React Router v5 - <AUTHOR> https://reacttraining.com/blog/react-router-v5/ <comment><USER2> Using react router on one of my personal projects (~ 30k loc) was probably one of my largest regrets. At every turn it seemed designed to do the thing I wouldn't expect, or have arbitrary restrictions that made my life tougher.

Some examples:

* there's no relative routes [https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/2172](https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/2172)

* there's no way to refresh the page [https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/1982](https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/1982) ("that's your responsibility, not ours")

* The scroll position will stick when you navigate to a new route, causing you to need to create a custom component wrapper to manage scrolling [https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/3950](https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/3950)

* React router's <Link> do not allow you to link outside of the current site [https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/1147](https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router/issues/1147) so you have to make an <a> in those cases. This doesn't sound bad, but it's particularly frustrating when dealing with dynamic or user generated content. Why can't they handle this simple case?

* Navigating to the same page would not actually reload the page, it would just trigger a componentDidMount() on all components in the page again, which led me to have a lot of bugs when I did some initialization in my constructor

<comment><USER3> Yup. I only use react-router when I have to (work). My other projects I always roll my own. A typical html5 push router can be really small. I don't reinvent the wheel normally but routing is hugely overcomplicated in the react ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> I feel like part of the problem with react libraries is that they implement their code "the react way" which basically means forcing it into your tree hierarchy. Dealing with dozens of higher order components gets really annoying after a while.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't much of this go away with hooks?

Before we had one hierarchy where everything was a component, logic and visuals.

Now we have two hierarchies where visuals are components and logic are hooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I usually shudder when I see React Router major versions which usually result in hard breaks that takes hours to migrate existing code bases to, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see:

> v5 is fully backwards compatible with 4.x

It appears the major version bump was due to package configuration changes instead of major API code changes.

<comment><USER7> Yeah that was my first reaction when I saw the title, "How hard is it going to be this time?" since it took me 2 days to migrate to the v4 last time.

<comment><USER8> Why upgrade?

<comment><USER7> Because if you don't upgrade, you are stuck with whatever version of React created at the time. You don't get stability & performance improvements, bug fixes, you can't potentially install some newer libraries requiring the new version. Not keeping up with upgrades is making the code rot slowly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We migrated from React Router to Reach Router ([https://reach.tech/router](https://reach.tech/router)) and found it to be better in a few ways:

* Built-in focus management.

* Smaller library size.

* Implicit route matching that Just Works.

* More comprehensive docs with live examples.

Migration was easy. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER10> So both of these routers are written by Ryan Florence? Interesting, what was the reason behind this? Freedom to experiment in one repo while keeping the other stable?

<comment><USER11> Ryan originally wrote react-router but then it became part of the ReactTraining org. Ryan later left ReactTraining to do his own thing, and started reach.tech, and Reach Router was born. Now Ryan is back at ReactTraining, and we'll see what that means for the routers.

FWIW, I use Reach Router for everything now and greatly prefer it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> react-router depends on the ReactTraining/history package for browser navigation support.

On 10 June 2017, an mind-bogglingly ill-conceived pull request[1] was merged, which causes _invalid_ URLs to be pushed to the browser history, breaking the back button and page refresh in many scenarios.

Ever since, users have practically been begging the maintainer to fix the bug[2] and implementing hacky workarounds[3].

In a twist of irony, the contributor who originally introduced the bug has:

a) switched their own competing router package to a different history implementation[4]

b) argued that fixing the bug (which was introduced in a patch release) would require a major version bump, implying it would be better to let it remain broken[5].

I concede that the software is open source, and nobody is entitled to make any demands of the maintainers. Nevertheless, I pity the countless end-users who are left wondering why the most basic functionality of their web browsers is broken.

[1]: [https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/465](https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/465)

[2]: [https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/issues/505](https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/issues/505)

[3]: [https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/32365](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/pull/32365)

[4]: [https://github.com/pshrmn/curi/commit/e850bcd9297398653a79b9...](https://github.com/pshrmn/curi/commit/e850bcd9297398653a79b903f35818cb2df7738c)

[5]: [https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/656](https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/656)

<comment><USER13> This [0] indeed seems like such a rookie mistake, with all kind of edge cases ready to mess up the path encoding. The fact that they left such a broken behaviour in the lib for two years doesn't inspire much confidence.

0: [https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/465/files#diff...](https://github.com/ReactTraining/history/pull/465/files#diff-c0634631ce0ed08197ba5cf4643ca0cfR37)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I migrated away from react-router because from v3 to v4 broke everything that made sense. Things became wildly more complicated.

I'm now extremely happy with my new router of choice router5 (not to be confused with React Router 5) [https://router5.js.org](https://router5.js.org).

<comment><USER15> Oh, this looks promising. I'm pretty tired of react-router, and I like to keep my navigation in my redux state, as it's a big part of any application state in my mind.

How well does router5 work with redux? I see they have an official package for it, so it's looking good, but maybe you have first hand experience.

<comment><USER16> Very well. We've been using it for 1.5yr at work, keeping up-to-date with latest React and Redux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hi reader unfamiliar with React Router! Just a heads up - these comments are not representative of typical React Router users. I work with React Router every day, and my co-workers and I love it.

Something about HN gives people license to air all of their nitpick grievances, and make it seem like SUcH A bIg DEaL OmG WorST LiBRarY EVArR!11

To the authors, maintainers, and contributors: Thank you for making the ecosystem better. It makes our work easier.

<comment><USER18> > Hey reader - stop reading these comments! They provide a cynical, > unrepresentative viewpoint.

You could prefix this to every HN thread in existence.

React-Router is reasonably good, and has some issues - like most open source libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting to see the reason they had to do a major version bump, because of the usage of ^ in their internal dependencies meaning that you could get a mismatch between versions of the two internal sub packages react-router and react-router-dom.

The solution? Pinning the version to an exact number.

I _always_ do this now as a policy, for everything, even when I'm using lockfiles though it shouldn't strictly be necessary, because I've been burned by ^ too many times. There's this ideal world expectation of ^ that it will magically give you upgrades for free without changes in behaviour, but breaking changes in behaviour occur _all the time_ in minor and patch version updates in real world npm.

I think this is an intractable problem - mistakes will always be made, even when people try really hard, and over 100s of dependencies in a project you're therefore quite likely to see these mistakes fairly regularly.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've never been a fan of React Router (mostly I don't get why defining routes with components is a good thing) and have been pleasantly surprised with how well Curi ([https://curi.js.org/](https://curi.js.org/)) works. It's nice to see it's not completely tied to a JS framework.

<comment><USER21> > I don't get why defining routes with components is a good thing

It makes the routes reactive. This is not necessary for smaller projects, but where it is needed this can be really helpful. The responsive route example shows this off well [https://reacttraining.com/react- router/core/guides/philosoph...](https://reacttraining.com/react- router/core/guides/philosophy/responsive-routes)

<comment><USER22> I find the opposite true. Components based routing is fine for small applications, but in a sizable application you will inevitable end up with several things that doesn't fit nicely into the simplistic router component model, and now you're shit out of luck and have to try to jimmy-rig in some escape hatch.

It's a much more flexible model to have the router update your state in Redux or whatever, and then you take care of all the rendering and component hierarchies yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recently implemented home grown routing in one of my apps - and was surpised to see that it was about 30 lines of simple code. You don't really need to tie yourself to a third party lib and risk future upgrades. Wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/p/9e2c7b036b0](https://medium.com/p/9e2c7b036b0)

<comment><USER19> But if you don't want to risk future upgrades, you could also just not upgrade?

I think react-router in particular have been pretty good about sending this message with past major version changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had nothing but trouble whenever I used React Router. For example, sometimes paths would be appended to the URL instead of replacing it, making it grow indefinitely, and it wasn't obvious why.

There were two API rewrites in a short space of time and it was extremely frustrating, especially since it seemed almost compulsory to be experienced with React Router (along with Redux) to be taken seriously by recruiters.

For my own projects, I started using page.js years ago and haven't looked back.

[https://github.com/visionmedia/page.js](https://github.com/visionmedia/page.js)

<comment><USER25> >sometimes paths would be appended to the URL instead of replacing it, making it grow indefinitely

Do you have a publicPath in your webpack.conf?

`publicPath: "/"`

Also make sure you a linking to="/path", not to="path"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Author here.

One more time for those in the back:

v0.x > v1 Breaking changes

v1 > v2 > v3 a couple obscure breaking changes, but practically none

 _18 months pass_

v3 > v4 New, composable design, basically a new project

v3 still maintained, 3.5 years no changes. v4 2 years, no changes.

v4 -> v5 was supposed to be 4.4, but an internal dependency '^' got us, so best choice was version bump to prevent problems.

<comment><USER27> I think it was the fact that v3 to 4 was "basically a new project" with a new paradigm that earnt the reputation for breaking changes but then React Router is such a marketable name I can see why you'd be reluctant to spin off a new project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I advise everyone to move away from React Router.

Maintainers who have such blatant disregard for users should not be rewarded or celebrated.

<comment><USER29> That's weird, I've had nothing but a great experience with the React Router team. Can you point to an example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised to see so many negative comments about react-router here. I've used react-router v4 in a half dozen projects without significant issues, and I think the API is pretty flexible and easy to work with. I'm glad to see the React Training folks continue working on it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is going to be awesome for React's apparent main industry: Training. A new set of videos and code camps...

<comment><USER32> Lol now that you mention this, it makes the React community make way more sense to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As someone who works with both React and VueJS on a daily basis, I find Vue Router to be much MUCH easier to work with, well documented and is really straightforward. Most importantly - It's an official package from VueJS core team and not a third party, so it's pretty much worry-free.

<comment><USER34> I totally agree. Vue Router always made more sense to me.

I wrote my own router for Inferno/React and Mobx inspired by Vue Router. It never made much sense to me to use components to define routes, or needing to use a HoC to be able to access the router from a component.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Probably the least stressful major version bump I've seen. Props to the team for solving the 4.4.x problem and pushing this out. Took a few minutes to update and now everything is great!

</comment><comment><USER36> May I take this opportunity to recommend found? It's great: [https://github.com/4Catalyzer/found](https://github.com/4Catalyzer/found).

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's an alternative which is being actively maintained: [https://github.com/frontarm/navi](https://github.com/frontarm/navi)

</comment><comment><USER38> My heart warmed when they said they were maintaining backwards compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER39> So many negative comments in here. Just wanted to let the maintainers know we use the library in multiple projects without issue and that we appreciate deeply the work that goes into it!

</comment><comment><USER40> Anybody using ui-router? I used to use that one in angular and saw they have a react version now. But I'm not yet familiar enough with react to judge it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Using React Component for routing has a benefit: Universal Routing, with all benefits of React inside the route itself (lifecycle, state, data fetching,...).

</comment><comment><USER42> > There are no breaking changes in this release.

Nice, glad to see the project becoming more stable. Upgrading from v3 to v4 made us a lot problems...

</comment><comment><USER43> Exemplary release notes.</comment>


Torus: A Toolkit for Docker-First Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/manifold-ai/torus-a-toolkit-for-docker-first-data-science-bddcb4c97b52 <comment><USER2> This is interesting! It sounds like this v1 gets your local environment up and running in a Docker container. I maintain something similar for analysts on my team, and we've seen success in terms of decreasing time spent on environment setup.

As another interesting use of Docker in the data space, I'm excited about Pachyderm [0] (though I haven't had the chance to use it in production). In particular, the data provenance story seems compelling.

0: [https://github.com/pachyderm/pachyderm](https://github.com/pachyderm/pachyderm)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the plug saamm, I'm one of the creators of Pachyderm. I think Torus and Pachyderm would work very nicely together. You could go straight from developing code in the image Torus provides to deploying it on Pachyderm as a production pipeline that runs on new data as it comes in with just a few commands. Similarly, their Dockerized data science cookie-cutter could work nicely as a Pachyderm service, this would work similar to using the service on your laptop, except that you could easily deploy it on a cloud provider and schedule it with GPUs and it will get updated with new data as it comes in.

Very exciting to see more people applying containers to data science.

<comment><USER4> Yes to containers! We are trying to make it as seamless as possible to be Docker first in all things. And not reinvent the devops wheel. It just needs to be adapted for the needs ot data scientists. Pachyderm is really cool. I will have to check it out. We've recently moved to Airflow for all our pipeline management... how does Pachyderm fit in that ecosystem?

<comment><USER3> Pachyderm's pipeline system covers much of the same functionality as Airflow's so there's generally not much reason to use both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No to confuse with this other company at [https://manifold.io/](https://manifold.io/) (io, not ai) which deprecated their [https://www.torus.sh/](https://www.torus.sh/) project :)

<comment><USER6> [https://manifold.co](https://manifold.co) ;-)

<comment><USER4> Yes, we found that super confusing thing later. I guess if you name your company Manifold you will name your projects after specific types of manifolds. We have Torus, next is Mobius, then ... Klein Bottle?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a more interesting direction would be for jupyter lab to ship an electron app and have it able to understand how to spin up and talk to containerized kernels.

I made a hacky version for work that proxies to a k8s pod but first class support would be cool.

<comment><USER8> [https://github.com/jupyter- incubator/enterprise_gateway](https://github.com/jupyter- incubator/enterprise_gateway) to launch kernels on a cluster and [https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/nb2kg](https://github.com/jupyter- incubator/nb2kg) to make a notebook server aware of them might be of interest (sans electron app shell).

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing this! I didn't realize this project existed.

I have lots of questions now, like why this isn't using the zeromq based protocol, so I guess I will need to spend some time with it.

It does look like it closely overlaps with what I was describing. I didn't realize overriding/extending the http api was even a thing that could be done so I just used zeromq for my own purposes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is cookie cutter running inside the docker container or on the host? The instructions imply setting up python, virtualenv, pip and cookie cutter all on the local machine...

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't this was Pachyderm was supposed to do?</comment>


Nagios is not a monitoring strategy - <AUTHOR> http://devops.com/blogs/nagios-monitoring-strategy/ Nagios is a great tool, but by itself it is a poor substitute for a monitoring strategy <comment><AUTHOR> Nagios is a great piece of software, but if you are going to use it as your monitoring strategy it is a mistake. Mike Kavis discusses on DevOps.com</comment>


Dallas Buyers Club case dealt blow by Australian court - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-33923482

<comment><AUTHOR> tldr version: Federal Court of Australia said DBC would have to pay A$600,000 ($442,000; £283,000) to obtain BitTorrent user details, to prevent speculative invoicing to alleged copyright infringers.</comment>


I got techcrunched! - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/myplaylist-combines-flickr-and-online-music/ Hehe, I made it to TC now how cool is that. <comment><USER2> Why does the article start off with "a bootstrapped startup from Agentbleu, a Englishman living in France" and in the end say the location is in India? Did they get it wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> company is based in India, it's just me that is in France ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> we just got crunched ourselves yesterday (see: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/soocial-makes-plaxo- loo...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/soocial-makes-plaxo-look-lame- beta-invites/)). we tried to get techcrunched a year but that was way to early (hindsight).

pick the moment you know you are up for it and then make sure you visit an event where some editor of techcrunch is and give them a demo. face to face contact really is so much more powerful than an e-mail from a stranger. thats how it worked for us, anyways!

<comment><AUTHOR> Only currently available for macs, love it. long live Apple.

Spazmaster, for server scalability I might suggest running a linode. I run my apps from a Linode and use the YC backed startup Virtualmin for setting up the domains. I highly recommend both of these products, and my app survived getting crunched with 20% headroom all times (so far).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep us updated with the traffic effect from the TechCrunch mention.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure will report back as it cools off

<comment><USER4> suggestion: you actual logo size is 600x150, but you are shrinking it into 500x125, as a result, the quality is degraded. You logo looks much better in actual size: <http://www.myplaylist.biz/i/myplaylist.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good job! May I ask how you managed to do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me it was not easy. Last year I made an app and they totally snuffed it. Someone somewhere along the line made a comment saying 'just move on, make another and another', I did and they still ignored it, bastards ha (lol). There is no formula, I suggest getting whatever you're making off the ground with SEO and once you gain some traction they might just take you more seriously (hopefully).

<comment><USER6> congrates man :) any suggestion how my application rivals4ever.com can get techcrunched ??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats, man

</comment><comment><USER8> That is one badass web app you've got there. I'm enjoying it right now. One GUI issue: The controls and song info are displayed on top of the slideshow, which leads to them being unreadable 25% of the time. (When they're on top of very bright or white pictures) I would move it down below the slideshow onto a stable background.

There's also no home link from the listen page.

Once again, nice app. I'll be using for a bit. Oh, and you should block Pandora adds from your Adsense account.

<comment><AUTHOR> home link is called search, and the best way to use it is in full screen mode, then the controls are clear enough. Ideal situation is just to start it off and let it fill your day with music similar to your first choice.

b

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How did you get on techcrunch? emailed them or they just found out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to kidnap MA's dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> did TC contact you before they cover you?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes they let me know it was going to be covered 24 hours in advance and I switched the server to a larger one with 300Mg more ram. It handled it all well, but Im glade I migrated it as I was down to 20% head room during the best of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty sweet. Question: is it possible for an embed not to immediately start playing when a person hits my blog?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea I will add that in a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool app!

It's funny listening to tool & metallica and watching pictures of puppies and snowmen. Is this legal? Is it "fair use" because it's remixing music with pictures?

edit: I'm not seeing where it says what the current song is? Any pointers?

<comment><AUTHOR> legal yes (see above link), in the player at the bottom right it has the track playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats, although your logo image on the homepage is a bit distorted because you're trying to squeeze it into smaller dimensions (making the font look jagged). May want to get that cleared up.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats, pretty cool. Just tried pink floyd and was pretty cool. Hope ur server can handle tones of traffic from techcrunch. Is it not illegal to play songs retreived from other sources?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://thenextweb.org/2008/01/30/the-music-wars-continue- war...](http://thenextweb.org/2008/01/30/the-music-wars-continue-warner-bros- records-vs-seeqpod/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pretty cool app.

What I'm missing, is a way to get info on the current image. Maybe a click on the image could bring up the Flickr side in a new tab?

<comment><AUTHOR> will add this function asap, thanks

b

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congratz! 15K hits only? I thought getting TCed would get you at least 50K to 75K. Still great.. and good app too. thanks!

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats!

Why does Arrington call Pandora "geo-retarded"?

<comment><USER18> It is US-only. (Last FM is not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> congratulations, but with the over-emphasis on music 2.0 on sites like techcrunch, there may be other sites where you want coverage

</comment><comment><USER20> Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER21> Congrats

</comment><comment><USER22> Grats!!!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hehe I got Hackernews'ed too Bonus points. ding ding. lol</comment>


Rise of the 'new rich': 1 in 5 Americans reach affluence - <AUTHOR> http://www.dallasnews.com/business/business-headlines/20131209-rise-of-the-new-rich-1-in-5-americans-reach-affluence.ece <comment><USER2> _Made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, the new rich are those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners. Even outside periods of unusual wealth, members of this group generally hover in the $100,000-plus income range, keeping them in the top 20 percent of earners._

This range gets hit the hardest by personal income taxes, so sibling commenter's observation of income, not wealth, is astute. 20% of the population may be in the top 2% of earners in income for one or more years, but they'll be hard pressed to sustain it AND overcome taxes.

Also, I noticed that those interviewed in the article have inherently volatile earning profiles. Stock brokers, day traders, art gallery owners... And early startup employees are a part of the cohort too, with spikes one time payouts.

<comment><USER3> This is why basing tax brackets on yearly income has always struck me as flawed. Imagine you're an author that spends a couple years writing a book. For the first three years you make no money, but the forth you make a million. You'll be taxed at a much higher rate than if you had made a consistent 250k a year.

This might be a simplistic model, and the outcome may be avoidable by sufficient tax planning, but I'm sure some entrepreneurs have lost money this way.

<comment><USER4> The worst category for this is star professional athletes. They make huge amounts of money their first few years, but then they retire at age 30 and spend the rest of their lives earning far less.

In the author's case, you could imagine a fix; the author could somehow amortize the income over previous years and pay all the money at the appropriate rate. (Though I can imagine a number of fraud- and incentive- related issues there.) But you can't really do that with the pro athletes because a) you don't know when they'll actually stop making money and b) in the future they may not actually have it.

<comment><USER2> I remember ichiro's last contract with the mariners was going to be paid out over 25 years or something. The guy makes a ton from commercials in japan, but maybe this is actually a decent move?

Edit: on second thought since star athletes are getting paid in the millions, prorating it over 20 years won't change _that_ much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe something like 400k*20% each year before they hit the max bracket anyways.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. From Wikipedia:

> The Associated Press reported that Ichiro's contract extension defers $25 > million of the $90 million at 5.5% interest until after his retirement, with > payments through 2032

If he retires at the end of next year, he'll make that money over 18 years. If he made it all at once, today, he'd pay about 9.8 million of that 25 in taxes (just punching things into a naive tax calculator; I'm sure his accountants would improve things. OTOH, it's also slightly low because it puts him in a lower tax bracket for the first 400K, which he doesn't get because of the other income he has). Ignoring the interest for a moment, splitting 25 million over 18 years he pays a total of 8.9 million. So he saves a million dollars doing it this way. Not bad.

With the interest, he'd get paid more; it looks like 1.8 million per year for 18 years, so 32.4 million instead of 25. That's a bit of a raw deal if he has to pay that as regular income tax, since if he got the money now and put it in the market, it would perform about as well, but would get taxed at a capital gains rate.

All in all, I suspect this is a compromise with the Mariners to alleviate cash flow and luxury tax pressure more than it's a shrewd tax move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard for me to take seriously an article that uses yearly salary to measure wealth. Beyond the fact that money is an extremely poor indicator of wealth due to cost variance across the country, simplifying someone's liquid assets into a direct relationship with yearly income is absurd.

<comment><USER6> It's actually worse than that: the article measures wealth by the maximum salary that someone is paid in any year of their life. So, if you made over $250,000 for one year back in 1999, and are now jobless, you're considered part of the New Wealthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like someone is busy setting up the narrative for raising taxes on "the rich" who earn more than 100k. This is how it starts. A whole bunch of "studies" come out, then the talking heads roll it out 24/7 on the news media and then Obama makes a speech and a bunch of people pound the table and ta da... brand new taxes for you "rich" people making 100k a year.

<comment><USER8> The average income is $60k. $100k IS rich, even if it doesn't feel like it in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER9> It sure doesn't feel rich to me :(

At the end of the month, after taxes and FICA and health insurance and Medicare and retirement are withheld, and after paying for housing, food, transportation, insurance, utilities, sundry expenses, and student loans-- there's not a whole lot of that $100K/12 left!

Raising taxes on $100K would be almost intolerable. I could probably part with a couple thousand more a year, but it would be difficult, and I have very little faith that they'll invest my money wisely....

<comment><USER10> Well just imagine how poor you would feel with just the median household income of 50k (2011 US Census) or worse and you were the bottom 20% making <=25k.

<comment><USER11> People with the median income don't live in silicon valley. 50k goes further in the midwest than 100k in SF.

<comment><USER12> Median household income in SF in 2011 was $72,947. That is a good deal more than 50k, but far less than 100k.

Now imagine the household isn't one 20-something person, but two adults, closer to middle-aged, with a kid or two. 2.3 people per household in 2011 in SF.

[http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html)

<comment><USER11> >Median household income in SF in 2011 was $72,947.

You just proved my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These are just the fattest cows in the herd. Being able to afford "luxury" versions of mass-manufactured crap isn't wealth. Wealth requires means a measure of financial independence and security. Dual-income professional couples who manage to get into the $100-250k range don't really have these, although they're in a better position than the rest of the middle class. Between student loans, school expenses, childcare expenses, saving for college, saving for retirement, etc, they can afford some toys but that's about it. Comparing them to the wealthy and saying they wield power in the economy is utterly ridiculous.

Also, does anyone understand the chart? Does it mean that 76% of 60 year olds will make > $100k at some point?

<comment><USER14> Who says they have to have kids? Earn a combined $250k a year, live frugally and invest the money early. Build a huge retirement nest egg in a decade! Then go travel the world and enjoy life.

What gets expensive is if you get caught up in the _keeping up with the Joneses_ mentality. Why do people want to live in a suburban sprawl nursery and spend all their life raising kids?

<comment><USER13> The question isn't whether you can live comfortably on $250k/year. Obviously you can. But that doesn't make you wealthy.

Trading off having kids to be able to afford travel and luxury goods is prole. People who are actually wealthy don't have to make compromises like that.

<comment><USER12> I am sure somebody who has kids and can afford to travel would tell you that what they have is not truly wealth because the _truly_ wealthy don't have to make reservations, they can all schedule last minute and fly first class to another hemisphere on a moments notice. Planning and budgeting for your travelling retirement is for peasants!

Some of _those_ people may even have the audacity to tell you they even they are not wealthy, because the those who are _actually_ wealthy don't need to fly in the same planes as the poors.

It seems like nobody ever stops looking up.

<comment><USER13> Having to compromise a biological imperative in order to be able to afford a particular sort of lifestyle, and not being able to book first class tickets at the last moment is difference in kind, not a difference in degree.

<comment><USER12> People with less money than you who have kids will still be able to travel. They will just travel less frequently (sometimes _much_ less frequently), they will travel to less exotic locations, they will book further in advanced, and they will travel and stay in less luxury. A week in Duluth, instead of a summer in France.

This is a difference in degree. It is a difference in degree until you reach the _real_ difference in kind, far closer to the median household income / poverty line. The people who have no hope for a retirement, who plan on working until their aging bodies force them to stop.

I am sure those who travel whenever they please would assert that a retirement consisting of planning out the next trip months in advance is a difference in kind. It _is_ a different sort of lifestyle if you are honest, but it is best described as difference in degree.

Everyone thinks that the difference between what they want and what they have is the _important_ difference. If you had it, the bar would move; you wouldn't be satisfied.

<comment><USER13> I agree that traveling more or less is a difference in degree not kind. But 'chongli suggested forgoing having kids so you can save money and travel. That's a difference in kind, and it's a prole sort of thing to do. At least assuming you'd otherwise have kids if you had more money.

<comment><USER12> Well, yeah. chongli's suggestion _is_ a difference in kind, not degree, but I think his suggestion is a bit extreme. I don't think many people decide to not have kids just so that they can travel more. Plenty of people probably claim that, but I don't think many people who _actually_ want kids would decide not to have kids just because of their retirement plans. There is probably a deeper fundamental lack of a desire for kids hidden in there somewhere.

Anyway, I think it is also worth considering how the price of having kids changes as you go up and down the income scale. Most parents will naturally be inclined to provide the best childhood for their kid that they can. For most people, this probably means making sure their kids have good nutrition, do well in school, etc. Parents with more money available to them might start considering additional expenses though, like private tutors, private schools, larger college funds, trust funds, etc. People with more money will probably spend more money on their kids, so that 50k extra (after taxes) income every year doesn't necessarily mean 50k more money for yourself. If your income increases, you'll probably spend more on your kids. (of course this won't make more income a wash, since certainly some of that extra income will be spent on yourself).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> $200k for a household is not affluent. Its just two people with good jobs.

The way the economy is, that often doesn't last. Then you have one person with a good job, and you better hope you saved. But you can easily eat up all of that previous income with things like urban housing which can be very expensive, an extra car, or a child's college tuition.

So anyway suggesting this situation occurring at some point for someone today is 'affluence' is not very realistic.

Maybe a few decades ago with less inflation those numbers would indicate 'affluence'.

<comment><USER16> > $200k for a household is not affluent. Its just two people with good jobs.

Yes, and 2 earners with good jobs makes one affluent :)

Affluence is one of those words, it all matters of perspective. But I try to use the test of "would an average guy on the street" consider a HHI of $200k affluent. I think yes, they would.

Remember, that income level puts a couple in the 96th percentile.

<comment><USER17> It's illustrative of the wealth divide in our society that engineers think 96th percentile wages are middle class.

<comment><USER18> Or, it's illustrative that what used to be truly middle class lifestyle can now be afforded only by people in top income percentiles, whereas the median income probably implies a lifestyle pretty close to poverty.

<comment><USER19> This, Exactly This.

Also, cost of living needs to be applied to these numbers, 100k in the Bay Area is 65k in Florida is 45k in Georgia.

<comment><USER17> You refer to the costs of living on the coasts as just the cost of living. Most of America can't make salaries to get by in the Bay Area, so they live elsewhere. That makes living in the Bay Area a luxury good.

Affluence is about how much you can afford relative to the rest of your society. If you're only comparing yourself to San Franciscans and New Yorkers, doesn't that mean you don't consider the flyover Americans your peers? As if there were some large divide in wealth in this country?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to see how many households are earning over $250K total where that household has less than $100K in net wealth.

I guess it's a majority (over 50%) but even with that, I fear that I'm underestimating. Real affluence is wealth-based (and living within means), not just income based.

<comment><USER21> _I 'd like to see how many households are earning over $250K total where that household has less than $100K in net wealth._

You might find this useful: [http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/](http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the data link! That paints a far less dire picture.

If I look on Table 4 of 2011 Excel sheet, the highest quintile incomes (still far under $250K/year median I'd presume) have a 74% chance of having a net worth over $100K. That isn't a perfect apples-to-apples invalidation of my premise, but it's close enough to give me comfort that I was being too pessimistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fascinatingly fleeting..." _for one year or more_ "

Huge difference between annuity and perpetuity cash flows.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article makes the critical mistake of implying that affluence has anything to do with salaried income.

The people who are actually wealthy are too busy laughing to rebuke this notion.

</comment><comment><USER24> my comment from the last time this was submitted:

> Because they spend just 60 percent of their before-tax income, often setting > the rest aside for retirement or investing, he says their capacity to spend > more will be important to a U.S. economic recovery.

As a salaried employee at less than $100K, my tax withholding in california was 35%. Spending 60% of your before-tax income doesn't seem to leave much room for any "capacity to spend more".

</comment><comment><USER25> "Wealth" is assets, not income.

</comment><comment><USER26> Income maybe, but not wealth.

</comment><comment><USER27> These are also known as HENRYs. [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/high- earners-not-yet-ric...](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/high-earners-not- yet-rich-henrys.asp)

Investment firms and luxury brands are well aware of this phenomena.

Notice that they are not-yet-rich :)

</comment><comment><USER28> What I imagine this study totally glosses over is the fact that many middle class families do make over $250,000 once in their life b/c they sell a home. That is far from making them "rich".

</comment><comment><USER29> The percentages for each group seem to include everyone in the higher groups as well.

I'm making this assumption based on the percentages of the 60-year old graph: 76.8%, 50.9%, 32.2%, 20.6%

I guess I was thinking about this plot like a histogram which makes more sense in a bar chart like this. Read like that, the percentages in each bucket are: 25.9%, 18.7%, 11.6%, 20.6% for the age 60 chart and 17.7%, 7.4%, 2.1%, 2% in each range for age 30

<comment><USER30> I think the data's being presented in a strange way.

Since it's "people who make over $100k at least one year of their life", it makes sense that older people would have higher numbers.

They've been working more years, and because of that they usually have higher paying jobs due to having more experience or moving up to management positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Kind of sickening that this misleading headline gets more attention than "1 in 5 American children live in poverty."

Now that's something to chew on.

<comment><USER12> Think of it this way: This headline is telling 1 in 5 Americans that they should consider how badly they think they have it, then consider that there are many people who have it _much_ worse. There are people here talking like 200k/yr/household is no big deal... meanwhile that is _four times_ the national average. This article is an opportunity for people to stop worrying about the luxuries they do not have, and reflect on the luxuries they _do_ have which most Americans do not get to enjoy.

Headlines about the extent of poverty do not offer much in terms of sudden realizations. Everyone knows that there is poverty, and most people think that there is _significant_ poverty. What most people don't seem to stop and realize is that the poverty that many Americans experience is nothing like their _" I can only put a few thousand into savings every month"_ problems. This headline gives _meaning_ to your headline. The two stories compliment each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Other commenters have pointed out many of this article's fallacies but there's one good thing that's being overlooked: the upper middle class is growing. The author skews this as if it's a bad thing. Quite the opposite. There are two stories here, one about the upper middle class growing and one that the middle class gap is growing.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Now a senior vice president for a private equity firm specializing in the marijuana business..."

Did anyone else notice this line in the article?

</comment><comment><USER11> People that are actually wealthy love this kind of misinformation. If they can get the society focused on hitting people that happen to have an upper-middle- class income hard, it takes the heat off of people that are actually wealthy. Screw people with incomes trying to get ahead, but keep capital gains tax low to favor the wealthy.</comment>


Bill Gates' $14M sees a future in low-carbon plastics - <AUTHOR> https://www.greenbiz.com/article/bill-gates-14-million-sees-future-low-carbon-plastics <comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but the "low-carbon" name is as wrong as it seams.

The new material has the same amount of carbon, the difference is that the carbon comes from biomass, not from oil.

It's like proclaiming the biodiesel is "low-carbon" because it's made from plant-oil instead of petrol-oil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plastic is the product, but the article emphasis is on the process. In a sustainability context, meaning the overall footprint to get the "same" product, it is low-carbon compared to fossil-fuel based processing.

This may also be helpful: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12495967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12495967)</comment></comment>


Seattle Surveillance Technologies Up for Public Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillance-technologies <comment><USER2> Seattle uses WiFi MAC addresses to track traffic movements. While the data is currently hashed and anonymized, it wouldn't surprise me if this data is eventually processed and combined with CV technology (specifically license plate readers and facial recognition tech) to provide detailed information on the movements of individuals. From one of their documents:

Acyclica technology collects encrypted media access control (MAC) address information and sends the data to the cloud using their RoadTrend Sensor. This sensor is a proprietary Linux-based device that is discreetly installed inside of traffic control cabinets for SDOT. The devices are Ethernet connected and have a Wi-Fi adapter capturing the MAC addresses of all devices within its range. Using the detection of MAC addresses, Acyclica identifies and differentiates vehicle movement as it approaches, stops and leaves an intersection. When Wi-Fi enabled device comes within range, the sensor generates a one-way hash code from the detected device's MAC address (using a SHA-256 algorithm). Only the hash codes are transmitted to their cloud server, and there is no way to reverse this process and access addresses of the original devices. From the aggregated data, Acyclica can extract and provide actionable traffic related information to SDOT.

<comment><USER3> > generates a one-way hash code from the detected device's MAC address (using > a SHA-256 algorithm)

This does not sound truly "no way to reverse" if they are using plain or some simple variants of SHA-256. There are only up to 2^48 possible MAC addresses (way less in practice), which is a very realistic number for rainbow tables.

That said, this might be less relevant quickly as more and more devices are going to use randomized MAC addresses for probing Wi-Fi networks.

<comment><USER4> Also, (typical) MAC addresses are not random; the upper 24 bits are constrained to a given smaller set of manufacturer codes, so you can reduce the search space considerably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who was raised in the south I find the competence of Seattle's city government absolutely amazing. It's night-and-day different from the learned helplessness of city governments elsewhere in the US.

<comment><USER6> I'm not entirely sure what I'd call it, but competent is not the word. Seattle has a history of attempting to push constitutionally-questionable and ill- thought legislation.

0: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-p...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-playing-wait-and-see-with-income-tax-on-the-wealthy/)

1: [https://q13fox.com/2018/05/08/seattles-proposed-employee- tax...](https://q13fox.com/2018/05/08/seattles-proposed-employee-tax-highest- head-tax-in-the-nation/)

2: [https://patch.com/washington/seattle/seattle-residents- jolte...](https://patch.com/washington/seattle/seattle-residents-jolted-new- sugar-tax)

3: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-t...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/seattle-to-add-tax-on-gun-ammunition-sales/)

and so on.

<comment><USER5> I get that you don't like taxes, but policy disagreement is not evidence of incompetence.

<comment><USER7> There's much more that's not just not liking taxes.

\- [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/12-millio...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/12-million-per-mile-for-a-bike-lane-that-should-trigger-a-civic- heart-attack/)

\- [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/like- terr...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/like-terrain-for- a-jeep-obstacle-course-the-enduring-mystery-of-why-seattle-cant-fix-its- roads/)

Or see the city council's total failure at dealing with homelessness. Or their 180 on the head tax.

<comment><USER5> I drove a stiffened up sports car in the area for years and the idea that Seattle has bad roads is ludicrous. The city of Seattle literally has an app where you can report potholes. I reported one on my street and it was fixed 2 days later with no further interaction from me.

For comparison, my parents' road in South Carolina is less than 5 miles from a major downtown and has a pothole in it that disabled an ambulance a few years ago. The pothole has been there for at least a decade.

People who live here have no idea how good they have it.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I think many Seattleites do not understand the sheer ineptitude of many local governments, even large ones such as Chicago or LA that have budget. God help you if you want the city of Chicago to provide you with any kind of basic service in a reasonable amount of time.

I think the reason that we think our government is incompetent is the reason it works. We're constantly angry and trying to fix it, and electing reformers that shake things up.

Although I would say is that Seattle does elect a few activists and others to the council that aren't competent administrators but push the right electoral buttons. Kshama Sawant comes to mind. That progressive spirit is a double edged sword.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This public review isn't be accident. For several years, an advocacy group that I was involved with briefly helped with achieving important milestones like a getting a chief privacy officer and a privacy advisory committee.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great idea. I wish more local governments had this. Lots of cities are acquiring surveillance without pols even knowing.

<comment><USER11> As the page notes, this is a result of a surveillance transparency ordinance adopted in 2017. Some other cities are considering these; readers could advocate for them elsewhere too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another city that forces private companies to provide them surveillance data is menlo park.</comment>


Vajra protects users from unsafe sites, suspicious emails, and cryptocoin miners - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vajra/mibdahogipimmfngmijkmmjoaecedmgk <comment><AUTHOR> We took an oath to make internet safe and accessible.

Features: ⦿ Email Protection ⦿ Anti fraudulent websites ⦿ Anti Cryptomining and Ransomware ⦿ Anti Trackers

The Internet is a great place, it feels like you can do anything over it nowadays, where you can buy anything you want, find information, meet many new people... and lose all your money to scammers and fraudsters. We've never liked that last part, so we started to fight back. We believe in the fight against internet fraud is the only way to combat it.</comment>


Using Graph Databases to Stop E-commerce Fraud in Real Time - <AUTHOR> http://neo4j.com/blog/graph-database-ecommerce-fraud/ <comment><USER2> If anybody wants a little more code with their blog post, here is another example [http://maxdemarzi.com/2014/02/12/online-payment-risk- managem...](http://maxdemarzi.com/2014/02/12/online-payment-risk-management- with-neo4j/)

A proper fraud detection system has lots of pieces. The one the customer was having trouble with was Cross Reference in real time. Imagine 10k requests per second coming in, you can use cross reference to flag transactions for further analysis or as a partial weight to more fraud detection algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite what the article seems to claim, it appears to be describing the most basic anti-fraud measures which are easily defeated by basic fraudster tools and techniques.

>User ID

1 account per card per IP, basic stuff.

>IP address

Vip72 is a pretty basic example of a commercial solution, more advanced people either source fresh IPs from bots or scan for SSH tunnels.

>Geo location

While not as trivial to defeat, most "serious" fraudsters either operate their own mule networks or pay for access to one. There's no lack of stupid people.

>A tracking cookie

lol?

>Credit card number

There's no lack of credit cards, even if you're paying $30 for a no-AVS card with full VBV info that still costs less than a TV.

<comment><USER4> This is a blogpost intended to demonstrate the usefulness of applying neo4j to a specific problem. All the challenges you cite are valid, but they do not negate the value of using neo4j in this scenario.

You can solve these problems by adding to the list of identifiers. Off the top of my head: browser fingerprinting, request latency, IP subnets, IP ASNs, hsts super cookies...

Stopping fraud is always going to be a cat and mouse game. The goal is not to eliminate fraud completely, but to make it so difficult for fraudsters to use your service successfully, that they would rather move to the next target. If a fraudster is specifically targeting your service, they _will_ get around any blockades you put in front of them. But you can still make it as hard as possible to circumvent those blockades.

If you deter a high enough percentage of fraudsters, you mitigate your risk of chargebacks. That risk will never be zero. But you should certainly do all you can to minimize it.

<comment><USER5> But the tone of the blog post implies this graph thingie is _the_ solution:

"How graph databases stop fraud e-commerce frauds in real-time" \- note the use of 'stop' and 'real-time'.

"Fortunately, graph database technology is able to detect the patterns that arise around these e-commerce fraud scenarios and put an end to them in real time"

Again, look at the terms used: 'put an end' and 'real time'.

I am not trying to nit-pick, but what has been discussed is far from being able to put an end to fraudsters. Maybe this could weed out some of the newbie frausters, but that is it.

Disclaimer: I work in the payments industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why can't you do this in a relational DBMS? Recent research says it that would probably be faster.

The Case Against Specialized Graph Analytics Engines

[http://www.cidrdb.org/cidr2015/Papers/CIDR15_Paper20.pdf](http://www.cidrdb.org/cidr2015/Papers/CIDR15_Paper20.pdf)

<comment><USER7> (disclosure: i work for neo4j)

This paper is a bit unrelated to Neo4j. Neo4j is an ACID-compliant native graph database. It is not a "specialized graph analytic engine."

Neo4j stores the graph data on disk (and caches in memory) as nodes and relationships. After index lookups to find the start points in the graph, all traversals of relationships are done in constant time -- allowing it to scale with linear performance characteristics, regardless of the size of the graph.

The referenced paper cites two main reasons that RDBMS would be better for the analytics use cases: (1) ability to express graph queries in SQL and (2) performance of executing those queries.

(1) Cypher is, like SQL, a declarative language. However, it represents graph constructs in a much more natural way -- "ASCII art for graphs." There's significant praise from developers on the web of the benefits of Cypher for traversing graphs, which is why we decided to open up the language: [http://www.opencypher.org/](http://www.opencypher.org/)

(2) As Neo4j isn't really intended as an analytics engine, its performance characteristics are not included in this paper. However, (expensive) indexes do not need to be created and maintained for every relationship in Neo4j. Similarly, these indexes do not need to be accessed for traversal (also expensive).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get how fraudsters can create all of these fake identities. Every cc and bank acct application I've ever filled out has asked me for my SSN. Surely the banks check on that before issuing a card? How can n fraudsters get n^2 valid ssns?

<comment><USER3> While synthetic identity fraud happens (you can use fake SSNs!), this isn't intended to stop that kind of fraud.

This is intended to stop people from using other peoples credit cards, not their own cards they just applied for as someone else.

<comment><USER8> That still doesn't make any sense. The modus operandi here (I thought) was that N fraudsters mix-and-match their actual addresses and phone numbers with fake names in order to open N^2 fraudulent accounts, which they then operate legitimately for a while before pulling the scam. So they can't be using other people's cards because the fake identities don't really exist.</comment></comment></comment>


Search all of Craigslist using advanced Google search parameters - <AUTHOR> http://www.allofcraigs.com

<comment><USER2> If your site relies on javascript to work, tell me or I'll think it's just broken.

<comment><USER3> function vote(node)

Please! javascript is an essential component of _every_ modern web site. If you want to live in a cave and think that flickering shadow on the wall is all there is to the world then fine, but not all of us are imprisoned by progress.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I use a browser which trivially allows me to only enable executable content for sites I trust and until you're one of them no javascript for you.

<comment><USER3> Your preferences are your business, but just because you don't run javascript doesn't mean a site is broken. It means you have a default setting that is in conflict with the current state, and direction of the web.

If I do:

csh> lynx www.facebook.com [et al.]

it really doens't mean facebook is broken.

That's my point - you're mixing up your personal preferences (paranoia) with the condition of a web site and they are not the same thing.

Fortunately many others are willing to move with the times, otherwise we'd all be still running gopher://news.ycombinator.com

<comment><USER2> If your site requires JS, not bothering to tell people just shows how much you (don't) care about your users. It's interesting you bring up facebook. I'm not a facebook user, but on I whim I just went there and what's the first thing they told me:

      Sign Up
      It's free and anyone can join
      Javascript is disabled on your browser.

      Please enable JavaScript on your browser or
      upgrade to a Javascript-capable browser to
      register for Facebook.

That tells me that the people at FB care enough about my time and theirs to tell me their requirements before I use the site.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A simple no-brainer approach to patent trolls - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/patent-troll-insurance/ <comment><USER2> The idea is maybe clever, but it has at least 2 major downfalls.

1.

The system is gamable by the trolls. Hurricanes don't care if you're insured, but trolls have an interest in taking troll insurance down. The way insurance works means that if you have a statistically unlikely run of bad luck, you could topple the whole insurance enterprise and leave those who thought they were covered out in the cold.

If I were a troll, I'd get together with other trolls and coordinate enough legal pressure that it was impossible to go to court on all the pending cases at once.

2.

Having insurance like this legitimizes the whole trolling issue, instead of fixing the systemic issues that cause it in the first place. You might think that doesn't matter since we can't really fix the trolling issue, but we can (maybe) create insurance to route around the problem. But here's why it actually does matter: if the troll insurance works and isn't killed by my point #1, then we've actually created a lobbying group with a vested interest in keeping trolling alive. In other words, the organization we created to protect us, if it actually works, will have strong incentive to work against our long term best interests by allying themselves with the trolls they are supposed to be protecting us against.

We'd essentially be creating a protection racket to extort /ourselves/.

Can't see this working.

<comment><USER3> > then we've actually created a lobbying group with a vested interest in > keeping trolling alive

That was my first thought when reading this article. It's a shame that lobby groups can petition for outcomes that are worse for everybody but their broken business model - where profits are the only virtue worth considering.

Lobby groups for keeping marijuana illegal[0] perfectly describe this.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and any other big tech-player need to band together, form a lobby group, and destroy software patents. It should be in their best interests considering all the patent litigation that goes on among them.

[0] [http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby- illegal/](http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/)

<comment><USER4> > Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and any other big tech-player need to > band together...

But they won't - Microsoft and Apple are patent trolls themselves, now, and it won't be long until Google and Samsung join them.

It works like this. Startups have no patents, but as they grow and succeed they accumulate them. Eventually they get lazy and start to rely on their IP for income, rather than continuing to develop valuable new markets.

Microsoft is a great example of this arc, making more money licencing unspeakable patents to Android than they do from Windows Phone. Apple are going that way - their heyday is over and patents are becoming more important to them. Google is currently not over the hump yet, but give them ten years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My understanding is that patent trolls persist with bogus patents because it's not in any one firms interest to challenge them. When it's a central insurance company taking the risk, they have much more incentive to do damage to the trolls. This is a good feature of this scheme.

The protection racket shape of this whole thing is a bit worrying though.

<comment><USER6> One of the more interesting things I read in Derek Sivers' book was about the mob. A cab driver he was chatting with indicated that the mob system was easier to work with than the government that replaced it when the city legitimized. You paid people for nothing more than keeping them off your back, sure, but you had someone to turn to if you got leaned on by someone else, in a town filled with assholes willing to break your arm on a pretext.

The mob had no incentive to shut commerce down, only to extract a rent. It was pretty straightforward, you set up shop in a certain part of town, and you knew the mob controlling that area would be around to "welcome" you. Paying them off is a cost of doing business. They have to be reasonable because if you get shut down, they won't get paid.

Compare that to the environment we have here. Trolls have no interest in keeping you around, and there's no way to work them into a business plan. The only thing you can do is set up shop and pray.

Personally, I'd rather deal with the mob.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What if the insurance only covered court costs. If you lose, you have to pay the patent troll. It sounds bad, but trolls would then face a furious fight every time.

<comment><USER8> Then the insurance have an incentive to pick for you a lawyer who loses fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This idea already exists. RPX Corp. Costs a fortune though! Can be 6 figures a month...

</comment><comment><USER10> RPX Corporation (RPXC-NASDAQ).

<comment><USER11> I didn't know they existed. Apparently they have a whole program for this: [http://www.rpxcorp.com/rpx-npe-litigation- insurance](http://www.rpxcorp.com/rpx-npe-litigation-insurance)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've also seen this [http://www.altageneral.com/patent- insurance.php](http://www.altageneral.com/patent-insurance.php)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDPpjca19s&feature=player_de...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDPpjca19s&feature=player_detailpage#t=182)

</comment><comment><USER13> Patent Litigation Insurance™, a new product from Intellectual Ventures®.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can't take Lloyds of London down so easily. That's where you should start shopping for a policy, because the dealers at Lloyds are ultimately the ones who set the prices for any insurance anywhere in the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> How about insurance that contractually requires me to never settle and pays for me to fight until the patent is declared invalid? That way I look like the worst possible troll target.

</comment><comment><USER16> I for one would say the no brainer solution would be to abolish patents. I know blah blah medical research, years investment blah blah, but after the investment is made back, it is abused again. And shit like Monsanto. Abolishment would be best imho. But as that's not in the cards, the next simple thing would be; if you (the company the patent belongs to, bought or created; not a partial parent owner, not some entity you have shares in; no, the physical company) are not actively creating, selling and marketing a product(s) the patent(s) are about, you cannot attack companies who are. If the 'enemy' openly started selling/marketing/producing with the product before you did, you are just out of luck; even if you create it after that you cannot sue. This is easy to check and follow up; there will be thousands/millions traces of actual sold and delivered product to end clients on tax papers, logistics papers, manufacturing papers etc which proves who was first.

So if you had the patent, which was supposed to be _original_ in the first place, then, because it was so 'original' (saying 'original' because at least in case of software it just never is and many(most) hardware cases aren't either) you could've easily been the first to exploit it right? If not; sorry for you, your patent lands in /dev/null. Will never happen but seems to be a logical and solid way of doing this.

Oh yes, and make the patent related to the investment used to come to it; you have to provide paper trail what 'enormous and painful investments in time and money' you did to get to that 'one click payment idea'; you can only sue others until your company made that investment back times X (X=10 or whatever), not after that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Patents are a good idea for rewarding people with original ideas. If they were required to stay with the original owner and weren't transferrable, this would be a different (and similarly problematic issue), but as patents have value and are transferrable, they will be bought and sold as investments by various people/corporations/whatever.

In theory patents are maybe a good idea because it provides exclusive rights to "own" an idea for enough time to extract value out of it by selling a product or service around it (if you so choose). You could argue that software patents lasting 20 years is "too long" for technology. You could also argue that patents aren't worldwide enforceable so, you need to get one everywhere, or basically you can't enforce it.

I don't really know that you can "fix" patents without throwing them away and rethinking them, but on a system as large and impactful as patents, the repercussions might be a lot worse than the problems we have now.

</comment><comment> alok-g I have been wondering about possibility of another approach, which is limited to B2Cs. Since I am not a lawyer, I do not know if this can actually work.

Instead of manufacturing or selling the product directly, you open-source the design while maintaining the copyrights (or even patents-coverage if needed) over it. You now do contract manufacturing of the design for the buyer and set up the legal agreements / EULAs accordingly. While it is the buyer now who has the risk of being sued, the troll I assume is unlikely to go after every small individual customer.

You maintain the copyrights (or patents) on your design just to prevent your competitors from freely copying it, though you promise not to sue the buyer himself for this IP as usual in the agreements.

Does anyone around here think this is correct / feasible? Any lawyers here?

<comment><USER18> From my layman's understanding, this doesn't work. Just because you are building something as a work-for-hire doesn't immunize you from being sued, if you are violating someone else's patents in the process. You can have a contract with the buyer that says that the indemnify you in the event of a suit, but the way that works is that you still get sued and then you can go after the buyer to cover your costs when you lose or settle.

Again, not a lawyer, but this is my understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is probably not a good idea, but what happens if the "badge" on the site is simply a link to a binding contract that forces the company to always fight patent lawsuits in court? No insurance or anything, a simple way of signalling that they will go to court no matter what.

(I believe there's a legal construct where a company can sign a binding contract with itself, overseen by a notary or something like that)

Now we replaced the rational actor the trolls faced, with an irrational one - the company simply _can 't_ settle, this is going to court no matter what. Trolls no longer have an incentive to sue such companies, though if they do, the company is in big trouble (though, possibly not forced to shut down).

</comment><comment><USER20> How about a "white-hat" troll? Get a bunch of patents, and threaten small players: you either join us, paying for insurance and lobbying OR we try and sue you.

</comment><comment><USER21> An alternative would be for a bunch of like minded companies to band together and form an alliance. If one of them gets trolled, the others contribute to their defence. "One for all, all for one." You'd want to trust your allies, or put some limits in place to keep flagrant patent breaches outside the agreement.

Don't some insurance companies already do legal expenses insurance?

<comment><USER22> It's a great idea, but it faces the small problem of solving nothing if all the participants get trolled, which they likely will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Something like malpractice insurance I guess. It'd create an interesting dynamic between trolls and troll insurance policy providers.

You'd have the insurance providers lobbying to reduce patent trolling, just as trolls will be lobbying to allow for more.

The thing about this, is that instead of just the latter, we'd have both sides. If anyone wants to make this happen I'm on board.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, the insurance business is so sensible and orderly, adding that to the mix would surely make everything ok.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this not exactly what Intellectual Ventures offers?

</comment><comment><USER22> personally I think the only way of stopping the trolls is to insist that the only litigant who has standing to bring suit on a patent is someone who:

a. Has the relevant patent

b. Is producing a product based on that patent which would be harmed by the alleged infringement

This would continue to protect actual inventors who actually make something (and the drug companies for whom the patent system really does work) but stop the trolls.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a rule, insurance doesn't insure against Armageddon. This would be like trying to get Geico to cover a top fuel dragster.

</comment><comment><USER27> This would be like selling car insurance to demolition derby drivers. It would never, ever be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER28> the guys at fightthetroll.com are also doing something along these lines

</comment><comment><USER29> A simple no-brainer approach to patent trolls: bit.ly/18Loez4

</comment><comment><USER30> Great idea. Fight capitalist excess with capitalism.</comment>


Show HN: Mobile SDK enables live chat support & visual assist - <AUTHOR> http://www.look.io

<comment><USER2> As an overview for us more novice iOS programmers, how are you going about sharing the screen with a user? I am going to download this and check it out, but really curious as this looks fantastic!

<comment><USER3> You can get the onscreen graphics context and convert it to an image to send over the network fairly easily. I'd guess that you probably won't get a full remote desktop experience, nor would you really need one. Just an image and a "tap here" indicator" that sends a coordinate (or rect) back and forth.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm the other cofounder of LookIO. Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of how the visual assist part works. We have some plans on extending it with more than just a "tap here" indicator, but don't plan on turning it into a full remote desktop experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty interesting niche they're addressing... hadn't really crossed my mind that there'd be a big need for "in app support", but makes perfect sense that if you're paying for an app you should get good/quick support.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks even better in person. Great team.

</comment><comment><USER7> If your website has Olark or any live web support, why wouldn't you want it in your app too? Well executed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's what we think too... especially for apps that are transactional based (travel, retail etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, isn't that address the Coloft space in Santa Monica? Cool to see something come out of there!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we love coloft! We're there a lot... swing by some evening and we'll give you the in person demo.

<comment><USER8> Sounds good. I live nearby so I'll drop you an email with my info to meet up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> sweet, but what the heck is an agent? It's not clear to me that my smaller apps won't ever cost me money with this, because I don't know what an agent is. ("First agent license is always free. You'll never be charged. No risk integration.")

<comment><AUTHOR> good feedback... an agent license is simply an account that can provide support (logged into the admin console or to ichat/any chat client)... so for a small app, you'd be the agent & you'd provide support when you're available (much like Olark)

<comment><USER10> Can a single agent support multiple apps? BTW, props - this looks EXTREMELY sweet and I expect I will be integrating this into my apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, a single agent can support multiple apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks amazing, any chance for some HN invite codes?

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the best teams in LA. Congrats, guys.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great job!</comment>


A Thorough Study of Chromium Blink's Memory in Real-World Websites - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1soWvmqxWuZQ_ZchvPZFgf5frAQBBlq5f2tJTuDDPZI8/edit#slide=id.g437b0e633_00 <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/q5Q...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink- dev/q5Q8oNsrc-I/PlFQPSFbCAAJ)

</comment><comment><USER2> I get redirected to [https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050) "Clear cache and cookies" when I click the link.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy to see Chome is finally taking memory usage seriously. There are some heavy HTML5 pages that my 1GB android tablet can't even handle with Chrome, but run fine under FF. There are still plenty of low-end smartphones sold today with 1GB or less of RAM.

Google should heed the lessons MS learned with IE. If they want people to keep the default browser, it needs to be competitive.

<comment><USER4> Most of IE is part of the operating system and get loaded at boot, rendering such memory test moot.

<comment><USER5> The browser's own memory footprint should be minuscule compared to that of the pages it loads and runs.</comment></comment></comment>


Argentine physicians claim Monsanto larvicide is true cause of microcephaly - <AUTHOR> http://www.examiner.com/article/argentine-physicians-claim-monsanto-larvicide-is-true-cause-of-microcephaly <comment><USER2> To note that in Colombia and Asia there aren't babies affected although the virus is also present in thousands of patients is a good point...</comment>


Apple Special Event – September 10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/apple-events/ <comment><USER2> Predicting new product announcements aside from the iPhone has become more difficult since Apple now releases product refreshes off-cycle (e.g. AirPods/MacBook Pro/iPad) that would normally be announced around this time. I suppose there could be an October event for a new iPad Pro.

Personally I want an iMac Pro update w/ a Navi GPU but that's wishful thinking.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to see them doing anything with the iMac Pro when the Mac Pro is just around the corner. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 32 inch iMac though.

<comment><USER2> The new Mac Pro is very explicitly for industrial producers with absurd budgets; there's still room to target professionals users with less-absurd budgets.

<comment><USER4> I have a feeling those will have to make do with the iMac and iMac Pro. Or keep working on their hackintoshes to get what they need.

<comment><USER5> I would be perfectly happy to continue on the hackintosh path I've been taking for years now, but man the GPU situation is not making it easy. Right now if you're looking for mid to high end GPUs that work with macOS, you're stuck with nvidia on two-releases-behind High Sierra or Mojave/Catalina with outdated AMD (Vega 56/64) or expensive and EOL'd AMD (Radeon VII).

Here's to hoping macOS gains Navi support soon — if it does I'll jump on a 5700 XT right away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd prefer they launch the new macbook now than iphone. There's nothing exciting about the new iphone except the triple lens back camera.

<comment><USER7> > There's nothing exciting about the new iphone except the triple lens back > camera.

There is no way to know that until we know what the software does with the newer hardware (including the rumored AI accelerator).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Return of the rainbow logo or just hinting at new colors?

<comment><USER2> > The Apple event invite has the iPhone XR replacement's green and lavender > colors at the top of the bottom of the Apple

[https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1167108671807074304](https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1167108671807074304)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mid cycle refresh phone. Big changes will be next year

<comment><USER10> Wasn't last year's XS the mid cycle refresh?

<comment><USER11> Yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this likely the iPhone event or the Macbook refresh?

<comment><USER13> Will be new iPhone launch. See speculation on features etc on macrumors.

[https://www.macrumors.com/](https://www.macrumors.com/)

<comment><USER8> For specific "iPhone 2019" rumors:

[https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/2019-iphones/](https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/2019-iphones/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm waiting for the claim "The best iPhone of all times" like..every year they do, for obviously reasons.

IMHO, I hope they announce some cheaper iPhone (less than $500), otherwise they can keep it.

<comment><USER15> I wish they had updated the iPhone 7 with A12 and sell it at that price. I don't need Wireless Charging, and no need for glass back which is expensive to repair. They could have fitted a single lens camera that is better than the iPhone 7 Plus.

And it would be the perfect Entry Level iPhone.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I'm on an iPhone 8 now, which is fine. I don't want FaceID.

<comment><USER17> I don't want faceid either, I think the fingerprint recognition is fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node.js Emerging as the Universal Development Framework - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/node-js-emerging-as-the-universal-development-framework-for-a-diversity-of-applications-c2e788290f5f <comment><USER2> Universal? Node.js is little more than an orchestration layer and a poor one at that considering it crashes when an error isn't handled. It's concurrency model - async i/o - is inferior to Elixir's actor model and Golang's goroutines and if you want computation Node.js will have to hand-off to something else. The only thing Node.js has going for it, once you subtract the hype, is that you can reuse your front-end Javascript devs. What a claim to fame.

<comment><USER3> Just curious -- what should a program do when an error isn't handled?

<comment><USER2> I'm talking about the whole server. Erlang has a "let it crash" approach where every process is isolated so the server stays up. Most scripting languages will produce an error in the logs without the need to reboot the server.

<comment><USER3> Can you describe your experience with node, specifically, how it has different from what you experience with Erlang? I feel like that would help me to understand your comment better.

<comment><USER2> Node.js is an event loop which is accessed via Javascript callbacks which are invariably nested. Each nested callback must have an error-handler otherwise the error "bubbles" to the top of the call stack and crashes the server because a Node.js server runs in a single process. Erlang and Elixir, on the other hand, handle requests with real concurrency, spawning many small "green threads" within the Erlang VM, not OS proceses. These lightweight processes can crash without affecting the other threads running in the same VM and co- ordination of these threads is handled by a genserver. Golang has a similar concurrency model but without the benefit of Erlang's genserver so you have a greater chance of race conditions. Why the world opted for the Node.js model of "concurrency" I will never understand. Then again, Java and Javascript are still the most popular languages in the industry so what does language design have to do with anything?

<comment><USER3> Your description of nested call backs sounds terrifying. I don't think the issue here is with the language, but rather your approach to it. Nested callbacks can be a pain, but it seems like the solution here may be to ensure that you properly handle your errors rather than expecting everything to continue to work when everything goes down -- seems like a safer approach to me. Even so, many newer features in javascript involving Promises and async/await can help you avoid callbacks, so the nested call backs isn't really an issue.

I'm curious -- what's your issue with Java? It's very different from Javascript, and the concurrency models are vastly different?

<comment><USER2> Promises and async/await are really syntactic sugar. The error handling issue still remains. My original point was that Node.js is the least universal platform I can think of. Sure, you can attempt all things with it but it's not optimised for anything other than lightweight orchestration.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Three CTOs Answer: What Is Good Code? - <AUTHOR> https://buttercms.com/blog/three-ctos-answer-what-is-good-code <comment><USER2> 1\. Does the code work?

2\. Can I make a change, and be reasonably sure it will continue working?</comment>


This Yacht Uses Only Solar Power, and It Has an "Unlimited Range" - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/this-yacht-uses-only-solar-power-and-it-has-an-unlimited-range/ <comment><USER2> I've seen a yacht that used only wind power and had unlimited range. :)</comment>


Jimmy Iovine is leaving Apple - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/beats-co-founder-jimmy-iovine-is-leaving-apple-reports-say/ <comment><USER2> Is it only a coincidence the last payout to Iovine for Apple's acquisition of Beats in 2014 happens in August? Probably not. He's earned an exit.</comment>