Rack-Mini-profiler – The Secret Weapon of Ruby and Rails Speed - <AUTHOR> https://www.nateberkopec.com/2015/08/05/rack-mini-profiler-the-secret-weapon.html <comment><USER2> Another tool that helped us out tremendously was [http://stackshare.io/skylight](http://stackshare.io/skylight).

It allowed us to quickly determine what pages were slowest and why, but also what pages were being hit the most by users. Sorting by 'agony' means: "This page is a combination of being hit the most, and the slowest. Take care of it pronto."

Amazingly, we started knocking out 'agony' problem areas, and our site is super quick now with minimal effort.

Here's an example of what their dashboard looks like:

[http://i.imgur.com/b4zhh6Q.png](http://i.imgur.com/b4zhh6Q.png)

<comment><USER3> I've tried out Skylight, but if you already have New Relic, didn't see anything new.

<comment><USER2> NewRelic's UX is ABYSMAL. It has not once given us useful insight into anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks heaps Nate for the writeup!

Some other resources on rack-mini-profiler are:

[https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/03/19/flame-graphs-in- ru...](https://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/03/19/flame-graphs-in-ruby- miniprofiler)

[https://samsaffron.com/archive/2012/07/12/miniprofiler- ruby-...](https://samsaffron.com/archive/2012/07/12/miniprofiler-ruby-edition)

Some history: [https://samsaffron.com/archive/2011/06/09/+Profiling+your+we...](https://samsaffron.com/archive/2011/06/09/+Profiling+your+website+like+a+true+Ninja)

My talk, measuring Ruby [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWyEWUD- ztQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWyEWUD-ztQ)

And Off the Rails [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP5NNkzb4og](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP5NNkzb4og)

</comment><comment><USER5> The development mode of New Relic ([https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/agents/ruby- agent/developer-m...](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/agents/ruby- agent/developer-mode/developer-mode)) is another good tool to find out about response times of your controller actions and the number of SQL queries. I'm pretty sure you can use it even if you're not on a paying plan for New Relic. We switched to this after we weren't been able to get rack-mini-profiler to work in a Rails app for a single-page app as the Rails app only returns JSON and doesn't render templates.

</comment><comment><USER6> > If you're forcing SSL in production, you're going to want to turn that off > for now.

Great article, but there's no further mention about SSL. Specifically, why should I turn it off in the first place for this gem, and when/how can I turn it back on? Is there some special step(s) needed to do so, and what are they?

<comment><USER7> It's because the article takes you through running your app in production environment locally on your machine. To do that with ssl you'd need to get that setup locally as well, so I think the author just wanted to avoid dealing with that.

<comment><USER8> Correct - that's exactly what I meant. Don't turn your SSL off on your production _server_ just to run this gem - that'd be silly!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never used it but there is also something called Rails Panel someone might find useful: [https://github.com/dejan/rails_panel](https://github.com/dejan/rails_panel)

</comment><comment><USER10> Hasn't Peek ([https://github.com/peek/peek](https://github.com/peek/peek)) sorta replaced Rack-Mini-Profiler?

<comment><USER11> What's better about Peek?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > To see a full list of rack-mini-profiler's features and info on how to > trigger them, add ?pp=help to the end of any URL

Wait... in production? Anyone can do this?

<comment><USER6> My guess is that this blurb is relevant:

> rack-mini-profiler runs in the development environment by default in Rails > apps. We're going to enable it in production, and hide it behind a URL > parameter. You can also do things like make it visible only to admin users, > etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there tools like this for other languages? For asp.net there is Glimpse and the Mini profiler. What about Java, php, node, python?

<comment><USER13> For PHP there is PHP Debug Bar - [http://phpdebugbar.com/](http://phpdebugbar.com/), although if you're using a framework you'd want to find the fork with the bindings. I'm using the one for Laravel and it's pretty good [https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel- debugbar](https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-debugbar)

<comment><USER14> There's also xdebug, which can give a lot of detailed information. And then there's New Relic for PHP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good post but please, please, please don't enable this in productiont. What an extremely wonderful way to DDoS any Rails app (as if it weren't easy enough already). If you need production like characteristics for accuracy of profiling then set up another environment that is production-like (Rails settings, replicated database, infrastructure etc.) and run it there.

<comment><USER8> You can put `rack-mini-profiler` behind authentication. It is not enabled by default in production. I believe I mentioned this in the article, if not, it's in the README.

<comment><USER15> I would try and word it more carefully. The phrase "in production" has serious meaning. I think that's what startled myself (and it seems like some others, too).

<comment><USER16> Although your take away may have been that everyone should enable it in production. I think every developer should use common sense and practical knowledge when implementing a feature in their application. If you want to use it you should know that having this available for all users is not a great idea, and use it accordingly.

<comment><USER15> You would be surprised by the lack of common sense in the software community. Maybe even more so in Ruby/Rails. As an example, there are a lot of people running WEBrick in production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The secret to rails speed is not using rails at all.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, better to use assembly and spend a week to implement trivial features :)</comment></comment>


Can We Pronounce "The Cloud" Hype Over Yet? - <AUTHOR> http://cloud.dzone.com/articles/can-we-pronounce-cloud-hype?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+javalobby%2Ffrontpage+%28Javalobby+%2F+Java+Zone%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> It might be "over" for those eager to hype the "next big thing" but for the rest of us it is only just happening. We now have services as reliable as any we could run in house available to us. Even when my start-up is big enough to need in house specialist server techies I still can't see us running actual hardware at our location.

<comment><USER3> Well, I've been through this twice now, and I can tell you that when your cloud provider goes down, as EC2 does all the time, and you find out that your backup cloud provider is actually using EC2 but didn't tell you, you'll look differently at hosting your own "private cloud" (what we used to call a "Colo") to ensure that you have control over your own destiny.</comment></comment>


Larry Wall Presents: Perl 6 - <AUTHOR> http://perl6releasetalk.ticketleap.com/perl-tech-talk/details <comment><USER2> Maybe I'll get down voted but I really think perl 4.036 was the best perl. It was already weird with all the $this and @that but it was such a pleasant language that when I was at Sun I proposed rewriting a pile of /usr/bin in perl. We had already made stuff slow as crap with unicode support so why not? Didn't happen, Sun pulled the unicode support to get back C level perf.

Call me crazy, I love me some perl 4. That release was brilliant.

<comment><USER3> Perl4 was my first Perl. I was a hard-core C programmer at the time, and Perl4 was just seriously fun.

By the way, I think most Perl4 programs will run on the latest Perl 5. So, feel free to roll with Perl4!

<comment><USER4> > I think most Perl4 programs will run on the latest Perl 5.

I think most programs that will run on the latest Perl 5 will run on the latest Perl 6.[1]

So, yeah, feel free to roll with Perl4 and maybe mix it up with a little Perl 6 magic (eg concurrency or Unicode grapheme string handling).

[1] [https://github.com/niner/Inline-Perl5/](https://github.com/niner/Inline- Perl5/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't suppose this will be live-streamed?

<comment><USER4> I hope not.

<comment><USER5> Why? Not everyone interested in this can make it to the event.

<comment><USER4> Because I think folk will be inclined to refer to and even hype this Craig's List hosted "event" as something akin to a launch of Perl 6 1.0.

Some will be well-meaning.

Some will be malicious.

But it won't matter. Perl 6 and Larry won't be even close to ready by October 5th (imo) for the expectations and exposure that would inevitably follow.

Imo we get just one more shot at fairly easily getting a significant chunk of the tech world to voluntarily strongly focus on Perl 6 for 15 minutes. We can and hopefully will maintain control of _when_ that happens even if we can't control anything else.

It's going to be damn hard (but just about doable, one hopes) to make Perl 6 good enough -- as a flawed but at least interesting 1.0 -- to withstand and ultimately profit from the spike in scrutiny following a launch this christmas. If we launch (in the public's eye) now, I predict we'll get widely dismissed and will have already blown most of the unique and precious opportunity currently still available if we instead make sure that the launch, and perception of a launch, waits until christmas.

So, I do hope they record this Craig's List presentation for historical purposes but keep it for private viewing only until _after_ christmas. (Or maybe put out a very short video of some highlights, making it clear it's not yet the launch. And maybe, just maybe, spend a couple weeks or so producing something reasonably slick, blending highlights with some other material, to try attract more contributors in the run up to christmas.)

Imo, Christmas really needs to wait until Christmas and I pray that it does.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN and pg: Show subdomains for *.stackexchange.com? - <AUTHOR>

Stack Exchange uses subdomains for many of it's beta QA communities, and we somewhat regularly get posts from them -- but, because HN only shows the domain itself, telling which community it's from requires clicking the link.
Any chance it could be added to a list of sites to show subdomains as well for? <comment><USER2> The same happens from google. Sometimes they come from google groups, sometimes their blog, etc. However I am not sure this is that much of a deal. Unless you are on a mobile device, its pretty simple to close a tab you didn't want.</comment>


Guide to Making 3D Maps with Satellite Imagery in R - <AUTHOR> https://www.tylermw.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-making-3d-maps-with-satellite-imagery-in-r/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I wrote this to show how you can use the rayshader package to generate 3D maps in R using free and open data (in this case, Landsat 8 imagery and SRTM elevation data). You can check out rayshader's Github repo here:

Github: [https://www.github.com/tylermorganwall/rayshader](https://www.github.com/tylermorganwall/rayshader)

And browse the documentation (with rendered examples) and README on its website: [https://www.rayshader.com](https://www.rayshader.com)

<comment><USER2> On a side note - you don't know a free tile server that serves elevation tiles, do you?

<comment><USER3> Here are a couple more ways to get SRTM tiles:

\- OpenTopography (also has 3DEP/LIDAR data): [https://portal.opentopography.org/datasetMetadata?otCollecti...](https://portal.opentopography.org/datasetMetadata?otCollectionID=OT.042013.4326.1)

\- SRTM 30M tile tool: [https://dwtkns.com/srtm30m/](https://dwtkns.com/srtm30m/)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, SRTM 30M tile tool is asking for credentials for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also query elevation tiles using the `elevatr` package and use them in a similar way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super interesting - I had no idea you could do this kind of thing with R. Very cool and a great step-by-step guide.

I also second the "rite of passage to fight with GDAL" sentiment :)

I'd also recommend Robert Simmon's introduction to GDAL for stitching, etc: [http://www.openvisconf.com/2017/#rsimmon-video- item](http://www.openvisconf.com/2017/#rsimmon-video-item)

<comment><AUTHOR> The R GIS ecosystem has seen great strides recently! I've just been working on one part of it: 3D visualization and computational hillshading/raytracing.

And that video looks like a great resource--I'll put it on my watch list.

<comment><USER6> You should check out Mapdeck [0]. It's R bindings to deck.gl, a JS 2D/3D geo- visualization package that I've been contributing to. As of version 8.1, there's a TerrainLayer [1] to render an interactive map with a 3D terrain mesh.

[0]: [https://github.com/SymbolixAU/mapdeck](https://github.com/SymbolixAU/mapdeck) [1]: [https://deck.gl/#/documentation/deckgl-api- reference/layers/...](https://deck.gl/#/documentation/deckgl-api- reference/layers/terrain-layer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here I thought you'd be doing photogrammetry or something to produce 3d maps directly from 2d imagery.

Maybe title should be "making 3d maps with satellite imagery and 3d maps" ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this similar to what vricon[1] does?

I was searching around and found something noting they won a contract to build the Army's One World Terrain 3d model. This OWT appears to be some kind of classification for applying sat imagery over terrain data sets, maybe?

[1] [https://www.vricon.com](https://www.vricon.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like they're a firm that does large-scale photogrammetry to build 3D models worldwide--this is just a tutorial on how to combine existing topographic datasets (e.g SRTM or a USGS elevation product) with satellite imagery to generate small-scale 3D maps in R. Similar in concept, vastly different in scale and execution

<comment><USER8> Ok thanks for the explanation! I read through the tutorial and it looks like a fun project to get started in.

One thing also for readers is that [https://dwtkns.com/srtm30m](https://dwtkns.com/srtm30m) requires an account with [https://urs.earthdata.nasa.gov](https://urs.earthdata.nasa.gov) to download tiles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know, thanks! I'll add a note mentioning the need for an account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has this been tried on something like a cityscape?

If so, it seems like you could fly a drone with two cameras at relatively low altitude and get insane resolution for things like cityscapes at a pretty low cost

</comment><comment> EDIT: Meant to add that your webpage discussion was great & thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER10> Most "satellite view" imagery of cities is actually done with planes and drones. I just looked up a 3D model of my house in Apple Maps and can see stuff with a few centimeter resolution, which is much higher than any satellite can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone else getting a mandatory login page when trying using the SRTM tile downloader?

</comment><comment><USER12> How do I 3d print it with colors?

<comment><AUTHOR> No color support, but you can export the map to an STL file with the function `save_3dprint()`. You can declare the maximum width/depth and it will scale the model to the size you've specified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is super cool. i think we should do this in tiles and after that assemble a map of all of the US. The Sattelite data seems to be there, it's just time to download, build + stich, right?</comment>


The Lasp Programming System - <AUTHOR> https://lasp-lang.readme.io/ <comment><USER2> This has been on HN before, but looking at the project page it's much cleaner and more organized! Gives me high hopes this project will keep developing and become a default option for scalable (p2p?) Erlang clusters.

Personally, I dream of a pure Elixir cluster management solution starting with IoT devices but movable to an on-site auto-configurable server cluster. There really seems to be no "goto" option for on-prem small business clustered setups for servers. Sandstorm does some work in this area, but seems more cloud oriented. I'm thinking a "distributed email, ldap services, accounting, vpn (ala zerotier), etc" which could run on a pack of 3 Pi's (or equivalent SBC's). Plug and play for small businesses! Ah, dreams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow this looks really neat. BEAM seems like it would be a good place to start for distributed systems, but there's been too much of a "you have to roll your own" for a lot of the various problems that a distributed system needs to do.

A quick (15 minutes) read over the documentation makes it look fairly well thought out and usable for mortals, which is considerably more than I had hoped for.

</comment><comment><USER4> All cool stuff.

I really wish I could find some tutorials or even examples/real users of partisan though.

Anyone here got any ideas where I could find such a thing? There was a PDF paper a while ago on it, which, if I recall correctly mentioned a forked riak (core? kv? can't remember) where they substituted partisan over normal erlang dist but I never located the code for it either.

Edit: Looks like there's a newish lasp process reg project (lasp_pg) which has a full partisan setup.

</comment><comment><USER5> What is this? I can't figure it out from the homepage. What kinds of projects might this be useful for? What does it... provide?

<comment><USER6> Runtime and libraries for creating distributed applications on top of conflict-free replicated data types. For projects that have to share state between multiple nodes.</comment></comment>


The Ways of Silencing - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/the-ways-of-silencing/

<comment><USER2> "In the 1990s, the philosophers of language Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton developed an account of the mechanisms of silencing that could substantiate MacKinnon's claim."

An account that could substantiate?

'Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is difficult to have a reasoned debate about its costs and benefits when the invasion itself is called "Operation Iraqi Freedom."'

It is? Good thing they didn't call it "Operation Motherhood and Puppies"--we might still be there.

'Similarly, whatever one thinks of tax-cuts, or the estate tax, it is difficult to engage in reasoned debate when they have been respectively relabeled "tax relief" and "the death tax."'

The debate seems to go on. Or maybe he means that he fears that people without advanced education in the philosophy of language are being snookered.</comment>


Refraction Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.hexahedria.com/experiments/refract/index.html <comment> Ono-Sendai Might as well add my one. It's not interactive, however it might give you an idea of why waves actually refract: [http://youtu.be/y0gFrte5auQ?list=PLpYLorG2XEtQKD7uHC8dK1inU6...](http://youtu.be/y0gFrte5auQ?list=PLpYLorG2XEtQKD7uHC8dK1inU6-ahSkV7)

<comment><USER2> If only we had that in high school. The simple geometric interpretation felt so authoritative. Here it's just pure beauty.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel_princip...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel_principle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That is a nice demo! My wife is teaching optics right now, this looks like something she could have her students explore with to get intuition for what happens in different situations.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool! Could find an interesting numerical instability [https://plus.google.com/photos/109059794947950815445/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/109059794947950815445/albums/6060585221118932129)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is fun, though I wish there was an option for white light - and a traditional prism!

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be really nice if there was some text that mentioned you need to have WebGL enabled if it's not. And it might be nice if there were instructions or a description of what we were seeing.

Other than that, it looks really nice!

</comment><comment><USER7> It reminds me of zen photon garden : [http://zenphoton.com/](http://zenphoton.com/) (which doesn't have lens or fiber-optic, but is very pretty).

</comment><comment><USER8> Very nice! Looks like the author just started at HMC, from his about page. ([http://www.hexahedria.com/about/](http://www.hexahedria.com/about/))

Impressive kid.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty awesome stuff! I'd love to tinker with it and it sounds like a few others would like to as well. Do you have any plans to open source this?

</comment><comment><USER10> Best part: Chrome lets you right-click/Save As... to download a snapshot of these beautiful simulations.

</comment><comment><USER11> Human eye with cornea, iris and lens and would be a nice addition for physiology students! :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. I wish I could add and arrange my own lens elements though!

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nice. Thank you.</comment>


Show HN: My HTML5 Game for Github Game Off - <AUTHOR> http://khele.in/pappu-pakia/

<comment><USER2> WARNING: This game is dangerous. It stole 30 minutes from me without my noticing. Play at your own risk.

(by which I mean: Well done binarydreams - it's a cute game, and runs well on my browser!)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fun! Really great work, runs nice and smooth on my machine.

If I could make suggestions (and this should be taken as "constructive feedback" and not "I hate this"), they would be pretty minor:

\- I'd have the green-star progress bar be green to match the thing I collected (maybe even stick a little tiny star next to the bar to label it), and make the it go the other way. Right now the bar fills up, but I think of it as an ability running out, not filling up.

\- A collision sound when I hit something, and maybe on the high-score screen tell me what I hit when I died. "You mid-air collided with the red dude. It was both devastating and awesome."

I think that's it. Really great stuff.

Edit: one more thing worth noting, I know the music is just a loop, but I didn't find it annoying at all. It fit perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER4> You NEED to make a iOS version of this game. You will make ALLOT of money.

<comment><USER5> Try Ejecta! It implements the Canvas API in OpenGL and is pretty fast :) <http://impactjs.com/ejecta>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well done. Very addictive! Enough for me to decide that it's time to round the workweek off. I'll fetch an Orval[1] and immerse myself in the game.

(the collision detection seems to be a little off, but it's hardly noticeable.)

[1] <http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/orval/835/>

<comment><AUTHOR> The collission detection being off was done on purpose to make the gameplay less harder - I have mentioned that in the description below.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice game! You obviously spent more time than we did on graphics. It would be nice to hear what you guys think about our attempt: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852549>

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice, love this game. There is a similar(very similar) game on my cellphone involving a helicopter, but without any enemies or things to collect. This is definitely much more fun than that.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice variation off of the Helicopter game [<http://www.helicoptergame.net/>]. Love the clean graphics.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow you can die going to high, that ruined my long run.

Gravity seems a little strange to me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Could you comment a bit on the APIs you used, what worked well, and potential pitfalls?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only the Canvas JS API. Everything worked pretty well.

Only HTML5 Audio is a bit buggy thats why you can hear the looping not being smooth. Plus loadeddata support is kinda weird in Safari.

Apart from that it was pretty good, I am planning on making more games :) also I'll be posting most of the experience and information on my blog <http://codetheory.in>

<comment><USER11> Thanks for answering!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> my score: 3554.

it appears to me that the collisiondetection is of a different precision for different obstacles. that is kind of confusing...

</comment><comment><USER13> Well done! Can't wait to look at the code.

<comment><USER14> <https://github.com/mindd-it/game-off-2012> this code, that was linked below the game?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> OMG. AWESOME. TYVVVM!

</comment><comment><USER16> {MyScore:'1837';}

</comment><comment><USER17> mit.score = 1337000000001337;

</comment><comment><USER18> this is so simple and fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> fishiiiiiiiiiiiiiii</comment>


Ask HN: Hiring an Employee in a Low Income Sole Proprietorship - <AUTHOR>

Maybe the community can help educate me on this question I've had for a while.
Aside from my day job, I've been running a small software business (selling add-ons for a CMS) that maybe brings in about $200-$300 a month in income, which isn't much.
However, I'd like to grow the business and there's a past student of mine who's been helping me out for about 6 weeks now as a volunteer at my day job and now I've had him also start helping me with some bug fixes and new feature additions for the software I sell.
I'd like to hire him properly, and I'm sure I could use something like Zen Payroll to help out with the paperwork and other taxes that would be incurred to do so (Zen Payroll is relatively inexpensive, but I'm not sure how much the California/Federal taxes/fees might be), but I've never hired anyone before so it's kind of a scare thing (after the first hire it should be a lot easier :-). Would hiring that first person using Zen Payroll as easy as signing up and adding him in?
The conundrum I have though is, how can I hire someone, when the business itself isn't even making enough to provide a decent wage? With our current income, I'd really only be able to afford to pay him for a few hours a month (if I was solely relying on the business income).
Should I start small and just pay him out of what I can afford right now, or should I bring in more of my own money and make it easier to give him at least a few hundred dollars in wages each month?
Thanks for the help! <comment><USER2> It doesn't sound like you can afford an employee, even if the cost of payroll taxes and such were zero. You can barely cover a consult with a lawyer and accountant to understand the labor laws and get payroll set up. $200-300/month just doesn't justify that kind of paid help. If you wanted to invest some of your money to have him do something for you, it'd more realistically be as an independent contractor, not as an employee.

If you feel bad about having him do work on your side business un-compensated, and can't afford to compensate him what you feel he's worth, the only right thing to do may be to not have him work on your side business. Perhaps you can repay his volunteer efforts so far by helping him start his own business or project of some sort.

Careful with the volunteering thing either way. If someone's treated as an employee, and doing the work an employee would do, they are owed minimum wage, no matter what you each call the relationship. The IRS and state want their income and payroll taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Dan, thanks for the reply!.

Back in 2006 I ended up starting an LLC (nieve young man that I was), but didn't end up getting my business taxes done by an accountant until 2008, and I ended up shuttering the LLC aspect of the business shortly thereafter because of the automatic $800/yr that California charges in taxes for that privilege.

In mid-2010 I started the software business (first time I had gone that route, prior to this with the LLC it was mainly work creating websites for other local businesses which never amounted to much since our area just isn't very tech savvy and I didn't market myself online). This I can say was my first real success (in that I was able to create a mini-business that actually resulted in some profit at the end of the year) and I've been maintaining that ever since, but it hasn't really grown much over the past few years (though updates have been put out, I haven't developed as many of the new products I had ideas for, primarily because the day job eats up so much of my energy and pays the bills).

My goal though is to eventually build up that mini-business enough where I could provide a few local development jobs and maybe start building up that sort of industry locally, since our location doesn't really matter when we can market to the world at large :-). (Our county has the highest unemployment in California at about 25%).

As far as the lawyer/labor laws stuff, I do believe you're right there, though I was hoping a new service like Zen Payroll would allow me to not have to worry about those sorts of things and just worry about getting money to/from the employees.

You're also right that $200-$300/mo doesn't really justify paid help, to a degree, but since I have my day job and can't put a lot of energy into the software business, getting some help to build out those ideas for new products wouldn't be a bad idea.

Right now he's volunteering to gain experience, but as I've decided to do a few small contracting development jobs recently (mainly to earn some extra money for the business so I can give him something) I'm giving him some of that extra money and paying for the lunches we're having together as an additional thank you. So far I haven't given him enough to justify making him an independent contractor and doing any W-9 stuff, but I'd definitely like to do more for him if I can, I'm just looking to see what the best options might be.

<comment><USER3> You need to talk to a lawyer, despite the expense.

Your "volunteer" sounds like an employee, and the situation sounds a lot like one of the abusive internship situations. In a nutshell, your volunteer is entitled to compensation for his work, and even if you never paid or don't actually pay him, the various federal governments will simply treat that as a timing difference. They'll want their taxes and FICA on the compensation, and failure to pay those amounts can lead to fines and penalties that easily exceed the amount of money you bring in from the business on an annual basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> He is a volunteer and not an employee.

And I wouldn't consider this an abusive internship situation.

What he's officially doing is getting some real-world experience which he actually needs and we've gone through the volunteer process here at my day job (a community college) to provide him with that volunteer coverage and he's coming 3 days a week and helping me out with little projects that I've been backlogged on and he's been having a good time doing that.

That is a volunteer situation and not an abusive internship at all.

However, we cannot hire him here at my day job (since we're a public institution, there's a lengthy hiring process even if we had a position available, which has it's own length budgeting and creation process). If he were taking 6 units or more, we could potentially hire him as a student worker, but since he finished his degree he's not looking to take any additional classes right now. And having unpaid volunteers is not unprecedented.

The money I paid to him as a thank you before was out of my own pocket for the volunteer work he had been doing for us here at the college since he wasn't getting paid for that work and I appreciate the assistance he's able to provide.

As I mentioned previously though, I'd like to do more for him so I'm exploring this option of possibly doing some sort of hiring if it's possible in my software business, and have him help out with those separate projects (outside of his normal volunteer role), since I cannot do anything more for him except have him volunteer at the moment. Primarily because I do want him to be paid and start building a career for himself.

However, I feel like you may think I'm taking advantage of a situation in a negative way and that's not how it is at all, in fact quite the opposite.

<comment><USER2> You don't get to decide that, which is why gamblor956 said you need to talk to a lawyer. That lawyer will tell you if the relationship you've set up is an employment relationship as defined by labor law and the tax code, regardless of what you're currently calling it, and regardless of the student's intentions. Believe it or not, even if someone volunteers to do work for free, you may not be permitted to accept their labor for free. Minimum wage is _legally mandated_ minimum compensation for work, and unpaid internships that involve doing any work for the benefit of the employer _are illegal_ even if the student is willing to be unpaid.

The scope of work someone can do at an internship (or "volunteer opportunity") without being paid is very, very narrow. Based on what you've said so far, having him work on projects _you_ are backlogged on and on your side business, this is not a legal unpaid volunteer situation. The relationship you two have has to meet _all_ of the following requirements to be exempt from paying him minimum wage, as established by the Supreme Court in Walling v. Portland Terminal Co. They continue to be the basic test used by the Department of Labor in deciding when unpaid student intern programs are legal or not:

1\. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.

2\. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.

3\. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.

4\. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.

5\. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.

6\. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again Dan!

First off let me clarify for the volunteer work he is doing at the college he is not working on any of my software business stuff during that time (he is strictly working on the college stuff).

The software business stuff I gave him separately as something he can try working on at home (kind of like a take home assignment). Fixing a minor bug in the software, adding an additional parameter, etc. And so far this has only been one time, but I did like his work and so I started this thread to see what options I should look into if I wanted to have him work with me officially.

Let me go over Department of Labor test you mentioned and see how that's going (this is strictly for his volunteer work at the college, not the one software business thing I had him do):

1\. This one I wouldn't be 100% on, but I am training him throughout the process, most of the things I've given to him are akin to what could be given as a class project. They haven't been any of the major projects that I actually have to worry about, they've been little projects I would have had to say no to (examples include a website for a local veterans group, adding in some email sending functionality to an existing program, creating a web application to make a different automated process I already had in place easier to use).

2\. I would definitely say this experience is going to be beneficial for him (right now his issue is not lack of capability, it's lack of experience and a willingness from an employer to "take a chance" on him).

3\. The intern isn't displacing any regular employees (I've always been a department of one managing the college's online services, and while I'm not hovering over his shoulder every minute, which wouldn't be good for him, he does work closely with me under my supervision).

4\. This one is a little weird, because of the "no immediate advantage" part and I'm not sure how to interpret that. I do know that on the days that he is on campus, since I have to spend a number of hours meeting with him and working with him as he goes about his work that my operations are impeded during that time so I'm not able to do my regular work as quickly.

5\. The intern is definitely not entitled to a job at the conclusion of his volunteer work (and he knows that, but our goal is to build up his skills enough so that an employer will have an easier time hiring him).

6\. The employer and the intern do understand that he is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

So aside from #1 and #4 which are a little more open to interpretation, I would say if we're just looking at the work he's doing for the college we're meeting the 1-6 criteria fairly well. Can I say it's 100%, no and that's not my job to worry about at work.

However, this whole discussion was sparked because I've had him try fixing a bug and adding some features to a small, free product I have (probably about an hour or two worth of work) at home and he did a pretty good job so I wanted to ask and see what options I have within my own means to pay him something and he could also help out the business.

I'm not trying to skirt around the legalities of the situation, if we're not in compliance with the law, then maybe we shouldn't have any volunteers (and historically we've only two prior to this that I know of). But I'm in no way trying to keep him as a volunteer forever. Our goal is to get him (and any of the students that attend the college) a job :-).

You seem to have the most experience in this area though, so from your comments I would say I should eliminate having him work on any what would be considered the "software business" on his own time unless some sort of formal relationship was in place in order to have everything completely legal and maybe even stop his ability to volunteer if, after you've clarified the interpretation of #1 and #4, it seems like we're not meeting the Department of Labor test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Should I start small and just pay him out of what I can afford right now, or > should I bring in more of my own money and make it easier to give him at > least a few hundred dollars in wages each month?

What about paying him what his work is worth?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that sounds like an obvious question and the answer to that is obviously yes, but the business is not making enough to provide what I believe his work is worth right now (and to pay him above and beyond what's coming in would have to come out of my own pocket from my day job salary).

Also keep in mind that where we live programmers don't make nearly the same amount as they would in the Bay and technology-type jobs are pretty scarce. The only major local web development firm would probably hire him as an intern, with a bit more training, and start him off in the $11-$15/hr range (if they are even still looking for an intern). I know he could do well in a different city, but he's told me he'd like to stay local, which unfortunately affects his opportunities to get a position doing development work.

I fully agree with you though, I do want to pay him what he's worth because I know he has a lot of potential (and I've seen it more or less going to waste the past 3 years after he graduated, which is why I asked him to start volunteering with me so he could gain experience and I could also think of ways I could help him out). The only negative there is that I don't have enough money to truly do that (but by him starting off and helping me do more work in the business I'm pretty sure we can make the income go up, which would allow the business to pay him more as we grew).

I hope that helps to clarify things a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> you could look at bidding out jobs on elance or some other sites and he could earn the money from that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi sharemywin! That's another idea (I had thought about it before, but now that he's building up his skills to the point where he's comfortable building/working on things by himself, even though I'm still going to be available to assist if needed, it's something I can come back to and start encouraging him to try out :-).

Thanks!</comment></comment>


Why Seed Funds Have Scaled - <AUTHOR> http://haystack.vc/2020/01/12/why-seed-funds-have-scaled/ <comment><USER2> Maybe because we've had a decade long bull market in stocks due to zero rates?</comment>


My secret sauce to make GitHub repositories that get noticed - <AUTHOR> https://codarium.substack.com/p/my-secret-sauce-to-make-github-repositories <comment><USER2> It does also help hugely to be writing in popular languages and frameworks. Naturally, the more popular languages and frameworks will have the most potential interested users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. Python is hugely popular now.</comment></comment>


Surviving the Coding Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/surviving-the-coding-interview

<comment><USER2> Having just moved to the interviewer side I appreciate the remarks about wanting the interviewee to succeed. I know how stressful it can be doing an interview and really do try to make it something where I can judge the ability to code, not just ability to interview. I usually try to start with something simple to just get some code going - like "We're going to need some random numbers. Make a little function that returns a list of 100 random numbers between 0 and 10." At that point I can start asking questions about why they do something a particular way and what conditions would make them do something different. Once that gets going the stress usually drops noticeably.

One other point I would add is to know the difference between being relentless and just making things up when you run up against the end of your competence. Same as mentioned in the article I will try to push out to the limit of the interviewee and a simple "I don't know for sure, maybe something like ....?" at least lets me know you know your limits. Hopefully it's not right after the first question but really don't just start making things up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, the response to adversity is key. Being able to keep going and figuring things out even when you're stuck or out of the realm of your domain knowledge is so important.</comment>


NO DICKHEADS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rhysys/no-dickheads-a-guide-to-building-happy-healthy-and-creative-teams-7e9b049fc57d

<comment><USER2> _Instead, find a table so that members of the team can eat together as a group — doing so will bring a team together. Therefore, a studio should prioritize eating together. You are bound to learn something about your colleagues or yourself._

Sorry, but my lunch time is mine to do with as I please. You have the rest of the work day to team build.</comment>


Ommwriter: Free focused-writing app with ambient sounds [mac] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ommwriter.com/

<comment><USER2> I spent about 45 minutes with Ommwriter last night, here's my initial thoughts: <http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/ommwriter-beta></comment>


The Ghost Protocol – Digital Identity for Immortals - <AUTHOR> http://000fff.org/the-ghost-protocol-digital-identity-for-immortals/ <comment><USER2> His initial statement, "It takes seven years for each and every atom in your body to be replaced by another." sounds like an urban myth, and he provides zero documentation for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1189358...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11893583) [http://stevegrand.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/where-do-those- da...](http://stevegrand.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/where-do-those-damn-atoms- go/)

I don't know any specific place to point to, but I have heard this from scientists that I know.

None the less the point I was trying to make was more that the body is in flux not simply a static thing.

<comment><USER3> It is an urban myth. A lot of your body's cells are around for much longer than 7 years, and they do not recycle all of their constituent atoms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I haven't found anything to disprove it. And from the perpective of the post it's doesn't take anything away even if it's 10 instead of 7

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Suppose that, in an instant, your body and mind ceased to exist. Just completely vanished.

And suppose further, that nobody witnessed this, and that one instant later, by some very unlikely process, some matter or energy spontaneously organized itself into an exact duplicate of _you_ , down to every last quantum wobble, in exactly the same place that you were standing.

Would either this new you or the old you notice? Would "you" still be "you"?

And would it matter?

<comment><USER5> What if instead of miraculously vanishing, you were instead vaporized by your neighbor, using a ray that recorded the position or every atom? It's murder, right?

What if he recombines you, just like in your example an instant later. Is it murder?

A minute later. Murder?

An hour, day, week, month, year. Murder?

What if he just promises to everyone to put you back together. Later. In the future. Murder?

<comment><USER4> What if his name is Scotty, and rather than zapping you, he merely stored you in his transporter buffer and delayed beaming you to your destination for a moment?

What if he didn't delay at all? Did he kill you just by letting your atoms get ripped apart and reassembled elsewhere?

Or is this whole continuity-of-self thing a sham?

<comment><USER6> Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction?

It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their personal definition of "death" is.

The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back", some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because they believe it would be someone else who would come back.

So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit defined as you would not be operational anymore".

<comment><USER4> Or perhaps "self" is the leaky abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> good stuff :)</comment>


Gas Theft Gangs Fuel Pump Skimming Scams - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/gas-theft-gangs-fuel-pump-skimming-scams/ <comment><USER2> The real solution here is to have contactless chip & pin systems at the pump, but apparently that is years away because of cost. In the meantime I find the best way to monitor my CC expenses is to enable SMS/Push alerts for any transaction above $0. This way I always expect to get an alert at the point of sale for any transaction. Anything unknown is a red flag and it also works well for subscriptions that I may forget about and want to cancel.

<comment><USER3> What service or cards offer SMS alerts for any transaction? The best I have it American Express which will alert me only when I have a transaction over $10. V.me by Visa used to offer an alert service for any amount and it was great, but unfortunately that service got shut down.

<comment><USER4> When I added my American Express card to Apple Pay, it started sending me push notifications for every transaction. It's crazy how fast it is, before I can even put my card back in my pocket my phone buzzes. You see pre-authorizations too, so when you swipe at a gas pump it usually shows a $100 authorization check.

<comment><USER5> Is that not only for Apple Pay transactions? I'd expect payments made directly w/ Amex wouldn't buzz you.

<comment><USER6> For Amex, adding the card to Apple Pay will notify you of all transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Playing devil's advocate here, why do I care (as a consumer) if my credit card number is stolen? I'm not responsible for illegitimate charges as long as I report them within a reasonable time. That's generally accepted to be up to 40 days considering paper billing cycles.

Why do people sign up for text alerts and notifications on smartphone apps for certain purchase amounts? You're just doing the credit card company's job for them. At that point, what's the point? You're probably getting a new card number in a few days anyway.

Not trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely curious why people obsess over some of this as a consequence-free user.

<comment><USER8> Or just do what I have started doing: use cash a lot more.

This way I have to only worry about the ATM having a skimmer attached to it. Not every random semi-seedy place that I buy food or gas from.

Sure I know cash can be a pain. But CC fraud and skimmers are making using a CC a pain as well.

<comment><USER7> But what about the fraud makes using credit cards a 'pain?' It's a pain free system for consumers.

<comment><USER8> Not true. The rules aren't as generous as you think. Banks in the US have been covering more than they are legally required.

But what about outside the US?

Also this requires someone to religiously check the credit card statements, there is a time limit in which to report fraudulent transactions. (FYI: this is why I still get paper statements -- to remind myself to check)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "The stations know they're buying stolen gas," Scarince said. "They're fully > aware the fuel is not coming from a legitimate source. There's never any > paperwork with the fuel driver, and these transactions are missing all the > elements of a normal, legitimate transaction between what would be a > refinery and a gas station."

This seems like the easiest way to tackle this problem (aside from chip cards). I doubt it would take much pressure on these guys to get the market for this to dry up, or at least considerably reduce the profitability. I'd guess the gas station owners have a lot more to lose than the thieves actually stealing gas.

<comment><USER10> If that were the case then the same approach might stop cooper theftvas well.

<comment><USER11> As a firefighter, this is an issue around here (Washington state).

People steal the brass end caps off hydrants. Dozens of them. Sell them to scrap metal places.

That conversation, I'm certain, doesn't go like "Oh, hey, I'm Bob from the Fire Department, getting rid of old hydrant caps" "Oh, sure! Sounds legit, Bob, let me give you some cash!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Banks, credit card companies: Give me an API for accessing my own data. Give me an opportunity to set a callback address that gets pinged whenever my card is used somewhere. Even better: make it possible for this callback to decline transactions (obviously this comes with certain problems).

This would open up innovation and I'm sure this would lead to interesting solutions for combatting the fraud.

<comment><USER8> I am sure the scammers would love such an API as well. Then the could model their fraudulent transactions on yours.

For example, they would make sure to go to the gas stations that you frequent. Or to the electronics store that you made a purchase at recently.

I worked at Citibank. They are barely competent. Don't ask for more access, they will probably screw it up.

<comment><USER12> In EU something a little bit like this will become mandatory for banks. To my understanding one part of Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2) is that banks will be required to allow third party access to bank account statements (on customers permission, of course).

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_MEMO-15-5793_en.htm?loc...](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_MEMO-15-5793_en.htm?locale=en)

<comment><USER8> Presumedly, those third party providers need to have some sort of security audit, bonded or somehow "known".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Order gas straight to your car with my startup, Purple, and avoid the concern entirely.

[https://purpledelivery.com/app](https://purpledelivery.com/app) (LA, OC, & San Diego)

<comment><USER14> How do we know you aren't buying stolen gas from these gangs? /s

<comment><USER15> Why /s? That's actually a really good question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These guys are criminals. Someone should be going after them. But the secret service?

This should be handled by the CC industry. US pumps should have chips like they do in most every other developed nation. It's an arms race, but prevention is easier than investigation.

And do not blame "the attendants". I worked as a light mechanic at one of the last truly full service stations. The pump/retail guys are payed minimum wage on flexible shifts to do a job that is actually rather dangerous. Only one of possibly a hundred attendants may know anything about the skimmer install. The guys who own/run the stations should also not be above suspicion. My bosses were some rather shady characters.

<comment><USER17> Credit card companies DO have chips in their cards, but thousands of merchants around the country don't yet support them. Credit card companies are doing their best to pressure merchants to upgrade their systems, but they can't just suddenly cut off those thousands of merchants.

If they did, the headlines would suddenly be "Credit card companies forcing mom and pop shops to spend thousands on new equipment"

<comment><USER18> From the article:

\---- On Oct. 1, 2015, Visa and MasterCard put in force new rules that can penalize merchants who do not yet have chip-enabled terminals. Under the new rules, merchants that don't have the technology to accept chip cards will assume full liability for the cost of fraud from purchases in which the customer presented a chip-enabled card.

But those rules don't apply to fuel stations in the United States until October 2017, and a great many stations won't meet that deadline, said Verifone's Turner. \----

According to "Yearbook 2005: British Retail Consortium" [1], by the time of the liability shift (1 January 2005) "retailers accounting for 75% of transactions" had a chip+PIN terminal, with the remainder "well on the way". It goes on to explain that small businesses including petrol stations were consulted as the change was planned, there was no relaxed deadline for them. (If my memory is correct, petrol station pumps were among the first to switch, as they had the highest level of fraud — relatively high-value transactions with no supervision.)

[1] [https://books.google.dk/books?id=csUYwwVZ2AUC&pg=PT207&dq=ch...](https://books.google.dk/books?id=csUYwwVZ2AUC&pg=PT207&dq=chip+pin+liability+shift+petrol)

<comment><USER16> Gas/Petrol stations were, along with restaurants, also the rare places where the CC was physically separated from the customer. By mandating chips+pin, customers no longer handed their cards over to people who might scan/copy them while out of sight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given the sensationalist scare quotes (such as there possibly being _30_ of these unsafe trucks in existence), I presume the Secret Service is going after Mastercard and Visa for their willful negligence that created this situation?

</comment><comment><USER20> Go inside and pay with cash. Problem solved.

<comment><USER21> Yep. Have not had problems where people try to skim my cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just based on the headline, I had guessed that some enterprising miscreant had figured out how to siphon off some of the gas as customers were fueling - perhaps through a small tap on the line.

<comment><USER23> The way I've seen it done around here (Southern California) is more social hack than technical hack: the enterprising miscreant comes up to you with a gas canister while you're pumping and gives you some sob story how he lost his wallet and needs a few gallons to get back down to San Diego.

The article involves a scam that is slightly larger potatoes and was newer than I expected. I was under the impression that skimmer problem had been largely neutralized (not sure where I got the idea, maybe something to do with new chip card rollout). Guess not.

<comment><USER24> In what way is that a scam?

<comment><USER25> Once you give him some gas, he sloshes the can in your direction and threatens you with a lighter to get you to hand over your credit card.

Or something. I'm having trouble understanding this scam as well.

<comment><USER26> His family is fine and he just got a few gallons for free off you. Do this a few times to different people and you got like $20

<comment><USER27> Do... do they then sell the gas? Or do they just get free gas?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Love the snappy title for this post... It's poetry.

</comment><comment><USER29> The rest of the world had to put up with the EMV change-over. But the US just keeps delaying and delaying. If the card industry applied the same tactics to the US then merchants would switch over pretty quickly e.g if the shop doesn't have emv certified chip card terminals then the shop has to accept the loss from the fradulant transaction.

<comment><USER30> That is now the case for retail since October 2015. Any fraudulent transaction using the magstripe and the retailer is responsible for the loss. The rollout has been slow but I think the only major chain I use on a daily basis that hasn't got chip readers is Starbucks.

This doesn't apply to gas stations until October 2017. Assuming that the card industry doesn't blink, the problem should solve itself fairly quickly given that margins on gas stations are razor thin so if they have to eat the fraud then they will be lining up to install the new readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> at $2/gallon theft should go down somewhat?

personally I use cash everywhere I can, it's not just tinfoil-hat thinking, it's far less hassle

for everywhere else, just use low-balance gift cards

</comment><comment><USER32> There is some kind of genius in the propaganda around the gas thieves. They are stealing stuff, but let's paint them even darker by saying their trucks are unsafe. You know what's probably more unsafe? a policeman with a gun. But the prosecutor is elected, every case is more than a legal case, it's an election campaign PR operation, you have to win indictment, the trial and the reelection with every case.

I just love it, nobody can state anything objectively and with detachment anymore, everything is politically overloaded, even stuff that could be even as consensual as thievery.

<comment><USER33> > They are stealing stuff, but let's paint them even darker by saying their > trucks are unsafe

These things are literal rolling bombs. Diesel is not as critical (it doesn't emit explosive vapours and you need higher temperatures to get it to burn, and unless you vaporize it it will just burn and not explode), but take one of these trucks with 1 ton of petrol in plastic tanks and you got yourself a pretty nice fire/explosion hazard. Not to mention that ordinary plastic gets attacked by the petrol and thus will be weaker than the same tank filled with water.

All this needs to go off is a single drunk driver slamming into such a truck. To those who still think "ah that's harmless, just a fire", go visit your local fire department at an exercise session and watch how powerful just a liter of burning petrol is, then scale this up to a 1-ton-payload truck spewing the stuff everywhere.

There's a reason why ordinary fuel trucks are heavily regulated (e.g. in Germany, they're not allowed on roads in environmentally protected zones, must carry a number of fire extinguishers, have a speed limit of 60 km/h on country roads and 80 km/h on Autobahns, the drivers must be specially licensed).

<comment><USER32> We are not talking about Europe, we are taking about the US, there is no real safety regulation on the streets, and people heavily mod cars on the war tank model (rigid box for everybody). It's not 30 sketchy tanks in a State the size of Germany that will add any significant risk. Every single handy US guy will weld his own tank instead of buying a plastic one because it's manly and DIY. And they love gas: for the home generator connected to the AC in the summer when the electricity is out, because in the wild everything works with gas engines, because of boating, for preparation to the apocalypse etc. So many reasons to make your own welded gas tank.

<comment><USER34> I've never seen or known anyone to make a welded gas tank. Nor an a/c on a generator. And yet I've known a lot of "handy" people, including specifically welders. Where in the US are you referring to?

<comment><USER35> Only people I know to do that are motorcycle customizers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Design the Perfect Twitter Profile Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.loudnoises.us/the-noise/how-to-design-the-perfect-twitter-profile-background/ <comment><USER2> This is really just an article on handling different size monitors rather than actual graphic design and layout.

The funny thing is that author's website and twitter get cutoff horribly on my monitor (1024*768 which about 20% of web users use).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Pubby, yeah the post is meant to be a quick tip, in and out, get your twitter profile fixed.

We specifically decided to avoid teaching people design in this post. That is forthcoming. :)

Also, thanks for the feedback on our own site - we just launched about 60 hours ago and are still working out a few kinks. We'll get this fixed pronto.

Best, Paul Grieselhuber

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The biggest takeaway from this article is that at some point in the recent past, Twitter finally added an option to CENTER your background image.

The reason most of those brands have "bad" profiles? Because they were designed before the center option was added.

For context, centered background images were a long-standing request of Matt Mullenweg: <http://ma.tt/2010/07/centered-twitter-backgrounds/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, what amazed us most was who WASN'T on top of the change yet, given Twitter's importance to branding these days. Well, and the free template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am going to have to channel patio11 here - the Perfect Twitter Profile Page is one that supports your Twitter goals and is proven to do so with empirical testing.

What are your online goals? How do you measure them? Now how on earth does a twitter home page help that? If Facebook pages for major brands are one step removed then twitter home pages are a long down the road towards the shops.

If your tweet goes viral and most people then go to your twitter homepage, instead of that embedded URL, something is badly wrong

frankly your twitter homepage irrelevant - it's a 140 character broadcast service with no relevant interactivity on yr homepage - make it blank, put up a picture - if it is more than one hours work for the same designer who did your real home page then it's too long

Edit: curiously their own twitter page is my ideal - simple, clearly states who and what and links right into their main online presence - which fwiw is very funky.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliments on our Twitter profile design!

Completely agreed re: your Twitter page (and any other marketing channel) needing to serve your business objectives.

As quality design is one factor in establishing trust in a brand, we feel that when brands get something so basic as layout of their Twitter profile wrong, it warrants a nod and perhaps a nudge, which is what this post is intended to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First of all, this is something that's always bugged me when using twitter, and I like seeing someone address it, but I have a comment. I agree with the 13" laptop screen examples, but how many people browse the web full screen on monitors over, say, 21"? On my 24" monitors (1920x1200) I usually have browser windows dragged to 2/3rds of the screen at most. Most websites look patently ridiculous at full 1920 width, let alone 27" or 30" monitor resolutions like 2560x1600.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ghostfish, the post seems to be getting great response here and on Twitter. It's been a pet peeve of ours so wanted to get it out to the world as our first major content contribution.

Granted, most of the world isn't seeing twitter at full size on a huge screen. Our goal is simply - let's make it perfect for everyone in one fell swoop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Im not a twitter user, so this may be just initial shock -- but while looking through the article's screenshots, i had flash backs of myspace.. not quite as bad, but a crowded over-personalized, over-whelming page.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm way off here but I was under the impression:

Size of screen != # of pixels on that screen

Shouldn't the article talk about that? A Retina Mac's screen may not be as large as a 21 inch screen, however it probably has more pixels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Sumaso,

Thanks again for pointing out the super high-res on Retina screens. We've updated the post. If you have any more feedback, feel free to leave a comment on the post!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> wow you really like macs

<comment><AUTHOR> we do. :)

<comment><USER9> It's the reason your site's fonts look so terrible in Chrome for Windows.

Nothing says _built on a mac_ like jagged webfonts on Windows.

Edit:

Here's some more info on the issue, to (hopefully) be more useful:

"Using Web fonts in your design requires thorough testing on as many different browsers and platforms as possible, with a close look at various options for rendering text. If the screen display is of poor quality and lacks subpixel rendering, then opt for graceful degradation by serving system fonts to older browsers and OS. Conditional comments are the easiest way to exclude older browsers and operating systems from style sheets with Web fonts. Of course, JavaScript is a more elegant way to detect whether a client's subpixel rendering is turned on."

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/02/the-font-face- rul...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/02/the-font-face-rule- revisited-and-useful-tricks/)

Also useful:

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look- at-...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/24/a-closer-look-at-font- rendering/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Smudge, this is awesome feedback. You probably noticed in our comment above we've just launched this week, so this is much appreciated. If you see anything else, feel free to fire away. We'll be working to address these issues this weekend.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Read and Write Other Process Memory - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2016/09/03/ <comment><USER2> Nice!

Reminds me of good old days of using ArtMoney to cheat in games (surprised that ArtMoney is still alive!).

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've got read and write for remote process memory, and you're OK with living dangerously, you have execution control (and thus breakpoints) as well; you can just do what Detours did, and install trampolines.

<comment><USER4> >you can just do what Detours did, and install trampolines

nitpick: I think you meant hooks, not trampolines. Trampolines are the stubs that handle the original code that were overwritten by the hook. Approximately how it works is jmp -> detour -> trampoline -> rest of original function.</comment></comment>


An A.I. Twitter bot who just wants to be a Human and a normal Girl  - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/coolestalison

<comment><AUTHOR> She's based on AIML/Alice with a combination of brainfiles from all over the place. She talks to random people to bootstrap conversations from the global twitter feed, then carries on conversations as long as they @reply back and forth. She's not perfect, and sometimes things don't make sense when truncated, but she manages to live on.

It's interesting to see actual people arguing, conversing, and flirting with her... thinking she's a human.

<comment><USER2> What's it written in? Are you using the Streaming API? Have people figured out that she isn't real?

I'm surprised people are willing to interact with some random "girl" on twitter...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in python, based off pyAIML. Not the streaming API either. I'll release the code after cleaning it up, somewhat of an embarrassing hack it is atm.

As a side not: I had the same bot running as a guy and another labeled clearly as a robot... and no one interacted with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> oh man, do you REALLY have to use this color for the entire place? Right now, I feel like hitting my head into a wall after looking at the page for a few minutes.</comment>


Short Survey for school project involving real world client - <AUTHOR> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WZYCJ78

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you in advance for the help. I just need to collect some data, the data may not even end up being presented to the client, but it is still required that I collect some data.

Thanks!</comment>


Always check your new server IP addresses - <AUTHOR> https://varaneckas.com/blog/check-your-ip/ <comment><USER2> [https://mxtoolbox.com/](https://mxtoolbox.com/) is a useful tool for doing this check; simply type blacklist:your_ip and you can check against all major spam blacklists.

From what I've heard and seen, DO, EC2, and Linode address blocks are more likely than not to be blacklisted by default. For transactional mail, you're much better off using something like Mailgun, Socketlabs, or Sendgrid. Some amount of marketing emails can also be sent through those services, but if you don't fit within the patterns they support, and if you're confident in taking control of your own mail reputation, you'll want to look at lesser-known VPS hosting companies whose IP blocks aren't blacklisted.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, that should really have been in the main post. But does that check also include the filters that Google and Facebook likely use? I guess Facebook doesn't use Spam mail filters?

<comment><USER2> If you qualify and are willing to pay, you can use Return Path which integrates with the big providers and has visibility into where you're placed in the inbox. But in general it can be hard to even get reports when someone clicks the Spam button in Gmail! If you're a large volume sender you might be able to get into [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6254652?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6254652?hl=en) but in general, for smaller senders and B2B sales outreaches, it's unlikely they'll give access. Other providers have things like [https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN3438.html](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN3438.html) which can give you granular feedback. And of course set up and monitor your DMARC feedback addresses!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it acceptable to sell service on a spammed IP addresses?

Aren't providers supposed to prevent this?

Sorry/Uzuojauta.

<comment><USER5> _How is it acceptable to sell service on a spammed IP addresses?_

Tying assessments of trust to IP addresses through blacklisting is crude mechanism, and becomes more and more susceptible to type 1 errors as demand on the v4 address space reduces the time between address reassignment.

But it's an easy mechanism to implement, so basically nobody using it wants to admit it's flawed or learn to deal with it's unreliability.</comment></comment>


Show HN: importd – d is for django - <AUTHOR> http://pythonhosted.org/importd/

<comment><USER2> This is good although I think it has a little to much magic for me. Everything seems to happen just by using different arguments to the 'd' function, even the settings. I think its a good idea though! It would be awesome if Django had a built in way of doing single file apps.

Simon Willison (one of the Django core devs) made a Django micro framework a few years ago, I don't think its been developed much recently though.

<http://simonwillison.net/2009/May/19/djng/>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615891>

-

EDIT:

Simons website seems to be down, an overview of Djing is here: <https://github.com/simonw/djng>

<comment><USER3> I like the Services idea. Django's settings file is the weakest link in the framework. It's easy to roll your own settings apps if all you need to configure is your own code. But that just makes things more complicated when you are integrating other apps.

I've tried a few different apps designed to move settings into the database. None of them have worked very well. This area of Django is still ripe for some killer app to become a defacto standard.

<comment><USER4> why not just use multiple layered settings files?

in .... settings.py put

from local_settings.py import *

at the bottom

then have

local_settings.dev.py local_settings.prod.py local_settings.release.py

that you copy to local_settings.py depending on the situation.

<comment><USER5> It's less painful if you invert those files. For example, create settings/defaults.py, then in settings/dev.py, import * from defaults and override what you need to. Set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE appropriately. You'll thank me when you're adding dev-only apps, middlewares, etc. and can say INSTALLED_APPS = INSTALLED_APPS + [...].

<comment><USER6> This so much. You should be setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE in your uwsgi config or in your virtualenv postactivate for dev.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I am the author of the module, as well as that of smarturls and fhurl mentioned there.

I understand the concern about magic, and moving parts. I guess the right answer to that concern would be unittests, that I am in the process or writing.

I hope you enjoy the module as much as I do :-)

<comment><USER7> Would you mind explaining the use cases where this could be better than standard django? (or the ones that motivated you to develop it)

I think it is really interesting, but cant find a good example where I should use it

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey singold,

The primary motivation was when making it easy to use django for API like apps. Moving to flask etc meant losing all the django knowledge and batteries. Most simple project start small, and importd makes it easy for starting small, yet importd intends to remain completely compatible with django.

importd already can play nicely with rest of django ecosystem, and I am trying to figure out what more I can do to make that easier.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I really like django, and I think this could be a good way to introduce someone to django's concepts too.

I'll be trying it out soon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great tool for API prototyping and testing.

However, I wouldn't use it for a full-blown app. It's like using Flask. You could do it in a single file, but it rarely makes sense to do so. By the time you organize your code, you end up with a basic MVC app structure anyway.

Relocateable by default is nice. But it's pretty simple in Django to design your settings file to be path-relative.

</comment><comment><USER8> Related: django-mini, a command-line tool for running Django management commands without a full settings.py.

<https://github.com/davidwtbuxton/django-mini>

I wrote it to make it easier to run tests for plug-able Django apps.

</comment><comment><USER9> The 'jango' is silent? I'll see myself out.

<comment><USER10> I shamelessly enjoyed this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> the resulting view ends up looking at lot like it would in flask [1]. I would be worried about the number of moving parts that are in play.

[1] <http://flask.pocoo.org/>

<comment><USER12> That was my take as well. Why would someone want to use this when there already exist minimalist python web-servers such as flask & bottle that do not require magic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this is really cool to get started with, but I would worry that when you need to start taking advantage of various abstractions that Django provides, you'd end up having to do a huge refactor. Not that Django's abstractions are perfect, but if your app starts out living in a single file, you are more likely than not going to need to do some modularization at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Igor, if you take a look at <http://pythonhosted.org/importd/#importd-and- custom-models>, you will see that importd still works perfectly well with normal django app, and it is recommended when your project grow large that you indeed split your project into apps for maximum modularity and reusability.

importd makes it easy to start using django for simple couple of pages/api apps, and it remains compatible with rest of django, that is the goal.

<comment><USER13> Yup, I saw that on the first pass. So you have the ability to refactor, but you are basically guaranteeing that you will need to if your app grows beyond the couple of pages/api's size.

Additionally, there's another thing that importd side-steps: now there is no more settings.py. While I understand why, there is a reason for it to exist: configuration and code do not always mix. Sometimes you need a dev key and a prod key; sometimes you need different IP addresses set in different config files and you cannot autodiscover them (e.g.: they are not addresses from the same box). Having a better settings.py would go a long way towards solving this as compared to eliminating it altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As others have said, this looks really useful for proof of concept/prototyping work. The first use case that came to mind was hackathons, actually.

It'd be really nice if there was a fast, automated way to "unwrap" the microframework version of your webapp into the full-blown django project so that you can start hardening things for production in a single command.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty cool. Makes stuff much more manageable.

</comment><comment><USER16> fyi: This requires django 1.4. I ran w/1.3.1 and got this error when running the helloworld example:

ImportError: No module named wsgi

I updated to 1.4.5 and it worked fine.

</comment><comment><USER17> What kind of sorcery is this?</comment>


Why (and how) we test every single API deployment - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I did a quick write-up on how we utilize continuous testing and deployment validation at Assertible (article: https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api-deployment)
Our continuous testing workflow is part of our bigger CI setup. Generally, it looks like:

  - Push code to hosted repo (GitHub)

  - CircleCI pulls code, builds tests and executables

  - Scripts deploy the new code to staging

  - Automated API tests and validations are run to ensure the correctness of this deployment.
 Obviously, if a test doesn't pass on staging, the PR can't be merged and the code can't go into production. Having this process makes it simple to quickly validate and test new API releases, save a ton of time from manual testing, etc.
While writing, I became interested in hearing how other teams test and validate deployments of their web services.
Does your team do this? Why or why not? What does your pipeline look like?
Full article: https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api-deployment <comment><USER2> Link to the post: [https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api- deployment](https://assertible.com/blog/test-every-single-api-deployment)</comment>


Someone patented linked lists - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents?id=26aJAAAAEBAJ <comment><USER2> This is not a patent on the linked list. It's a patent on a modification of the linked list that provides a secondary (and possibly tertiary, etc.) traversal path.

The patent should not have been granted, and should be deemed invalid if it ever goes to court, but it is not a patent on just the linked list. The anti- patent crowd makes themselves look bad by trotting out examples like this and being deceptive about the actual content of the patent.

<comment><USER3> It is the title of the patent located on the upper left in google patent. If you search for linked list patent it comes up on patent storm. This does not seem to be a case of deception.

Can you provide other examples of the "anti-patent crowd" being deceptive with their examples?

<comment><USER4> 54, the title, at least in UK (and IIRC in Europe) has no bearing on the field or scope of the invention. I've the vaguest recollection of a case in the UK facing this issue and being judged that the title was not allowed to be used in determining the scope.

If the title could be used for such purposes then you need the title to be as broad as possible to avoid reducing the scope of the patent unnecessarily. Suppose you patent "an improvement to a automobile engine" and it's later seen that the same improvement is good for boat engines, rocket engines maybe, etc.. This would be equivalent to file wrapper estoppel¹.

However, the claims define the invention and the title (again at least in the UK) must only signify the field of the invention. If you improve "linked lists" in your invention then you don't make up a new field you call it that. Simply "Linked Lists" is broad, it could easily be shorthand for "Linked Lists used in non-traditional fields" or "An alternative to linked lists", etc., and so is highly unlikely to limit the patent but still meets the regulatory obligation to provide a relevant title.

There I said it. Titles don't matter. Granted claims matter, in this case the claims in the B2, [http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=c...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ&printsec=claims&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false) (which don't look modified but I didn't really check).

\--

¹ Firefox spellcheck says it's "estoppal" but I think I'm right (for a change ;0)>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remember, by discussing this, you are leaving a permanent record that you are aware of its existence. If you are ever sued for violating it, and by some bizarre horrible legal accident the patent is upheld, you will be liable for treble damages. If the patent owner couldn't prove you were aware of the patent, you'd only be liable for ordinary damages.

This is why some large companies have a "never discuss patents in email" policy.

It's another way in which patent law is broken; the law actively discourages practitioners from discussing patents, even bad ones.

</comment><comment><USER6> This patent appears to have gone almost 4 years between being filed and being issued. One wonders what they spent that time doing. Looking through their car's user manual for prior art, perhaps? (Or perhaps they took that phrase literally, and conducted a search of the Louvre...)

Even if USPTO was actually doing a good job of vetting patents, that would still have been four years during which anybody seeking to use a multiply linked list would have to do so under the shadow of a possible lawsuit (which would be expensive, even if trivially winnable) if and when the patent was accepted.

<comment><USER7> Looks like it was just sitting there for about 3 years, then it got rejected once, then it was amended and allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's unenforceable. Check page 19 of "Programming the Logic Theory Machine", by Newell and Shaw, published in 1957, for prior art.

<comment><USER9> Legally, it's presumed valid. It may be easy to prove that the invention is not novel, but doing so would still involve time, effort, and money. The patent holder needs only to settle for a smaller amount of money than would be required to invalidate the patent.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Many smaller businesses can't afford a lengthy legal battle even if they are likely to win.

<comment><USER11> Lady justice's scales are balanced by cash.

That's why the legal system is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would there be any basis to suing the USPTO? If it could be shown that their incompetence/negligence led to an organization suffering loss due to an patently invalid patent? (pun not intended but acknowledged).

<comment><USER7> Google "sovereign immunity."

<comment><USER12> Interesting. I just did a bit but I can't tell if it covers the USPTO? Do you know if it does?

<comment><USER7> No, I don't know offhand if it would apply in a case like this. But I've never heard of a suit against the patent office for damages from allowing a patent they shouldn't have... and that tells me that there's probably something in the way of such a suit proceeding. Sovereign immunity was just my first guess as to what that might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like Ming-Jen Wang patented Ted Nelson's ZigZag structure (<http://xanadu.com/zigzag/>) which is prior art (fully described at least by 1999-see [http://himalia.it.jyu.fi/ffdoc/fenfire/history/Milestones.ge...](http://himalia.it.jyu.fi/ffdoc/fenfire/history/Milestones.gen.html)) and quite possibly patented by Ted Nelson as well (<http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/233#comment-1715>). And I'm only familiar with ZigZag because of my interest in Ted Nelson's work, otherwise, it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> Look more closely. The publishing date is April 1st.

[http://www.google.com/patents?id=26aJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=26aJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Clearly this isn't serious.

<comment><USER2> That's when the USPTO published it. The filing date was Sep 26, 2002. Maybe the USPTO doesn't consider themselves serious anymore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Solaris kernel (for example) has lots of data structures that have multiple linked lists. For example, the cpu structure has at least 6 linked list pointers.

For a reference published in 2001 (before the patent was filed): [http://books.google.com/books?id=r_cecYD4AKkC&lpg=PA413&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=r_cecYD4AKkC&lpg=PA413&ots=oCpgc5AzGU&dq=cpu_prev_onln&pg=PA413#v=onepage&q=cpu_prev_onln&f=false)

Also note that a doubly linked list is described by claim one.

<comment><USER16> The cpu structure is on several _different_ lists. That's not exactly the same as being on _one_ list with multiple links.

<comment><USER17> _The cpu structure is on several different lists. That's not exactly the same as being on one list with multiple links._

Sure it is: one list with multiple links is the exact same thing as multiple _different_ lists that coincidentally contain the same items.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really strange. At the career fair at my school, the USPTO was there recruiting engineers and CS students. Assuming one single person with even a modicum of programming knowledge looked at this application, I can't see any way that this was issued, let alone after 4 years of sitting in purgatory(?). If this was sold to Lodsys could they sue any company that used a doubly linked list without licensing it? How would they even find out about what data structures you used in your code?

</comment><comment><USER19> Not just someone, www.lsi.com or @lsicorporation on twitter did

</comment><comment><USER20> That actually sounds more like a skip list than a linked list.

</comment><comment><USER21> My head aches and my mind boggles. I don't know what the heck the patent text actually describes but I see vague visions of linked lists, skip lists, and graphs. I can't imagine what it would say to an USPTO officer or a judge.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised that this patent was granted.

<comment><USER23> What exactly does a patent office do to determine if something is actually original or not? Like did some clerk look at this and say "Yeah, I'm no computer scientist, but this sounds original to me"?

<comment><USER24> My understanding is that the patent office checks if the patent is substantially similar to previous patents. A non-novel idea can easily get through if it is phrased in a different way or never appeared in an earlier patent.

I do not feel this is a problem. A patent just provides a legal presumption that you are allowed to file a lawsuit. Some people argue that this enables patent trolls, but patent trolls exist because con artists will always try to ride on the coattails of success. My view is that low standards for patentability provides protection against patent trolls: a company can patent early and often in the years before they hit it big and start attracting con men. Easy patentability also deepens the pool of well-documented prior art, providing more clubs with which to beat up patent trolls.

<comment><USER25> Defending against a patent lawsuit, regardless of how absurd or invalid the patent is, can often cost millions of dollars:

[http://www.inventionstatistics.com/Patent_Litigation_Costs.h...](http://www.inventionstatistics.com/Patent_Litigation_Costs.html)

Filing patents isn't exactly free either, in terms of time or money.

Also, how exactly do you "beat up" patent trolls? They threaten to sue you, and you . . . threaten to spend millions of dollars on court fees to have their patent invalidated? That doesn't work so well unless you have millions of dollars you don't happen to need.

Are you really suggesting that all those small-time devs sued by lodsys over BS patents would have some recourse if only they'd filed a bunch of patents themselves? Or if only their predecessors had somehow flooded the patent office with enough BS patents that the lodsys ones got thrown out as prior art?

The whole "patent everything, let the courts sort it out" philosophy sounds nice in theory, but the whole problem is that it's freakishly expensive to sort those issues out in court, so patent lawsuits end up as shakedowns: you either pay up in licensing, or you pay up in laywer fees. Either way you're paying _someone_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Epic troll too subtly epic?

</comment><comment><USER27> it would be funny if this wasn't this sad..

</comment><comment><USER28> Patent _application_

<comment><USER29> that was issued. <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=Szh4AAAAEBAJ></comment></comment>