"The books will stop working." - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rdonoghue/status/1144011630197522432 <comment><USER4> Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance.

Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never stop working.... just ignore the damage from fire, water, rips, loss, bed bugs... maybe they do actually stop working for other reasons now that I think about it :-)

<comment><USER5> It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_libraries) The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

<comment><USER6> The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.

<comment><USER7> Wow ... that's .. is that irony? I don't even know.

<comment><USER8> It's straight up dystopian that's what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. Amazon, before they introduced the Kindle, used Adobe DRM for ebooks. I lost a book I'd bought through them when they switched to Kindle.

The thing that really gets me is I had to _register_ my book to buy it, with my _email address_. They _had_ my address, and couldn't even be bothered to send me an alert, telling me that the DRM servers were being decommissioned, so if I wanted to license any new computers to use the book I should do so then.

I've not been able to replace that book either, so it's not like the refund they finally begrudgingly gave me could be put towards a replacement - <USER2> book has never been republished in any form that I have been able to find (Vinge's annotated version of his book _A Fire Upon the Deep_ ).

<comment><USER10> You have my sympathy. I have been searching for the annotated version for years now. Any readable versions seem to have disappeared.

This is a good reminder for me to make backups of the ebooks I do have.

<comment><USER11> Is this the version you have been searching for? It is "A Fire Upon the Deep" and it looks annotated.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/260sH2V.png](https://i.imgur.com/260sH2V.png)

<comment><USER9> That might be it. The annotations look like the kind of thing I remember.

<comment><USER11> I got it from a private tracker but it looks like you can find it on libgen fiction too [0]. The 1.7Mb epub one is the one I got.

[0] [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/fiction/?q=A+Fire+Upon+the+Deep](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/fiction/?q=A+Fire+Upon+the+Deep)

<comment><USER12> >O site a que pretende aceder encontra-se bloqueado na sequência do cumprimento de ordem judicial ou administrativa.

(The website you want to reach is blocked due to the execution of a judicial or administrative order).

Ah the World Wide Web, less world-wide every day. I guess now if you don't use a VPN you're a second class netizen in many places.

<comment><USER13> No need for a VPN yet, thankfully it's just a DNS block.

<comment><USER12> I didn't even consider that, I'll just switch my DNS then, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My grandmother is in her late 90s, has dementia, and is in a care home. My mother sent me this update last week:

> Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in > "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928, > how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them > to her

Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-year- old-content that way?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Very_Young](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Very_Young) [1] It was first published in 1924

<comment><USER15> I've been hoping this nostalgia trend will end. It's time to move forward. Instead of teaching kids about Shakespeare, we should be teaching about Super Mario for cultural history. Why should anyone care about poems or poetry? It was the entertainment of the early-print society, it has comparably little value today.

<comment><USER16> Because our collective western culture is still the direct product of Greek philosophy no matter how many mario kart games are released.

The books in the western canon are important because they are good and went on to influence everything you consume today, even the narrative in super mario. Take some time to read a good chunk of these books and you will be wiser than most people you know on all sorts of topics.

<comment><USER15> My view is quite different. They're just stories that anyone could have told and don't contain any unobtainable wisdom. The people that told those stories simply existed before us. In many ways the stories are inferior to their modern counterparts.

<comment><USER17> The argument here is not about quality. It is about relevance. Specifically, these old works have largely determined our current culture. If you want to understand the current culture, it pays to have some knowledge of what it was based on.

<comment><USER15> I know it's about relevance. I'm making the unpopular argument that these ancient works aren't really all that relevant, and definitely aren't profound. Simply because something is old and was the first to do something, doesn't make it important.

We have our own culture now, we spend far too much time worrying about what the dead did with their limited free time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is why DRM isn't just anti-consumer, it's also morally evil using the same logic that says libraries are a good thing.

This is also why I buy games on gog.com instead of steam if they both have them.

<comment><USER19> Have you found a solution to piracy that doesn't involve DRM? What was its success rate? I'm sure the publishers would love to switch to a better system if it exists.

<comment><USER20> Apple, Inc. did - they sell all of their music without DRM for the last, like, 10 years. Meanwhile the music industry is alive and well.

The key is convenience. When it's convenient to buy, people buy.

<comment><USER19> Oh? I thought Apple Music was encumbered with DRM in their M4P format. I'm not super familiar with their service though. Maybe I'm wrong..

Edit: Looks like the M4P format was mainly on older songs pre2009. Though I see forum threads with people saying that they have to re-pay Apple w/ itunes match to get the drm-free version.

<comment><USER20> [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201616)

No DRM for iTunes Store where you can _buy_ music.

Apple Music a streaming service, and that is DRMed (I believe).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every piece of DRM'd content will end up like this. Every book, movie, show, album, and game will be dead in a few decades (or sooner) if it relies on some company maintaining it's servers.

It's good that there's alternatives, but it seems like the alternatives are slowly diminishing.

<comment><USER22> Take this with a grain of salt, but Steam support says there are "measures in place" to ensure users have access to DRM'd games when steam dies [0]. (Not to mention that it's trivially easy to remove Steam DRM with existing tools)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/)

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately we'll have to see it to truly believe it. I don't doubt Valve would do that, but it's easy to say that now.

Luckily, we still have torrents to help backup old games.

<comment><USER24> right... like what if Valve actually even intends to do it, but it requires someone to throw a switch and the last guy that knows how to (or even just to) do that dies suddenly just before Valve suddenly goes bankrupt.

<comment><USER25> Not even that - what if they're bought out by another company who doesn't share their philosophy? (EA?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.

<comment><USER27> "and you will receive a full refund of the original purchase price."

Seems fair enough to me.

<comment><USER26> That's like saying the car factory is allowed to take an old timer from you if they refund its original price.

Can I use the money to buy the same book? Is my time lost searching for this replacement worth nothing? If I added annotations, do they end up in the new book? If you answer any of these questions with 'no', its not fair enough.

<comment><USER27> That analogy is loaded because classic cars appreciate. Ebooks don't. Toyota can feel to take back my 03 4Runner for the original purchase price.

<comment><USER28> Ebooks can appreciate.

You could have originally bought it on sell and that sell is no longer available.

You could have added value to the ebook by way of adding annotations.

The ebook could have had better display than its competitors, if it and all other equal quality displays vanished, they are now very rare. Someone would be willing to pay more than your original purchase price if they could now get that display experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A similar thing happened with Ultraviolet's movies service: [https://www.myuv.com/](https://www.myuv.com/)

There's also a great story regarding "right of first purchase" in the USA where Redbox literally purchases DVDs at retail so that they can rent them out to customers because Disney would not sell directly to them: [https://gizmodo.com/redboxs-crafty-workaround-for- stocking-d...](https://gizmodo.com/redboxs-crafty-workaround-for-stocking- disney-movies-ba-1820925295)

<comment> B-Con Yep. This is why I don't have a cloud-based digital library. UV offered a way to migrate to other providers, but will the next one? I don't know that they're legally allowed to. What if the other provider doesn't have the content, am I SOL?

I so badly wish I could buy a license to get a specific piece of content, get a copy to play on my own computer, then also have the ability to "upload" (aka, unlock) that content on a cloud streaming service of my choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There will be a time, I'm not sure when, that the whole "its a license!" nonsense will die a hard death. It would be unwise for any company to rely too heavily upon it. This is not a new tactic at all. It works only temporarily, but has been used in a multitude of different industries through history - <USER3> the end is always the same. Eventually some company will push it too far. They will rip the wrong people off, and there will be a court case. The court is a very sensible place, usually. They will ask "when the consumer gave you money, what did you provide to them?" And if the answer boils down to "nothing. We assumed no obligation to them, and they gained no rights to anything" then the court is going to see it for the fraud it is.

Personally I'd just like to see some 'false advertising' lawsuits. It should be illegal to say "Buy the book!" if you literally are not being offered a sale. If you're being offered a licensing opportunity, it should have to be marketed as such. Yes, this would confuse consumers. I want it to. I want them to actually ask what they're getting, since up to this point the entire marketplace is founded upon tricking people into thinking they are buying a copy (like they would in a store), but in reality they are only getting a license (which grants no rights, places no obligations on the licensor, and can be cancelled at any time for any or no reason... in other words, you're throwing money at a company and hoping they don't screw you too bad).

<comment><USER31> > If you're being offered a licensing opportunity, it should have to be > marketed as such. Yes, this would confuse consumers.

idk, spotify et al seem to be doing alright...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is why when I buy a DRM ebook, I also get the pirated copy and put it into my Calibre.

Buying a ebook is just for the payment.

<comment><USER19> You just signaled that you find value in the DRM'd product, even if that wasn't your intent. Why not reward creators who choose to distribute their works without DRM? I'm neither pro nor anti-DRM, but I find that people who love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you), never seem to be willing to take a hit when it comes to living without popular content that doesn't exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.

<comment><USER33> > I find that people who love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you), > never seem to be willing to take a hit when it comes to living without > popular content that doesn't exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.

I pay for DRM-free versions of anything if it's available -- even if it's more expensive (I've downloaded many hundreds of dollars of DRM-free audiobooks). I eben refuse to buy physical books from authors like JK Rowling (who tried to force book-owners to return copies of the Half-Blood Prince that were accidentally sold early).

Here in Australia you sometimes can't even buy the DRM-up-the-wazoo version. Game of Thrones wasn't available through any legal channels for years. And that's ignoring the Australia Tax we get for not being from the US or Europe (the shipping costs of bytes is very high it seems).

Then again, I also don't watch too many films or shows these days. Mainly because I can't get many DRM-free versions.

<comment><USER34> Game of thrones was such a good example of how out of date DRM can get.

It was quite literally getting released months after it's release in the US in the early seasons, and only on pay TV.

With the way everyone is connected online, it was ludicrous to think people were going to wait months to watch each episode and not get it spoiled for them and/or not be able to discuss it on worldwide forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair that his hard work is being used globally for free.

So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

<comment><USER35> The lack of empathy in the responses is staggering to me. It's as if the idea that a content creator should be financially rewarded for his or her hard work is some sort of moral crime. Yes, DRM sucks, but what other way can content providers ensure that they get rewarded for the hard work and good content that they provide?

<comment><USER19> It is rather bizarre to see some people feel entitled to content which isn't distributed as per their own personal wishes. A principled person would chose to take his/her business elsewhere and purchase a book on a platform whose ethics they agree with.

Not saying I'm some Mother Teresa type.. but I'm against online ads, and I don't run an ad-blocker. I simply don't visit sites which feature blaring in- your-face ads. I filter Google results to exclude domains which I will never visit because of their ad policy.

<comment><USER36> > _It is rather bizarre to see some people feel entitled to content which isn > 't distributed as per their own personal wishes. A principled person would > chose to take his/her business elsewhere and purchase a book on a platform > whose ethics they agree with._

Couple counter-points:

1) It's reasonable that I'm expected to compensate the creator for the content. It's not reasonable for the publisher to dictate _how_ I get to consume that content, especially not by forcing me to use particular format, software or hardware. DRM is enforcing the latter, not the former.

2) Having personal wishes wrt. content distribution is part of the market game. There is huge demand for bullshit-free content distribution, which is evidenced by the success of Steam and Netflix (especially relative to Torrents!), who cut out most of the crap and left the "you're now renting the content, not buying it".

3) Most content is non-substitutable. You can't just "take your business elsewhere", because there's nowhere else to take the business to! If Disney decides that the newest Star Wars is DRMed, there's shit all I can do - it's going to be DRMed everywhere, I can only choose from providers that enforce that DRM, and I can't exactly go and watch some cat videos on PeerTube instead - I wanted Star Wars, not smelly cats. This applies to books, movies, TV shows, video games, and to a large extent, to music.

<comment><USER19> 1) If I'm selling lemonade and my terms and conditions are that you have to jump 10 times before paying me, and I only accept payment in rocks with 10% ferrous oxide, you are free to laugh and ignore me. Please also remember that we're talking about games, movies, music... not exactly life-critical products.

2) I agree. I avoid DRM and other BS as much as possible. I went out and purchased affinity photo when photoshop went to a subscription model. I'm going to cling on to my CS6 for as many years as I can. Yes, I'm going to lose out eventually when plugins stop working or when I buy a new camera whose RAW files cannot be opened by CS6, but thems the breaks.

3) Yes, that sucks! I don't know what else to say. You can either be principled and avoid DRM, or be a realist and accept DRM in as few places as possible. I'm objecting to the "I'm entitled to pirate it because they didn't sell it or stream it without DRM" mindset.

<comment><USER36> 1) Sure, but while you can set conditions on my purchasing lemonade from you, you're not entitled to tell me what I can do with the lemonade after I buy it and walk away from the stand. Unfortunately, DRM does exactly that - it limits the ways I can consume products after I already paid all relevant parties for it.

3) I can be principled realist and accept DRM whenever it's convenient, and find ways to break it or alternate sources whenever I prefer it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Because of the volatile nature of all things web, I frequently screenshot (yes, screenshot, because printing to PDFs makes them look awful, imo) Twitter conversations, print blog posts to PDF or download articles that I want to make sure that I don't loose.

It's so sad that this is necessary.

<comment><USER37> I have a collection of over 1000 faved tweets that's one of my favorite possessions. I noticed that one would occasionally get deleted by the author so I wrote a script to screenshot them all with a Python package called Splinter.

<comment><USER38> Would you mind publishing it? I'm in the same situation

<comment><USER37> Sure, here you go: [https://pastebin.com/iXzscHW6](https://pastebin.com/iXzscHW6)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can still hear my professor of Classics say that "with the introduction of the printing press the loss of books ceased". With all that electronic junk that no one knows how to archive properly that statement needs to be revisited.

<comment><USER40> > I can still hear my professor of Classics say that "with the introduction of > the printing press the loss of books ceased".

...what? Loss of books has pretty much nothing to do with the technology used to produce them. If you stop producing them and lose the existing ones, they're gone.

You can lose printing plates just as easily as you can lose a printed book. Actually, losing the plates is _much easier_ \-- the point of movable type is that you can cannibalize old plates to print new works.

Think about the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia) \-- not printed for budgetary reasons, but produced several hundred years after the introduction of the printing press. Almost all of it is gone.

<comment><USER41> The loss of books and other written works was almost total prior to the printing press. A small number of durable tablets and some funeral documents were preserved simply by lasting a long time. Others, like many religious documents, were preserved in some form or another by expensive, tedious, completely manual copying. Some information (both fiction and nonfiction) was only ever verbally communicated, as it wasn't deemed worth the expense and difficulty of putting it onto paper.

Your link says "A manuscript copy was commissioned by Jiajing Emperor in 1562 and completed in 1567.[8] The original copy was lost afterwards. " That doesn't often happen when you can produce 10,000 copies.

It's not about the loss of the printing plates. It's about the extraordinary difficulty of preserving a document of which a single copy exists, and the much higher probability that one of thousands will survive.

<comment><USER40> > The loss of books and other written works was almost total prior to the > printing press. A small number of durable tablets

Mesopotamian clay tablets are incredibly robust. We have many times more than we have the manpower to translate, not to speak of the ones still buried in more or less unknown locations.

Funnily enough, they survived much better in cities that were destroyed -- and burned, firing the tablets -- than in cities that weren't, where the tablets might eventually fall below the water table and dissolve.

But anyway, we don't have "a small number" of durable tablets; we have an extremely large number, including some entire royal libraries.

> Your link says "A manuscript copy was commissioned by Jiajing Emperor in > 1562 and completed in 1567.[8] The original copy was lost afterwards. " That > doesn't often happen when you can produce 10,000 copies.

This is not the case; China had extensive markets in printed popular works for centuries beforehand. Most of that work doesn't survive because of lack of interest. The fate of almost all printed material is total disappearance, because we can only maintain so much material, and printed material is a subset of all material.

From the introduction to _Record of the Listener_ ( [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666841/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666841/) ):

> At the time of Hong Mai's death in 1202, the _Record_ [夷坚志] had grown to a > massive collection of 420 chapters, totaling over four thousand entries. > Although it was not clear whether any complete editions were ever published > by any Song publisher, we do know that multiple editions of varying sizes > and qualities were made available by commercial publishing houses in > different parts of the country. Much of the _Record_ was nonetheless lost as > early as the Yuan Dynasty [less than 100 years later], an indication of the > traumatic effects of the Song-Yuan transition. The current 207-chapter > editions are based on post-Song redactions and later manuscripts by > traditional and modern scholars.

Note that this is a famous work considered relevant today. Contrast the countless printed popular works that nobody thought were worth preserving in the first place.

The ability to make copies is not relevant in the slightest. The number of copies made is relevant, but only weakly. Information is preserved when people devote effort to preserving it, and lost otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have a Kindle for a few years now, and I love it... but the weird thing it's that most of the books I have read on the platform, haven't been acquired through Amazon. All of this it's thanks to me being afraid of this kind of practices, plus the weird pricing doesn't help (like some hard covers being cheaper than digital books).

I kinda like the humble bundle approach to this, where I can buy bulks of books DRM free in my PC, that are easy to use thanks to software like Calibre. I hope soon the e-book industry have an equivalent to gog in games, or bandcamp to music.

Yeah the subscription model it's cool, comfy and all, but what happen when the company behind decides to shutdown the product because didn't reach the desired metrics? I mean I can see Google having their own Stadia for books, and a few years go by and then they GoogleReaderIt/PlusIt, and that's it, my library of started books with their literally bookmarks and notes are gone.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've always considered the internet (in its current form) to be histories biggest book burning event. Hoarding rss feeds I often reached a point around 35 000 subs where the number of new ones I find is roughly equal to the deleted websites. I'm sort of stuck in a mental loop thinking of book burning.

<comment><USER14> > histories biggest book burning event

If you've not been to Bebelplatz in Berlin to see Micha Ullman's sunken library installation[0], do try and get there.

It's one of the most upsetting art installations I've ever seen, but it absolutely should be on everyone's list.

[0] [https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial- bebelpla...](https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial-bebelplatz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm more disturbed by the fact that they can also edit or remove books that I've already purchased. How long until Amazon is forced to "deplatform" something offensive? Those old books contain a lot of words and ideas that have no place in 2019.

It's one of several reasons why I mostly only buy paper books.

</comment><comment><USER45> Much of this discourse would make more sense if we use the term ebook, instead of book. When we say book, it conjures the notion of atoms. When we use the term ebook, we understand there's a technical dependency. Surely nobody expects any technical service to run forever funded by a once off payment.

The much bigger problem with DRM content is that I cannot give them to my children. My kids can browse my many bookcases, and might be curious to read one of hundreds of book they may not choose to buy. That cannot happen with DRM ebooks.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm astonished that Microsoft is apparently just refunding the original purchase price of (everybody's?) books.

What's most mind boggling is the realization that apparently nobody sat down and planned this situation out - because if they did, the idea that someone could get an okay from their boss on the idea that even a mildly unsuccessful result and end of life of the product would end in full refunds for everybody.

What's the point of even doing business?

Am I misunderstanding this outcome? That means anyone who used this product got free book rentals for whatever they wanted to read?

...

Let's talk about DRM now.

DRM in itself as a concept is not bad (IMO), and it's probably necessary for a lot of products that obviously would not have been created had 100% of the customers decided not to pay.

However, I think what we fail to talk about is how there's no agreed upon standard regulating the end of life and transferral procedures involved with works sold under DRM.

I suspect that book publishers would not agree to allow Microsoft to say "the store is closed, your books can be unlocked once you follow this procedure." Even if they're okay with that, Microsoft probably didn't even have the foresight to implement that sort of thing on a technical level.

So, what we need in the digital goods industry is some kind of statement to the customer that's set in stone regarding what will happen with your content if the business ceases to exist and the platform is canceled.

There's some semblance of this concept around. For example, Ultraviolet is shutting down in July - so, you have the option to transfer movies to other services for most movies on that platform (it should be _all_ movies).

MoviesAnywhere is also a DRM service making an attempt at avoiding platform lock-in for digitally purchased movies.

But beyond that, there needs to be some sort of guarantee that you'll get perpetual access or a refund. The fact that Microsoft is dishing out refunds since that's cheaper than getting sued by every customer they've ever sold a book to is not a given - imagine if Valve were to go bankrupt and simply shut down their servers one day. That's where DRM should have a sort of mandatory living will.

<comment><USER47> DRM caused this problem, and if you want to convince me that the solution is more advanced DRM that somehow fails open when the company that built it goes out of business, you'll need a stronger argument than "it's probably necessary for a lot of products that obviously would not have been created had 100% of the customers decided not to pay."

Abolishing copyright wouldn't eliminate all creative works. It would eliminate a lot of the funding, but there would still be plenty of people willing to create things for free and other creators working on a patronage or cross- subsidisation model. It's not obvious to me that the world would be a worse place under these conditions. I'm prepared to give up the certainty of the next Marvel movie being produced if it means giving everyone free access to all the other creative works that have already been published.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> GNU's The Right to Read sounded utterly and totally laughable to me in circa 2000 when I first read it. A fanciable dystopia. It has come too close to reality in more recent years since.

<comment><USER33> Despite having some fairly questionable social views, Stallman has been living 40 years in the future for the past 40 years. Every time I read him, I'm saddened that nobody listened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> All ebook sold in Poland are without DRM, You just pay and download epub+mobi+pdf versions and thats all. It's the only one working system...

</comment><comment><USER50> RMS has been warning this for a long time [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> If you look up the word "browse" in a dictionary, you will see that it now has an entry relating to computer networks.

When we browse items in a library, we can see context, we can see neighbouring items. Even some of the library database software today allows you to do this on the computer, simulating the physical experience.

Maybe some of you can remember searching an item then going to retrieve it from the stacks and ending up just browsing the neighbouring items and discoevring even better items. I often discovered the best items through just browsing in a section, in the stacks.

This is one element that is missing from today's web. It is probably one reason why a search engine can become the most popular site on the web. The search engine controls the user's view of the web. The user cannot see the "stacks". Nor can she browse them as she would in a library to discover what is there.

Libraries impose an order that is missing from the web. Something like a Dewey Decimal classification system where a number reveals something about what is found in that location. IP addresses reveal almost nothing to us about the item(s) that may be found there; and whatever they reveal is not intentional. These numbers are in turn "hidden" behind potentially ambiguous names that sidestep the trademark system, another proven classification system, that serves to eliminate ambiguity and deception of consumers.

In the past I have seen some sites that listed the entire IP address space in numerical order where it was possible to browse at least some minimal information on each network number. These always seem to go offline eventually, as if they are breaking some rule.

Imagine going into a library where you were not allowed to visit the stacks or see neighbouring items, where the ordering of the items was a secret and all you could do is perform "keyword" searches. Imagine the results would not be ordered alphabetically, chronologically, or even by a known method of determining relevance (that too is secret). Imagine you could not sort the results or get a quick copy of all of them for reference. Imagine the library set the order of the results according to some "secret" methodology and preferred that you only view the first 5-10 items.

</comment><comment><USER52> That's why you should never buy DRM-ed anything if you intend to keep it long term. Companies change, businesses get bought & sold, collapse, disappear - thinking that your particular DRM scheme would be supported for 20 years is insane. For a movie that you'll forget in the next 2 days it's ok, for a book that you intend on re-reading years late - no reason to "buy" DRM-ed version of anything. Or, at least, if you have no other options, strip DRM from it immediately and export into a common format.

</comment><comment><USER53> I forget which store it was, but back in the day when I bought e-books to read on my PDAs they came encrypted, with the credit card number I used to buy them being the decryption key, so I was completely independent of the store to read them and could share them with anyone I trusted with my card number. It seems like a quaint solution to modern sensibilities but thoroughly satisfying on a moral level.

These days I buy the digital version on Amazon but don't download it. I pirate the copy I'm actually going to read and archive.

<comment><USER54> Some (few) stores offer DRM-free PDF versions, usually with a personalized watermark.

I feel like that's a good compromise, I get a DRM-free PDF and I can only share it with people I trust not to put it online. And the watermark is a non- issue because it doesn't bother/impact me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's why I only buy games from Gog now. I just install the .exe and it works. I no longer tolerate DRM.

<comment><USER56> But you tolerate Windows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> People need to be made aware that "purchasing" something with DRM means that you aren't purchasing the item, you're only purchasing a revokable license to access the item though software controlled by the vendor.

In a way, it's good that we're actually seeing the predicted issues with DRM (losing books, etc.). Hopefully it will help raise awareness.

<comment><USER58> In the case of Kindle, you're usually paying more for the revokable license than you'd pay by moving your mouse 2 centimeters to the right and selecting a physical copy instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The books still work if you drink a verification can. Just make sure nobody else is in the room and trips the antipiracy measures.

</comment><comment><USER60> All my ebooks get their DRM removed instantly and I back up my kindle every now and then. This shit is not ever happening to me.

<comment><USER61> How do you strip Kindle DRM? asking for a friend.

<comment><USER62> Search for DeDRM plugin for calibre. There's several ways to do it. If you have a physical kindle, you can download the books from your amazon account, and plug the serial number of your kindle into DeDRM. If you have the Kindle for PC or Mac app, DeDRM can pick up the relevent keys. I recommend getting the books in the AWZ3 format rather than KFX.

<comment><USER63> I couldn't make the desktop application ripping mechanic work. Apparently you need to download an ancient version which still uses AWZ3 since KFX wasn't support. I got lucky since I had an old gen one kindle on my account so I was able to download the files from my account portal but I think I would've been out of luck otherwise.

<comment><USER60> Ah yes,I have kindle keyboard (it won't die!) so maybe one will have problems with the newer versions? After installing Calibre plugins, simply double clicking to download books to my local library automatically strips the DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Another case of "Stallman was right": [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right- to-read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

<comment><USER65> What's RMS up to these days? Haven't heard from him for a while...

<comment><USER66> He seems to travel a lot giving speeches about Free Software. If you get the FSF bulletin, you get updates each quarter, e.g. [https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2018/fall/on-the-road-with- rms](https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2018/fall/on-the-road-with-rms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> How many times does this need to happen, for people stop paying for DRMed junk? Buy digital goods DRM-free only. Vote with your wallet, otherwise it's pointless to complain.

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't suppose anyone ever cracked the DRM on Microsoft books such that the De-DRM utilities for Calibre would work to scrub them before they're rendered inaccessible?

</comment><comment><USER69> Back in 2005, my undergrad school gave students access to the then newly legit Napster. Everything was DRM-d WMA files, but there was a third party tool that stripped it out and let you play it on any device that played WMAs natively.

I'm reminded of that occasionally when I see files with "noDRM-$Artist-$Title" pop up in the File Manager. Does Napster even exist anymore?

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm so shocked about this, my Iphone almost slipped out of my hands while I googled the Microsoft ebook store, but then I asked Alexa and she said everything will be ok. My Tesla is now driving me to an analogue bookshop to show my full support against dependence on digital platforms over my daily life, I might even upload a protest video to Youtube.

<comment><USER26> Tesla's software in the car is probably phoning home on a regular base. What happens if they pull the plug on those servers? You didn't buy that softare, you're only licensing it, after all.

<comment><USER33> That was the joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> > Remember: Free with DRM is not the same thing as free.

I agree with him the whole way that this is weird, but this particular tweet made no sense to me.

It seems akin to "Hey, we'll allow you to rent something for some duration for free", and it sounds like he's saying that that situation is _also not free_.

<comment><USER72> I understand it as two slightly different meanings for the word 'free'.

In French we have separate words for (a) 'free' as something we don't pay for (gratuit) and (b) 'free' as your have the freedom to use it as you wish (libre).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This book DRM thing also means that the online courses at my local college are more expensive than the normal ones. Because they use copy protected materials that self destruct at the end of the semester, there is no way to avoid paying full price by borrowing, buying used, reselling or stealing.

</comment><comment><USER74> while i understand the general sentiment, this type of outcry and little quip is kind of silly, because it's too late. everyone knew what they were signing up for, and people still know what they're signing up for with kindle, itunes, netflix, and every other "you're just buying a temporary license" service. meanwhile, libraries in the u.s. are struggling despite being one of our greatest ongoing services. libraries are awesome, but they are having to redefine themselves (not necessarily a bad thing along some vectors) because people aren't using the books that are there. so in effect, the books already stopped working, but that doesn't make for good twitter hype.

and as far as killing off services go, giving full refunds is pretty rare and should be applauded.

</comment><comment><USER75> Apprentice Alf's DeDRM tool may come to the rescue. [1]

I don't condone piracy, but if you buy an ebook, you should be able to read, store and personally transport it freely.

[1] [https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/](https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER76> OUYA stopped working this week.

Games lost (hacks available to get around it do exist though, like you could hack the Microsoft books) even 100% free apps stopped working correctly.

For all OUYAs extreme self-righteous about open source they became the worst.

Perhaps a middle ground is needed

</comment><comment><USER77> I think that if something is DRMed like this the seller should be legally required to use the word rent instead of buy. And place the length of rental(licensing), which will require them to operate the server until that point.

</comment><comment><USER78> Anything with DRM is not sold, it is leased. My bugbear is that they still have "Buy Now!" buttons and such, which to my mind is fraud.

I wonder what the reaction would be if it said, "Lease Now!" instead?

</comment><comment><USER79> They could have offered non-DRM copies of the books to people who purchased them and then closed shop. Giving refunds seems to be much more expensive than the alternative?

</comment><comment><USER80> They will fully refund all purchases, seems reasonable to me.

<comment><USER81> Imagine if one day you went to find your well-thumbed, most loved book in your bookshelf, maybe to re-read your favorite chapter, and the physical book was missing, replaced by a note from the publisher: "this book no longer works, but worry not: we've refunded you!"

<comment><USER80> But this is not a physical book, so it is not a "unique" copy.

All of my e-books are entirely replaceable by buying them again from a different store (or as a physical book).

<comment><USER33> Deleting books is a form of virtual book-burning. Yes, you can always buy another copy of the book (assuming that it's still being "printed"). But, that isn't the point.

I do find it interesting that Amazon decided to name their book reader "Kindle", of all things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> When Amazon switched Canadian kindle customers to a Canadian site, all the magazines they had purchased, and not yet read "stopped working." No refund.

</comment><comment><USER83> "The books will stop working"? They were never "working" properly in the first place! There's a reason why DRM systems are said to be "defective by design"; DRM is inherently anti-consumer (in denying entirely lawful rights, such as format shifting and copying for the purpose of fair use under copyright law) and DRM-encumbered media of any sort should always be regarded as _fake_ media.

</comment><comment><USER84> What I do when I want a book or movie is I buy it somewhere, then pirate my preferred format.

</comment><comment><USER85> I have Twitter blocked. Is there another source?

</comment><comment><USER86> paper books are better and you can get them cheaper than ebooks most of the time

</comment><comment><USER87> DRM is censorship.

</comment><comment><USER88> In a way paper books "stop working" after 10 years or so when the paper turns yellow and dusty

<comment><USER89> "or so" is doing a heavy lifting in this sentence. 10 years is an absurdly short time for a book to last.

<comment><USER90> In fact, the majority of books you will find in most libraries are at the very least 10 years old.</comment></comment></comment>


Loud Music Doesn't Affect Hearing as Much as Previously Thought - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5643667/loud-music-doesnt-affect-hearing-as-much-as-previously-thought

<comment><USER2> There is a tendency in society to trumpet up ideas based on early evidence, especially when the conclusions sound logical, even if they aren't scientifically valid. For instance, another example isvsecond hand smoke. Much of the smoking perception comes from coroners saying smoking is the cause of death in smokers, even when it really wasn't... Eg: heart attack or old age in a smoker is called a smoking related death.</comment>


A DNS takeover could compromise Twitter passwords - <AUTHOR> http://masonlee.org/2009/12/18/twitter-com-passwords-compromised/

<comment><USER2> Without reading the article: this follows _directly_ from "Twitter is typically reached via HTTP and does not require users to type <https://>.</comment>


Send Noncompete Agreements Back to the Middle Ages - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-05/noncompete-agreements-are-bad-for-employees-and-the-economy <comment><USER2> I've had non competes at my last 3 jobs (all in web hosting)

The first, a darling "startup" adored by investors and customers alike sued me twice, sent a process server to my door at 6am on a saturday and tried to call me in for a deposition the afternoon of Christmas eve. They regularly win company culture awards and receive undeserved praise for being a place people can grow. I had a chance to grow from IC to VP and they did everything they could legally do to stop me.

The second, a publicly traded hosting company that has battled negative public perception for years had an EVP handle it wherein he basically said "sounds like you are leaving for a great opportunity. We wish you and your family well and you'll always be 'one of us.'"

The third company voluntarily and without my asking remover the non compete from my separation paperwork.

Non competes are a disaster and always will be. But how companies enforce them is the real culprit.

<comment><USER3> What does the process server say? They are so glamorized in TV shows, lime Suits where they deliver a Chinese takeaway!

<comment><USER2> He said "I'm sorry, I know this is disruptive" as my two small children cried behind me, unsure why someone had banged on the door so early in the morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank god the german law requires a NC clause to have a compensation directly mentioned in the contract that is not allowed to be less than 60% the person earned in the company in the last year she worked there. If the compensation is missing or too low, the NC is against the law. In other words: if a company wants me to not compete, they need to pay me for the time the NC is active. Its also limited to a maximum of 1 year.

<comment><USER5> 60%? Forget that. Why should anyone give up their right to work for a little over half of their market value?

There is no excuse for allowing less than 100% compensation, and that should include not just salary, but projected bonuses.

<comment><USER6> It's not like the specific job is the only thing you can do - there are other jobs that don't break the NC. 100% is too high, and 50% is too low. But the amount should be negotiable for each person.

<comment><USER5> You are most valuable in a position that leverages your existing skills and expertise. Those positions are the most likely to be covered by NCAs.

Not only is 100% _not_ too much, but it's the _minimum_ that should be required. The cost of requiring a NCA should be high; that ensures they are only used when they are _really_ worth it to the employer.

<comment><USER7> > You are most valuable in a position that leverages your existing skills and > expertise.

Exactly. So per the non-compete, you'd have to take a position where you are only 40% as valuable as you could be—and the 60% noncompete makes up the difference.

<comment><USER8> What about the opportunity loss that results from taking a less relevant job with worse career prospects?

<comment><USER9> That sounds like a bad idea, but you could also take it as an opportunity to develop in a new direction and build some experience there.

It's probably a bad deal for people who are extremely specialised and want to stay that way, but it'd be a pretty good deal for people like me, who love an excuse to learn something new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Non-competes under U.S. law are neither all good nor all bad. They have their legitimate uses but these are the narrow cases and not the norm.

For example, you sell a business to someone who pays you a big premium for your goodwill value usually tied to the value of the customer base. It is entirely fair that, having taken the money in exchange for the sale of your goodwill interest, you not be able to turn around the day after the close and effectively steal it back from your buyer by setting up a competing business and conducting raids to get back your old customers. A reasonable restriction on your ability to compete in that case makes eminent sense and is not in any way unfair.

So too if you exit a professional practice and get bought out. Same principle. You get paid for the goodwill value and you should not be able to capitalize on the payment and simultaneously raid the goodwill of your former practice by competing against it. Fair and reasonable even though it restricts you in your livelihood.

Thus, even states like California, which basically ban the use of non-competes in an employment context, will fully enforce them in the situations noted above.

On the bad side, non-competes tend to operate unfairly and to burden ex- employees by preventing them from engaging in their normal livelihood even when they have been paid nothing for the privilege. Many jurisdictions do enforce them in that context and the only way to challenge them is to argue that they are unreasonably broad, which (if fought out) takes a tidy six- figure sum to prove in court.

So, yeah, all jurisdictions _should_ adopt the California rule that largely bans non-competes in an employment context. But I don't see this happening anytime soon.

In the meantime, as an employee, you should try to avoid these if you can, negotiate to be paid for any non-compete if you have the leverage, or, if you have no choice, live with them as best you can until the law comes to a better place. As long as the law enforces them, you are sometimes just stuck.

<comment><USER11> There are many incentives available to prevent the seller of a company (and the employees) to not run out and start a competitor. You can give them shares that vest over time. You can offer them employment in the new company. You can make various offers contingent on the performance of the sold company.

<comment><USER12> Given that these NCs are generally negotiated as part of the sale of the company I don't really see a problem. If what you're being offered isn't worth agreeing not to compete then keep negotiating or walk away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> munk-a One of the most insidious portions of non-competes IMO is that they are often non-enforceable. Depending on how wide or restricted the target of the non- compete is it can be ruled invalid. A lot of the more questioning people have probably discovered this but consider that there are probably janitors laid off by amazon who read their non-competes as the word of law and end up suffering hardships because of it.

Also, as an aside, a non-compete is not required to prevent corporate espionage, it's just easier to prove violation of. A lot of the sales teams worried about losing leads when team members departed could have pursued them with law suits focusing on the theft of corporate resources, it's regrettable non-competes have even gotten this far.

<comment><USER13> From the perspective of any normal employee, "non-enforceable" doesn't matter. That I can eventually win in court doesn't matter if I can't afford the time, money, and stress to get that ruling.

Exactly the goal, I'm sure, of the people writing up these agreements.

<comment><USER14> From the perspective of the normal employee they should understand they pretty much won't be enforced. The threat will be made. And then no follow up.

<comment><USER13> Maybe. Or maybe they're willing to go to court, make you get a lawyer, drag you through discovery, depose you, set a court date to force you to prep for trial, and then offer to settle at the last minute.

For a large company, that's a small amount of money and a modest amount of time. For the normal employee, it's a lot of unexpected expense, a great deal of stress for months, and the risk of owing a shit-ton of money at the end of it.

If you really think there's no risk to ignoring non-competes, presumably you should be willing to guarantee the legal expenses for someone who wants to try. But my guess is that you won't offer.

<comment><USER15> Sure. But it a company wants to sue you just for the hell of it, then whether or not you signed a non-compete is irrelevant. Maybe you negotiated this out of your contract, but they decide to sue you anyway.

The better solution to all of this is not to "ignore" the non compete risk, it is instead be to simply lie to your former employer.

What are they going to do? Hire a private investigator to track down all ex employees, to see if they have another job? Probably not.

It is pretty easy to get away with this stuff if an employee really feels like it.

<comment><USER13> The notion is not that you get sued for the hell of it. It's that you get sued for commercial advantage. You get sued to make an example of somebody, so that all the employees know they'll ruin somebody if they find out they're working for a competitor.

That somebody has decent odds of getting away with something is only relevant if the punishment not terrible. But a 95% chance of not getting sued is not great if when you are sued it's $100k in expenses and two years of incredible stress.

Will some people do it anyhow? Sure. But most people won't, and that's what bullshit noncompetes are after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Q: I'm willing to pay you $100,000 to sign a non-compete to work on the project with my company. If I don't pay, the non-compete isn't valid. Okay?

A: No.

Q: $500,000?

A: No.

Q: $1m?

A: No.

Q: $10m?

A: Yes.

The point being... the problem is _NOT_ non-competes. The problem is the exchange of value. They serve a useful purpose in support of business risk- taking and investment.

Make them fair, not unenforceable.

<comment><USER17> Terms become unenforceable when it's recognized by the courts that one party has so much negotiating power that true negotiations are impossible. A software engineer in the middle of SV might be able to demand $100k to sign a noncompete, but who else?

<comment><USER18> A candidate demanding another $100k on top of a fair offer, whether to sign a non-compete or for any other reason, is not going to get the offer.

There's a myth that SV engineers can demand whatever they want and get it. No, they can't. If I get an offer for $200k, and that's actually my market value, and I demand another $100k for any reason whatsoever - I won't get them, period.

NCAs aren't legal in California, but if they were, and some smartass decided to demand another $100k cash to sign them, I guarantee he'd just get a pass, and someone less smartass would get the job instead.

<comment><USER19> It's interesting that you use the pejorative "smartass" and imply the demand is unreasonable. This couldn't be a clearer example of the low social status engineers have.

<comment><USER18> I'm actually an engineer :-)

I used "smartass" because it's a move that superficially seems clever, but is actually completely futile when you look at the broad picture - as my comment shows.

I don't know if us engineers have "low social status", but we certainly don't have as much negotiating power as some of us may fancy, certainly not against a huge mega-corporation.

<comment><USER20> All other things being equal, businesses will hire the candidate that they can potentially abuse before the one that may righteously push back. So if you are one who _would_ negotiate the terms of a non-compete, you will not even get the opportunity until all those who will just blindly sign it have been given the chance to do so.

The smart-ass part is signaling that you're less-abusable before the decision is made on hiring you.

The devious move would be to play dumb in the domain of HR paperwork, and delay signing anything. Just say you need to review it in private and make a copy, pocket the paper, and never give it back, or even bring it up again. Or mark up the document to completely pull its teeth, sign that, and turn it in with a stack of other paperwork. HR will probably just file it and tick their checkbox for it, without even flagging it for review by legal.

<comment><USER21> How do you do this when the signature happens online rather than on paper?

<comment><USER17> Try sending them physical documents? Maybe they have a fax machine.

<comment><USER20> If they don't have a fax, they still have a mailing address. If you can print out the document, you can alter it before sending it back. But going outside the normal workflow invites human scrutiny, so anything you do there has to be above-board.

You could always add some words to your digital signature, like "this is not a contract", or "I refuse these terms", if that's the only way you could otherwise edit the document. If it's an automated system, it's likely that there is no human review until the documents are actually needed for some legal reason. By that time, you'll already have your money.

You could also try hacking the document system. The worst that could happen is that you don't get to work there. Second worst is that months or years into your new job, some HR person notices a discrepancy, and wants you to sign a fresh copy, or you're fired immediately. Try sending back a document that has _lorem ipsum_ generated text or Markov chain text with the appropriate paragraph lengths? They're probably counting on you just clicking the buttons, maybe typing out your full legal name, and automatically filling the checkboxes with green checkmarks. Putting all of it into an automated system is already a means of cutting corners on legal paperwork. You can easily outsmart the computer, if there's no human helping it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In 2016, there was a White House initiative to ban non-compete agreements. The comment thread there from my parent is still the most active comment thread I've participated in on HN. It may be worth reading for a re-hashing of all the various sides of the debate. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795119)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hah. I interviewed for a [growing in popularity and market share] top 20 cryptocoin. They had some curious choice of words in their "freelance" contract, notably that it would use German copyright law to transfer rights of all inventions I ever made.

I pointed out that a couple of the phrases in the contract, when combined, indicated they would have IP rights to EVERYTHING I did not just work they paid me for.

They moved on to another candidate.

<comment><USER24> > Hah. I interviewed for a [growing in popularity and market share] top 20 > cryptocoin. They had some curious choice of words in their "freelance" > contract, notably that it would use German copyright law to transfer rights > of all inventions I ever made.

IANAL but I _really_ doubt that would be legal under german IR/IP laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would love to see a spoof where a middle age serf is going to move to a new farm, but his current lord forces him to sign a contract which precludes the serf from using his wheat farming skills for the new lord who is the current lords political competition.

<comment><USER26> nice try but serves were attached to the land by nature.

<comment><USER25> Well, tying your labor force to the land should be no basis for a free economy!

Imagine, just shackling your primary economic labor force to an arbitrary plot of land and demanding taxes and work of them?! How ghastly.

Next thing you know, you'll be claiming right to their innovations in the advancement of farming technology. Ill have you know that I shall not be sharing MY designs for soil improvement through the addition of various rock powders and animal droppings for a greater yield in the annual barley production with this stingy, short-sighted lord. That's for sure.

And don't get me started on Johnson's idea about switching out the types of crops grown between plots. There is no way I am going to share ___THAT_ __idea with a lord who limits __ _MY_ __ability to migrate between estates!

<comment><USER26> Who cares, the lord will be gone at the next reversal of alliance.

<comment><USER25> If you haven't already watched it, I would expect you would like the spoof on "Vikings" called "Norsemen" on Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Odd that Right to Work laws don't ban non-competes. </sarcasm>

Edit: Added tags, just in case.

<comment><USER28> I don't see the connection. Right to Work laws say that workers can't be _forced_ to join a union. They don't say that workers can't _voluntarily_ join a union; so why should they say that workers can't voluntarily sign a non- compete?

<comment><USER27> Why should laws say employers can't voluntarily sign a union security agreement [0]?

There's no force involved in either case - workers can _choose_ not to work at a union shop, just like they can choose* not to work under a non-compete.

*Until it becomes impossible to find a place without a non-compete.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to- work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

<comment><USER28> _Why should laws say employers can 't voluntarily sign a union security agreement?_

Because (at least pre-Hobby-Lobby) laws have historically prioritized the rights of individuals over the rights of corporations. An employer which compels their employees to join a union is signing away the rights of those employees, while an employee who signs a non-compete is only signing away their _own_ rights.

<comment><USER27> The compulsion in both cases is _exactly_ the same - pay union dues/sign non- compete, or find a new job.

<comment><USER28> You can negotiate with an employer over the terms of the non-compete you sign.

If the employer has a mandatory unionization agreement, you can't negotiate with them to change the terms of that.

<comment><USER27> Sure you can - just invite the union to the negotiating table. Any contract can be changed if all parties agree. Or even simpler - ask for a pay raise in the exact amount of the union dues.

<comment><USER28> Asking for a pay raise to cover the union dues is a red herring -- unions do far more than merely collect dues from their members.

<comment><USER27> As do employers, so I fail to see your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While we are at it, let's also send anti-moonlighting clauses into the abyss and drastically scale back IP-assignment clauses too! One's employer should have no control over what you do on your own time using your own brain and equipment at home. All large companies I've worked for include such garbage and they are never open to negotiate them out. These clauses stifle innovation and actively deter entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER30> The UK approach is as ever very reasonable.

"To rely on a restrictive covenant in a contract of employment an employer needs to be able to show that it is designed to protect a legitimate business interest (e.g. goodwill or confidential information); and goes no further than is reasonably necessary to protect that interest."

Any more than that and it is unenforceable.

Enforcement is in Employment Tribunals not courts where the burden of proof is largely on the employer.

</comment><comment><USER31> Have a friend who makes crowns etc. for dentists. He took a job here in town working for two dentists. They hired some junior folk and had him train them and then fired him.

He tried to start his own business so they sued him with a noncompete. They claimed thousands of dentists as their territory and the judge became angry with them but in the end the noncompete crippled his ability to make a living for years.

<comment><USER31> On the flip side, I have another friend who was brought into a small town for a small branch of a medical-related practice. After awhile, he joined with the other guys in town and they started their own thing.

They actually did buy the business from the group who had brought them out, but it was a bit of a forced sale because there was no legal way for the group to stop them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If I work for an employer based outside of CA but work out of a CA-satellite office, am I still subject to any non-compete?

<comment> munk-a Also, if complying with the non-compete would introduce a hardship there is usually a way to just ignore it entirely.

So, let's say you're a database specialist picked up to tune someone's DB, part of the contract you sign (probably unwisely) states that you can't work tuning DBs for the next 6 months after signing. If, after two weeks at the job, layoffs happen and you're let go then it's likely that a judge would dismiss any enforcement of the non-compete.

But here's why this _is terrible_ either you need to secure a waiver of the non-compete from the company based on goodwill in advance (which the company has very little motivation of doing) or you could consult with a legal expert about the validity of the non-compete (for the cash monies) or you find a new job and hope no enforcement is attempted with the onus on you to defend your new employment if the company decides to pursue you (which they very rarely do)

So it's basically like pirating music in the 90s, there's a thousandth of a percent chance that some company is going to try to ruin your life over it, and if they try there's another thousandth of a percent chance they'll succeed. But if they do, it is _terrible_.

<comment><USER33> > there's a thousandth of a percent chance that some company is going to try > to ruin your life over it, and if they try there's another thousandth of a > percent chance they'll succeed. But if they do, it is _terrible_.

Perhaps you're exaggerating for effect, or perhaps you really don't understand the probabilities involved. But this is many orders of magnitude less likely than you getting killed by a meteor strike. E.g. something like [0] estimates a 10km meteor strike every 10 million years. That has (optimistically) a 50% survival rate for humans and you will live 50 more years, so 1 in 400,000 chance it gets you.

If you don't like the meteor calculation, you can look at the odds of, say, a murder in your area and both the judge and all the members of the jury are convinced you did it despite your alibi to the contrary. Maybe a million to one. Or, you know, something a thousand times more likely, like you get diagnosed with a rare untreatable form of cancer and have a year to live. Maybe 1000 to 1.

Either way, if that's what you think of your non-compete it's not worth worrying about.

[0] [http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.ht...](http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm)

<comment> munk-a I was indeed being hyperbolic but hey, I just learned about meteor strikes.

My intention was poorly portrayed but to try again, in all my years I've never known anyone who has been sued over a non-compete, a good chunk of those people have been software developers and most software developers sign non- competes these days, usually in overly broad topics (and I do know a bunch of people who have continued to work within the same relatively narrow industry).

Non-competes are nearly never enforced but their presence has a chilling effect, those of us aware of their unenforceablity and lack of attempts at enforcement generally waive off the consequences of signing them. People who are less familiar take them more seriously and they can have a real chilling effect, so their mere existence creates an imbalance in seeking future work.

<comment><USER34> I am aware of sufficient enforcements (admittedly second hand) to assume that at least certain firms are quite serious about pursuing them up to and including people basically looking to have a similar role at either another firm or independently.

But, yes, the chilling effect is much broader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These aren't the free markets the ultrarich are interested in.

Actually, America doesn't care much for free markets at all, which is why virtually all industries are monopolies or cartels.

</comment><comment><USER36> Non-competes, the most anti-innovation, anti-skilled worker, anti-free market, anti-business and anti-American thing in working today.

Non-competes are protectionism for larger businesses over small/medium businesses and try to own employees skills that they may have brought to the company or client themselves.

As a freelancer, contractor and self-employed business owner/worker, please make these illegal, tired of these.

The worst part about non-competes is they are blanket protectionism usually and up to 2+ years of non-compete, this sometimes happens on a job that is only 1-3 months. You have to laugh at those types of situations. Usually the client will push them aside or lower the time to the job plus some time, but both non-competes and arbitration agreements are horrible for workers in today's economy where people change jobs frequently and many are self- employed/freelancing/contracting. NDAs are plenty enough to protect companies from clients and work done specifically for the projects.

After SCOTUS upheld arbitration agreements [1] I am worried if non-competes become fully legal which they are not in extreme cases except in California [2]. We need to move the way of California and make them null and illegal, it hasn't stopped innovation in CA and may be a big reason why so much innovation goes on in Cali.

The non-compete should not exist. At the core, removing competition from skilled workers in our economy is bad all around, unless you are one of the current big fish.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court- up...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds- workplace-arbitration-contracts.html)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete- claus...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete-clauses.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> "In Great Britain, courts generally endorsed NCAs so long as they remained "reasonable" -- a quality that was very much in the eye of the beholder."

Legally speaking, reasonable refers to "The man on the Clapham omnibus" and is a standard test in many jurisdictions. It is NOT the same thing as the general use of the term in the English language. AT least in Great Britain and most Commonwealth countries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person)

</comment><comment><USER38> > They also determined that patenting rates -- a useful proxy for innovation > -- dropped after the change.

In a place where non-compete agreements are not allowed, patenting ideas is a neat way to prevent your employees leaving and then doing the exact same thing for a competitor.

Where non-competes are allowed, patenting things is far less important, since employees won't be able to jump ship with your ideas easily.

<comment><USER39> This really isn't true. Generally patents are used to prevent your competitors deliberately reverse engineering your innovation and selling it (which isn't _generally_ all that hard), and (by very large companies) to have something to negotiate with when you inevitably discover you're violating a patent you were unaware of, since at this point you dig for the patent your competitor is accidentally violating and come to an agreement to license them back to each other in exchange for not suing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Really the problem is the laws themselves are basically embezzling. The government is paying to make society worse for the benefit of wealthy actors. In no world does that make sense - it is corruption plain and simple.

Like other such laws the beneficiaries should be told to go fuck themselves as a matter of good management alone.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think you could sort of argue that non-compete agreements are a sort of price-control in favor of companies that write add them into their employment contracts. These companies are effectively trying to both lower the costs of their hiring, and make it cheaper for themselves to compete against their competitors.

</comment><comment><USER42> What surprised me most about a recent job offer I got from one of the big SV companies, was just how restrictive and limiting they were.

Sure, they didn't have a traditional non-compete as such, but they had layers of code of conducts and the like which basically made it a firing offense to do anything that wasn't effectively invisible. I turned them down for a number of reasons. But the general "your our slave, and you will suffer and regret doing anything outside of work" sure didn't help much. The idea that I might have to take down my github account, or fill out piles of paperwork to continue helping a non-profit I am involved in was just too much (combined with the fact that basically nothing was negotiable other than RSU's).

</comment><comment><USER43> NCs are a legacy management technique that needs to be replaced with continuous innovation, better work culture and a mentality to innovate or die!

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know what the state of NC in Canada is?

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel like the proliferation of non-compete agreements is counterproductive even from a practical standpoint. Sure, you get to prevent your employees from jumping ship to your competitors, but your competitors are doing the same thing. Better to be against them even for short-term gains, let alone long- term.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is ironic for Bloomberg as it has a clause in its contract banning "influencing current employees to work for competitors" for a period of 3 years after an employee leaves the firm.

Source: I am ex-Bloomberg employee.

</comment><comment><USER47> The idea this this is a silicon valley thing is funny to me since I didn't get asked to sign one until I came out here, and then when I refused the other party freaked out.

</comment><comment><USER48> There's a new tactic non-supervisory coworkers can use to escape their non- compete BEFORE leaving their job, at noncompetes.org.

</comment><comment><USER49> > But the history of these covenants suggests that there's a strong economic > case for banning them entirely

This is an example of starting to make a good point and carrying to an extreme that makes it unreasonable. Non-competes exist for a reason, and saying they need to be deleted is a silly argument. "This common business practice could use modification" generates less clicks, I suppose. <Insert rant about journalism>

<comment><USER50> What, to your mind, are good reasons for non-competes? To me it just looks like rent-seeking.

Do you see any negative consequences in states that have banned them almost entirely, such as California?

<comment><USER51> In some cases an employee might be able to build up a base of loyal customers more easily with a larger firm than they could alone, leave and take much of that business with them, and enjoy the continued productivity with much higher margins. The resources of the larger firm then become a stepping stone to the loss of their own business.

I know of one case (in which I am actually mostly sympathetic to the individual bound by the non-compete) in which that's actually exactly what happened.

<comment><USER52> If the customers prefer a new business, that suggests non-competes are damaging, just like the article says.

We can all see why the company wants the clause, but it's equally clear that it's in society's interest to not allow it.

<comment><USER51> There's an actual cost the company is trying to avoid though, and that actual cost will have to go somewhere eventually. Either it will actually result in companies having higher overhead to maintain their business, or the employees who used to have non-competes having to pay for some of the firm's business generation one way or another.

Reminder that the question was "what are good reasons...", which suggests that not everyone knows why the company wants them, unless you assume all companies are inherently evil which is not reasonable. They invest in their brand. Employees get the benefit of that to help establish their own brand. And then they can take that brand elsewhere to the detriment of the original investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> your-nanny non competes are incompatible with free Enterprise, and incompatible with social democracy. yeah send them back

<comment><USER53> A lot of people seem to think that "free enterprise" means that companies can do whatever they want and that that's somehow always good for employees. Same for "Right to Work".

<comment><USER54> So? Free enterprise is still a term of art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm not convinced NCs are always bad for workers. There are lots of junior SWEs out there who can't get jobs because no company wants to hire them and pay to train them just to watch them leave for more money once they become productive.

There was once a time when I would have happily signed an NC since the alternative was unemployment.

<comment><USER56> There was once a time when I would have happily become a slave, since the alternative was starvation.</comment></comment>


AT&T and Verizon both want to run massive ad-tracking networks to rival Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17410942/att-verizon-facebook-ad-tracking <comment><USER2> Not sure how they are planning to achieve that.

The only edge they _potentially_ have is access to location data without a possible opt-out. Everything else is behind HTTPS, so impossible for them to track. Facebook can pull it off because people stay within Facebook's services (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc). The carriers don't have any kind of compelling service users would spend all day in.

This will fail miserably, and I'm very happy about that.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, what do all their current trackers and such do, then?</comment>


Resolution of the human eye - <AUTHOR> http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html

<comment><USER2> > The eye is not a single frame snapshot camera. It is more like a video > stream. The eye moves rapidly in small angular amounts and continually > updates the image in one's brain to "paint" the detail. (...) Then we would > see (...) 576 megapixels (...) This kind of image detail requires A large > format camera to record.

The first sentence seems to contradict the last. It's obvious that you can't take in a 120 degree view in detail even near to 576 megapixels in any period of time short enough to compare to take one photograph. If we instead consider a rather modest 1.3 megapixel camera, and using the 15 fps figure that's provided elsewhere in the article, it will take 30 seconds to "record" the scene in full detail. Also, that assumes that the scene is intensely diverse - it seems that the brain has a pretty efficient compression algorithm. Looking out at the sea, you can immediately dismiss 80% of the scene as "water" and "sky" and concentrate on the detail, arriving quickly at a very high resolution image for the 20%, even with much less than 1,3 megapixel "per frame" resolution.

<comment><USER3> That's definately plausible and i think that's what the author meant by "video stream". We only see clearly enough to read in the fovea, which is only 2 degrees of our field of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets imagine someone would want to build a "retina display" which's ppi value matches the maximum ppi of the human foveal vision. (fovea is the point of the eye with the highest density of rod & cone cells)

According to this article this is 530 ppi (pixel per inch)

Now, if my math is not entirely flawed (please check) for a 27 inch monitor with a 16x9 ratio this would mean a resolution of

      12,472 x 7,015

That is ~ 21 times higher than the best resolution available today, for such a screen. (2560x1600)

The iPhone 4 has 326 ppi and I just took off my glasses and I really had to focus until my eyes hurt to be able to see a single pixel. (I failed, I couldn't see one) Also I have to get really close on to my PC screen to see single pixels (235 ppi)

Now my question is, how could my retina have 530 ppi if I can not identify single pixels on a 326 ppi device?

Furthermore I fail to understand the most basic assumptions & calculation in this article:

      > 53*60/.3 = 10600

? Why did he multiply it times 10? Is this a calculation error, or am I just missing something?

Assuming that this calculation is correct and he just left a part out. I have problems understanding the first and most basic assumption:

      > Thus, one needs two pixels per line pair, and that means pixel
      > spacing of 0.3 arc-minute!

      > 0.7 arc-minute, corresponds to the resolution of a spot as non-point source
      > Again you need two pixels to say it is not a point

      > Again, you need an minimum of 2 pixels to define a cycle

If I interpret the article correctly the "line pair"/ "spot"/ "cycle" in the 3 named experiments were all the smallest size which humans were able to identify. Why do you need 2 pixels? Wouldn't anything below 0.6 arc-minutes already constitute as being below the smallest visible size?

If this point does not hold up, the entire following calculations are way off. I would be thankful if someone could enlighten me.

#Edit: as ristretto stated earlier, there are ~ 100 million cells in the human eye. There are only ~200 000 cells in the fovea. Also everything gets compressed and send through only ~ 1 million nerve cells. Just to be interpreted by 140 million neurons in the V1 area. Short: measuring the megapixel of the human eye is quite a fruitless exercise. The human eye does not work like a homogenous camera/monitor.

The maximum visible pixel per inch (ppi) on the other hand have serious implications to technology and hardware development. Therefor I have much greater interest in this metric.

<comment><USER5> _Now my question is, how could my retina have 530 ppi if I can not identify single pixels on a 326 ppi device?_

Assuming your retina does indeed have 530ppi or so (there's no guarantee that all retinas are ideal), there still remains the question of whether your eyes' focusing systems are in good enough shape to produce that resolution, whether any vision flaws are corrected fully by your glasses/contacts, etc.

(edit to add one more correction)

      > 53*60/.3 = 10600
      ? Why did he multiply it times 10? Is this a calculation error, or am I just missing something?

It's your calculation error; you are multiplying by .3 instead of dividing by .3.

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot. Embarrassing mistake from my site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia[1] has a nice diagram showing how rapidly our visual acuity drops as the function of the angular distance of the fovea. This is a drastically different situation from a camera photosensor where the distribution of pixels is flat. Yes, our brains use saccades[2] to construct a synthetic image over a longer integration time, but still, our non-central acuity is so poor that we cannot even read regular-sized newspaper text except with the central couple of degrees of our vision. I don't think any "megapixel" calculation makes much sense given these facts.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade>

</comment><comment><USER7> More scientific, more compact list on more or less the same topic: <http://white.stanford.edu/~brian/numbers/numbers.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure I agree with the methodology here. You can't take a person's visual acuity at the center of their field of view and just extrapolate it to the rest of what they can see like you can with a camera. Human vision varies across where you're looking. The figures I've seen elsewhere based on more physiological reasoning put the megapixel equivalent at close to 100 megapixels, and with only a region of about 5 megapixels actually in focus.

<comment><USER9> But the point of these calculations is to say what resolution the thing you're looking at needs to have. Which, unless it physically tracks the eyeball somehow, needs to be as crisp as the center of vision throughout.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> found this when looking for what's the closest two objects we can make out. Apparently there are people who can distinguish 20 arc seconds which would be two black points on white 15 micrometers apart from 10cm away. Which should be almost enough for seeing bacteria.

<comment><USER10> Fighter pilots? Serious question...

<comment><USER11> Or short sighted folks - I have -6 in both eyes and at 10cm things do look awfully sharp. Though more than 10cm away (without glasses/contacts) things are rather fuzzy.

<comment><USER12> As another nearsighted individual (-4ish), I can attest to this. At short range, without glasses or contacts, I have ridiculous vision, much tighter and sharper than when I have my contacts in, again at very close range. Long range is much less impressive.

<comment><USER3> Short sightedness is a convergence problem. There's nothing wrong with your fovea, so you still have the sharp vision when using glasses or looking close.

<comment><USER12> It's more than that. It's "I have sharper vision looking very close without my glasses than with my glasses." I believe I heard it was a common issue.

<comment><USER3> i do remember seeing very sharp closely before my lasik, but i assumed it was because of reflections and diffusion through the glasses

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused by the quote of number of pixels required to match the eyes resolution. I don't see a definition of the size of a pixel in that calculation? Though the whole thing seems way to thorough for them to have missed that, so I'm assuming I misunderstood.

<comment><USER14> > How many pixels are needed to match the resolution of the human eye? Each > pixel must appear no larger than 0.3 arc-minute. Consider a 20 x 13.3-inch > print viewed at 20 inches. The Print subtends an angle of 53 x 35.3 degrees, > thus requiring 53 _60/.3 = 10600 x 35_ 60/.3 = 7000 pixels

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't quite get how he estimated the ISO equivalent of the eye - he compares it to a camera taking 12 second exposures, whereas the eye is essentially video, as he says, implying 1/15th sec exposures.

<comment> j-g-faustus He also says that "at low light levels, the human eye integrates [light] up to about 15 seconds".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That is a much better treatment than others i have seen. Although i think the actual megapixels of the eye should be measured as the number of rod and cone cells which is ~80 - 150 million. However the retina is smartly organized to give greater acuity in the center that's why the effective megapixel is so much higher. It's also remarkable that rod cells can detect even single photons.

<comment><USER16> True, a rod or cone cell (collectively, "photoreceptors") is the smallest, indivisible detector unit in the retina, but in _normal_ visual processing (i.e., daylight-lit scenes), they probably never operate in isolation. The photoreceptor signals are immediately integrated by accessory cells in the retina (horizontal cells, bipolar cells, amacrine cells) and the major output neurons of the retina, the ganglion cells projecting to the thalamus, exhibit "center-surround" sensitivity. Furthermore, any one photoreceptor can be used in many receptive fields in the downstream visual processing pathway.

Thus, the mapping of "pixels" to the number of retinal ganglion cells is probably less tenuous than a photoreceptor-to-pixel mapping. Now that I think about it, perhaps an even better definition of a physiological pixel would be a _functional_ measure: the number of distinct, electro-physiologically measured center-surround fields in the thalamus. In that case, the effective megapixel rating of a human visual system is only indirectly related to the sheer numbers of photoreceptors, but more closely related to the wiring pattern. This wiring pattern is much more difficult to experimentally measure than simply counting neurons because it would involve flashing tiny, contrast-y dots of light in front of a fixated mammal while poking an electrode around in the thalamus. [This is outside of my main field, so it may have been done, but I don't know the results.]

Two side notes of interest:

1\. Photoreceptors are oriented towards the rear of the retina and are embedded in a dark sheet of cells called the pigment epithelium. The upshot of this is that every photon that is involved in our visual perception has traversed a tangle of bipolar cells, ganglion cells, and their associated axons (it is easy to overlook this fact in diagrams, such as at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina> , because it is usually only mentioned textually in the figure caption). The fovea is relatively free of these light- scattering objects and, in addition to a higher ratio and density of cone cells, is why primate visual acuity is highest in the fovea.

2\. In extremely low light-adapted rod cells, the absorption of single photon can trigger photo-transduction. Thus, our visual system has the capacity to operate at the very limit of physics. If I recall correctly (i.e., no citation on hand), this has even been experimentally demonstrated, although the experiment must have been pretty demanding, what with photon shot noise and all. [This last side note #2 is what I had in mind when I referred _normal_ visual processing in the first paragraph. Even though you might think that this validates the photoreceptor:pixel metaphor, at best a human would probably just report a tiny inkling of a flash in some general vicinity with very poor spatial and temporal resolution.] Ah, I now see ristretto mention that.

<comment><USER3> In the end, it's wrong to try to determine how many "megapixels" the eye can see, as its not a camera and everything before and after the optic nerve perform a number of enhancements / processing of the signal, so what matters in the end is what is perceptible and discriminable under specific lighting conditions.

<comment><USER16> I quite agree: I don't think megapixels will get us very far, if we could even formulate a consensus definition. I much prefer a perception/discrimination measure, as you said, and as it seems neuroscientists in the visual field have settled on.

Clouding the issue even further is the fact that different areas of central vision processing handle different features. Some areas are tuned to react to points, some to bars, some to grids, some to movement, some to rotation, etc. Perhaps it would be simpler to make the comparison in the other direction: "How intricate do I have to make this visual scene to fully exercise the perceptual abilities of grating-sensitive neurons in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus of the thalamus." That way, we could put some sort of upper bound on the useful specifications of a pixelated display. We would then have to iterate over all the known feature sensitivities (bars, grids, rotations, etc.).

Display engineers surely must know that below such-and-such pixels per inch, a screen can present any reasonable perceptible pattern. So outside of casual interest, ristretto and I think that eye "megapixels" is relatively meaningless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Typing app for geeks(Typingeek) - <AUTHOR> http://188.8.131.52 <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea, 2 things i noticed:

* On my first try with the simple test session, i got a text about military (which was already odd) but it was also out of sync. I pressed N from Navy and it suggested "y".

* The font is rather hard to read. I guess this shouldnt be a reading exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll fix this soon, thanks</comment></comment>


Moola: Accept credit card payments in ten lines of code. - <AUTHOR> http://moolarb.com

<comment><USER2> The landing page looks nice and you could have something here, but you're going to need to do a better job on the marketing.

The alternative to your product is using something like Gumroad (<https://gumroad.com/>) or building against the Stripe API directly, which is well-known for being gloriously simple. Your job is to show developers that using your micro-framework is significantly better than doing a simple integration of the Stripe gem into a framework they already use.

My advice would be to show all of the screens that Moola autogenerates to really demonstrate the added value you're providing. Better yet, create a screencast going from download to deploy in 60 seconds.

From a technical perspective, I'd also recommend using a YAML file to store the configuration settings in one place, making the process even easier. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> _plus, thank you for your advice! I've considered doing a screencast and will create one as soon as I'm back from my travels. I built the tool mainly for dogfooding my own products and figured I'd build a marketing site to see whether there's any interest.

Re: YAML configuration, that's a good suggestion. I wanted to keep the footprint lean and uncomplicated, so I figured swaying away from config files in favor of Sinatra settings was consistent with that philosophy. YAML would be effective for environment-based configuration.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> moola.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Taken :(</comment></comment>


The Saga Of The Bearer Bonds - <AUTHOR> http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1119-The-Saga-Of-The-Bearer-Bonds.html <comment><USER2> Lots of speculation, not much real information.</comment>