Start a business, not a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/997-start-a-business-not-a-startup <comment><USER2> Y'know, I liked DHH's talk as much as anyone. It was a good talk, which provided an interesting and much-needed contrasting perspective. But haven't we had a sufficient number of reports, notes, videos, paraphrases, discussions, comparisons to other talks, rebuttals and repeats-of-the-same- thing-by-some-other-guy by now?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guessing this is coming off the discussion DHH and PG had in another thread and... wow. I've never seen such intelligent people waste so much time arguing word choice. What a waste of time.

Different kind of "entrepreneurial enterprises" can be successful in different ways - and most of us would be happy with either kind of success. So let's be specific as to what has the highest probability of success.

PG advocates iterative design throughout the product - he mentions it repeatedly in his essays and talks, that startups should start somewhere which looks good and change their ideas "en route". It seems to me that DHH might call this "trying to give turds wings" - instead, he advocates starting with an idea which will have a strong market to start with, like Basecamp. Then you can work a productive 4-day week working on "objectives [which] are reasonably clear". PG would argue that most of the time, the objectives should never be too clear - in the sense that we should keep an flexible mindset about what we are building.

I guess the unknowns we don't agree on are:

1) How many "obvious" market niches are there, where at least 2,000 users will pay you $40/month? In his SS2008 talk, DHH hypothesizes that there are many, but as far as I can tell, it's just a hunch.

2) What is the probability of hitting one of those niches, and what is the probability of getting acquired/going IPO using "iterative design" to traverse the space of ideas? I don't think there are enough data available to really say.

Since there aren't enough data to make a call statistically, both PG and DHH argue from their experiences - which differ. Both are right to claim that you can be successful either way, so I guess the best way to make a call is based on an individual's personality.

<comment><USER4> Take your agnostic ideas away from out religious flame war! :)

Just kidding. I don't think its fair to say that DHH is pulling markets out of his butt though. They service the fortune 5M, so obviously their own customers are living proof that the market is bigger than you'll ever need it to be. As well, $40 a month is less than most people pay for a cell phone. That's a pretty low bar.

To your second point, given that there exists a "fortune 5M" and there exists a lot fewer "big mammoths", I think there's plenty of data if you care to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those of you interested in growing a business, read Paul Hawken's, "Growing a Business": <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0671671642>

For those of you arguing for or against, read Joel's Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html>

I am with the 37signals guys on this one. DHH's startup school presentation was refreshing.

<comment><USER6> There is no need to 'pick a side' ... this should not be a flame war. Honestly, the 'argument' is over the best way to make millions. That is like arguing over whether it's better to 'have your cake' or 'eat it too'.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. My favourite slide that I saw at Startup School was Paul Bucheit's one that said "Advice = Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization", since it was a great antidote to all the other talks.

If you listen to the 37signals guys, they're going to tell you the best way to get rich is to do pretty much what they're doing. If you listen to PG, he's going to tell you the best way to get rich is to do pretty much what he did. Both business models are valid, and they both work. If you're thinking of starting a business, you should keep both models (and several others) in mind and pick the one that best suits your situation, your needs, your ambitions, your available funding and your product.

Of course, that doesn't mean that it's useless to sit around and discuss the upsides and downsides of various business models -- that's actually a very useful discussion. But it is silly to argue that one is better overall.

<comment><USER7> Having a fairly unhealthy obsession with entrepreneurship, and having actually read some of the research, rather than generalizing from my own experience, there is one basic reason why VC funding works better than bootstrapping. That is that small companies (less than roughly a million $ in revenue) are much more likely to be hurt by random events - key employees leaving, acts of god, macroeconomic events, etc. Getting big isn't just about making millions, it's about increasing the chances of survival. And when you hear a bootstrapped company talking about their path as the only way to go, just repeat the words "survivorship bias" to yourself.

<comment><USER8> I agree. My only input is that I believe entrepreneurship is about wealth creation.

One can make the argument that if we make money for VC's, then we make money for ourselves. I think there are plenty of examples (especially in the Silicon Valley) where this is true. That's the "a small slice of a large pie" school of thoughts. The other side of the same argument is that if you bootstrap your company, then you are on your own and the world conspires against you. So at best you have "a large slice of a small pie".

I think these are false choices. My own experience (I had two startups, one of each) is that bootstrapping is not a lifestyle but a tactic in wealth creation.

I believe the speakers at Startup School are all in agreement that the world has changed and that it is possible to build a meaningful company with sustainable revenues by bootstrapping. But bootstrapping does not mean that you don't take VC money, just not for R&D.

When you have a working product and a workable business model, then you can go out for VC money, but now as "working" capital. And if you can take it further and actually become profitable, trust me, VC's will be kicking down your doors wanting to buy a piece of the action.

I enjoyed the Startup School presentations very much, especially that of PG, PB & DHH and the following is my takeaway ...

"Make something people want … don't ignore but try to understand [people's] advise … listen [mainly] to yourself … don't worry too much about money … the secret to making money online … is to ask for it."

I believe they are arguing that the optimal solution might be "a medium slice of a medium pie". As one of the commenter has stated, "getting the bus back in the middle of the road where it belongs".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Suggesting startups — specifically tech startups — don't need to look for revenue opportunities now is akin to spoiling a child and shielding them from the outside world: They're far less prepared when they eventually have to leave the house for the first time."

That's why I make my daughter pay her own way. Sure she's only three years old, but she's already able to work 10 hour days at the factory, which makes her way more profitable than most other three year olds. Best of all, we're not spoiling her, and you can be sure that we won't waste money on frivolous "startup" expenses, such as school.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised I haven't seen more about this yet. Doesn't anyone realize that these smaller businesses are good for 37signals?

Starting companies designed to change the world either succeed or die, and they tend to find out which very fast, which leaves a good number of them dead. Those dead ones have no reason to stay subscribed to campfire. 37signals will make more money on "lifestyle" businesses than startup businesses (if startup is defined as high technology, get rich or die trying).

It's the long tail of business types. On the left, taller side, you have a few wildly successful companies (startup or otherwise). Just to the right of that, there are the moderately successful ones. They don't make as much, but there are more of them. To the right of that there extends a massive tail of "lifestyle" or similar businesses that didn't set out to change the world or make the founders billions - millions maybe, but not billions. The farther that long tail extends to the right, the larger the market potential for 37signals products.

The point is that they don't make money on the hight of the graph (the success of the companies) but by the length of the graph (the number of companies).

Bottom line: it's good business for 37signals to encourage more lifestyle companies. I don't blame them for it. In fact, it's actually pretty smart of them.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the past week this has progressively turned into a "startups" vs "businesses" meme.

Regardless of your definition, each is simply a different approach towards business, and as such, they will take different paths (VC funded, angel, self funded) towards their goals. There is no panacea and no single way to succeed, so articles like this that imply otherwise just sound a bit pretentious.

</comment><comment><USER12> Again, DHH says "what you can't say" on HN ;)

<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still waiting to hear the name of the 'startup' that had a wildly successful product and failed to make any money. The key of course will be the definition of "wildly successful". We could use twitter as an example.

Is there any one on hackernews that believes twitter won't make any money when they finally decide on a revenue model? Anyone who is willing to say publicly that 37signals will be worth more as a business than twitter in 12 months?

Just to be clear: if your product is very popular, finding a way to make money will not be difficult. You might not make a lot of money (but DHH says that's ok right?) and you might have to sustain a huge level of traffic to stay in business, but you won't go broke.

<comment><USER14> I would take that bet. 37 Signals > Twitter in 12, 24 and 36 months. 37 Signals has real businesses paying monthly for a service intrinsic to how they make money. There are clearly scenarios where Twitter can be more successful, but if I had to bet it would be on 37 signals. And I don't user their service but I do use Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think one of the main reasons all this "37 Signals/DHH/Make Money Now" talk has been so well received is because it's a message ripe for this community.

I just spent my first weekend ever in the Silicon Valley and was incredibly impressed with all the smart personable people working on and talking about cool things.

I was also perplexed at how many of them were having trouble making money, and the general lack of customer facing skills that we take for granted in other parts of the U.S.

Sure, it's nice to dream of hitting a grand slam, but it's also nice to eat while you're dreaming. You CAN have it both ways; it's just so easy to get caught up in the hype of the former that we forget about the latter.

Thanks, 37 Signals, for helping put the bus back in the middle of the road where it belongs.

<comment><USER16> Yeah you can have it both ways, it's called getting a regular job and having some stock options.

<comment><USER15> There's lots of ways.

You can also write a great app that people want, get them to pay for it, and scale, scale, scale. With great tech, nice financials, and growth, you may be surprised at the investors who seek you, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A company that sells software to small businesses suggests you start a small business rather than a startup? Call me cynical, but this seems like SEO marketing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Starting a business sucks. Failure rates are often just as high, no big reward to look forward to, your peers who work a fourth as hard in regular jobs usually get more money. Unless you're already rich, starting a business is the worst of everything.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can we get a spam filter :/

<comment><USER19> yeah, it's called just reading the front page and not the newest links ;)

<comment><USER18> 3 stories on the front page are from 37signals. Essentially saying pretty much the same thing - "You're wrong", "You're wrong", and "You're even wronger". Just gets a little tiresome IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, imagine what the HN readers who have families and focus on profit must feel.

The upvotes and comments mean that some (lots) of HN readers appreciate the discussion and the alternate viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well said.

<comment><USER20> Hmm, I see that my appreciation was ill-received :-) Ah well, I found the article to be helpful to me.

<comment><USER3> Appreciation is better expressed with an upvote. The comment didn't add anything to the discussion, so it was spam. Although, I do agree that -5 is a bit harsh for simple spam. I'd suggest we try to keep those at -1 or 0.

<comment><USER21> > The comment didn't add anything to the discussion, so it was spam.

Can we please stop using the word "spam" for everything? Spam doesn't constitute anything online that you didn't appreciate. His comment wasn't enlightening nor insightful and as such many may consider it useless. But it's noise, not spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Enough already with the divisive posts.</comment>


Russell's paradox and the Y combinator - <AUTHOR> http://c9x.me/art/notes.html?6/2/2015

<comment><USER2> I studied both (λ-calculus and Set Theory) academically and the description IS disjointed and difficult to read. I get what OP is trying to say because I already understand these concepts.

But even though the isomorphism between the Y combinator and Russell's paradox is elegant, the paradox is actually very deep (much deeper than the idea of a fixed point) -- that's why it took someone until the early 20th century to formalize it. For an awesome (and mind-blowing) explanation of the paradox, see Halmos' Naive Set Theory (botom of page 6): [http://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~lokylog/images/stories/Al...](http://sistemas.fciencias.unam.mx/~lokylog/images/stories/Alexandria/Logica%20y%20Conjuntos/Paul%20R.Halmos%20-%20Naive%20Set%20Theory.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It also took someone until the mid-20th century to formalize the Y combinator, though... Earliness of discovery is no grounds on which to consider the Y combinator less "deep" than Russell's paradox (if anything, the reverse!).

<comment><USER2> The Y combinator followed from of the invention of λ-calculus whereas formal logic predated both Russell as well as Curry/Haskell by a large margin. Also, the idea of a "fixed point" (consider x^2-3x+4 where there's a fixed point at x=2) had already been recognized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this description disjointed and difficult to read.

<comment><USER5> It might be valuable to expand the definitions of things a bit.

First, we talk about characteristic functions. As noted, they are merely functions which return either 1 or 0, True or False. They represent sets by examining their argument and returning True if and only if the set they represent contains that thing.

So, if x is a characteristic function and (x x) is True, then x "contains" itself. Then N is just negation, so if N (x x) is True then x does not "contain" itself. That much is simple.

Now we form a special new characteristic function, R, defined as

        R x = N (x x)

When is (R x) True? Exactly when x is "contained" in R. When does that happen? When N (x x), e.g., when x does not "contain" itself.

So this is a well-defined characteristic function and therefore represents what we might think is a well-defined set.

But what happens when we check (R R), i.e. to see if R contains itself?

Well, R, by definition, contains all things which are not members of themselves. If R is in R then (R R) is True, but then N (R R) is False and (R R) = False. Contradiction!

We can inline R into (R R) in order to take a look at the functional form.

        (\x -> N (x x)) (\x -> N (x x))

and the author notes that this is the same form as the Y-combinator with its first argument specialized to N.

        Y f = (\x -> f (x x)) (\x -> f (x x))
        Y N = R R

And there we go!

<comment><USER6> How is this example special, compared to the general notion:

        F = (\x -> Z (x x))
        Y f = (\x -> f (x x)) (\x -> f (x x))
        Y Z = F F

so, any set F that is defined in terms of how sets (functions) relate to themselves, fits into the Y combinator. Which is expected, since Y is the essence of recursion.

<comment><USER5> I don't know that there's anything special about Russell's paradox in particular, to be honest. It has obvious historical importance, obviously, but I doubt that's what you're looking for.

There's something a bit remarkable about how trivial it is, I suppose. Booleans are very simple types, if you'll give me those, and then Not is the only involution!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read that languages for mathematical reasoning (such as Coq) are not Turing-complete to avoid issues like this. We can tolerate the possibility of infinite loops when we actually execute a program and see that it returns an answer, but apparently programs used as proofs aren't actually run, so type- checking needs to eliminate this sort of paradox.

<comment><USER5> It's true! The reasoning is fairly simple, though.

In such a language, types classify terms and types correspond to theorems. The type/theorem for a fixed point is

        fix : forall a . (a -> a) -> a

which as a theorem reads: "for any proposition A, if we can prove 'if A, then A' then we can prove A". Hopefully it's now clear why having 'fix' in your prover language won't work!

<comment><USER8> Not quite. You're appleaing to the Curry-Howard correspondance, which is neat but is not used by many theorem provers. Furthermore,

        > fun fix (f : 'a -> 'a) : 'a = fix f;
        val fix = fn: ('a -> 'a) -> 'a

The trick is that all functions must be total, which is the crux of the matter (and why the Y-combinator exhibits the paradox, because it allows nontermination). This is why we have stuff like the polymorphic lambda calculus, in which termination is guaranteed and the Y-combinator is untypeable.

<comment><USER5> Yes, of course. I'm not trying to prove anything, just to not that non- termination leads to suspicious looking logics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff. A bit of googling got me to Curry's Paradox [0] which is really just a different statement of this. Self-reference breaks things.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%27s_paradox#Existence_pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%27s_paradox#Existence_problem)

</comment><comment><USER10> Russell is spelt wrong</comment>


Google quietly discontinues NFC Smart Unlock without explanation - <AUTHOR> https://betanews.com/2017/09/28/google-kills-nfc-smart-unlock-android/ <comment><USER2> NFC tags can cloned trivially and permanently. Wearing an NFC ring that can unlock your phone broadcasts a working phone PIN, without your awareness or consent, to any transmitter or receiver that cares to ask. It is safe to assume that malls and government security agencies worldwide are tracking you in part through your NFC tags.

Anything that uses a challenge-response protocol would be safe, but that's not NFC tags at all. Google is removing a feature that can be used to break into your phone as easily as if you'd printed the PIN on a ring in Courier. Phew.

<comment><USER3> Is yubikey integration for mobile considered unsafe? [https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey- neo...](https://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey-hardware/yubikey-neo/)

<comment><USER2> The NFC protocols implements by Yubico are dynamic, not static, derived from a secret key held in hardware on the device. Those dynamic methods are not vulnerable to the NFC Tag issues described above.

An attacker could use NFC to sniff the exchange between your phone and your Yubikey, so you're still vulnerable to eavesdropping. But the point of the challenge-response protocols is to make eavesdropping irrelevant.

The practical vulnerability would be if an attacker eavesdropped on a one-time password going over NFC, blocked your phone's outbound signals so that it can't send it, and then somehow used the one-time password for their own nefarious purposes.

You'll have to make your own judgement call on whether that's a level of compromise you can accept for your use case.</comment></comment></comment>


Turbulenz Engine Goes Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://news.turbulenz.com/post/49430669886/turbulenz-engine-goes-open-source

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept. But I can't get it to work on my system. Any other Linux users having any luck?

<comment> google-1 Which browser were you using? Perhaps this site can help you: <http://get.webgl.org/></comment></comment>


Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/22/vladimir-putin-killer-genius-kleptocrat-spy-myths <comment><USER2> I stopped reading after the first section says: "all he faced as punishment were some minor sanctions" as well as: "A few diplomats expelled from the United States is a small price to pay for a potential end to US sanctions"

I mean, what is it, are they minor sanctions? Or was it a small price to pay to get rid of them, implying they were not so minor after all? Maybe I'm hangry, but this style of writing smells like the author trying to bend reality to some sort of predetermined moral stance, and it annoys me greatly.

Time for lunch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rather too much for somebody who once subsisted on stealing sugar, soap and sausages from American humanitarian aid to USSR.

A man of such calibre making The Free World standing on its toes tells more of how politicaly weak the Western bloc became, than of him being a significant threat.</comment>


Chrysler 'like a $60 billion startup' - <AUTHOR> http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080319/BIZ/803190438/1396 <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel that Nardelli has no idea what it means to be at a startup: some of the execs having some of their compensation tied to performance doesn't really cut it.

I'd suggest having them put their mortgages on the line (yes, even the vacation home(s)) along with their pensions and their golden parachutes.

</comment><comment><USER3> In other words, not like a startup at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> ... getting decimated by its competitors, in a consolidating industry space, with a mostly worthless legacy product line ...

</comment><comment><USER5> So he is saying that lack of market share makes Chrysler like a startup? >.></comment>


An Autonomous Car Might Decide You Should Die - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/reinventing-the-trolley-problem-85f3d1730756 <comment><USER2> I've found the problem is too few people enjoy reasoning and critical thinking. They prefer to listen to the fear-mongering and their "leaders" to think for them.

Let's give humans a random % of accidents. Let's say... 10%. For every 10 drivers that day - one will get into an accident. Once a week, this accident will be fatal and result in 52 deaths/year. An autonomous vehicle has a 0.1% chance of an accident. For every 1,000 vehicles driving that day - one will get into an accident. Once a week, this accident will be fatal and result in 52 deaths/year.

Both scenarios result in 52 deaths/year and neither is better than the other. This is what people are being led to believe. It attempts to hide the 10 vs 1,000 difference in number of drivers. Once you scale it up to be 1,000 humans driving and 100 will get into an accident. Each week, 100 will be fatal. There are now 5,200 deaths/year.

52 deaths/year should be something everyone desires over 5,200 deaths/year. Even better - autonomous vehicles can improve faster than humans. Eventually there may only be 5.2 deaths/year. Then 0.52 deaths/year. Then 0.052 deaths/year. Meanwhile, humans are a bit more consistent... there will likely be 5,200 deaths/year _every_ year without seeing any improvement.

The faster we make _any_ improvement over human drivers - the more lives are saved.

If your state senators are trying to ban autonomous vehicles. Remind them that they are are contributing to deaths of people. Any improvement over humans to reduce these deaths should be desired - not banned.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think many people assess risk differently when they are passive vs. active participants. When you are the driver of a car, you tell yourself that you can avoid any possible accident and it's only "other people" that will be part of those unfortunate 30,000 deaths a year. When you are a passive participant you lose that sense of control and all of a sudden feel yourself to be more at risk. That's a big reason why so many people fear air travel more than driving their car.

That said, I hope we find a way past this irrationality. I look forward to a future of fully autonomous vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER4> The other mental block is that people somehow trust/prefer 'randomness' vs. determined outcomes from a machine. But it shouldn't be so.

E.g. with people-driven cars, when an accident happens (lets say 1 passenger, 1 driver on each vehicle), the result is random. (4 dead, 3-1,2-2,3-1,4) If a self-driven, intelligent vehicle determines that a sudden shift to the right when the crash is happening will save 3 persons, and one dies (and this was the best outcome under all the scenarios/simulations the car calculated under the circumstances of the crash) in this case, the car determined who would be the casualty, as opposed to let the accident happen at random, which could result in all dead, all alive or other choices.

As humans with subjective POVs..we somehow prefer randomness and see it as 'natural way', 'God's will', 'Destiny', 'Fate' etc...

In the near future, algorithms will make a large number of life-death decisions. We just have to be comfortable on statistics and results. Machine results > Human Results > Random Results - so autonomous cars and other upcoming vehicles will have to make these calculations every day, we'll just have a hard time letting go of randomness or of the overrrated value of human decision-making during a car crash.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting points. The problem with discussing the trolley problem as it applies to autonomous cars is that it conflates possibilities of the future with decisions that need to made today. Todays autonomous cars are not networked and not particularly smart. They are unlikely to know much about their own occupants, let alone information about the occupants of others. Their behavior in emergency situations is likely to be "avoid hitting/being hit by a solid object" and "if I have to hit a solid object, lets try not to make it a person or vehicle", although that second one may be future safety improvement. We can largely avoid the moral question of what is the moral behavior here (at least at in the short term) by pointing out that the machines aren't even capable of understanding the world well enough to adapt the behaivor, but are still (as the author points) far more staff in aggregate than non-autonomous systems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think it is somehow going to be better when there are more autonomous cars on the road(all networked) and the behavior of the other cars on the road is easily predictable? And with that machines wouldn't have to adapt to the behavior of human beings but to other machines (which seems a lot easier). Seems more utopian to me though.</comment></comment>


Oracle wins Android-Java copyright appeal - <AUTHOR> http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/05/oracle-wins-android-java-copyright.html

<comment><USER2> Note that the article was written by Florian Mueller, who is on the Oracle payroll.

<comment><USER3> Days like this are when I really miss Groklaw. I refuse to click on a link to FOSSPatents, and I don't have another reliable source for tech-legal news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The appeals court argument seems reasonable, if applied in a more typical context of creative end user content. Mickey Mouse is copyrightable because he's not just any old mouse, but rather a specific one.

But as for API's? Although Sun might have had choices, there is no a priori added value derived from the specific choices they did make, other than the fact that they have become standardized, so engineers are used to working with them.

Mickey is Mickey because the specific qualities Disney gave him, in and of itself makes him rather more interesting than some randomly chosen rodent. Which language API's, as even the court (or the article author, I'm unclear) acknowledges, generally are not.

</comment><comment><USER5> Appellate court decision: [http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/...](http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/13-1021.Opinion.5-7-2014.1.PDF)

The appeals court looked to a decades-old "abstraction, filtration, comparison" test. In essence, that test requires the judge and jury to play the role of a patent examiner. See slip opinion at pages 23, 40. The expense and uncertainty aren't much fun for either party (or for the judge, jury, and law clerks for that matter). But yippee, say the IP litigators, because cases like this require lots of billable hours.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's an important procedural aspect to this that I haven't seen mentioned yet. This was appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, not the 9th Circuit which is where copyright cases from the 9th Circuit would normally go.

I believe that it ended up in the CAFC because it was also a patents case, and CAFC handles all patent appeals from the Federal district courts.

This is significant because CAFC sets precedent for all circuits. If there had been no patent case, so that the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit instead of the CAFC, then it would only set precedent for the 9th Circuit. The Courts of Appeal in the other circuits might decide similar API copyright cases differently, and then there would be a good chance the Supreme Court would take up the issue to resolve the differences between the different circuits.

The Supreme Court can, of course, still take up this issue, but they are much more likely to take a case if there is split among the circuits. Here's the Court's statement on this [1]:

        Review on a writ of certiorari is not a matter of
        right, but of judicial discretion. A petition for a
        writ of certiorari will be granted only for
        compelling reasons. The following, although neither
        controlling nor fully measuring the Court's
        discretion, indicate the character of the reasons
        the Court considers:

        (a) a United States court of appeals has entered a
        decision in conflict with the decision of another
        United States court of appeals on the same important
        matter; has decided an important federal question in
        a way that conflicts with a decision by a state
        court of last resort; or has so far departed from
        the accepted and usual course of judicial
        proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a
        lower court, as to call for an exercise of this
        Court's supervisory power;

        (b) a state court of last resort has decided an
        impor tant federal question in a way that
        conflicts with the decision of another state court
        of last resort or of a United States court of
        appeals;

        (c) a state court or a United States court of
        appeals has decided an important question of federal
        law that has not been, but should be, settled by
        this Court, or has decided an important federal
        question in a way that conflicts with relevant
        decisions of this Court.

        A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely
        granted when the asserted error consists of
        erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of
        a properly stated rule of law.

[1] [http://www.supremecourt.gov/ctrules/2010RulesoftheCourt.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/ctrules/2010RulesoftheCourt.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is terrible news, one of the first decisions towards APIs being copyrightable.

</comment><comment><USER8> So if Google had written a tiny portion of the Java API themselves then the whole debate would have been over?

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant There's something I can't fathom: Isn't Java supposed to have a Free Software incarnation? How could Google possibly infringe on it's API if it's the case?

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't give Florian Mueller the pageviews.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what the implications might be to .NET? There's a large part of it's library that's pretty much lifted straight from Java - both the good and the bad. Flush with success might Oracle go after Microsoft next?

</comment><comment><USER11> As we've seen with the recent patent case that reached the Supreme Court, once again because the Federal Court overturned the lower Court's ruling, it seems the Appeals Courts are a lot more inclined to be pro-patents, while the lower Courts (other than the East-Texas ones) and the Supreme Court aren't.

That being said, I hope this forces Google to deprecate Java on Android and start pushing developers to using Go. They should've been working on this since the trial with Oracle started, and not rest on their laurels.

<comment><USER12> Ugh, but Go is slow compared to Java and it's missing a lot of features.

Why not something like Mono? It's faster than their current Dalvik/ ART VM _and_ it would allow for many more languages to be used natively than just Java or Go.

<comment><USER13> The last time I looked, Mono was in an even more precarious legal situation than Harmony, but who knows? Since Google is already paying Microsoft, they might just work something out.</comment></comment></comment>


Get Paid What You're Worth - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_Paid_What_Youre_Worth <comment><USER2> page moved: <http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Get_Paid_What_You%27re_Worth></comment>


Under Armour opens advanced manufacturing Lighthouse - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6fhVNK_0Tg&app=desktop <comment><USER2> Making stuff the same way well funded startups do it. All in one place.</comment>


An Infinitely Large Napkin - <AUTHOR> http://web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html <comment><AUTHOR> Adding this here as it may be of related interest for those who enjoyed the massive math cheat sheet on the front page recently. Evan Chen, a math student at MIT, wrote up what would be considered field notes for higher mathematics. The full PDF is here[1], complete with a dependency graph showing what you need to know before reading any particular section.

____________

1\. [https://usamo.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/napkin-v15-2019022...](https://usamo.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/napkin-v15-20190220.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Am I missing something here? The link you've shared is exactly what the post is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a computer scientist, not a mathematician (but I've taken around 25 college math courses spread over many years). Nevertheless, I do have a couple of suggestions and observations that I will address to the author that I hope is seeing this.

First, it would be a very sophisticated high school student to tackle topology and some of the other areas of abstract mathematics. I really like the topics you've picked for your book, but they do seem to require quite a bit of mathematical sophistication (e.g. Topology).

Secondly, I feel that there are a few important fields that you might consider adding to your napkin: Combinatorics, Statistics, Differential Equations, and Logic.

The usefulness and the importance of understanding statistics is pretty obvious in today's data dominated world. Statistics seems to fall outside of Mathematics at some (most?) universities, but I keep my statistics books right next to my math books.

Combinatorics is full of interesting results some esoteric (the friendship theorem) and some practical (stars and bars). The proof techniques of combinatorics are also worth studying for their own sakes (like the probabilistic method).

I've always felt a love hate relationship with Differential Equations. Theoretically, they are disappointing ("oh hey, let's try this, surprise its the solution!") but practically they are needed everywhere.

One of the best math experiences that I had in high school was a logic course that I took one summer with two other students. What fun and it always served me well in course 18.

<comment><USER5> The point of the "napkin" isn't to be a generic Maths textbook; it's to trace up the prerequisite chain from category theory until it connects with high- school-level maths. Do you need statistics or differential equations to understand category theory?

<comment><USER4> I like the book but the contents seem to go well beyond the prerequisites of category theory—-it's almost 900 pages.

I got the impression that the author was not simply attempting to connect high school math to category theory but was providing a broader survey of higher math. I interpreted the author's remarks about the path to category theory as the inspiration for embarking on the project that has turned out to be a wide survey of higher math that might benefit young mathematicians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is supposed to be aimed at high school students.

I majored in math in college, and yet there were things which I could not decipher in the first few pages of chapter 1. For example, on page 43, what is "nonzero residues modulo p"? I guess you start with something, divide by p, and get a remainder, or residue. But what is that something? Going back to page 41, I see the hint that Z is the set of integers. I vaguely kind of remember that this was a thing that you learned once and just used forever. I had long forgotten that Z is the set of integers. I don't really see where this is clearly stated in this book.

If I was writing this for a high school student to skim through, I would make a big deal that Z is the set of integers, and Z is going to be used many times going forward, and it will always mean the same thing, the set of integers.

Someone who just learned all this stuff would be able to skim through it.

But the way it's written now, it's going to take a lot of intense work for a high school student, or someone who majored in math many years ago, to work through the whole thing.

\---

Edit: I see now. The prerequisites are in Appendix E. Technically, it's in there. But it's still problematic. High school books can just be read from beginning to end. For college level texts, it's OK to tuck things in Appendix E, and require the reader to go back and forth. So, no, I still would not say this is really aimed at the high school level.

<comment><USER7> The fact that Z denotes the set of integers is a sort of mathwide standard. It comes up a lot (number theory, group theory) Did you major in some specific area of maths? Or is it just the span of years between?

<comment><USER8> "The fact that Z denotes the set of integers is a sort of mathwide standard."

I'm pretty sure I saw that in my high school in the early 90s, but it was a one-off event where we discussed ℕ, ℝ, ℤ, and ℚ, but we never used them for anything. I'm sitting here trying to remember our high-school set theory (which is getting cognitive interference from my college training on the topic), but my memory is claiming I either never had to write {x | x ∃ ℤ} in high school, or if I ever did, we blipped over it _really_ quickly.

High school math generally implicitly takes place in "casual ℝ". I call it casual because the only time it even gets close to really hammering on the characteristics of real numbers is in the limit discussion. I certainly never heard "Dedekind cut" in high school.

<comment><USER9> We used Z a _lot_ when dealing with modular arithmetic and complex roots of unity, mostly just to quantify our variables. I can't recall ever using N or Q in high school, though.

Also, you don't need to mention Dedekind cuts at all when dealing with R - <USER2> can be defined by the fact that it's the smallest extension of Q that's closed under limit-taking (and I think most high school math students _do_ understand that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome, thanks! My learning style is to read summaries of things and then go deeper where I feel like. I'm not a fan of reading 20 pages of proofs that don't teach me anything new, only to reach half a page that takes me 3 hours to get through. A book which is basically a massive cheat sheet is perfect for reading as if I'm skimming a much larger work.

</comment><comment><USER11> If there was an infinitely large napkin, floating in space for example, far away from everything else, would its own gravity cause it to crumple toward any folds/creases/imperfections, with sufficient force to create a cascading implosion of sufficient mass/density to create a black hole?

<comment><USER12> An infinitely large napkin, if made of any sort of normal matter, would have infinite mass. It's gravitational pull would propigate, at c IIRC, out from the instant of its creation across all of space/time, sucking all objects (including itself) towards it's center of mass at the speed of light (OK, just under. Literally c-0.000...1m/s). It not only would create a black hole, it would signal the end of the entire universe. The destruction of any point in space would depend simply on the distance from the napkin. For every 299,792,458 meters away from napkin center, that object would have one second of existance left. When the gravitational pull hits anything, the acceleration would be so strong, again 0-c in 0 seconds, that some crazy subatomic fusion would occur.

Any physicists out there able to flesh this out? I find the thought experiment fascinating and am sure I'm missing/misrepresenting something.

<comment><USER13> How can an infinitely large napkin have a center of mass? It seems to me that all everything would get sucked on a trajectory normal to the napkin's surface. Any horizontal force would get cancelled by an opposite force, at an opposite point on the napkin. Also, force of gravity drops off with the inverse square of distance, so the force would have a finite value, depending on the density of the napkin. Similar idea to a common homework problem for introducing electrostatics: calculate the electric field generated at some point by an infinitely long wire with some charge density.

<comment><USER12> True if the napkin is perfectly flat. Any imperfections would negate the cancelation of opposing force, no?

The drop off would only apply if the napkin has finite mass or infinite size, correct?

<comment><USER13> Here's a cool link I just found going over this exact scenario: [https://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath530/kmath530.htm](https://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath530/kmath530.htm)

Interesting to note, the napkin creates a uniform gravitational field above and below it. Meaning that the force applied to an object is the same regardless of how far away it is from the napkin! That force is 2pi * G * m * rho where rho is the mass density of the napkin.

<comment><USER14> How is that possible since the force on a test particle on the surface of the napkin is 0?

<comment><USER15> It is the same result as infinite planar light sources or infinite planar electrostatic charges. Move the test particle a small delta above or below the napkin, and the result will become apparent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> joe-collins I've got a few years of community college calculus under my belt, but the cost of university and the unstructured nature of MOOCs had both deterred me from advancing along those lines. Wikipedia's math pages typically pre-suppose a higher level of understanding than I possess, or are written in exquisitely correct but practically impenetrable fashion.

This looks like it may be the bridge I've been seeking. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Was not at all what I was expecting from the title. Love the work, (of course I majored in math at Uni).

I totally support and encourage any efforts to make higher math more approachable and understandable. I remember the multiple hazings I went through with Rudin (both little, big, and functional analysis). The comic in the beginning is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thank you, this is awesome, very readable.

</comment><comment><USER18> from the book: "With that in mind, I hope the length of the entire PDF is not intimidating." PDF is 900 pages...</comment>


Evidence of toxic environment for women in economics - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/upshot/evidence-of-a-toxic-environment-for-women-in-economics.html <comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in discussing the paper itself, here's the HN discussion link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15051243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15051243)</comment>


The Lost Art of System Design (2018) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujOc3a7Hav0 <comment><USER2> Quick summary: this talk is about how to use design patterns to build well- architected, robust mobile (iOS) apps

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recap: presenter tries to explain clean architecture[1] with not very clear examples on ios/swift mobile domain. And he has very fuzzy definitions of architecture and design. Also talk tumbles between pretty high level abstractions and low level design stuff.

[1] [https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the- clean-a...](https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean- architecture.html)

<comment><USER5> Is that diagram at the beginning supposed to be ironic? Or is it just ironic.</comment></comment>


How geek communication differs from the norm. - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a957c26a3ce37?hl=en&pli=1

<comment><USER2> I am a student in art school, but I work in a machine learning research lab. I talk to hip people half the day, and nerds the other half. I hope (at least in part) that I've managed to pick up a little of both dialects.

I think that the point about speaking the written word is an excellent one. My nerd socialization as a young adult came almost entirely in text. I became used to the way that punctuation, flow, phrase length, and formatting communicated. Particularly when writing comments or IMing, it is fantastically important to be able to convey tone. If I'm sarcastic and you can't tell, I may ruin the conversation. When I'm talking about computer science, I end up using those skills more than the usual nonverbal cues.

I'd also make a point about eye-contact: it's really hard to think while making eye contact. When a "fan" talks, they let the eyes wander so that they can think. When listening, they focus the gaze to prevent internal dialogue from getting in the way of hearing.

Or maybe we're just awkward. Hard to say.

<comment><USER3> what differences did you find out between art- and CS-students?

<comment><USER2> In the end, there aren't really that many differences between them; there is more variation from person to person then there is from subject to subject. Certainly the greatest difference I notice is one of passion; the good artists and the good engineers share a passion for what they do, and it's easy (for me) to talk to passionate people --- polite or no, passion is infectious and soon I don't care a whit about turn-taking or eye contact. The students who lack passion --- who are in engineering for the money or art because it's "easy" are the ones that make small talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _When we make a joke, we don't do a little laugh in the middle of a word to signal that it's funny; we inhale and exhale a very fast, short breath at the end of the sentence, rather like a suppressed beginning of a laugh, or a kind of a gasp._

We're actually pronouncing the :-) at the end of the sentence.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'She did suggest that many of the common features of fanspeak seem to be related to thinking in "written English".'

That seems a good summary of the differences cited between the "fans" and the "mundanes."

<comment><USER6> I worked at company where everyone in IT was called engineer/geek/nerd/hacker and everyone else was called a mortal. We even had mailing lists with these names. It always made me chuckle.

<comment><USER7> I assumed the use of "mundanes" was a reference to Piers Anthony's Xanth novels.

<comment><USER8> Actually, it's a long-established usage in SF fandom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

"Our body language is also different from mundanes. We tend to not use eye contact nearly as often; when we do, it often signifies that it's the other person's turn to speak now. This is opposite of everyone else. In mundania, it's _breaking_ eye contact that signals turn-taking, not _making_ eye contact. She demonstrated this on DDB; breaking eye contact and turning slightly away, and he felt insulted. On the other hand, his sudden staring at her eyes made her feel like a professor had just said "justify yourself NOW". Mutual "rudeness"; mixed signals."

I find this to be really true. Amazing I never noticed it before, but I often find eye contact dynamics to be a little bit awkward when talking to a non- geek, and I think this explains why.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting.

This is from 10 years ago... has anyone else heard Karyn Ashburn lecture, seen a video, or read a book by her since then?

<comment><USER11> Good call—I completely missed the date and thought it was recent.

Pretty much everything that comes up when you google the name is about this, so it doesn't look like anything came of this, which is a shame. Also, it being 1999, I'm guessing the only videos that may exist would be sitting on someone's shelf somewhere (if they weren't taped over or thrown out...). :(

Any Minicon 1999 organizers or attendees in the house?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now I understand what my mother meant when she said to me, in a fit of exasperation, "normal people don't talk in dissertations...strung together!"

<comment><USER13> Their loss, really. Someone who's in the habit of speaking in complex sentences with formal diction can usually, with a bit of extra effort, talk like a normal person. It's harder to go the other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if these differences in communication help to explain why some people are better than others at learning new languages (written/spoken, not programming languages).

If nothing else, I can use it as an excuse to explain why I have so much more difficulty learning to understand spoken Norwegian compared to being able to read it. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> While normal people talk to other people, geeks generate sociolinguistic expressions to communicate with all the kinds of information processing entities, possibly cyborgs, robots, or something. If the communicative pattern of normal people is human-centered, that of geeks is (over-)generalized to all intelligent beings. Yes, I'm overgeneralizing here.

</comment><comment><USER11> While reading this, I couldn't help but think of one thing: Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. While I'm certain that the creators were drawing from existing characteristics, I wonder how much has been reabsorbed and amplified as a common foundation for speaking with other fen.

</comment><comment><USER16> It isn't clear from the article but based on the newsgroup name this talk was part of a sci-fi convention. Should we assume that HN readers share language characteristics (and maybe cultural interests) with sci-fi fans?

I would think so, but maybe there's self-selection bias involved.

<comment><USER17> While there is commonality, I have to say from experience Sci-Fi geeks and Computer Geeks are very different. Yes one interest overlaps the other but I find the "geek essence" (yes I just coined that) to be different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except, of course, for all the computer geeks that are also sci-fi geeks.

 _looks around his office_

<comment><USER18> I know lot's of really dumb geeks that are into sci-fi because they can't function in society. I also know several highly intelligent people who simply don't want to function in society and happen to like sci-fi. It can be difficult for outsiders to separate these groups, especially because the less intelligent geeks try and mask their faults. It's something like the Bulb problem where it's hard to tell if someone is actually highly intelligent or just acts differently than you do.

There is still a shared context among the geek community. I think Equilibrium was the most emotionally moving movie I have ever seen yet I have little interest in seeing it again, others just like the gun play and will watch it constantly. But, such distinctions are only relevant once you have seen the movie. Stepping back a few years and Blade Runner has the same dichotomy of people who like and or obsess over the movie and those who simply reacted strongly to it. (Now add Dune, Enders Game, Stranger in a Strange Land, etc.)

PS: The number of times you have seen each of the Star Wars films is probably a good metric for this. (Not to insult Star Wars.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Surprisingly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> Unless this was meant tongue-and-cheek (and even then, it wasn't very funny), it was a dumb post promoting cartoonish stereotypes.

<comment><USER21> Did you feel somehow attacked? The post gives the appropriate disclaimer upfront. And generalization is necessary to make any kind of point.

It's not about promoting, it's about honest observations. Which is what makes this interesting.

I think the speaking "written English" idea is very plausible.

<comment><USER22> Does anyone else crave direct, honest, borderline offensive observations about themselves? People tend to be so darn polite that sometimes I feel like I never actually know what people think of me. Maybe it's because I was home schooled and for a long time I was socially awkward and didn't realize when I was doing or saying something weird or stupid. Now as an adult I prefer people to just tell me what they think about what I'm saying or doing.

<comment><USER23> Getting married fixes that :-)

But seriously, some of the best insights on my personality and the way I interact with other people have come from my wife. Usually when she's pissed off, but at least it's accurate and honest.

<comment><USER22> I too am married, and maybe it's that exposure to pure, loving honesty about myself that has opened my eyes to how rarely people really give you good feedback about yourself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this iPhone hack possible? - <AUTHOR> http://joshmlewis.com/?p=337

<comment><USER2> _I'm not a programmer, much less a hacker, but I thought it would be interesting to find out from people that are._

The barrier to entry is sufficiently low that you should at least try to become a hacker -- or even a programmer; you have the requisite curiosity and imagination.

There are many benefits to learning how things work and what's more; _you can do it!_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It's on my plans to learn Python this summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Most people jailbreak their iPhones..."

No, they don't.

"With that ... there is a default user name and password that almost no one changes I'm sure."

I'm willing to bet the opposite is true. Almost everyone who has a) jailbroken their iphone, and b) installed OpenSSH on it, has changed the default password right away.

</comment><comment><USER4> ... No one mentioned that this was exactly the problem with iphones jailbroken early on?

I am disappoint.

<http://www.cellular-news.com/story/40529.php>

</comment><comment><USER5> No. You have to install sshd on the iPhone before you can SSH into it.

<comment><USER6> And even then you have to somehow find the IPs, which is pretty hard if they aren't connected via WiFi.

<comment><USER7> Bonjour makes finding the phones easy in a restaurant with wifi.

Here's a bit on it (read the answer) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6241623/ios-bonjour- over-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6241623/ios-bonjour-over-the- internet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty sure a very low percentage of users jailbreak their iPhones.</comment>


WordPress Theme Thesis Maker Backs Down, Adopts GPL - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/07/22/thesis-relents/ <comment><USER2> Off-topic: What does Thesis actually do? Most Wordpress "Themes" I've seen actually make your blog look a certain way. Thesis seems to be focused on giving you the tools to do... something to do with how your blog looks, but I can't figure out exactly what. And none of the blogs in the showcase look anything like each other.

Is this intended to replace freelance WP theme designers? Or is it intended to be something that they somehow use in their designs?

It doesn't help that all the video tutorials are behind a paywall... <http://diythemes.com/thesis/generate-affiliate-links/>

So maybe I am just not in the target market for whatever this thing is, but I cannot understand why I would want it.

<comment><USER3> I believe it's considered a "theme framework" ... I think it adds panels/setting to the WP admin, allowing you to adjust column widths and other aspects of the blog.

<comment><USER4> so, its a theme plus a plugin?

does this instantly kill the entire premium theme/plugin market?

<comment><USER5> Not at all. The rest of the premium theme and plugin market already works under/with the GPL.

<comment><USER4> fair enough. thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can somebody provide me with the GPL'ed parts of Thesis? Shouldn't be a problem, right?

</comment><comment><USER7> Whew, glad that one is done.

<comment><USER8> Indeed we can focus more on the code again now :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Even if Thesis hadn't copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP (PHP) would still need to be under the GPL,"

Is this really true? I never thought a theme interfacing with other software using public APIs is a derivative. Is it just the GPL that sees it this way or is it the actual copyright laws too?

<comment><USER10> Yeah I don't understand this either. Is there any way to sell a closed-source piece of software which integrates with Wordpress? What's the difference from software like www.copilot.com which uses GPL software (TightVNC) at its core?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ___It's not a complete win for FOSS, but at least it's fair, compliant and fork-able._ __

It's a complete win for FOSS. The GPL is intended to preserve the rights and openness of the original software, not to force people into releasing their own original creations.

<comment><USER11> There is a difference between libre and gratis after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this quote:

"Even if Thesis hadn't copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP would still need to be under the GPL, Mullenweg wrote on his blog. He also began encouraging Thesis users to abandon the theme and seek GPL alternatives."

Thesis was caught red-handed with GPL code. However, it still bothers me that the guys over at Wordpress would have still considered it a "derivative work" if it only had function calls to WP. Even before they found the code, Mullenweg was saying it was under the GPL, which is wrong.

<comment><USER13> > Even before they found the code, Mullenweg was saying it was under the GPL, > which is wrong.

Which you _believe_ is wrong.

Which Mullenweg and the FSF believe is right. Which is the reason the LGPL exists.

Just because you believe it to be the case that users of libraries are not derivatives of those libraries does not make it true. Nor does the belief of the FSF and others that it does make that true.

<comment><USER12> "Which Mullenweg and the FSF believe is right. Which is the reason the LGPL exists.

Just because you believe it to be the case that users of libraries are not derivatives of those libraries does not make it true. Nor does the belief of the FSF and others that it does make that true."

If this were the truth, anything compiled using the GNU compiler would be also under the GNU (since you would be compiling libraries from this compiler straight into your application/binary and calling function names).

It really boils down to the definition of a "derivative work". As an example: A Paypal plugin for Wordpress should not fall under this, yet the developers for Wordpress think it does.

The entire situation with Thesis will only hurt Wordpress in the future. As a developer, why would I want to create any Wordpress plugins or themes if someone else is going to lay claim to my work (which really is my work. If the guy from thesis was actually re-distributing Wordpress along with his theme, it would be a different story)?

It's scary to think that the people that have talked about Freedom for so long are getting just as restrictive and bad as the RIAA/MPAA.

<comment><USER14> _It's scary to think that the people that have talked about Freedom for so long are getting just as restrictive and bad as the RIAA/MPAA._

Despite your scare language, this isn't new. "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" [1] was written in 1999.

One of the defining features of the GPL (or any copyleft license) is its reciprocal or "viral" nature. It was created to define an ecosystem distinct from one where source could be encumbered or hidden. And has been updated many times to maintain that ideology in the face of changing laws and legal precedents.

It's a choice to work in the GPL ecosystem. There's a lot of BSD software offering an option that many argue is "more free."

[1] <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>

<comment><USER12> "One of the defining features of the GPL (or any copyleft license) is its reciprocal or "viral" nature. It was created to define an ecosystem distinct from one where source could be encumbered or hidden. And has been updated many times to maintain that ideology in the face of changing laws and legal precedents."

There needs to be more warnings out there for businesses to steer clear of anything under the GPL. To call the GPL "freedom" is just laughable. It's a vile license used to feed a political movement. Nothing more.

<comment><USER15> The text of the GPL is very clear about what it's trying to accomplish on behalf of end users. The industry has been publicly debating the ethics and consequences of copyleft for literally decades. If anyone still hasn't figured out whether it's appropriate for their business (which is far from the hardest decision they'll ever face!) there's just no reaching them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Autism in Women Is Misunderstood - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-invisible-women-with-autism/410806/?utm_source=SFTwitter&single_page=true <comment><USER2> The description of hers matches my experience pretty closely as a boy in the 1990s. The feeling that something is deeply wrong with you (logically based in being bullied in multiple different schools) and that you're terribly different, and seeing >10 psychiatric professionals and having 20 different diagnoses can become a life-defining struggle (and this is for the kids with resources). Its very hard to re-integrate into society, and the comorbidity of depression and anxiety from pretty logical reasoning can make it harder and harder to peel the onion to get at the core of the problem.

This girl had supportive parents all the way through, and made it into and eventually graduated Cambridge, and I'll bet the classes were the easy part. Too many aren't so lucky.

I'll also be willing to bet that the reseach they've made on women applies to men as well. This quote in general:

> Particularly interesting is the unpublished observation that in girls with > autism, the social brain seems to communicate with the prefrontal cortex, a > brain region that normally engages in reason and planning, and is known to > burn through energy. It may be that women with autism keep their social > brain engaged, but mediate it through the prefrontal cortex—in a sense, > intellectualizing social interactions that would be intuitive for other > women.

This is exactly it for me. It costs energy to be social, because it really is just like doing math all day. I know the rules, and have done very well in high communication jobs, but its draining in a way that isn't for others.

<comment><USER3> For me, doing math or programming actually takes far less energy than socializing with new people. I wonder what the mechanism is here. Btw, i'm not autistic.

<comment><USER2> Familliar tasks (including a familiar feeling of uncertainty in math/programming problems) take less energy than meeting unfamiliar people for many people, I would presume.

<comment><USER4> Familiarity is one thing. But I think (not certain though) you can also be really predisposed to certain activities. I wouldn't be surprised if they found out that there are certain babies who have subcortical reward structures only lighting up when they do analytical tasks.

<comment><USER2> We're relatively neurodiverse (as the discussion relating to autism reveals pretty handily) and its almost certainly true that the differences in our hardware make certain things easy and possibly some not as easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably not going to be the most popular opinion but...

The article really didn't shown any proof or even suggested anything besides hinting at various SJ issues. The Autism spectrum at this point is so overblown that I'm not sure if it's even correct anymore at some point this looks like it's becoming the new ADHD everyone has it just in a different flavor.

At this point Autism is almost no longer classified as physical neurodevelopmental disorder but with a lovely brand new name pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. Now don't get me wrong I don't think that low functioning Autism is fake, nor that some actual physical neurodevelopmental syndromes are but the amount of cases that 2 decades ago when psychoanalysis was still in fashion that would be classified as neurosis that are now being classified as autism even tho they do not show any of the physical signs of autism is quite staggering.

I'm not saying that those people are not "sick" I just have very strong suspicion that at the end this whole autism spectrum will blow up. It seems like every week we get a new article about normally functioning adults with various eccentricities that come out and say that they now know why they aren't normal and that's because they are autistic.

Articles like this: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/why-i-love- knowing-i...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/health/why-i-love-knowing-i- have-high-functioning-autism/) just make me question this whole ordeal, 5 hours of diagnosis of a woman in her 40's with a career and a family is enough to deem some one being autistic without any actual developmental tests, brain imaging or even in depth psychoanalysis.

I just don't really understand all these cases when people claim that they don't feel the same way that other people do (there's almost no way to know what other person is feeling, at best empathy will let you know what state they are projecting) or what other people find easy or hard. Not everyone finds socializing easy, not everyone likes to talk about their feelings, not everyone is even capable of building complex emotional attachments and it seems like people go in and out of various states like that throughout their life.

<comment><USER6> As a father of a 15 year old girl with autism on the lower ability end of the spectrum I agree with some of what your saying. I feel that the 'spectrum' is getting so wide that anyone that has any social issues, or has any odd habits is labeled as autistic now. It's frustrating when I hear people that are fully functional in society and maybe just have a hard time socializing with people (probably because they grew up on facebook, etc... and never really interacted with real people) that say they are autistic. It is like the new ADHD. I spent the first 11 years of my daughters life changing diapers, usually with her fighting me the entire time. Wasn't until she was 7 that she ever even called me dad. 15 now and can barely read Dr. Suess books or answer basic yes or no questions.

I worry that as more and more fully functioning people are added to the spectrum that it will result in less help out there for people like my daughter that really need it.

<comment><USER7> > I worry that as more and more fully functioning people are added to the > spectrum that it will result in less help out there for people like my > daughter that really need it.

Do you actually see this happening?

It seems to me just as likely that greater awareness of the entire spectrum will bring more acceptance and more resources.

Anyway, for my wife, learning that she has Asperger syndrome has been a great relief. It's hard for me to see that as a bad thing. Your story is heart- wrenching, and I hope your daughter gets the help she needs. I just don't see why my wife's experience and yours need to be in conflict.

<comment><USER6> I've noticed a huge shift in peoples opinions towards autism since I've had my daughter and I do think it will affect the overall help available to people with autism. The more you add higher functioning people to the spectrum, the more people don't see it as a debilitating mental illness.

Whenever I mention to someone these days that my daughter has autism, they don't really get what that means. They say things like "oh, is she really good at math" or "my coworker has autism too". And I'm thinking no she doesn't really understand even the most basic math, she'll likely not ever be able to have a real job, and who's going to take care of her when I'm gone because she needs help all day every day just to get through the day.

I strongly believe there needs to be a clear distinction between higher functioning people on the spectrum and the people that are really struggling with the most basic aspects of life.

Anyway, I get that people have different opinions, that's just mine. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The quality of psychiatric care, in general, is abysmal. There's a ton of poorly-competent therapists.

SO when someone has autism or ADD or depression or these other disorders that make it really difficult to reach out to get help, and then that one person does reach out and gets shit for help, well, then how do you not give up?

The behavior health system is stacked against the most vulnerable.

And nobody cares enough. All those doctors that dismissed this woman again and again need to be publicly taken to task for their lack of professionalism and lack of giving a shit (which IMO goes right against the Hippocratic Oath).

<comment><USER9> It is definitely a general problem, and from personal experience I've gone through so many therapists this year it's not even funny. I've even had a therapist put me down, and for awhile I was wondering whether to off myself because I couldn't get good help.

Whether I'm in the DC area and looking or in the Bay Area and looking, and I feel like giving up on a search most days because nobody knows how to properly treat those of us who are on the autism spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For an article addressing the issue of autism in women being misunderstood, I would have hoped to find a clear description of the actual difference with male autism. Instead we get a few human interest case studies and scientists working on this. The article simply doesn't seem to go to the heart of the matter.

<comment><USER11> That was the point of the article. Wouldn't you only get a clear description and be able get to the heart of the matter if it wasn't misunderstood?

Were you expecting hard data in a magazine article?

I personally thought the 'human interest studies' were very informative, and gave me plenty of context when thinking about differences between male and female people I know (not getting any more specific than that).

<comment><USER10> No not necessarily. If the headline claims something is misunderstood, you set up the expectation that you'll set the record straight. Misunderstood implies that there is some correct point of view, otherwise you'd call it a mystery.

I didn't expect hard data, but a list of traits specific to female autism would have been useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a father of a girl (3 years old) who has been recently diagnosed with autism, I found this article interesting. She is currently receiving speech and occupational therapies. This article gives us a glimpse of future challenges she'll face. Hopefully we can get her prepared somehow.

<comment><USER13> I've been reading more and more about the relation of autism with the microbiome, as mentioned in this article

[http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/0...](http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/03/probiotics- impact-brain-performance.aspx)

"Here we describe an association between high levels of intestinal, mucoepithelial-associated Sutterella species and GI disturbances in children with autism. These findings elevate this little-recognized bacterium to the forefront by demonstrating that Sutterella is a major component of the microbiota in over half of children with autism and gastrointestinal dysfunction (AUT-GI) and is absent in children with only gastrointestinal dysfunction (Control-GI) evaluated in this study."

Have you looked into this? It may help your daughter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> More in response to the comments so far than the article itself. In general, I think these comments too much reflect or defend against the idea that "autistic women have it worse than autistic men" and people are debating this when really the message is "The scientific community does not have an official lsit of symptoms for autistic women versus autistic men" This is important because noone knows what causes autism so diagnosis based on symptoms is the only way, and we are figuring out right now just how different these symptoms are, and how uneducated the medical community is at even thinking to get a girl diagnosed for autism.

40 years ago the medical community, even the guy who coined autism himself, didn't even beleive it was possible for women to have autism at all (even the most extreme obvious cases) we are in close to that same position for high functioning women with Asbergers. Just take the fact that the average age of diagnosis for women is about ten years later in life than males, mostly because the symptoms accumulated over the past 40 years were only accumulated based on men. So women, just to get diagnosed (forget crying a life of "oh we have it so much harder as being autistic) just to get a diagnosis you have to stumble into a series of misdiagnosis and oddities and lack of documentation about how these symptoms (again we don't know the source) present themselves in women. BY then, women are just as much as men, if not more by a delayed diagnosis frustrated by everything theve been through and all the things that are "wrong" with them that their families can't figure out.

The struggles autistic men and women face are not to be argued whether its worse for one gender or the other, but based on the whole point above, that they are DIFFERENT, and we are less educated about one set of symptoms than the other. It's not about giving one gender a "I've got it harder than you" sympathy card.

1\. In 2013 Asbergers was classified as being on the Autism scale.

2\. Alot of high functioning Asbergers are technically autistic now that were medically/officially not autistic 5 years ago, but these people are no different than they were 5 years ago, its that the medical community rearranged a big group of typically high functioning people and put them on the autism scale. I happen to be one of these, and was diagnosed (as Maya was in this article) with OCD at 8, and anxiety, and basically an accumulation of common symptoms of autism until I went to an Engineering school where so many people were on the scale a Professor made us all take the test and that is when I found out about all of this.

3\. Speaking of that, You can be tested for this and registered on a scale. As we do not know what causes autism, we can only diagnosis based on symptoms, like a lot of things, so the conjecture about "not knowing for sure" on this thread is valid, but so is it for alot of other diseases and cancers that we don't know the cause of, so that does not invalidate the seriousness of the impact the non sourced symptoms have on the lives of people.

4\. Being an Aspie and a book nerd (my mom first took me to get me tested to see what was "wrong" with me when I spent the entire summer of my 8th year and read all 138 Mandy (kids mystery novel) books in 7 weeks and didn't care to do anything else).

I have since being diagnosed, read 17 books on females with Asbgergers and about 15-20 books about Autism in general, and I think the comments about females with Autism on this Atlantic comment thread and the HN thread so far are way off. That being said...

5\. I DO NOT like this article because it is almost entirely anecdotal and focuses on Maya's extreme cases while for me, and alot of other female aspies I know (sources of female aspies below) it went more like all the things that make you cute and "quiet" growing up, you do not grow out of.

I would pausit (and youll see some horribly negative and ignorant comments on the actual commentary of the article's page on the Atlantic) that alot of the anger coming from the responses is trying to put girls on this special "i have it worse than you" stage but its not about that. It's that we have it hard in DIFFERENT Ways.

Girls are EXPECTED to be socially smooth, incredibly bubbly and cute and outgoing. Girls to have careers that are more socially oriented. We are expected to be flirtacious. We are expected to be stylish. Any deviation from this norm results in a horror movie of emotional bullying especially from NT girls starting in middle school, who feel threatened by you and think you are some kind of monster, and the bullying does continue, just in more nuanced pretensed ways as women "mature" and learn how to be "fake" nice, whereas typically we are considered to be continually naive and childish, and too innocent because we are bad at interpreting other peoples emotions, and more importantly, their motivations, which actually makes female aspies more vulnerable to being taken advantage of in any situation, but particularly sexual ones, and this aspect is only exxagerated by the fact that overall physically and emotionally aspie women tend to mature more slowly, and most don't start their periods until 19-20ish.

I would say from there it's not that our genetic inheritance or whatever the cause is, that our physical lot of autism is "worse" its that our personalities, career choices and lack of friends when women are expected to have friends where its generally accepted that alot of guys are introverts, is that we are just put in situations where we stand out like a sore thumb more and more, whether it be being the only girl of 5 in my Engineering Department and automatically standing out, in the male dominated career or the fact that when a guy tries to hit on me at a bar I may look normal but the nuances of these more subtle interactions I fail miserably at.

I've lost a couple guys interested in me because I literally could not flirt and do this properly.

It means for me I have NO idea how to flirt, how to make any eye contact or in an effort to make any eeye contact giving an acidental death glare.

To say it's degrading for your self esteem is an understatement...

Being socially awkward,

5.5 So as far as the people on here making comments and posting articles about how the more they see high functioning women/successful CEOs being autistic the less they believe it, BELIEVE IT! Because on the high functioning scale, we are masterminds and extremely laser focused and dedicated, but also sympathize with them how hard it is emotionally as well because it goes against the grain of everything people expect from women. Not to mention, women whove managed to surpass all these social abnormalities and become successful have learned more than ANYONE just how much success is based on political favour and shmoozing people, not because they are good at it or even succumbbed to it, because they KNOW how hard it has been not having those characteristics come naturally have had to put in the effort in one way or another to overcome inadequacies other people cannot even comprehend, and have probably faced alot of judgment as they have stumbled their way along. Certainly for me this is the case.

6\. reddit.com/r/aspergirls is a more realistic perspective of what high functioning "autism" specifically Asbergers is likem since it is a community of women who have asbergers or are atlast trying to learn more about it by sharing about their symptoms etc.

<comment><USER15> As the father of an autism-spectrum daughter, I find your insights very enlightening.

<comment><USER14> Depending on how young your daughter is, especially if she is still a child or preteen, I strongly recommend searching "female asbergers books" on Amazon and reviewing ratings for yourselves but there are alot of books for parents about aspie girls, what to expect, how to empower them, and most importantly, how to keep them safe.

Female aspies are empaths actually, which is counter intuitive to people not familiar with all of this, which makes them huge targets not just for casual bullying and being outcasted by girly girls, but for more sinister reasons as well. Even being older, empaths are the perfect codependent counter type for narcissists and other wise sociopaths and psychopaths. They have affective empathy (empty shallow charming ability to pretend to have emptathy) but crave raw empathy which is what aspie girls have an abundance of (google intense world theory, applies to both male and females for autism). This coupled with (I edited in my original comment in more detail) a females aspies or any autistic females tendency to be just incredibly naive about peoples emotions and their intentions, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Going to school in a male dominated environment with an unusual number of anti social personalities (introverts --> engineering...) I was the perfect target so sociopathic men and there were alot of them around me. It's not surprising in RETROSPECT that a year ago I got out of a long term relationship with a verifiable sociopath for all the reasons I just said.

After educating myself about all of this I wish I had read some of these aspie books for young females when I was younger and I could have protected myself from a lot of toxic situations.

Now, I volunteer in aspie programs teaching young girls how to code. Alot of aspie women can't keep good jobs because they are "rude and bossy" or not charming enough or "creepy and quiet". Luckily for me my skill set is in high need and objectively evaluated for the most part (can't argue with me if I produce your code on time) so I thought it would be incredibly empowering to build girls with this confidence and self esteem, and potentially the ability to arm themselves with solid careers/technical skillsets that overpower an HR departments ability for a 26 yr old girl wearing designer clothes and paid to be charming to evaluate a nerdy antisocial girl on her "overall performance" if actually she is an objectively solid and valued individual contributer and has code to show it.

If she is young I would recommend fostering her hobbies as much as possible and encouraging "structured playtime" for whatever her interests are. With channeling and encouragement (for all the people who post successful autistic women as a reason to doubt they have it at all) aspies including aspie girls can become MASTERS at the things they are obsessed with.

Turns out, successful people are typically successfully because they love what they do, they have infectious passion and they are GOOD at it, and can spend hours uninterupted developing their product or building their empire, so actually aspie women are the perfect character trait combination then for successful people, if they can have emotional support through their difficulties with social interactions while being encouraged to do what other people call "active but odd obsessions" because that could be the talent that makes or inspires her career one day, or maybe even her company that she starts.

<comment><USER16> @usmeteora great comments here.

 _" I was the perfect target so sociopathic men and there were alot of them around me. It's not surprising in RETROSPECT that a year ago I got out of a long term relationship with a verifiable sociopath for all the reasons I just said."_

Read _" Dangerous Personalities"_, Navarro.J. [0],[1]

Navarro details a forensic checklist to identify personalities like this. I've got this book and it gives you a numerical score to ID said personalities, along personality types you've listed, and a few more.

Forewarned is forearmed.

[0] [http://www.jnforensics.com/#!books/cnec](http://www.jnforensics.com/#!books/cnec)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Personalities-Profiler- Ident...](http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Personalities-Profiler-Identify- Yourself/dp/1623361923/)

<comment><USER14> This is so funny, but I actually just finished that book 2 days ago. Along with about 10 other books over the past few months about antisocial personality disorders and Autism, Asbergers, Females with Asbergers. My way of grieving through it was to read and learn everything I could about myself and my ex.

Thank you!

I'm also reading/have finished reading in the past few months: The Empathy Trap Safe People Without A Conscience Trauma and Memory Women Who Love Psychopaths Social Engineering Whos Pulling your strings In Sheeps Clothing

From your recommendation which is the first one I heard of, I found these highly reviewed books on Amazon in the recommended section after you search that book.

<comment><USER16> _" This is so funny, but I actually just finished that book 2 days ago."_

Did you find out any diagnosis or observations you didn't recognise?

I suggest you also read WEBIS and work at reading body language.[0] WEBIS is an API of human body language.

I read an interview on the book, DP, before I purchased it a year ago and Mr.Navarro made a comment in the interview that it was hard to write. I actually asked him why? His answer wasn't that revealing. I was just curious. After reading the book, [1],[2] I now know why.

If you have any specific questions, ask Mr.Navarro at [http://twitter.com/navarrotells](http://twitter.com/navarrotells)

[0] Read, _" What EverBody Is Saying"_ WEBIS for specific examples of body language. Got this one as well.

[1] Cf: Time spent at Brigham Young University. (Read the book).

[2] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/news/economy/joe-navarro- cub...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/news/economy/joe-navarro-cuban- refugee-fbi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As the parent of an 11 year old daughter with autism, I've found in past autism-related posts that many are unaware of warning signs. Early detection is key to better outcomes.

[https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/learn- signs](https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/learn-signs)

</comment><comment><USER18> There was a time when heart attack symptoms in women were misunderstood, too. It seems to be a recurring pattern in medicine.

<comment><USER19> Still is. In my friends case it was misinterpreted as toothache.

<comment><USER5> Not really misunderstood but misdiagnosed as the symptoms are often quite different including the major symptom - acute chest pain which almost 2/3rd of women who have went through a cardiac event do not experience, that percentage is even higher in women that went through vaginal labor.

It seems that the best tool doctors have is where does it hurt > my chest > heart attack. Women just do not seem to have the same pain sensation not in scale nor location as men when it comes to heart attacks which it makes it very hard to diagnose. Most female heart attack cases do not get reported simply because allot of them do not feel any significant pain and those that do often feel it in other parts of their body. Add to that the fact that allot of heart attack likelihood increases with age which coincides with menopause which on it's own introduces lightheadedness, shortness of breath, sharp pains and other similar symptoms to cardiac distress and you get a diagnostic nightmare.

There are other conditions which are more rarely go under diagnosed in men such as bladder cancer, breast cancer (cancer on it's own is more prevalent in men and women often are diagnosed earlier, and have much higher survival rates some times upwards of 50% difference), eating disorders and many various other things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > It's the long list of diagnoses Maya collected before she was 21, from > borderline personality disorder to agoraphobia to obsessive-compulsive > disorder, that begin to hint at how little we understand autism in women.

That doesn't follow. It could simply mean that she had really bad psychiatrists who just threw around diagnoses. Maybe it reflects that mental illness in general is poorly understood, because they didn't discover that the other diagnoses were false positives. I am afraid that unless a diagnosis is followed by a successful treatment, it's not worth much.

<comment><USER20> You seem to have mistaken "begin to hint at" in the article for something like "proves" or "necessarily, logically implies".

<comment><USER10> No I haven't. I just found it very odd that that was the conclusion drawn from this (even if it's only called a hint), while not saying _anything_ about how bad those psychiatrists were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's an interesting observation

The response by doctors and the general public is about the same for:

People who can't be diagnosed with Celliac without extreme measures

Women who can't be diagnosed with a heart attack without extreme measures

Women who can't be diagnosed with autism without extreme measures.

There can't be much if anything in common between my son's stomach lining, a young womans brain tissue, and an old woman's heart muscle. Oddly enough what they both have in common is the same medical-industrial complex. On a very small scale you can fix one person at a time, with a heart bypass or whatever else, I can't disagree with that. The insight is whatever fixes the "big system wide problem" given the commonality of symptoms it obviously can't be biologic in origin. The problem is inherent in the medical system itself, what it means to be a medical system at all, what it means to be healthy or normal. I think this is missed by people hyperfocusing on one narrow issue, well, all we need is "the official autism test" and it'll all be fixed. Or we need to sell Chinese made pink bracelets to "increase awareness of female heart disease", thats all a waste of time compared to looking at the greater issue (of which I currently have no answer, but I'm also uninterested in wasting my time on half efforts)</comment>


Beating Atari Pong on a Raspberry Pi without backpropagation - <AUTHOR> https://ogma.ai/2020/03/beating-atari-pong-on-a-raspberry-pi-without-backpropagation/ <comment> c-cube This company does very intriguing work, with some inspiration from numenta, as far as I know. The low resource usage (running on CPU, on a raspi!) is quite impressive. I wish there was more research on this approach.

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks very interesting but whitepaper is completely offputting. It's filled with terms you would have never heard elsewhere but authors use them without much explanation. It's really not even a whitepaper, just bunch of half done slides. It's surprising that authors would so much time around writing code, taking videos etc but have no time to really write good description of their ideas. There got to be a simple and better way to explain how exactly their proposed system work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of some of the stuff Vicarious is doing.

[https://www.vicarious.com/posts/general-game-playing-with- sc...](https://www.vicarious.com/posts/general-game-playing-with-schema- networks)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mixing backpropagation and gradient descent does not inspire a lot of confidence.

What they are describing seems to be based on hierarchical temporal memories ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory))

</comment><comment><USER5> I once bet Pong on a Atari 800 XL!</comment>


Electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles, study confirms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/23/electric-cars-produce-less-co2-than-petrol-vehicles-study-confirms <comment><USER2> There are three phases in the use of a product: manufacture, usage, and destruction/recycling

It matters not if there is an advantage during the usage phase but disadvantage during the manufacturing or the destruction phases.

Nuclear Reactors are a prime example: They are great during both the manufacturing and usage phases, but the cost and pollution during the destruction phase (where there is both danger to humans during dismantling, and hugely expensive and dangerous disposal of nuclear waste)

Similarly with electric cars. It's useful life is OK, but .... What happens to all those toxic batteries at the _end_ of the car's life? What happens to the toxic byproducts of lithium-ion battery manufacturing at the _beginning_ of the car's life? How much energy is expended (CO2 is produced) at those parts of the car's life?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a reason to move from Go to Java or C#? - <AUTHOR> I'm just curious to see if I'm missing out on something. I did webdev with PHP previously so I get the "generics" aspect but I don't miss them that much. <comment><USER2> It depends on what you want to do.</comment>


The Employee Is The Company - <AUTHOR> http://byjohnbrandon.com/the-employee-is-the-company/

<comment><USER2> True, but I despair of it ever actually happening. If even companies with sales people can get it wrong, where getting it wrong makes a difference, then what hope to companies who stick employees in little fabric colored boxes have?

Of course, 23 years in the cube farm might have left me cynical.

I had a brief glimmer of hope back when I first worked for Lands' End. They encouraged their employees to care about the customers to the extent of the whole company culture reflecting that care. After they were sold to Sears and then K-Mart, the whole place began the slump into the typical corporate bean counting contempt for the customer that we have all come to know and not love.

Personally, I shop where I get good service even if it means I have to go out of my way or shop there slightly less if they're higher priced.</comment>