End Software Patents (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://endsoftpatents.org/ <comment><USER2> Let's not pussyfoot around then. Let's enforce software patents rigorously, _and do it retroactively_.

Now we can make it easy on ourselves and cut a single cheque of what amounts to basically _all the value in the world_ to Don Knuth. I'm sure he can pass various bits on to the other stake holders.

Congratulations:

\- The technology company you work for is now out of business, you're jobless.

\- Don Knuth is now Emperor of the planet.

...

which sounds like a pretty good state of affairs, really. Satire isn't supposed to end up like that.

However, bottom line remains: no one who would be a real stakeholder in the field is in favour of software patents. Software is mathematical; again, no experts have ever argued software isn't mathematics, almost by definition.

<comment><USER3> Knuth did invent many algorithms, but it's still a miniscule part of his oeuvre.

Knuth is so fundamental to computer science, because he sighted, assessed, categorized and published the main body of the field. That's curation, not invention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think its possible to have a good software patent. However in my quite long experience in the software industry, I quite literally have never seen a software idea that was actually patented and which convincely passed the "skilled in the art" novelty test. Nearly everything I have seen would be logically thought of by someone even moderately skilled in the art if presented with the same requirements. So I think the conclusion is, even if there are a few "good apples" if the barrel is full of 98% "bad apples", you really should throw out the whole barrel.

<comment><USER5> Maybe apply some simple formal criterion, like if function is implemented in under 100kloc, then it's trivial and invalidates the patent.

<comment><USER6> I think it's fair to say that LoC is perhaps the least relevant metric it is possible to imagine.

Languages differ in expressive power in ways that effectively mean that 200kLoC in one language is trivial to implement in a few thousand lines in another. Even within one language, two implementations of the same effective feature can be devised with similarly large differences in line count, if one prioritizes brevity over efficiency.

A simple criterion like this would be laughably useless and abused to absurd degrees.

<comment><USER5> I don't mean that 200kloc implementation proves non-triviality, I mean 100kloc implementation proves triviality. Also efficiency is achieved by implementation of specific algorithm, not by code formatting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the patent system is broken, not software patents.

Patent trolling is blatant abuse, and none of these loopholes ever get fixed because patenting is a one hundred year old legal concept that hasn't been touched in decades.

Why not create a better system? To patent your idea it should have to be non- obvious; therefore pinch-to-zoom wouldn't be patentable. To patent your idea it would have to take a significant amount of work to implement. Maybe certain 'types' of ideas cant be used to litigate for financial compensation.

Really theres so many ways the system could be better but i don't see the need to throw it out. People like having their ideas protected and valued. The concept is there, it's just been corrupted by corporate greed.

<comment><USER8> It's important to allow protection for ideas/products/software/drugs that take a large amount of investment to develop. If you spent 10 years and millions developing a better video compression algorithm, why there should not be a way for you to offer it to market, but at the same time have it protected against copying.

Similar problem occurs in biotech, if you developed a drug and proved it helps cure a disease, usually it is trivially simple to create the same drug (generics). This means that without a patent, companies would lose part of the incentive to innovate.

However, if your patent is simple, it's an idea like pinch to zoom that realistically didn't need millions in research to develop, then that patent should not be granted as the purpose of the patent is not return on investment from research.

<comment><USER9> One of my big problems with file format patents is that historically they've been abused and used to place artificial restrictions on the user. There should be playback and encoding exceptions for personal non-commercial use, or at the give the user an option to export / convert their media into a standard format.

Have people forgotten the terrible user experience with media file formats in the 90s and 00s? You had to download a bunch of codecs and fiddle around with different programs in order to watch a video. The details on this point are a bit fuzzy, but I also remember having to needlessly jump through hoops in order to encode some audio files for my MP3 player. Fast-forward to the current year: now I can use ffmpeg for conversions and either mpv or VLC for playback, providing a vastly superior user experience. This is only possible because the developers of these tools have opted to completely disregard software patents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd be happy with and end to low quality patents (i.e., doing "X" but on the internet). Basically, any patent that an average software developer would violate just in their normal course of work (without prior knowledge of the specifics of a given patent, but possibly with knowledge of the problem to be solved). Of course, patent law has this covered already with the "non obvious to those skilled in the art", but this seems to have no meaning anymore.

<comment><USER11> > Basically, any patent that an average software developer would violate just > in their normal course of work

By definition that's every software patent, given the same problem to solve.

Donate: [http://endsoftwarepatents.org/donate](http://endsoftwarepatents.org/donate)

<comment><USER10> What about ones like the RSA patent? From what I understand, the requirements were laid out ages ago, but it wasn't known if any algorithm could meet those requirements until the RSA algorithm was developed.

Of course, RSA is just math, and patent law already forbids patents on math (but somehow unless it is math related to computers). But that was just the first example off the top of my head of algorithms that took a bit of work to develop (just like many other encryption algorithms, or ML algorithms, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An argument that's rarely made: Almost everyone whose work would be protected by software patents, is fervently opposed to them. Except patent lawyers and multinationals. That should tell you everything on whether they're a good idea.

<comment><USER13> Ask Larry Page if he is _fervently_ opposed to software patents.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en)

<comment><USER14> It's years since it was _his_ work.

Now it's protecting the turf of the large corporate, from any whiff of competition by fair means and foul.

<comment><USER13> About 20 years. In fact it expired on June 2 and you're free to use it. You are free to use the work that he was incented to do. His work is now our work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Everything they listed is also true for non-software patents. End all patents.

<comment><USER16> This is the only intellectually honest case for ending software patents.

Methods have been patentable for as long as we've had a patent system--why should they become unpatentable because they're machine-implemented?

<comment><USER17> Perhaps methods should become unpatentable when implemented by machine because the cost-benefit of the patent bargain in current context no longer advances the public policy behind patent law.

<comment><USER15> As far as I know there is no evidence that the patent system as a whole is a net benefit to society. The negative effects are clearly visible like the formation of oligopolies, litigation costs, licensing costs and so on. So unless one can present data that the positives outweigh the negatives the whole system should be abolished. As a practical matter it might be much easier to end software patents than it is to end all patents.

<comment><USER18> I mean adoption by nearly every legal system in the world is a pretty good indicator. You'd think developing economies would be trying to unchain their competitiveness by getting rid of patents, but as China outgrows its phase of stealing technology and starts the phase of developing original technology, it's developing its patent law and providing for enforcement.

<comment><USER19> Developing economies get pressured to implement western style IPR regimes as part of trade negotiations, to the point of getting draft legislation written by foreign powers.

See: [https://www.grain.org/article/entries/399-information- feudal...](https://www.grain.org/article/entries/399-information-feudalism- who-owns-the-knowledge-economy)

(whole book: [https://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/pdrahos/books/Information%20F...](https://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/pdrahos/books/Information%20Feudalism.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting to consider that the US industrial revolution got its start by stealing patented ideas from Britain.

</comment><comment><USER21> Software occupies an interesting boundary between engineering and mathematics. Software patents for trivial things typically do not exist, it is just a misreading of the patent--they start very generally and end up in specifics. As long as you change some of the particulars, you are allowed to file for a new patent.

Just because innovation happened without software patents does not mean that higher quality innovations can not exist with patents. I know of algorithms which give certain companies an edge in their flagship international products. If these algorithms were able to be patented globally, it would be a large benefit to the entire industry. Since China is part of this market, the company does not patent this algorithm and instead keeps it as a trade secret.

I think in this case it would be better if the algorithm was patented.

We need to distinguish this case where the patent is truly non-trivial and would not be able to be re-created without great expense. It's very difficult to evaluate this, especially for those who aren't experienced.

Honestly, I don't think "end of all software patents" is the solution here. Imagine if NNs were developed completely as a trade secret.

<comment><USER18> Imagine if the secret sauce that makes Apple's trackpads the best had been patented and disclosed. It'd be out of patent soon and we could have Windows laptops with decent trackpads.

<comment><USER22> As it is, at least Windows laptops can try to replicate that secret sauce. Or just reverse engineer it: we're talking about software patents, and pretty much all of Apple's software is available unencrypted in binary form and can thus be reverse engineered by those with the right skills.

The idea that Apple would have a goverment-enforced monopoly on good trackpads for _20 years_ sounds like a far, far worse outcome to me. If it were 5 years or less, maybe...

<comment><USER23> IIRC Bezos argued that software patents should have 9 years protection, which seems like a good compromise to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Software should be copyrighted not patented. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

<comment><USER25> Patents are about protecting how something works.

Copyright doesn't do that at all.

<comment><USER24> That's not true. Copyright of source code would protect your invention.

However if someone else wrote their own code to do the same thing, it would not be protected, which is the point.

<comment><USER25> It protects the code not the invention. Rewrite from C to java and you get around copyright.

With respect to patents, inventions are about how you do something. Whether it is written in java or C is irrelevant. Similarly, for gadget patents, the material it is manufactured out of doesn't matter.

<comment><USER24> Perhaps that's an edge case not well covered? Is my copyrighted English work not covered if someone translates it to another language?

<comment><USER26> Translation is one of the canonical examples of derivatives works [1], and one of the rights implied by copyright is the right to control the production of derivative works.

The question of rewriting a library in a different programming language has never been litigated, to my knowledge, so there's no precedent as to whether or not it would violate copyright. The customary practice is to assume that the code produced by anyone who has seen the original source code would qualify as a derivative work, and therefore to rely on a clean-room implementation, where one group inspects the source code and builds a spec that a second group uses to implement the replacement.

In the absence of legal precedent, the customary practice tends to be accorded legal preference, so it's reasonably likely that a court would rule that somebody who looks at a C implementation and produces a Java implementation without any intermediaries would constitute a derivative work and therefore be in violation of copyright if not properly authorized by the copyright owner.

[1] It's literally the first example given in the US law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In the US, the Alice supreme court decision killed most of them. But the USPTO changed its own rules to keep going.

IBM and al are pushing for a law to restore them (the STRONGER patent act).

EPO ignore the law and the courts to keep granting them. And european courts gonna be replaced by puppy captive Unitary Patent Courts.

</comment><comment><USER28> i get a large majority of software patents should not exist, but are there no software ideas that are truly patentable?

what makes a "physical" patent you consider valid different from a software patent?

I know there is some difference, it's hard to formalize though.

Say someone spent years building a compression algorithm 10x better than everyone else's in some novel way and then tried to capitalize on it. And then google just copied the idea and put this guys company out of business. Isn't that bad?

<comment><USER29> No, there are no software ideas that are truly patentable, because ideas area not patentable. Code is copyrighted. Algorithms shouldn't be. If you spent developing a better compression, then sell the software, but don't release the algorithm.

Some of the problems with software patents is "on a computer" or "on a server" just aren't novel enough. In fact, that is the problem with most patents, they aren't novel enough.

<comment><USER16> > ideas area not patentable

Totally wrong. Ideas are exactly what is protected by patents.

<comment><USER30> Patents protect inventions, not ideas. [https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-you-patent-an- idea](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-you-patent-an-idea)

<comment><USER16> What's an "invention"? It's not a particular physical embodiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, yes. Software is clearly not eligible for patent protection.

<comment><USER32> "Clearly"? The current state of affairs indicates it's anything but.

<comment><USER33> Premise 1: Legally pure mathematical objects cannot be patented.

Premise 2: Algorithms are pure mathematical objects.

Tentative conclusion 1: Algorithms cannot be patented.

Premise 3: Hahaha, lawyers don't know math but they do know billable hours.

Firm conclusion: See figure 1[1].

[1] [https://www.dourish.com/goodies/see- figure-1.html](https://www.dourish.com/goodies/see-figure-1.html)

<comment><USER34> This is often repeated but wrong, because this is not how patents work.

You could present _any_ patent as a discovery of a "pure" fact about physics or mathematics: a particular configuration of physical objects would behave in this particular way according to the laws of physics, or, a certain abstract dynamical system described by this formula (i.e. algorithm) has these properties. The thing is, the patent doesn't protect the _discovery_ or the knowledge or the fact itself. Even with a patent, anyone is free to study the design/algorithm, teach it, write about it, print it on a T-shirt etc.; in fact, patents are _meant_ to help spread the knowledge they contain -- in exchange for a certain protection. What the patent protects is the exploitation of the discovery in some physical product for certain ends, i.e. not the fact about the universe/mathematics, but its practical implementation. So in this respect software patents and, say, mechanical patents are exactly the same: a monopoly is granted for some years on the _practical exploitation_ of certain physical/chemical/biological/mathematical facts in certain ways and for certain means.

<comment><USER31> Sure. So, an algorithm isn't patentable. But a particular encoding of that algorithm might be patentable by your logic? However, copyright, not patent rights, protect encoded algorithms!

There are many possible programs, but only some are useful. In this sense, patents might protect only those useful programs, and not the useless programs. However, you'd have to write new law to cover this case.

Laws written before the advent of information theory are missing fundamental truths of mathematics. In this case, given that patent law already knows about mathematics, surely patent law is prepared to yield.

<comment><USER34> > So, an algorithm isn't patentable. But a particular encoding of that > algorithm might be patentable by your logic? However, copyright, not patent > rights, protect encoded algorithms!

No, an algorithm _is_ very much patentable (and _not_ copyrightable, while a program is copyrightable but not patentable), it's just that the patent does not _protect_ the notion or knowledge or mathematical fact of the algorithm -- in fact, it very much makes it public -- it's just gives a monopoly for _exploiting_ the algorithm for some business benefit.

> Laws written before the advent of information theory are missing fundamental > truths of mathematics. In this case, given that patent law already knows > about mathematics, surely patent law is prepared to yield.

As I said, this reasoning is irrelevant. _Every_ patent is some "truth" of physics, chemistry or mathematics, but the truth is not what's being granted a monopoly. Everyone is free to know it or teach it. Rather, it is its implementation for profit that's protected. Moreover, because I believe that in the US patents apply to physical inventions, the language of software always describes some computing device computing an algorithm. It seems that technically everyone is allowed to perform the algorithm by hand, even to exploit it for profit.

Software patents are therefore not different in principle than any other kind of patent, but they are different in practice, simply because of how they've come to be used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A small thread from 2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492233)

</comment><comment><USER36> If software patents were "ended", what would replace them? Trade secrets? Everything out in the open under a use license?

<comment><USER12> No need to speculate - the EU, Russia, India, South Africa, and New Zealand have no patents on pure software - I'm sure there are other places too.

<comment><USER36> So what do software inventors in these countries do with their inventions?

Edit - It seems to me that there's clamoring about software patents without suggestions for alternatives. Were software patents always disallowed in these countries? If not, what was the overall effect of "ending" them? Was there innovation and business activity, before and after?

Edit2 - [https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2470358C2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2470358C2/en)

<comment><USER12> > software inventors

Are those the companies that force patented technology, to the exclusion of free alternatives, into widely used standards, so that they can charge everyone that wants to read a FAT32 filesystem?

The ones that patent an idea, not method, like one-click buying, or minigames in loading screens?

The ones that have some overly broad, unreadable patent, that would be invalidated in court due to countless prior art, but use it to extort businesses for amounts too small to make litigation worthwhile?

Or is this some mythical inventor, that creates something actually useful, and licenses it to others at fair prices? Something that improves the state of the art, but bizarrely does not rely on any prior patents in that area (otherwise existing companies could simply block the use of the new method)? _And_ this someone isn't already employed at some company where the invention was made during the normal course of R&D (because otherwise, you already have your answer as to what software inventors do - write software/do R&D for existing companies that need it).

How many such people are there? Enough to justify the enormous headache of software patents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Curios: how many investors still consider software patents as a pro/asset for a startup?

<comment><USER38> Curious: Would you spend millions of dollars in research if your know it will be copied and you won't be able to make a dime back?

<comment><USER37> What startup spends millions of dollars in research? And if the patentable is so easy to copy, it should not be patentable.

<comment><USER30> Startups in medtech, biotech, or advanced materials, among others.

<comment><USER37> We are talking about software patents here.

<comment><USER38> Do researchers work for free?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This: [http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Just_a_Use_of_the_Patented_General_...](http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Just_a_Use_of_the_Patented_General_Purpose_Computer)

Software patents are a hack, they are really against the patent law. The patent law requires an invention of new hardware, which software obviously doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER39> Patent documents can be very useful, particularly in areas where the patent is unenforceable.

My team found the what3words patent very useful in reverse engineering the what3words geocoding system, and have open-sourced our results: [https://whatfreewords.org/](https://whatfreewords.org/)

<comment><USER40> I'm curious as to why you think the patent is unenforceable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> If I invented a new process for producing an expensive drug, it could probably be implemented as a program for a robot arm. Would that method be impossible for me to patent if software patents were banned?

<comment><USER42> You should try that on the Supreme Court. Oh, wait...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It should be outlawed because burden to find out if someone has copyrighted this solution is too much

</comment><comment><USER44> Seems like nothing changed since 2007 with the approach towards software patents

</comment><comment><USER45> We've paid a high price for letting the anti-patent faction kill the value of patents.

\- VCs used to be about finding someone with a new technology and a patent, then funding them to commercialize it. Now they're about buying market share, losing money on every sale and making it up in volume. When VCs funded real technology, from about 1970 to 2000, they made money as a class. Now they lose money as a class.

\- Everything is a trade secret now. When patents were strong, you could disclose how things worked. With weak patents, NDAs are a bigger deal than ever. Right to repair suffers. Companies use unmarked components to inhibit reverse engineering.

\- Trade secret law has criminal provisions, which patent law does not. You can go to jail for supposedly stealing your employer's technology, even if you just went to work for a competitor. Like Sergey_Aleynikov, and possibly Anthony Levandowski.

\- Most of the fuss was about business method patents, but those were prohibited years ago. That's a dead issue.

\- Patents are for 20 years, then it's public domain. Trade secrets are forever.

The "America Invents Act" made it hard to maintain a patent. Now you can face repeated challenges in post-grant proceedings.

China now has tougher patent laws than the US does. In China, you can routinely get injunctions to shut down an infringer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov)</comment>


Online course in game analytics – perfect for game developers [FREE] - <AUTHOR> https://edu.devtodev.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Awesome course that covers everything from the basics to the more advanced methods in game analytics: main metrics, ML, AB-testing, revenue forecasts and many more (video content + study materials).</comment>


SNI and HTTP to HTTPS Redirection for CloudFront - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2014/03/server-name-indication-sni-and-http-redirection-for-amazon-cloudfront.html <comment><USER3> Nice $600/month saving for me! I can't wait for ELB and CloudFront to implement SPDY and WebSockets!

<comment><USER4> Might want to throw your +1 in this AWS thread: [https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=353099](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=353099) [Add SPDY protocol support to ELBs]

<comment><USER3> I just did! Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Just got an update about activity in the thread :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is excellent news - SNI very widely supported in browsers now, so there is little excuse to avoid it.

Would be great to see SPDY/HTTP2 support so the overhead of serving many small assets (i.e. typical website use) would be reduced.

<comment><USER6> Sadly support for SNI isn't supported widely enough that you can actually use it, unless you control the clients.

You really need Internet Explorer to support SNI on Windows XP before you can use it. We would lose maybe $50- 100.000 in turnover per month by relying on SNI support, rather than just having multiple IP for each domain.

<comment><USER7> Windows XP is completely and utterly deprecated as of next month. For any future deployment and new development it should not even be on your consideration-matrix.

It's dead, Jim.

Let's just let it die already, instead of sowing cushions under XP-users arms. If their internets starts breaking, they might actually be motivated to upgrade.

<comment><USER6> >If their internets starts breaking, they might actually be motivated to upgrade.

More likely: My customers take their business elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks Jeff, its appreciated.

Can we work on SPDY support for ELBs? That forum thread is getting pretty heavy with +1s.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that the team is aware of the need for SPDY and that it is on their roadmap, but I'll ask them to reevaluate the priority.

<comment><USER4> Thank you! Its greatly appreciated. If there was a web app to send a beer your way, I'd do so :) You guys have saved me countless ops hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is EPIC news! We were just beginning to plan our rolling our own SNI infrastructure to replace Cloudfront due to the previous limitation and cost prohibitiveness of the dedicated IP model. Excited to test this out and see what happens!

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know an elegant way to sniff browser support for SNI?

Using JS to load an element from the SNI domain and then rewriting URLs if the response is too slow would probably work but surely there are better methods.

<comment><USER10> What do you do for clients that don't support SNI? What would graceful degradation be in your scenario?

Would you not use SSL (rewriting https to http)? If ssl is so unimportant for your purposes that IE8 and Android 2.3 clients don't need it, it would be much easier to not run SSL at all since you don't really need it if you're willing to have a non-trivial percentage of clients accessing the site insecurely.

Would you rewrite urls to a separate domain with its own IP? That would negate the reason for using SNI to begin with; if you'd use that host/ip for all ssl, you don't have to detect SNI support.

The third option, of course, is to refuse to support IE8 and Android 2.3. No detection needed.

<comment><USER9> TL;DR; SSL would be used for all traffic but non-SNI browsers would be served from the origin server or a caching server. URLs would be rewritten in JS in the browser on first hit.

Thanks for replying. Below are the details:

I work on an e-commerce project where 50% of bandwidth, a few hundred GB per month, is thumbnails and CSS. We currently serve this over HTTP on CloudFront - primarily for faster page rendering.

CloudFront and on-server caching are also helpful in handling traffic spikes from Reddit etc.

Total hosting cost is under $500/month so $600/month for CloudFront custom SSL hosting is steep in comparison.

My question was considering a scenario where we might switch to SSL all the time.

CloudFront would serve static content from [https://sni.domain.com](https://sni.domain.com) via SNI.

The main server would be at [https://ssl.domain.com](https://ssl.domain.com). This serve dynamic content to all visitors, static content to non-SNI browsers and is the CloudFront origin.

If non-SNI traffic was too much for the origin server we would set up a caching server (e.g. Nginx/Varnish on [https://sslcache.domain.com](https://sslcache.domain.com)) and rewrite non- SNI traffic there instead of the origin.

In the browser a javascript snippet would try to connect to [https://sni.domain.com](https://sni.domain.com) by loading a 1 pixel image then write the URLs in the DOM if a short timeout delay was exceeded and set a cookie for further requests by this browser. The cookie would then determine if the server delivered pages (usually from the cache) with SNI or non-SNI URLs for static content.

I think this would work and would see at least 90% of static resources served over SNI.

It would be nice if there was a more elegant way detect non-SNI browsers - such as a JS test for the existence of a particular browser property - <USER2> than trying to load from CloudFront (seems a bit web 1.0ish).

Any suggestions?</comment></comment></comment>


An entirely hand-painted Common Lisp game - <AUTHOR> http://blocky.io/f0rest.html

<comment><AUTHOR> w00t, one upvote! :)</comment>


Stanford Study Finds Companies Get Less Innovative Post IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2013/01/15/stanford-study-finds-companies-get-less-innovative-post-ipo/ <comment><USER2> This study's benchmark for innovation is "measured by the number of patents filed." It's hard to measure innovation, but going off of just patents alone is ridiculous.

That said, I would actually agree that in general, post-IPO innovation slows at most companies, but a lot of it has to due with the lowered levels of risk that the public is willing to assume as opposed to angels and PE/VC firms. Public companies naturally have more regulations and bureaucracy, making it a lot more challenging to release revolutionary products and features than private companies.</comment>


Ask HN: What laptop should I buy? - <AUTHOR>

Hi. I just moved to Canada for my postgrad and I am looking to buy a new laptop.
- I am a Windows guy, but I run Linux in a VM.
- I will be using it for development.
- It will also be my general purpose / college laptop.
- I want to be able to carry it around for meetups, hackathons, college, or if I feel like working at a coffee place.
What would you suggest based on the above given points? What screen size should I be looking at? I am currently looking into ThinkPads and Dells. Also, will it be worth trying to get one from USA instead, or is the price difference not that huge?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> +1 for "staying away from HP", seems like everyone around me with a HP runs into hardware problems (maybe that's the reason why they are slightly cheaper?)

My favourite would be Dell, they just released 15z a while ago, seems pretty nice.

I would also recommand Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba. I'm using a Toshiba Satellite A660 at work, pretty quiet and stays cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless they've improved a lot in the last year or so I'd stay away from both Acer and HP at least. Lenovo Thinkpads or Macbook Pro/Air is probably your best bet (running Windows through bootcamp)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't recommend HP. I got one and had hardware problems within the first week (wouldn't boot). They fixed it via mail without much fuss, but it was annoying. The mouse keys were also highly un-ergonomic.

</comment><comment><USER5> +1 on thinkpads, I've heard good things about them

( I currently have a Dell that has worked ok, but they feel kinda "cheap", so I'll probably move to either a Thinkpad or a MB(A|P) )

</comment><comment><USER6> Whatever you buy, get a matte display.</comment>


Ask HN: Most common motives to adopt difficult technology and would you do that? - <AUTHOR>

= Background:
I have an idea to bring Semantic Web [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web] & Linked Data [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_Data] into mainstream by creating a platform/marketplace for consumer (from ordinary users to small-medium businesses and beyond) applications. Technology proof-of-concept that this is possible to do is mostly ready.
However, one of the corner stones of such product would be technology adoption by developers, which is not very mainstream or well known. Couple of buzzwords: RDF [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework] or Turtle [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(syntax)], SPARQL [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARQL], XML & XSLT. Below all this would be code in Java or PHP, probably other languages as well.
My main traction point for app-authors would be a continuous revenue stream (read - customer subscriptions) for them. Which, in theory, should create quite a big income for app-authors, given that they adopt technology early and their application(s) are well made & customers continuously like them. As a platform vendor I would try to lead app-authors through this endeavor in new technology.
= Question:
Is money big enough incentive to try new technology on a new platform/marketplace? What would motivate you more/less to try it out?
P.S. I would like to start a healthy discussion about this (or the topic in general) instead of providing fixed set of answers. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Money is the reason most things are done. That's why people usually move to higher paying employers & clients. Throw in a nice office, reasonable working hours and I don't care that much what I'm coding if I'm paid well for it - it's an interesting job most of the time anyway.</comment>


The public alpha of the Blockstack Browser - <AUTHOR> https://browser.blockstack.com <comment><USER2> What is this? it wants an email address without saying what it is.

Have we forgotten that people actually want to know what things are these days? Oh just hand over your data suckers, it doesnt matter what its for, we just want your essence.

Go away!

<comment><USER3> Came here to say this, first of all a modal prompt about whether I want to view the website or download a mobile client. Then a series of jerky animations before a dead-end when I refuse to give an email address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone please respond to this comment with, what are the MAIN UX stories for this browser? What does the user actually DO in the real world that they couldn't do otherwise on the Web?

I accessed this on a mobile phone. There's no mobile version? OK.

First of all Web site asks me to choose a secure root password. That seems like a big oxymoron. I have to trust Blockstack! They might be saving my password. I understand the same could be said of a random app but that's what I feel whenever I enter a password on a website - I know I am about to post it to a server somewhere, I need the internet to do that.

Secondly, what do I need a password for, if I am generating private keys? My guess is, it is used to generate those private keys from the password and some random data, and giving me that long phrase to save in a safe place. But then why not JUST have random data as a seed?

Anyway. So now I signed up and I have to choose storage. I suppose they will store info on the server of my choice, encrypted. Is this like the Solid project from Tim Berners-Lee? Apps that run in the browser, but save stuff on the server you choose? And they use your private key to sign your changes?

Then I finally got to the Blockstack app page. Most of the "apps in progress" don't actually do anything. The TODO app took me to a page that doesn't size for mobile, where I clicked the central button and it said Safari doesn't recognize this request.

So what do I do now, if I am on mobile?

</comment><comment><USER5> I just clicked continue about 10 000 times and I still have no idea what this is.</comment>


Magnetism, Radiation, and Relativity (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html <comment><USER2> Also related: [http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_13.html#Ch13-S6](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_13.html#Ch13-S6)

</comment><comment><USER2> Related: a phenomenon that can be described equivalently as due to electric or magnetic interactions, depending on the reference frame: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_magnet_and_conductor_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_magnet_and_conductor_problem)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maxwell's equations are strange, in that there is the concept of charge (q), but also of current (density, J). If the charge starts moving by the tiniest amount, it suddenly changes "identity" by becoming a current. This is a weird kind of "discontinuity" in the theory.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that current is defined as charge per unit time _through a single point_. The charge moving stays a charge. I don't get what you mean by it changing identity?

<comment><USER5> Maybe this helps:

[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/190259/%CE%97ow-d...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/190259/%CE%97ow- does-a-current-density-becomes-a-charge-density)

<comment><USER6> Is there an analog to that in mass/gravity? Or no because mass doesn't have sign like charge does?

<comment><USER5> Yes. You can combine charge density and current to form a 4-vector in SR like (charge density, current vector). Other 4-vectors are (energy, momentum vector). There are also a bunch of others, the most famous/basic one being (time, position vector):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four- vector#Fundamental_four-v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four- vector#Fundamental_four-vectors)

The reason it's a good idea to group these into 4-vectors is that the components of the vectors transform into each other under coordinate transformations in SR (see Lorentz-transformation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've heard this before- that magnetism is a consequence of moving electric charges when special relativity is taken into account. But doesn't this on its own rule out magnetic monopoles?

</comment><comment><USER8> > electrostatic fields transform from one reference frame to another

Is it true?

<comment><USER9> Yes, because of the Lorenz contraction.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to blow off steam? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Ride road bike for at least 3 - 4 hours at moderate to just below time trial pace. This will exhaust you, normalize your hormones, improve your mood (high from endorphins), reduce your stress, and reduce your aggression levels (adrenalin) etc. Eat to recover and feel great for at least couple of days.

This is also better than indoor exercise because of the long sun and fresh air exposure.

I have been doing this (cycle every day) for 24 years now. And nothing else does it for me better than this.

<comment><USER3> +1 for going for a bike ride. It'd be nice to be able to go running, but it just doesn't do it for me. It's boring. On a bike, you're slightly removed from the world - going through it, but not plodding along connected to it. Also, you can go somewhere. It's not hard to do 50/60 k in a few hours, which means you can vary your route a lot more than running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At the risk of painting myself in a negative light: I drink. I go out with friends, throw back some tasty cocktails/beer/Scotch/wine, and vent about my day/week/whatever.

Depending on my mood, I'll either be one-on-one/two/three with a few close friends and lay it all out, or go out with a larger group and just use the alcohol to take my mind off things.

Healthy? Jury's still out. Effective? Yup.

<comment><USER5> Drinking with friends is a pretty acceptable thing to do. Can't see how it would paint you in a negative light.

<comment><USER6> It's completely reasonable. Lack of moderation is the problem, not enjoying oneself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I play video games. Usually an hour or so is enough for the 'steam to get blown off', but sometimes I do get sucked in and lose track. I try not to play competitive multiplayer games when I'm riled up, as they can get me more riled up, but I love to pick up one of the 10s of unplayed critically acclaimed single player titles lying in my Steam (ironic?) library I got as part of some bundle. It really takes my mind off everything, and reminds me of the magic that software can create, and makes me want to get back to creating it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I step away from work and focus on fixing little tiny things around the house I've been putting off for a while.

Switch lightbulbs, clean drains, vacuum the attic, etc. 2 hours of this and I'm happy because:

a) I took my mind off work.

b) I fixed up my house something fierce.

\---

I would love to buy and ride a bike but I would get run over by a car or stabbed here in Bolivia.

<comment><USER9> That's what forests and mountains are for, you don't need to ride on roads. Get a mountain bike!

<comment><USER8> And I would get stabbed by indians...

<comment><USER10> Lool

<comment><USER11> What's with all the stabbing in Bolivia?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Smokin da Ganja. ;) Usually I'm super overly focused and concentrated the whole week, like in Zombie mode. This helps to get back into the normal world. ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> I lift weights. Used to listen to Death Metal. But mostly, I've learned that it's not really necessary. Just makes us feel powerful, recently started meditating with teh Headspace app and that works a lot better.

<comment><USER14> Weightlifting definitely turned my life around.

When I can't go to the gym, pullups are a good substitute and I highly recommend everyone get a pullup bar. I do a set or three every time I go to the bathroom and it helps clear my mind and restore my self-confidence.

<comment><USER13> I feel exactly the same. Best way to work out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Short term: I go take a walk. 45 minutes to an hour of brisk walking around the city in places where I don't have to stop much for cars.

Longer term: I'll just take a day off, email cow-orkers that I'm out that day, and go motorcycling in the mountains. I started doing this 25 years ago; having a hobby that has _nothing_ to do with computers helps a lot. (I'm not a crazy rider, I wear all the safety gear, have a bike with ABS and so on).

Vacations: I like to go somewhere and read books for a week. I seldom get to have this kind of vacation, but it's my ideal one.

</comment><comment><USER16> Quake 3 Arena DM17 frag limit 100, simplest bot ai.

<comment><USER17> Gotta love q3dm17. Alternatively, Deck 16, Morpheus and Facing Worlds in UT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I sleep. Its going to sound really weird but over the years i have constructed this alternate reality. A whole universe over the years i have built up in my mind, and whenever i am angry, or depressed, i lie down on a bed, pretend i am in this alternate reality and it helps me relax and slip into a peaceful slumber :)

<comment><USER19> And one day you 'wake up' in that reality and struggle to remember if this reality was in fact the dream all along? :)

(in fairness I find it entirely possible to wake up and spend a few moments weeding out the real from a dream)

<comment><USER20> I just had this dream where I was up in Syracuse and trying to catch this bus and things kept going wrong and when I finally got on the bus I argued with the driver and said I shouldn't have to pay and he kicked me off and then when I got on the next one it went to the wrong place.

In the middle of all this I was waking up and falling back asleep so I knew it was a dream and then I saw my kid running and thought I had to chase after him and some women said, "Just go do what you want" and instead of chasing after him I went and did what I wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Home improvement and woodworking. It is a good change of pace, at work I shuffle bits and like to create new functionality (or improve the performance of existing software); but it isn't tangible. It is nice to look at a vanity or the like and know that you made it, and know what challenges there were along the way; whether it is something simple like getting the drawers to fit properly, a doing a bead on the inside of a flat panel door's frame, or something more complex a bow front. It is intellectually stimulating in a different way than software development.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ride my motorcycle on the track. For 20 minutes every hour I get to think about nothing but what I'm doing at that moment. A day at the track resets my mind better than a week on vacation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Bouldering and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are great pass times for that. Not only to blow off some steam, but also it's possible to easily get in great shape if you hate running/gym as I do.

</comment><comment><USER24> Depends on the mood, but it's either video games or working out. Generally video games work for me if I need to shut down for a while, without distractions. Working out helps re-adjust my mood, likely due to the endorphins and the feeling of accomplishment. My workout is quite broad, I like to kayak, hike, or simply lift weights. Whatever strikes me at the moment....

</comment><comment><USER25> Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). Getting choked for 90 minutes really puts your day into perspective. Also, it's great exercise.

</comment><comment><USER26> Intense exercise early in the day, before doing anything "real": Reduces the boiling point.

Playing music later in the day or when stuck. Electric guitar 12 bar power chord blues with amp set on raunch or viola aiming for tones of delicate beauty, depending on mood.

</comment><comment><USER27> Exercise works well for me. I do Muay Thai (AKA Thai kickboxing) which is a high-energy, high-impact, quick, always-on-your-toes sort of sport. When I spar, I find myself in a state of psychological flow and that whatever was bothering me just melts away.

</comment><comment><USER28> Play with my baby. Before that either weights, cycling or videogames (Halo or Rez work for me).

</comment><comment><USER29> I run. I usually come back from a run with sticky code or business problems solved and things I need to write half written in my head. There is definitely something about being on my feet and out in the fresh air that allows my brain to sort stuff out.

</comment><comment><USER30> Lift heavy weights. Squat. Deadlift. Bench Press. Overhead Press. Barbell Row.

</comment><comment><USER31> Soak a dish towel, old t-shirt, or the like in water. Then wring it out over the bathtub, HARD. Wring it out hard, like you're wringing out blood from your enemies. Grunt while you are doing it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Music: [http://unmode.com](http://unmode.com)

A good route to the flow state. Still spend altogether too much time staring at computers though. Bouldering is fun.

<comment><USER33> Didn't know about unmode! I checked it out and I like it very much, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I played/sang in a garage band and smashed a lot of cheap guitars during sessions.

Nothing beats shouting your ass off for few hours then smashing the guitar on a peak of an adrenaline surge.

Genre matters.

</comment><comment><USER35> Running, fixing up the car and/or bike if it's needed, sketching, and actually biking all work for me.

And drinking with friends, but not in ridiculous excess.

</comment><comment><USER36> I grab my copy of Half Life / Half Life 2 and play my favourite levels OR grab my copy of Mass Effect 3 and do the same. Sometimes play airsoft.

</comment><comment><USER37> Running 6 days a week training for marathons. The high from endorphins puts me in the right mood.

3 hour run on a Sunday evening gets you ready for the Monday morning

</comment><comment><USER38> In order of frequency: gym, bars/clubs, football (soccer). When I'm on the computer: Reddit/9gag/bombermine.com

</comment><comment><USER39> I build twitter bots

[https://twitter.com/simplenewsbot](https://twitter.com/simplenewsbot)

while drinking a nice bourbon

</comment><comment><USER40> There are a few activities I do but generally I prefer to disconnect from tech and noise so I go for a walk, run, or hike.

</comment><comment><USER41> Inundate myself with trivial/simple mundane tasks until I can no longer think. Their is a world of crap to be done.

</comment><comment><USER42> I go out for a brisk walk. You want to do an activity that helps clear your mind, rather than impair it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Drawing and laying in bed doing literally nothing/daydreaming. And sometimes aggressive music.

</comment><comment><USER44> Surf when near the ocean and there are waves; otherwise, bike or take a walk in the woods.

</comment><comment><USER45> I go out drinking Thursday through Saturday, I barely make it to work on Fridays,

</comment><comment><USER46> tai-chi tanglang kungfu.

I learned it years ago and teached it for a few years. Even if I don't practice as much as I should, the moves come back very naturally. An one-hour training makes me happy whatever are the circonstances.

</comment><comment><USER47> I play in a local competitive squash league. Best stress reliever I know of.

</comment><comment><USER10> Play or learn something new on my acoustic guitar. Or a long walk.

</comment><comment> noir-york Shooting people. Airsoft, so it's not as bad as it sounds ;)

</comment><comment><USER48> Nowadays its golf, don't know what it will be for winter.

</comment><comment><USER49> play with the dogs, woodworking, work on a greenfield app, play video games with friends (something non-compete [unless I know I'll beat them :P])

</comment><comment><USER50> I go fishing.

<comment><USER51> This! Either I go alone or with friends it is the best steam remover for me. Also living near a river or lake helps a lot.

<comment><USER50> It's very therapeutic. Oceans, rivers, streams or even waterfalls always relaxes me. I've lived near oceans all my life and have island hopped many beautiful places. I can't imagine not being near water.

<comment><USER52> I don't know what it is about water but I run along the lake Michigan shore. The sound of the water lapping against the wall or crashing onto the shore is a great stress reducer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Go for a run. Do some exercise.

</comment><comment><USER6> I run.

</comment><comment><USER54> Masturbate furiously.

Edit: Downvotes? You judge on how you blow off steam too?

</comment><comment><USER55> Music, bike

</comment><comment><USER56> masterbate</comment>


Recruiter! 10 things you are doing wrong - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@betoayesa/recruiter-10-things-youre-doing-wrong-f0c47f908cd9 <comment><AUTHOR> I hope at least 1 recruiter reads it.</comment>


Google Chrome and Multiple Profiles - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-chrome-and-multiple-profiles.html <comment><USER2> What I want is the ability to sync my work and home browser profiles into distinct remote storage. At the moment, you get one sync profile per GMail login. Nor is it like XMarks, where you can tell it to pick and choose which folders to send.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope this is eventually how web single-sign on works. The sooner OpenID goes away, and the browsers just take over, the better, IMO.

<comment><USER4> How does single-sign-on require OpenID going away? If anything, it's almost an _ideal_ tool to achieve this, as it _is_ a single-sign-on system. Browser take-over of maintaining sign-ons is an identical problem with or without it, but OpenID reduces the requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds very useful.

If Chrome can finally get decent cookie management, I might make it my primary browser.

<comment><USER6> [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fngmhnnpilhplaee...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fngmhnnpilhplaeedifhccceomclgfbg)

Has been great for me

<comment><USER5> I actually want something more like CS Lite for Firefox that lets you create a white/black list on the fly (no pop-up dialogs or anything).

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5207/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know if this allows you to run certain windows through a separate http proxy?</comment>


Overwatch Randomized Trial on Gender - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/overwatch-gender/ <comment><USER3> This is about as well done of a study as we could ask for from a non-academic research level. Basically while the number of sexual comments were relatively low, the amount of questioning/challenging of his abilities went up a lot when he played with a feminine name.

Reminds me of a professor at Stanford who underwent a sex change and experienced very different interactions from his peers: [https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/does-gender- matter-b...](https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/does-gender-matter-by- ben-a-barres-10602856)

We recently did a survey of 240 collegiate esports players and found that women were 9x more likely to be "very concerned" about sexism and 2x as likely to be "very concerned" about bullying in competitive gaming culture.

I think Dan's research can help explain why.

[https://www.midgame.gg/survey](https://www.midgame.gg/survey)

<comment><USER4> This study is missing one important factor, a baseline. The author should have provided an androgynous named account to see how that fared.

<comment><USER5> An A/B test doesn't need to attempt a "middle" option. And there's no reason to assume an androgynous name would be in the middle or in any way qualify as a "baseline".

<comment><USER6> It would still be very interesting to see how people would react to neutral usernames like randomly generated number sequences. It could provide some useful insight.

<comment><USER7> Gamers just default to male.

<comment><USER6> That's just an assertion without data backing it up.

The above experiment with neutral names would give some insight if "gamers" do indeed "default to male", as you express it, or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I took up soccer, I'd be unlikely to join a team with some 8 year olds - even though I'd probably be at their skill level. Instead, I'd find a group of people who I'd get along with better. So why do games do matchmaking based only on skill, not taking social cohesion into account? There's much more to a good gaming experience than just having skill-balanced teams.

CS:GO is a classic case of this - the player base is noticeably more mature at certain times of day, and there's a distinct period when all the kids have just got home from school where things are particularly bad. Occasionally you'll get a team where you everyone works together well, but to have that every time you'll need to spend a lot of effort maintaining a huge friends list in order to be able to put a team together at any given time - <USER2> than just pressing the matchmaking button.

(I think you could might get decent results on this by having each player rate the others at the end of the match - but you don't use the ratings to rank the players, instead you'd use them to cluster players based on who they mutually like to play with. You'd then use that as a variable to optimize on when doing matchmaking. Hopefully with enough data you'd be able to predict if players would have a good experience even if they've never played together before.)

<comment><USER9> Since matchmaking has taken over, I basically don't even play online multiplayer games anymore. I feel fortunate to have grown up in a time where there were dedicated server communities. It's a bit like Cheers, sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name and you don't really mind that they routinely wipe the floor with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do wonder if toxicity is inherently built in to the nature of Overwatch. It's a 6v6 team game that incentives you into a play mode that punishes you heavily for leaving a game you aren't enjoying. I realize non-competitive modes are a lot less punishing, but anyone who's played a lot of Overwatch knows if you want to "play Overwatch the way it was meant to be played," you have to go to competitive. Speaking psychologically, I'm curious what that kind of experience does to a person's behavior (short term and long term).

I've played hundreds of hours of Overwatch on console with my wife. We don't use mics, because we had enough bad experiences early in our career to make it not worth the risk. I never have problems when I play by myself.

Surprising number of people questioning the methodology in this study. I would've expected that if it ran counter to anecdotal experiences described by women (and men who group with them) who play, but I'm not convinced more rigorous methodologies would significantly change the results. If someone does believe that, I'd seriously challenge their reasoning.

<comment><USER11> I don't think toxicity is built in, though I understand where the thinking comes from. I play Overwatch (albeit on PC) and pretty actively use a mic, and I make a point of being the first person to talk in a channel. I'm friendly and I'm even-keeled about it, and that sets the tone. Once that tone is set it's very difficult for your garden-variety douchebag to start mouthing off.

The LFG system also helps.

<comment><USER12> Comparing overwatch to League of Legends, League is sooo much worse, and I don't know why.

Also FWIW the voice you use in OW can cause drama. I've definitely had games where I get flak for my voice - when it was more androgynous often people would want to know my gender.

I've seen people get exploded on for their accents, sounding young, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that can make sense. I'm a white American male with a deep voice, people aren't going to give me much shit. But by being friendly I can make things easier for other folks, and I occasionally get PMs from people who tell me they appreciate that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _For one thing, when I was playing video games in the 90s, a huge fraction > of the online gaming population was made up of kids, and online game > communities were nicer than they are today_

Maybe it's because I grew up playing FPS, but for as far as I remember people in these games were extremely hostile to women.

<comment><USER14> Overwatch is the only First-Person Shooter I have ever played where I have heard women speak in voice chat and other players continued to focus on the game itself. In other games I've played, a woman in voice chat would _always_ become the center of attention, whether she wanted to be or not. The attention wasn't always negative, but it was unavoidable (and thus probably pretty frustrating).

That happened in Overwatch sometimes too, but I was surprised it wasn't more often. My suspicion is that it's the a result of the competitive mode putting focus on the gameplay and a larger than average female player base for an FPS.

<comment><USER15> Came here just to say this. Before OW, my other multiplayer games were Valve's (CS, TF2, L4D), and I didn't know any girls/women in real-life who played them. Given the hours/years of time I played, I would have to guess that I played in a game with a female player at least a few times, but I could not for the life of me ever recall a single time. It would be such a rare occurrence that if it did happen, I think I _would_ remember it generally.

With OW, I'll hear a female voice at least a third or fourth of my random games, as well as see female-gendered screennames who may not actively participate in chat. I haven't played many games between old-school CS and TF2, so I don't know if the overall demographic has changed. But I wouldn't be surprised if OW's diverse and welcoming cast and lore was a major factor in attracting female gamers. As much as I liked the older games, OW was the first game that made me realize how much diversity could itself be a feature -- not just in attracting a playerbase, but just more creative designs (though I understand it may be too cartoony for some, of course). If only Blizzard's writing could be as clever and less clichéd-ridden than Valve's...

<comment><USER16> It's not that you've never played with a woman—you've just never _known_ you've played with a woman.

<comment><USER15> That's what I mean. If I had played with any, they may have not been active in voice chat. In OW, it's not uncommon for me to hear women players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "If that result generalizes to OW, that would explain something which I thought was odd, which was that a lot of demands to switch and general vitriol came during my best performances with the feminine account. "

This isn't statistically analyzed, but I think it's a fairly significant detail that's not emphasized more in the paper.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. Especially this excerpt:

> Per above, I didn't want to code tone of messages to avoid bias, so this > table only indicates the rate at which people told me I was playing > incorrectly or asked that I switch to a different character. The qualitative > difference in experience is understated by this table. For example, the one > time someone asked me to switch characters in the masculine condition, the > request was a one sentence, polite, request ("hey, we're dying too quickly, > could we switch [from the standard one primary healer / one off healer > setup] to double primary healer or switch our tank to [a tank that can block > more damage]?"). When using the feminine name, a typical case would involve > 1-4 people calling me human garbage for most of the game and consoling > themselves with the idea that the entire reason our team is losing is that I > won't change characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Obviously, a number of issues present in the study, but I can appreciate they tried to account for some of them. Lots of variables are unaccounted for like time of day, win/loss, character, what _the researcher_ said in chat, etc.

Similarly, the opening preamble points out that often the worst harassment is potentially related to when players _hear_ female voices. Obviously there is a different way you could do this study, which would be to invite ~300 players of various skill levels to play a single game and record the results for analysis. That type of study would have it's own problems, but you could at least be more likely to control for some of the problems in this study.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, the voice is the key. The gender ratio is skewed so much at higher ranks that an obviously feminine name will simply be assumed to be ironic. I would imagine the toxicity/sexual comments would increase by an order of magnitude if the voice was female-presenting along with the account name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really interesting read. I appreciate that it highlights the problems with the data and doesn't reach ridiculous conclusions based on junk data.

Anecdotally I've found a noticeable improvement since Endorsements, which this data missed.

Also the rise of Fortnite and more recently Apex Legends has led to a further decrease in toxicity that I've seen. A lot of toxic kids left for BR pastures.

That's on PC in the EU region on a high-silver current, low-gold peak SR account, casual QP-heavy play but some comp, pure flexing (as I prefer to fill rather than focus on maining one or two characters. Maining is arguably the best way to climb out to Plat).

I'm an almost ridiculously positive player with a gender neutral name and I've found being overtly positive vastly improves the experience.

It does prompt a couple of toxic responses ("kys", "fuck off" etc) but the majority is really positive. (I generally just report any toxicity.)

Playing without voice in Comp is sub-optimal, as winning is much easier with some kind of synergy. Even a basic PharMercy combo, or ultimate combos like a EMP+DVa Bomb can be highly effective.

I normally Solo Q, but playing paired with a friend in QP yesterday I had a surreal experience. One player on the enemy team insulted my friend (sexual but not specifically-gendered insult). She was playing with a non-gendered name, as Moira, and the toxic enemy player complained she was carrying us.

All the players on both teams turned on the toxic player, calling them out and highlighting why they were actually losing. I have not seen anything like it before but it was hilarious.

Stay As A Team is great in theory, but a team of 6 randomised will get rekt by a pre-made 6 stack on Discord with each other, and the matchmaker doesn't seem to take that into account.

I wonder what region author was playing on?

<comment><USER22> Overwatch remains one of the most toxic games I've ever played. I've put well over 1,000 hours into that game but haven't played for about 9 months now, and honestly its a breath of fresh air (to not deal with it anymore). There's something about the rank structure of the game (and others I've heard about like LoL and Dota) that encourages beratement.

Apex Legends conversely has been amazing in comparison. Maybe its because its new, the tagging system, that its a free game, or that there is no ranked structure (yet), but I've met nothing but cheery people and the occasional crude drunk. I've played with a couple shy women, but (anecdotally) have seen not one iota of what i've seen in Overwatch (aside from crude usernames that are prevalent everywhere).

<comment><USER23> >that its a free game

Wait... Shouldn't it be the opposite? Paying for the game should make you more reticent to being an ass because losing access to it means you've lost money.

<comment><USER22> Optimistically I believe humanity is generally good such that if you get a massive number of users the good overwhelms the bad. Contrast this with Overwatch who (IMO) has a shrinking userbase of increasingly hardcore/invested players, and the worst tends to shine through.

I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers or if this is anecdata.

<comment><USER24> > I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind > than casual gamers

I can't prove this scientifically, but yes _absolutely of course_ "hard core" gamers are more likely than casuals to be raging toxic asshats in any kind of competitive environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >There are a lot of games that weren't included in the experiment because I wasn't in a mood to listen to someone rage at their team for fifteen minutes and the procedure I used involved pre-committing to not muting people who do that.

</comment><comment><USER26> The hardest thing about this study to me is that these tendencies aren't only applicable to Overwatch. It's obviously worse in video game culture (because it's more abusive and immature as a whole) but this matches with what I've had women engineers tell me of their experiences (especially in college where I know people who got asked out constantly and also were disrespected in group projects)

</comment><comment><USER27> Great study! Only gripe is that most trolling I get in online gaming is through voice chat. They also seem to troll me a tad bit more if I have a mic plugged in but I'm not talking. I suggest a re-run of this experiment recording the audio in case we get wildly different results. In a one-party consent state if you want to play it safe. ;)

I also think it will vary game by game. I don't play a lot of games. Most are shooters like Modern Warfare, Battlefield, and Mass Effect 3. Modern Warfare 2 and 3 on Xbox brought in more trolls in voice chat than all my others combined except maybe GTA V. In the last one, you play as a vicious thug causing problems for everyone around you. Them being pricks makes more sense. The difference in shooter games, though, was more interesting given it might reflect different sub-cultures in gaming. Specifically, MW is designed to appeal to largest number of people with lowest barrier to entry and patience required. Might self-select for higher percentage of jerks. Whereas, Battlefield 4 and Mass Effect 3 push people to work together more for best results.

<comment><USER28> I don't understand why people ever play with voice chat enabled. I don't want to hear streams of ungrammatical foul language, and I certainly don't want to hear people slapping their kids, etc. TMI.

<comment><USER29> I've found that when you are matched with a team of good communicators, voice chat is a force multiplier. I've had games of Overwatch, Battlefield, etc. where the faster coordination really let us steamroll the other team.

Maybe the other players were just really good and I was getting carried? But from my anecdotal experience, good voice chat tends to add a ton to team momentum.

With someone who's playing TV in the background, someone who doesn't bother with callouts, and someone who's tilting hard... I'd rather mute them and myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This video series from a gamer who plays with voice chat enabled was pretty eye opening. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL0aVqVslSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL0aVqVslSE)

<comment><USER31> Cherry picked recordings are very eye opening

<comment><USER30> The series comes out regularly enough to give you all the information you need about the frequency of this shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >Examples of typical undirected comments that would occur in either condition include ""my girlfriend keeps sexting me how do I get her to stop?", "going in balls deep", "what a surprise. _strokes dick_ [during the post-game highlight]", and "support your local boobies".

I think it's notable that although these are not directed they are highly gendered. This is part of the problem as well.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an interesting study, and helps highlight why Overwatch needs a scoreboard. With 6 random people on a team, very limited personal statistics, and no game length team statistics, everyone tends to get toxic once you start losing. I've played everything from high gold (tanked rank for a few seasons) to low masters, and its the same pattern every time. Someone makes an accusation about a player not pulling their weight, demands a swap in a rude way, and the player being accused defends themselves. Then the name calling starts.

It would be interesting to see what roles the author was playing, and the exact SR of the accounts, as there seems to be a great deal of variation in what people will say on voice comms (usually higher SR, because voice comms > chat) and what will be said in chat. People also like to blame DPS first, then demand a Reinhardt (if they don't have one) and then finally blame support.

Without hard data as to what is going wrong with a team composition, toxicity is almost guaranteed when losing.

<comment><USER34> _> People also like to blame DPS first, then demand a Reinhardt (if they don't have one) and then finally blame support._

As someone who mains support, I don't think this is true. I've had plenty of games where I do a shitton of healing, get the healing card at the end, and still had people blaming me for "0 heals" all game.

A scoreboard would help with that, but it'd be a trade-off with having 5 angry people shitting on you if you ever have a bad game. I'm not sure that's better.

EDIT: Plus there's all the times when your stats are bad but you're not the right one to blame, like when the whole team can't move up through a choke because the tanks are too chicken to go first, but it gets reflected in poor DPS eliminations.

Ultimately it's a team game, and failures of teamwork aren't reflected well in a stats scoreboard. I think you'd incentivize poor team play by people trying to pad their own numbers at the team's expense.

And no matter what information is available, some people are just looking for someone to blame when they lose. I'm not sure how to fix that. If matchmaking is working right you're going to lose about half the time, there's no point in getting worked up about it but people still do.

<comment><USER35> Exactly. I average around 10k healing/10min, but if the team isn't working well, that can drop 90%. If no one peels for me, or if we just get rolled because of an infinite number of variables, my individual stats can look like crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Lots of one off gender swaps that have been shared and showed similar bias. Eg [https://blog.olark.com/live-chat-gender-equality- experiment](https://blog.olark.com/live-chat-gender-equality-experiment)

</comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps I missed it in the article, but did the author control for receiving comments on 'how to play' in winning games vs losing games?

Because if not, the whole study seems sort of moot.

</comment><comment><USER38> So, it seems like you could probably get a fair number of people to volunteer to participate in a study like this, in order to up the number of games played. Also, I wonder if you could (Laurie Anderson-style) change your voice's gender, so that gender could be manipulated even for games with live voice. If there's a researcher out there who was willing/able to organize, I think there would be a fair number of volunteers.

</comment><comment><USER39> Lots of comments here about voice chat.

I wonder if there is software that can convincingly change the gender of a voice in real time? Could make for an interesting experiment.

</comment><comment><USER40> The entire premise of this study is not useful, because what you're asking is "what is the numerical occurrence of quantifiable harassment" and not "what is the rate and which players abandon playing the game as a consequence of feeling unwelcome and how does it vary by gender". What do the numerical rates of harassment tell us, and how are they actionable? If a group of players does not play because they feel unwelcome, THAT is the thing that matters, and your study does absolutely nothing to analyse this criteria.

> I avoided ever using voice chat and would call things out in text chat when > time permitted.

Again, this betrays a deep flaw in methodology, since voice chat is an integral part of competitive Overwatch. The important things to consider here are: what percentage of players are comfortable using voice chat and how does that vary by gender; does availability and usage of voice chat confer any competitive advantage to the player; and do the two factors interact in such a way as to confer a competitive advantage to one gender over the other?

I find it disturbing when men do scientific studies to determine if women's stated experiences are real.

<comment><USER41> > If a group of players does not play because they feel unwelcome, THAT is the > thing that matters

What, in terms of profit? (And in the next paragraph, competitive advantage, really?) That's a very narrow view of what it means for something to "matter".

<comment><USER40> no, in terms of the fact that they literally ran away because of harassment. That's important, and if I have to explain to you why people leaving due to serial harassment is bad for communities, we have nothing to talk about.

<comment><USER41> We agree that people leaving due to serial harassment is bad for communities. Do you disagree that harassment is an issue even when it doesn't cause people to leave? Because that's what it sounds like, and it sounds ridiculous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: High Volume Thermal Entropy from an iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/vault12/how-to-get-true-randomness-from-your-apple-device-with-particle-physics-and-thermal-entropy-a9d47ca80c9b <comment><USER2> Go V12!</comment>


Surfing Google may be harmful to your security - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/09/google_gadget_threats/ <comment><USER2> I'm baffled how this is Google's problem; because they provide a platform for running apps? That's like saying OSes are bad because they let malware exist too</comment>


Offer HN: I will work for free in SF this coming week - <AUTHOR>

I'm staying in San Francisco and will be here until the 6th of March; I came here to expose myself to a different culture and perspective (I'm from the UK) and I would love to visit your startup, I would even be happy to do some work for you for free!
To give you an idea of what I might be able to do for you, my background is I:
- have a PhD in Machine Learning (graduated in 2010) - am a software developer (primarily full-stack web) - run a small SaaS business in London - recently started building iOS apps - have experience in industry in the UK and Japan - have some understanding of the Japanese market
Of late I'm particularly interested in idea validation (ala Startup Weekend) and data-driven business intelligence, e.g. use of split testing, cohort analysis and other techniques used in lean startups to learn and improve as quickly as possible.
I'm open to any and all suggestions (including just grabbing a coffee/beer!). My name is Stefan and you can reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Thank you! <comment><AUTHOR> This is about to disappear off page 2 of the new submissions... one person did get in touch and put me on to Launch Festival which I hope to attend before I leave.

Otherwise, I'm wondering if a Sunday morning wasn't a great time to post this. If anyone has any feedback on how I could have done this better I'd really appreciate it—I naively thought that an offer of free no-strings work would be quite popular in SF but it looks like I'll need another approach. Ideas very welcome!

<comment><USER2> The problem is that the HN front page can't be used for this sort of thing or it will be swamped with free offers of various sorts (not to mention other types of advertisements). Sadly, I don't know of a good alternative except to find some people that you like here and contact them individually. You might even have luck cold-emailing startups that are doing something in your areas of expertise.

Btw, it doesn't help that you have virtually no karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, it's a shame there isn't a good alternative—there are meetups but they're really a different beast and may not be running when people visit.

On karma, I feel guilty enough just enjoying reading HN but I realise I am missing out by not interacting at least a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi Stymis. We are in LA and could use ur help. reach out info[@]washioapp.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice meeting you today! Looking forward to introducing you to Mavenlink this week.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, great talking to you and looking forward to seeing a little behind the scenes.</comment></comment>