solid foundation upon which the rest of it should stand. You've obviously done a great deal of work and it "looks nice" so it hurts me to tell you this.

You've basically re-invented the Japanese INKAN...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkan#Japanese_usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkan#Japanese_usage)

Passwords, as painful as they are, work because they are secrets.

Fingerprints, eye scans, vein prints, voice patterns etc... are not secrets and can be/are replicated anytime.

Possession is just another form of a non-secret and between the moment your device is stolen and the moment you report the fact there is a window for abuse.

Passwords don't permit such abuses.

I hope my feedback will be constructive for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. We certainly seem to disagree about the security of passwords in general.

With that said, our system supports far more than a possession factor. LaunchKey has a Pin and/or Digital Combo lock (your secret) on the app level for a knowledge factor and Geo-fencing available for an inherent factor. Combine these factors with possession and you have a very secure system. Reliable bio-metric factors could certainly be implemented in the future as well.

As you said Passwords are painful, especially when we don't know them any more and pass them off to a third party application. The explosion of Password Managers such as your own indicate that users are expected to carry the burden. There has to be a better experience and solution for consumers and systems alike.

<comment><USER2> Well, possession might work better if it were a chip you'd implant in your body. Then at least it wouldn't be prone to theft.

You'd just need to convince people to implant something in their bodies.

In any case, you're free to your opinions and the market is the ultimate decider of what floats and what sinks. Good luck to you and your project!

<comment><USER3> Presumably you'll know if your phone has gone missing and can then deactivate it as an authentication token long before someone could combine it with guessing your PIN. There has been a secure token business operating for years without a major problem due to token loss. Migration to using your phone instead of a separate token is a natural transition and doesn't change the fundamentals much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this work if I don't have a smartphone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently we are supporting iOS and Android ecosystems. This includes Tablets and Phones. We will have apps available for a wider variety of devices (Windows Phone, PC, Mac, etc) in the near future if you device isn't currently supported.</comment></comment>


My Parents Were Home-Schooling Anarchists (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/magazine/my-parents-were-home-schooling-anarchists.html <comment><USER3> From what I can tell as a non-expert, kids cannot learn certain things very well until they reach a certain age or maturity, but after that age it's very easy.

My gripe with the education system is that early on, there's too much focus on learning things that people are going to learn regardless. If your kid learns the alphabet at 4 or at 8, what's the difference? Can anyone not learn how to read a newspaper by the time they leave school?

Later on, when the kids get to the teenage years, they are able to learn a great deal of stuff. But then nobody is really teaching them when they can learn. There's a whole load of scientific stuff that's quite interesting that ends up getting crammed into a few years of high school, and crammed in a way that turns kids off. And culture classes (literature, history) are so horrific some people never pick up another book.

There's also not enough emphasis on motivation. The emphasis is on passing tests. If you're motivated, you can learn anything. You'll even spend your own time and money learning. My guess is the home schoolers have figured this out and that's why they're not that far behind ordinary schools.

<comment><USER4> >If your kid learns the alphabet at 4 or at 8, what's the difference?

It's a huge difference. As soon as a kid can read, they can learn in a way that isn't just you telling them stuff. They can self-direct their learning, read books about stuff, go online and devour Wikipedia, etc. It's not just "hey, can anyone not read a newspaper by the time they leave school?", it's "how soon does this kid have the tool to satisfy their natural curiosity about things that require more than someone telling them about it?" which establishes their relationship with learning itself, with knowing how to learn.

<comment><USER5> There is no solid evidence that teaching reading early is advantageous, and in fact there is evidence that it can be damaging. No one really knows why exactly, but there are several theories ranging from discouraging other types of play and interaction, to the difficulty turning them off of reading later on.

>it's "how soon does this kid have the tool to satisfy their natural curiosity about things that require more than someone telling them about it?"

I don't think that's true at all, an average 4-7 year old who can read, cannot read to a level where they can learn topics complex enough that they "require more than someone telling them about it."

A kid who learns to read at 7 will catch up to the kid who learned at 4, so that by the time they are ready to teach themselves on their own through reading, there won't be a difference.

[https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkind...](https://deyproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/readinginkindergarten_online-1.pdf)

<comment><USER6> > ...to the difficulty turning them off of reading later on.

Wait. What?

Who the hell thinks that making kids stop liking to read is a thing that should happen?

<comment><USER7> I think that sentence meant "the difficulty of reading at a young age makes them less interested in reading when they are older"

<comment><USER6> Hmm, oh yeah, I think you're right.

(Personally I was reading by the time I was four without my parents doing anything more than reading to me on a regular basis, and maybe setting a good model by reading a lot themselves.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing that stood out most to me in this article is the tale of abuse and torment the kids received when going back to the formal school system. The concept of teasing and abuse was foreign to them. Obviously it's just one datapoint, but I'd love to see a study that checks whether the school system makes children meaner and more cruel.

Imagine the damage being done to society if it really is the case that traditional schools result in meaner people.

<comment><USER9> It might be the law of large numbers. The larger the school, the larger the probability for one or more really mean kids per age group. This is then probably amplified once more by school size since mean kids thrive on a large audiences and have an easier time recruiting allies (who in this context aren't actively mean themselves but are eager to provide social support structures to bullies).

I switched primary schools once at that age because of massive bullying (in my country switching to a different primary school is almost impossible unless you move to another school zone, so it took quite some effort). The second school was smaller and more diverse socially, and I got through the whole thing much easier.

<comment><USER10> Same experience I had. Went from a medium sized middle school of ~3k to a high school of ~15k students and had the worst time. Transferred to a rural high school of ~1500 and had a much better experience the rest of my high school years.

The other contributing factor though is culture. My middle school was serving a metropolitan suburbia. Demographics were mostly white, a good amount of Hispanics, and few Asian / African kids. Parents were often overbearing and abusive through their helicoptering, Stark contrast with my high school - <USER2> more mixed culture, knock 30k off the mean income, tons more violently abused kids who take it out on their peers.

And then I moved to a literal bleach show, where in 1500 kids there were probably ~50 - 100 non-white students, and it was in a college town where the median income was around 100k. The kids were super passive aggressive to an outsider like me, but there was absolutely no violent bullying, and the insularism of the community meant I could just ignore everyone and they ignored me.

Fundamentally though, its systemically broken to stuff kids in grades like this, with the same peers, with no escape for over a decade. Bullying is barely a thing outside of school because its only in school that you cannot escape it. In the real world, you quit jobs with peer abuse, you move away from toxic neighbors, you avoid the bad neighborhoods. It isn't toughening them up because its in no way reflective of reality to have to put up with verbal and physical harassment every day without reasonable recourse.

<comment><USER11> > In the real world, you quit jobs with peer abuse, you move away from toxic > neighbors, you avoid the bad neighborhoods. It isn't toughening them up > because its in no way reflective of reality to have to put up with verbal > and physical harassment every day without reasonable recourse.

As long as you have the money or support to quit your job, or move, or avoid the bad neighborhoods.

Do people choose to live in bad neighborhoods? Do they choose to send their children to poorly funded schools? Do they choose to work part time, minimum wage jobs?

> Bullying is barely a thing outside of school because its only in school that > you cannot escape it

Or if you're a female on the internet.

Or black in the south.

Or poor.

<comment> guard-of-terra "They want that nobody would be rich"

"My granddad wanted that nobody would be poor"

Do you want everybody to be poor, human-interaction-wise?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My brother and I were home educated from end of primary up to 18 years old or so. My brother totally believes in home education, and (not but!) is now a primary school teacher, after having gone on to do his degree and masters in universities in the UK.

We found European home educators are often much more "anarchist" in the sense of this article, liberal, free-thinking, non-conforming, often of non- traditional religion / spirituality, who think the state system is too narrow, limited, and structured. In the States it's much more right-wing religious exclusionists who think the system is too liberal, unstructured, and ungodly. A very very weird difference of culture.

My mum wrote a lot about home education, here's her site with all kinds of info about getting started, details about what we did, etc: [http://home- ed.info/](http://home-ed.info/)

I loved it, and it was perfect for me. My brother loves regime and structure, so would probably have done fine in school. I'm much less academic, and do a whole mixture of jobs (acting, teaching, programming, writing, A/V, electronics, etc.) in a non-profit organisation. Almost all stuff that I learned as a kid, with the oceans of free time that I had, and my friends in school didn't. I worked in a theatre company for 3 years, and did school-work in the evenings, or when I had time. I taught myself to code.

With our kids now, my wife (non-home-educated) is a bit skeptical of her ability to home-school. Our son is still too young (he's one). I certainly wouldn't object to him going to school - providing it doesn't interfere with his education too much. :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression.

Imagine if all the state money that went into your schooling were invested instead for your minimum basic income: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a- graduation-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation- speech/)

<comment><USER14> > Does the author resent staying out of school because... it didn't prepare > them for the awfulness of school? I kind of got that impression.

No. The author resents staying out of school because it also meant staying out of more diverse and more regular social interaction. Successful social interaction requires shared values (which wasn't really the issue) and, at least to a degree, shared social experiences. If two people have hitherto had experiences that are so divergent that ego cannot understand any of the structures or references alter uses, then social interaction becomes very difficult.

Accordingly, _fitting in_ was difficult because of their non-standard upbringing, and while the parents might not have minded that they did not quite "fit in", the children did not have a choice of their own or even the necessary experience that would have enabled them to make an informed choice in the first place.

What is described is the removal from the Zeitgeist, which becomes a problem if others simply assume a shared set of conventions and experiences or if you would _like_ to be part of a group that is based on different premises.

That school was (at least partially) awful was merely a symptom of this underlying social schism, not a cause.

<comment><USER15> "The author resents staying out of school because it also meant staying out of more diverse and more regular social interaction."

How is sitting in a room with other people, all of whom are within 12 months of your own age, with an authority figure at the front constantly telling you what to do, a "diverse" social interaction?

American schools were designed to produce factory workers who would stay on- task based on the direction of a foreman and bells ringing at certain times. That world doesn't exist any more.

<comment><USER16> The public schools I attended were far more economically, culturally, ideologically, and ethnically diverse than both my private college and post- college work environments (and you can throw in gender diversity too wrt my work environments). I would not have met kids like this otherwise -- certainly not if I had been in a homeschool group socializing with the children of parents who had similar philosophical views about schooling.

Public education is certainly in need of big reforms, but I'm grateful for the diversity I was exposed to attending one. It's a big part of what keeps me grounded in the ridiculous Silicon Valley bubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra "didn't they need to be with their peers and suffer all the harsh experiences that entails"

Around some people, there's a belief that "doing time makes your a person"

But you know what. Regular folks avoid going to prison. Moreover, they avoid doing things leading to that outcome.

Why would you submit your _child_ to prison-like environment? It's not like adults are routinely exposed to that kind of experience. Certainly not required for leading a productive life.

<comment><USER5> I've never understood this at all. Outside of public school, I've only encountered one other similar environment--my first retail job after high school.

After that, social interactions have been nothing at all like what school prepared me for.

<comment> guard-of-terra Worse still, school un-prepairs you from healthy interactions. You grow all kinds of needles, you become wary of people and insecure. It takes literally years of your life to overcome that. Sometimes forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its an interesting story but I would summarize it more as being extremely poor as children in the 70s, also they happened to home school although that wasn't a substantial part of their story. Or if they somehow attended stereotypical K-12, however impossible it would have been logistically, wouldn't have changed the overall story very much.

Also, in the olden day, people, both kids and adults, were more creative.

<comment><USER18> > Also, in the olden day [sic], people, both kids and adults, were more > creative.

Wat? [citation needed]

It probably depends on who you hang out with. Granted, i wasn't there in the 70s, but there are some mighty creative individuals in my sphere of experience, both local and remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> More upbeat than the story of the Paskowitz family, as told in the documentary Surfwise. They said they never had trouble with the authorities because their kids never started school. Dropping out of the system is tougher than never entering it.

The kids, as adults, were quite resentful that they lacked an educational background that could've helped them.

</comment><comment><USER20> I generally sympathize with homeschoolers, but these parents seemed pathologically unable to doubt themselves or admit to mistakes. They were unable to see that their son, James, needed help learning to read, and even seemed to minimize his unhappiness. They did nothing to prepare their children for public school, despite professing to know how unpleasant the social environment can be. When James was picked on by his classmates, he never let his parents know — presumably because they were so unattuned to their children's experiences that it would have been pointless.

These parents doubtless believed they were virtuous in rejecting the culture of the times, but they went quite a bit farther and were basically delusional. People like that should not homeschool.

</comment><comment><USER21> First, an anecdote about home schoolers: I am good friends with three people who started home-schooled and did not enter the traditional school system until later on (two in high school, one in college). I don't think any of them regret it, and they are all very well off academically. There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality.

Honestly, having spent about half my pre-college years at public schools, I would much rather be home schooled than public schooled.

The primary reason is that it seemed like public school classes were always geared towards the lowest common denominator of the class. I hardly did any work (and hardly learned anything) because we spent so much time banging on the same concepts for the benefit of the slowest people in the class. When I finally went to private school, we suddenly started targeting at least the middle of the class. I finally started learning things in school!

The secondary reason is political. Even from a young age, I was very aware of the fact that the public school system didn't treat me like a human being. I'm better at articulating why I felt that way now; it's because the public school system is alarmingly close to the prison system.

As a child, you are legally required to attend school, under threat of force (directed at your parents). Since many people can't or won't do home or private schooling, this amounts to forcing many children to attend public school. Upon arriving, you are not permitted to leave of your own free will. You are subject to the arbitrary directives of non-elected officials. You are stripped of many basic human rights on campus (in particular, the right to free speech and the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures). There is a healthy judicial tradition in the USA of taking away the rights of school children. I'm sure there's a list of relevant supreme court cases around. Public schools in the US also do tons of political indoctrination, like saying the pledge of allegiance on a regular basis. Growing up in that environment was extremely deleterious to my critical thinking; by the time I was in sixth grade, I had all sorts of authoritarian leftist ideas of exactly the sort I'd been subjected to by my teachers and my schools of the last seven years.

It wasn't until I finally switched to private school, where they treated me like a human, that I realized I had been imprisoned about half the days out of every year. Finally, I was free to leave campus of my own accord. Finally, discourse, rather than blind obedience, was the norm. If private school wasn't an option, I'd much rather homeschool my children than expose them to the academic and psychological clusterfuck that is every public school I every attended.

<comment><USER22> > There seems to be a popular conception of home schooling parents as crazy > religious zealots or something, which I think has little basis in reality.

Knowing nothing about you other than that you read and comment on this site I would assume that 1) you are above societal average intellectually and financially and 2) you associate with people who are similarly successful.

Given that you mostly know people roughly as successful as you, it shouldn't be a surprise that people you know who are home schooled are doing about as well as you are.

To directly address your point, I think of the home schooling population as fairly bimodal; there are many parents who choose homeschooling for religious reasons, and there are some (especially with gifted children) who homeschool because the standard curricula move to slow. Which is to say, crazy religious zealots are a large fraction of the homeschoolers, but not representative of the homeschooled people you and I meet.

Incidentally, I was briefly homeschooled with no impact on my academic career.

<comment><USER23> _...you associate with people who are similarly successful._

This argument is nearly uncounterable (that's not a good thing): is anyone going to respond "no I hang out with dumbass bible-thumpers all the time"?

Since we're comparing anecdotes, some homeschoolers I know might comprise another "mode": those whose local public schools are so horrible and dangerous that they cannot subject their children, whom they love, to such an environment.

<comment><USER22> > This argument is nearly uncounterable [...]

I'm not sure I understand your objection here. Most people spend their time interacting with people who are similar to them. If anything, this is an argument that anecdotal evidence is quite limited in general. But that doesn't seem controversial at all!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have seen this happen. To me, it is all legitametely wonderful, except for the naiveté of the _parents_ in thinking they can drop their kids into the churning river of public school without any instruction on how to get along. That challenge can be addressed, but only if you acknowledge it exists.

</comment><comment><USER25> There are multiple strains of Anarchism, each as valid as the next, and some diametrically opposed to the other (eg. Anarcho-Capitalism vs. Anarcho- Communism). People are going to self-identify in ways you may not agree, so just focus on the content not the label.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is not what the modern definition of "Anarchists" means at all.

<comment><USER23> This assertion would be more interesting if it included some supporting detail. What is that "definition"? Why should we use it rather than some other definition? How does the situation in TFA not qualify?

Don't worry, I'm not attached to any particular definition of any particular political philosophy. I'm just curious about what _you 're_ trying to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why doesn't NYT let hackernews links through their soft paywall? I guess I will go and google the headline so I can read the article...

<comment><USER28> Why should HN be an exception?

<comment><USER27> It's in NYT's interest to allow people to read linked articles. I'm never going to subscribe to NYT just to follow a link from Google or any other source. But maybe if I read enough interesting pieces linked from other sources, I'll shell out $100 to see what else is in the publication, access archives, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Nothing on HN about the protests is disappointing - <AUTHOR> The lack of content and discussion on HN on the topic has been disappointing. I understand this is a tech community but why aren't we using tech to help with protests to help with understanding the problem and finding solutions to fix it. If I'm missing content and posts i apologize. But I need to see that this community cares about more than just the best JavaScript library or the downfall of we work. Again if I'm missing these I apologize. I mostly a lurker rarely commenting.
Edit: I don't want to be accusatory and i'm sorry about that. I want to have discussions and mobilize this community. I'm lucky to be a part of it and that I engage and get to be in it.
So please, let's throw ideas out there that help with 1. fixing the current issue today 2. fix the future issue.
It can be anything, but I want to hear peoples thoughts and ideas.
Update: I see this has been flagged maybe I'd ask moderators to consider a different way for users to engage in discussions like this while still maintaining the current community happy. Maybe difficult but thanks to those who did engage. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349294) | 516 points | 1 day ago | 346 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23352785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23352785) | 391 points | 22 hours ago | 419 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355572) |192 points | 18 hours ago | 160 comments

And a few more with less traction [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=minneapolis&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

<comment><USER3> Indeed, the correct statement is that although there are highly upvoted posts about the protests, they are forced out of the front page by posts with less votes.

<comment><USER4> This happens to all posts about controversial topics (I guess because they also attract lots of flags). It's the same for posts about climate change for example.

<comment><USER3> Also this post has been flagged and I can't seem to be able to vouch for it.

<comment><USER5> You can only vouch for [dead] posts and comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel the opposite. I find that social discussions here always turn toxic quickly and teach me nothing.

I agree it's helpful for US residents to all be reading about and discussing the protests, but I don't see a reason it should be here. It's all over every other social medium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not everyone here is on social media and not everyone here has a connection to someone who is Directly connected and is making a request for action. I agree with your assessment, things can turn toxic but if there's some action on positivity where there was non before then it's good.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> I feel if you want that type of discussion you should go to a 'social media' site to get it. Not expect this forum to turn into a social media site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe if you offered something specific and actionable HN readers could do. There's no single simple "problem" to understand, no easy tech "fix." Posts that generate comment flame wars are not helping anything, those aren't mobilizing or engaging anyone towards a solution.

Protest peacefully if you think that will help. Vote. Join the police force and set an example. Call out racism when you hear or see it, don't go home and write some self-righteous indignant post on HN.

This has nothing to do with the "tech community," we don't have any special insight as nerds to solve deep human and cultural problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most people here want to belive that the world revolves around tech as opposed to tech being a tool that is used in our everyday world to make it better. So I'm not surprised there is nothing posted here.

<comment><USER10> Well I think we want to apply insight from the tech world to a variety of topics.

This is one of those things we're having difficulty applying insight into because it's a systemic issue within the Police department that revolves around power dynamics, accentuated by race (or an issue around race, accentuated by power dynamics).

If we had to frame the discussion for optimal discourse here, we should try to find the parallels in power dynamics within our field. Otherwise this topic is better off on Reddit, where no particular lens is applied other than the general human experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure. I come here to read about technology and technology related issues. There is some overlap -- specifically, I think Twitter's choice to start policing misinformation from POTUS is good. But I don't feel like the protests are technology related.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your comment and I agree that maybe people come here as an escape. That is definitely something to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's self selecting because previous social posts rarely make it to the top of Hacker News. I don't know if it is due to the population or the moderation. However it means that people who would otherwise post are less likely to due to past results.

<comment><USER12> See. Gone from the first page already. Looks like it got flagged this time. The moderators don't want social discussions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware of the heavy moderation happening. This is good to know because it helps me understand why certain things are discussed. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Representative bias - You only know what you see!

</comment><comment><USER14> This post has also been flagged, which is both disappointing and unsurprising.

</comment><comment><USER15> What the monitoring is telling?

<comment><AUTHOR> That we need to put pressure on police leadership and stand with our people. There are people on the ground putting their lives and livelihoods on the line. People are losing businesses to send a message to the state that this needs a solution. To the country. People are donating money and doing personal fund matching. And that whatever we are doing is not enough and we can't let up.

<comment><USER16> Sorry to inform you. But nothing will change.

They'll get this to quiet down. Then it's back to business as usual.

The oligarchs have too much power over the plebs. And they have the heavy weapons to enforce it.

We all knew it, but the virus exposed, how predatory, capitalism truly is.

I must admit though, the protesters are very brave. The cops are just running people down now, if you get in front of their patrol car.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you on how daunting the problems feel. And the pandemic has shown what many have suspected about the ugliness of capitalism. Thanks for your comment it helps me engage better with the broader community.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth getting a computer science degree? - <AUTHOR> I've been studying comp sci for the last year and the extremely low quality, lack of focus, teachers with no experience and outdated materials is getting to me. It'll take me at least 3 more years to get my bachelors and I don't think I'll be able to motivate myself.<p>Is it still worth getting one? I already have 5 years worth of work experience.
Should I consider getting some certificates instead? Which ones? <comment><USER2> I am in a similar situation as far as work experience and opinion of course material.

My reasons for pursuing my degree: 1\. Significantly easier to get a visa to work out of the country 2\. I don't want it to be used as an excuse to pay me less 3\. I don't want to compete for a job with people who have one when I don't

It's pretty sad that "becoming a better programmer" isn't in the top 3 reasons. The truth is that the courses I have taken just haven't improved my programming in any meaningful way. I have 2 semesters left, so maybe all the good stuff will be there?

So my answer is: yes I think it's still worth getting one, especially with degree inflation in overdrive with no sign of slowing down, certificates are probably not worth very much to employers, especially for somebody with experience already.</comment>


Is getting a patent worth it? - <AUTHOR>

I know that's a vague question, but I'd like to hear your personal views and experiences on the subject. <comment><USER2> I've spent some time pondering over this, so here's my 2 cents:

1\. Build your product first.

2\. It's expensive. If you still believe your idea is unique[1], hire help.

3\. Algorithms are not patentable. Systems and methods are.

See: <http://paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html>

      If you want to patent an algorithm, you have to frame it as a
      computer system executing that algorithm. Then it's mechanical;
      phew. The default euphemism for algorithm is "system and method."
      Try a patent search for that phrase and see how many results you
      get.

4\. It's a long process. See PG's footnote:

      [3] Applying for a patent is now very slow, but it might actually
      be bad if that got fixed. At the moment the time it takes to get a
      patent is conveniently just longer than the time it takes a
      startup to succeed or fail.

and this: <http://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html>

      There are two kinds of patent suits:
      1. Random people suing you in the hope of getting money.
      2. Competitors suing you in order to destroy you.
      Until you're successful, you won't have to worry about the first
      type. And once you are successful, you'll inevitably have a lot of
      them to deal with, valid or not. So fatalism is the right plan for
      type 1 suits.

and the classic: <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

      One way to put up barriers to entry is through patents. But
      patents may not provide much protection. Competitors commonly find
      ways to work around a patent. And if they can't, they may simply
      violate it and invite you to sue them.

5\. It's a defensive gesture, more than a monetization/licensing move.

See: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming- software...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software- patent-apocalypse.html)

6\. See Modista vs Like.com (<http://thenoisychannel.com/2009/12/26/r-i-p- modista/>) and _Roy van Rijn's_ ordeal with Shazam's patent lawyers for the ridonkulousness (that's a word, thanks UD) of the patent system. A blogpost describing how to create Shazam in Java receieved a letter from the patent holder requesting it be taken down. The audacity of it in the author's words:

      A blogpost describing an algorithm can never be infrigement of
      intellectual property. The whole idea of a patent is to preserve
      an idea, to write down what it does and how it works for future
      generations. A patent has to be publicly available for this sole
      reason. This isn't protecting their intellectual property, this is
      plain censorship.

Source: <http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/07/patent-infringement/>

And [http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement- part-2...](http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/11/patent-infrigement-part-2/)

7\. Also read the discussions on quora on whether patents are worth it:

[http://www.quora.com/Software-Patents/How-important-is- paten...](http://www.quora.com/Software-Patents/How-important-is-patent-for- consumer-tech-startup)

And <http://www.quora.com/Are-patents-valuable>

8\. And if you still want to go this route and hire a lawyer, ask the right questions (I've dealt with a few and have concluded that in the end, you're the best person to look out for yourself - the same goes for finances, exercise vs. hiring a personal finance manager, trainer, anything important for that matter): [http://www.inventorinsights.com/Find_Patent_Trademark_Attorn...](http://www.inventorinsights.com/Find_Patent_Trademark_Attorney.html)

a. If the lawyers says his last patent applications were granted on the first submission, that's a bad sign. You're supposed to be as broad as possible, cover your bases, and go back and forth with the patent office a couple of times (see Amazon's 1-click patent).

b. Another rule of thumb is to check his registration number. I don't fully agree with this rule saying that the lower number, the better. Because that's like saying I'm going to hire the oldest guy for my startup because he's wiser. (I.e. he may just not be the right lawyer for you).

I couldn't figure out where I got all my information from, until I found this old bookmark: _Anyone have experience getting software patents?_ from your very own: <http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=73044>

Oh my, I just realized my 2 cent post turned into a 500 word novel. I'll stop now.

      [1] Wait! Final thought: my philosophy is to be
      transparent about my ideas and share them. Because in the
      end, it comes down to execution. One helpful tip is to not
      just bounce ideas off other entrepreneurs (who often meet
      you with a healthy dose of skepticism) but to ask women.
      Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start explained why better than
      I can, so I'll just post the link to his page here:

<http://brownieinmotion.ca/guykawasaki_women_killer_gene.png>

<comment><USER2> Edit: Seems that Modista is back in business, but here's a screenshot of their website of when they shut down:

<http://brownieinmotion.ca/modista_vs_like.com.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am founder of a startup that in discussions with a larger company buying us out. One of the advantages of acquiring a patent is that, a larger company values the patent exponentially more than the money and effort I have spent on getting it. My vague explanation of why it is so is that large corporations have an army of attorneys and can go after the offending party, or may have a track record of patent suits working in their favor.

Personally, getting a patent is also a value-add to my own skill set, for the next time, whenever that is.</comment>


Silicon Valley start-up success for savvy Aussies (Omnisio, YC 08) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/gobbled-by-google/2008/11/10/1226165479838.html

<comment><USER2> _Don't waste too much time writing a formal business plan, worrying about the state of the market, worrying about potential competitors_

Don't worry != don't think.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rare photo of the famous black t-shirts...

</comment><comment><USER4> Good on the Aussies!!! Makes me proud!

Though I must add that this is one in a million, this is not the case in most cases

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't even mention YC.</comment>


Ask HN: What simple tool do you use to manage your bookmarks? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for an easy and highly accessible tool to manage my bookmarks. It would be very nice if it is browser and platform independent. <comment> alok-g I maintain a static HTML file with all my bookmarks, which also includes embedded search boxes for Google, Wikipedia, etc. It forms a much better home page + new tab page than anything else. File is automatically sync'd between various devices using variois tools.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm building Tefter [1]. It's a privacy-focused bookmarks manager with social aspects and feeds

Features

* Full-text search in the content of the bookmarked pages

* Import from pocket, pinboard or browser

* Ability to assign tags to bookmarks

* Automatic tagging

* Filter by tags, domain or user

* Organise in lists

* List subscription

* Feeds (like theverge [2] or hackernews [3] )

* You can follow users and feeds and build you customised newsfeed

* Archiving

* Dead-link discovery

* "read later" capabilities

* Readable-mode (preserves only the content of articles - removes ads)

* Powerful previews for youtube, soundcloud and mixcloud

* Browser extension to quickly bookmark pages and search

* Desktop and mobile apps

* Slack integration

* Public api

and the list will keep growing!

It's currently in beta so feedback is welcome.

[1] [https://tefter.io](https://tefter.io) [2] [https://tefter.io/~theverge](https://tefter.io/~theverge) [3] [https://tefter.io/~hackernews](https://tefter.io/~hackernews)

</comment><comment><USER3> I posted about an extension I built to help me manage my bookmarks yesterday. It sends you an email of all the bookmarks you make for that day at the end of a day (similar to a news letter). You can find it at linkdrop.co

It sounds like you are more concerned with management than rediscovery, though, so it might not solve your usecase. In that case, I would definitely recommend getpocket.com for saving bookmarks across browsers/machines.

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently spring clean my bookmark to bare essentials, because I found that I rarely use them anymore. If I want to read something, I save it to Pocket. RSS+Feedly for sites that I want to follow. For site that I want to keep for historical purpose, I save the url and screenshot in Google Keep, label it, archive and forget, without cluttering the bookmark.

Actually, I also use this method (keep-archive) in Google Keep for keeping other site too (the 'archive' button is so satisfying to use. It lifts the burden to manage bookmark out of your head, and I know the information is there, in my Google Keep, if I want to see it again (Note: I don't)

For sites I use frequently, I put it in new tab screen using chrome extension called Toby. If it start to accumulate, then I review it, discard it, or save it in specific label in Google keep.

<comment><USER5> Your archiving method seems like a waste of time if a) you don't need them, and b) you could just save a bookmark with one click in your browser.

I believe bookmarks (or something similar) have still its place in an increasingly digital world.

<comment><USER4> Funnily the another me deep inside somehow agree with you lol. I even think about it while archiving 'Do I really need it in the future?'

However as a neat freak, archiving things, put it out of sight, gives me a bit peace of mind. With bookmark, I still see its accumulated through time and always feel the need to do something about it, even it not necessary.

Maybe one day I will realize and decide that all the thing I save is just nonsense and throw everything away. One day...:)

<comment><USER5> I can relate with you!

However, to prevent the time-expensive and often difficult-to-answer question 'Do I really need it in the future?', I'm archiving (more or less) everything.

Concerning your archiving method, I am suggesting: Create a folder in your bookmarks called 'Archive'. A psychological trick to reduce mental burden similar to the archive button in Google Keep :)

<comment><USER4> Sound like the sanest and sustainable way dealing with information overload. I'll give it a try, Thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently found out about Larder.io[1]. It nicely integrates with github stars, web clipper and has an API. I like it for it's simplicity as most of these tools are way too much for simple bookmarking.

[1] [https://larder.io](https://larder.io)

</comment><comment><USER7> WordPress. Not simple to setup or free but once it is setup, it is pretty simple to use.

I use bookmarklet on desktop and WordPress app on phone to post anything interesting to my bookmarks blog. It is pretty easy to search. Sometimes I use tags but usually not. It appears to be a messy collection of links, videos, quotes. But it works great for my purposes.

Blog: [https://www.chaosplay.com](https://www.chaosplay.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wanted the simplest way to save bookmarks, with a single click like i do in the browser, so i made this: [https://pinplz.com](https://pinplz.com)

You can browse chronologically (blog-like), by tag, by domain, leave notes. It also saves the referrer of the bookmark, which is handy when i can't remember where i found the link.

<comment><USER5> How do you add bookmarks in pinplz without using the third-party toolbar button?

<comment><USER8> actually you can't right now.

Also note that it doesn't inject any third party javascript

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using pinboard.com since the open beta, almost ten years ago. One of the hidden (?) gems of the internet.

<comment><USER5> Do you mean pinboard.IN?

<comment><USER9> Oops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> www.pinboard.in is great. Could use some improvements, but it just works and is reliable. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER5> What do you think about getpocket.com and flipboard.com? What are the cons of pinboard.in over the other two?

<comment><USER11> Small operation and simple functionality. No pressure to grow as a business (and sell my data or close doors).

Also, the founder is an amazing writer.

<comment><USER5> Do you know if there is a free trial for pinboard.in? It seems that you can't try it out without providing your credit card information, which is a UX no-go for me.

<comment><USER10> There is no free trial. Not that I'm aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm using Static Marks [1], my own tool to manage bookmarks. It's open source ans browser/OS independent.

[1] [https://darekkay.com/static-marks/](https://darekkay.com/static-marks/)

<comment><USER13> Hey, check [https://mailist.app](https://mailist.app) :)

<comment><USER14> Looks neat.

Can you explain more on the following point, in the non-personal information section of the policy?

"navigation paths used while visiting the website or platform"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related question - how many bookmarks do you have and how do you use them? Because for my use I don't see a point of doing anything fancier that Ctrl-D to bookmark and keeping them in <5 folders in my browser.

<comment><USER5> I am archiving many links in my desktop browser (about 50 folders with various subfolders and each with a dozen links). The problem is that I would also like to have them available on mobile devices. Sure, most of the time you will not need them again. But with increasing regularity I am remembering that I was reading something interesting somewhere and want to have a look again, but can't find it in the web anymore. Then, you can figure out more easily where you read it when having appropriate and well-structured bookmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Take a look at Buku: [https://github.com/jarun/Buku](https://github.com/jarun/Buku)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://tiddlywiki.com](https://tiddlywiki.com)</comment>


The Maths Problem Making Scottish Kids Cry - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-maths-problem-making-scottish-kids-cry?utm_source=mbtwitter <comment><USER2> I remember having this exact same problem when I was 17 (in the USA). Phrased slightly differently, but the main difference was that we weren't given the formula. We were given the land speed and the water speed. Find the fastest route. I don't remember anyone crying over it.</comment>


Researchers discover ferroelectricity at the atomic scale - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-04-ferroelectricity-atomic-scale.html <comment><USER2> I was wonderimg if this was expected and the answer is yes. It was predicted 80 years ago. Here's another article with a simple explanation of it and its dual phenomenon:

[https://phys.org/news/2018-10-validate-year-old- ferroelectri...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-validate-year-old- ferroelectric-theory.html)

<comment><USER3> If I get that right, a 1nm layer should behave more like an ideal material, rather that the average of several multi-nm hysterons.

<comment><USER4> It's just 1nm in one direction, so you merely force the hysterons to lie along the plane.

They claim ferroelectricity, not a _new_ form of ferroelectricity, presumably this means the old theory applies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Edit: oops, I confused ferroelectricity with ferromagnetism. This comment is about the latter... not strictly related to the article, although there's at least _some_ similarity between the effects.

I've been wondering if the ferromagnetic effect could be used to make mid- scale integrated logic devices at home. CMOS devices (and really just anything which depends on PN junctions) are notoriously difficult to manufacture outside of a controlled setting and often require dangerous chemicals. On the other hand, the ferromagnetic effect works on a macro scale (read: hobbyist- friendly) with fewer process steps and friendlier materials for the most basic implementations.

You can make memory devices out of it from just two materials — a toroid- shaped ferromagnetic "core" (e.g. nickel) and a wire running through the core (which can be used to polarize the core, or to read its polarization). That's core memory, used extensively after the era of vacuum tubes but before the era of flash or silicon-based memories.

To my knowledge it was never used much for logic, but the row + column select of a core memory circuit perform an AND operation, and if you search around you can find at least a few papers proposing combinatorial logic based on those ferromagnetic cores.

It's _two_ materials (a ferromagnetic material and a conductor), it's something that was actually used for a decade in industry (core memory), and you can get to 1 MHz even with macro-scale devices. Ferromagnetic devices seem like a hobbyist's dream! The biggest missing link seems to be a way to automate their manufacturing, since threading wire through a thousand cores to make a multiplier sounds too tedious for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pardon my ignorance on this topic. Anyone have a sense of what the response time is like? Is the idea to use the hysteresis for storage? How do cycle limitations compare with other storage tech?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this not the problem graphene was going to solve?

<comment><USER8> Graphene, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So maybe FRAM will finally have it's day.</comment>


Apple Keyboard in pure CSS. - <AUTHOR> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/921159/Keyboard/page.html <comment><USER2> "Pure CSS". Really? The CSS is cool and everything, but there's some JavaScript going on there.

<comment><USER3> More to the point, even if it were "pure css", there's nothing pure about it. Perhaps "only css" makes more sense, but CSS was meant as a way to separate style from content.

Try viewing this page without style and let me know what inherit content is present.

<comment><USER4> The obvious implication in the context of web development is that there were no images used -- all of the rendering is done on the fly by the browser.

However, there are images used, at least one for the background and four for the arrows.

<comment><USER5> Is that the obvious implication? I've seen pure css used in the context of no images, and I've seen it used in the context of no javascript. Both seem reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Credit where credit's due: :)

<http://forrst.com/posts/Working_css3_Apple_Keyboard-thx>

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/921159/Keyboard/keyboard- background....](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/921159/Keyboard/keyboard- background.jpg)

not so pure

<comment><USER7> This could easily be remedied with some CSS3 background gradients.

<comment><USER8> prove it :)

<comment><USER9> Proof: <http://f.cl.ly/items/0T010H1W0X2r3w1B2z3K/keyboard.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> cmd + a letter = a stuck letter. And aww, the capslock doesn't light up. And it would be even cooler if you could type _with_ the keyboard.

Otherwise, _excellent_ job. Responsive and looks _great_ \- it's kinda fun to watch myself type as I type :)

<comment><USER11> Maybe he mapped CapsLock to be a control key, like the rest of us. :)

<comment><USER12> I tried pressing Caps Lock and Escape depressed, then I remembered that I have it mapped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And on Chrome on Linux, it doesn't work at all, as in nothing gets typed. However it's still pretty cool from an effect perspective.

<comment><USER14> Works perfectly here, in Chrome, on Linux. You're clicking up top to set focus first, right?

<comment><USER13> yeah I'm doing that. It seems to work only when I use my keyboard. Clicking on the actual keys doesn't work. I have Ubuntu 10.10 32bit and Chrome 9.0.597.107 The CAPS lock also doesn't light up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Saw a cool presentation at Hack And Tell tonight: Rule 110 in only css3 <http://elilies.com/rule110-full.html>

<comment><USER16> Nice, but I still need a keyboard to press space and tab. Now if there was a way of simulating a keyboard in only CSS3...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks very silly when typing with the Dvorak layout. :)

<comment><USER18> Your Dvorak looks pretty silly too when using QGMLWB. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome. I think the eject icon could be made out of unicode symbols.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters#Geom...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters#Geometric_shapes)

<comment><USER20> Good idea. I think the arrow keys could be made out of unicode symbols as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Works perfectly in Safari 5. Excellent job. Beautiful to look at and works great, just like the Apple keyboard itself. The only way it could be better is if the focus (the cursor) is automatically loaded and placed on the first line of the page on page-load. I had to click on the paper to start typing.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's pretty sweet. One bug i noticed: holding down the shift key breaks up the bottom row. (using chrome)

<comment><USER22> I should probably mention that I'm zoomed out (cmd -)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just a shame that on my work machine (running Windows 7) it does not work with a touch screen. Maybe iPad owners have more luck, but this seemed like the only useful use case for such a keyboard so I was disappointed that it did not "press" the keys as it does with the mouse.

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't expect to see an html element with id="asdfg" that actually makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised no font snob has brought up the lack of VAG Rounded yet.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why is the Delete "key" tied to Delete instead of Backspace?

</comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. Works perfectly for me Chrome/osx.

</comment><comment><USER28> It really looks great. CSS3 is really fun..

</comment><comment><USER29> Its fun.Its more fun in IE :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sweeet job

</comment><comment><USER31> Sigh. Who's going to write the first good GUI for cross-browser CSS?

<comment><USER32> There are a couple of GUIs for cross-browser CSS, many of them are web based. A quick search with searchyc, or Google will yield numerous results.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: NoSQL or flat files? - <AUTHOR>

I suspect a lot of companies use complicated tech for no reason. When using a database, even with the simpler case of not needing table joins at all, people shard databases and use caching on the front-end machines. This complicates their design, with a recent example being the blog post about Pinterest.<p>What does that offer that flat files on a shared filesystem don't? <comment><USER3> \- Concurrency (of access to records)

\- Performance (e.g. caching, indexing, etc)

\- Less first party code means less development/debugging/design time, with benefits growing very quickly the larger a project becomes

\- Queries are more flexible than APIs (and add a clear isolation between data source-logic and data usage-logic)

\- Scalability; flat files don't have it.

The only benefit of flat files is as a learning exercise. It is useful to understand how to make a database-like system yourself so you can understand how things can go wrong and certain edge cases.

But in production code I'm yet to see any situation where a homegrown flat file system was better in the long run than an off-the-shelf database solution. I have seen several flat file systems that have made it impossible for companies to scale and have likely cost them millions in lost revenue as a direct result, so that is fun too.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you first start a project and have only one server a single file can be fine. Once you start getting too many people though you'll start dealing with file locks. One way of solving that is to map a file to each individual user (sharding). If you make each entry into the file immutable this will work beautifully for a while.

If you introduce the idea of groups of users you'll probably want to create a group text file for each user rather than store it as an entry in their pre- existing text file (kinda like an index though different)...

Main point being- I advocate starting with a text file until the complexity of managing that file begins to outstrip the complexity of managing a third party data store.

To many people go straight to a 3rd party data store by default when text files are extremely capable.

</comment><comment><USER5> I worked at a company which sells document archiving to businesses, and they do not use a database. All data is stored on disk in files. They use indexing of archived data, similar to how google indexes everything (they don't use google). They also use indexed files to keep track of some data, but most of it is about users+permissions, not much to do with data.

I don't feel I can give further details, but the company is making money, nothing you'd read about, but it's doing OK. Solution scales up so that insurance and financial companies are their clients. Terabytes of data - <USER2> big deal, it's quite amazing to see how much faster it runs on customer's computers with terabytes of data, than in house with test-databases on developer's PC's with only 100 MB of test data. And it doesn't even require an admin (besides someone to make sure there's enough space on disk).

I think it really depends on your app. Databases aren't always the right answer, but no one has been fired for using databases. (maybe that's why people flock to them - that, plus if everyone's doing it, and you are worried about your resume ... well ... you better do it too)

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, shared filesystems are kind of a mess. If they're some sort of clustered block filesystem, there's all kinds of weird performance edge cases and split- brain potential problems.

If you're using NFS or some sort of centralized filesever, you're going to bump into UNIX performance limitations around things like opendir() with lots of files in a single directory. Not to mention, trying to get any kind of atomicity around NFS is a huge pain - look at maildir as an example of a working model for a much simpler situation, email.

Sure, of course, in the early days you won't run into these issues, bceause you won't have enough objects. But once you start getting into a few hundred thousand files, you'll need to start hashing into subdirs, and deal with all the issues above depending on your tech.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the kind/amount of data and type of analysis that is to be performed on the data should probably lead the decision. Scenarios where you have hundred of GBs of data having to perform text analysis on them, probably would make me think in terms of flat files. But for simple web apps, probably RDBMS or a NoSQL store is the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER8> Eventually you might end up writing a database, if you start building on top of a shared filesystem.</comment>


Ask HN: Experiences with small business banks with an API? - <AUTHOR> We're getting into a unscalable reseller business in California and wondering: what's the best starter SMB bank that has an API, convenient services and lowest fees? We're gonna need a bank account, ATM/debit card and maybe a credit card, iOS and Android support.
Looking at Seed.co, SVB, SBB, CapitalOne Spark, BofA
Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> So most banks don't have apis. But I am working on a product at nuBank. That makes it so you can have a banking api for pretty much most major bank account including cards, invoice, bill pay etc. NuBank.io if you're interested.</comment>