New Initiatives for Lyft Drivers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lyft.com/posts/wetreatyoubetter <comment><USER2> I know Uber has the dominate market share, but I really enjoy life. I notice that I get better, friendlier service from the drivers and I like having the option to tip. They have rolled out a lot of impressive features and programs recently. I hope, at the very least, their actions will pressure Uber into some similar moves

<comment><USER3> Having an option to tip enforces customers to tip, I would prefer using a service that does not force me to tip by providing that option. I am against tips in general for drivers.

<comment><USER2> Does it enforce customers to tip? You tip via the app well after the ride is over. I usually don't tip, but occasionally I get a great driver and toss them a few bucks. They don't make great money so the tip is worth it.

I'm not really sure why you are against tips for drivers.

<comment><USER4>
      They don't make great money so the tip is worth it.

This is the main issue for me. When tips are allowed, the floor for pay/remuneration drops. I would much prefer to know that people are paid sanely for the job they do than to know I am _obligated_ to supplement their pay.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely agree with this point. I hear the same argument for restaurant waiters and I hate this tipping system that even has suggested tipping tiers. It only tells me that owners of these establishments are not paying their employees correctly. I know of places which don't even disburse the tips back to their employees (when tip is part of receipt)!

<comment><USER6> At least in CA, waiters still get full minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how Lyft is trying to make it easier for more people to drive for them. But, after Lyft's cut, tax and gas the hourly rate was very low. I drove for a couple months and they promised $25 - $35 during peak time, but I netted out to about $10/hr. Now to add on a Hertz rental fee, that is going to get very slim.

Obviously this is still a better job for some people then there alternative. Lyft will market to new drivers with the higher rates and ease of renting a Hertz vehicle.

<comment><USER8> The issue is, this is how profitable it is effectively – any driver following the law will have to pay this much.

And this is why uber can only currently provide their high margins because they provide no insurance between rides (only during rides), because they don't follow laws, etc.

It's unfair competition, and sadly, people expect Lyft to offer the same.

<comment><USER9> IMHO, this is a misconception. Most of the benefit of Lyft/Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done.

They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages. Remember, people were using UberBlack (as "UberCab" way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX/Lyft.

<comment><USER10> As much as I hate the serfitude economy companies, the fact that the cab companies have not adopted the app approach _boggles my mind_.

I would have _zero_ problem calling a cab, even with the regulated cab prices, if they had a Lyft/Uber-like app. Hit the button, accepted in 60 seconds, tracked to your door. The fact that the cab companies _simply won 't do this_ grinds my gears.

This is also why Lyft/Uber grind my gears. _JUST BE A COMPETENT CAB COMPANY_ and people would love you. Uber/Lyft doesn't have to flout the existing laws while lobbying to get them changed.

<comment><USER9> Curb and Flywheel don't meet your criteria?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found it interesting that this program is starting in Vegas given the trouble Uber has had there [1]. I don't hear about Lyft nearly as much as Uber, but I haven't heard any stories about Lyft running into issues with taxi regulations (which seem to show up here weekly for Uber). Do taxi companies find Lyft more palatable for some reason? Or has Uber just been the figurehead taking most of the heat in the news for all of the other ridesharing companies running into issues with taxi regulations?

[1] [http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l- smith/mask...](http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/masked- men-descend-uber-drivers-riders)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a picture of an industry right before being automated. Rather than relying on skilled drivers with knowledge of the area, the industry can rely on computers to do most of the work. Reduction in labor costs, which are partially subsidized by coupons provided by partner companies who also make money. When driverless cars become widespread, Hertz can provide the cars and Verizon the on-board WiFi.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is actually really cool.

I can't tell you how many people I know whose livelihood essentially depends on their single, aging vehicle not dying. These are often folks whose university debt is, essentially, a monthly car payment.

I would guess that the greatest demand for Lyft drivers is outside or nearly outside normal working hours. If a person with no car can subsidize a long- term rental by spending their after-work hours being a Lyft driver, perhaps arranging to leave work slightly early to help with the after-work rush, that could be a huge benefit to a lot of low-income individuals and families.

It could also be a benefit to families with one car. If one partner uses the car to commute and the other can subsidize a rental, that could provide opportunities to earn _something_ which might otherwise not exist (not every location is amenable to public transportation or cycling).

There are certainly some potential problems with this model. But looking through the eyes of an under-privileged family, I can see this being a huge opportunity too. I just hope the pay rate and the negotiated rental rate and fuel rate are enough to make more than a pittance at the end of the day.

</comment><comment><USER14> Some nice moves from Lyft. Feels like they've really upped their game with this and it will be an incredible case study if they're able to surpass Uber who has a head-start, which almost never happens.

Reminds me of the days when alltheweb had just become the popular SE beating AltaVista, Excite and others, and Google stormed in and cleaned up.

<comment><USER15> Lyft had the headstart (and Sidecar was earlier than Lyft). Uber had their UberBlack program but didn't jump into the ridesharing pool until nearly a year after Lyft did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Delayed payouts are one way for businesses to minimize loss should a chargeback occur. But now that Lyft pays out instantly, they're at risk of losing the payout (> $50) + $chargeback_fee. Is the wording of the announcement code for "Stripe is shielding us from exorbitant transaction fallout costs"?

<comment><USER17> Not necessarily - they could be self-insuring. Given their historical chargeback data, they've got a fairly good amount of information about how much money it would cost them to eat chargebacks. Lyft may suspect that they're getting their money's worth in terms of non-pay driver compensation, loyalty, and marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like ridesharing, great market offering for consumers and drivers. Using a rental agency like this is good because those cars are underutilized and that can help people without cars provide service. Initially, i was going to snarkily compare this to cab companies, and the point still stands the economics arent great but it is a decent trade in some scenarios.

I don't have a car, and I would be willing to drive lyft for limited funds AND access to the vehicle. Sure you couldn't take the car on vacation, but if you could make a bit of money and knock out some errands locally, I could see this catching on. The magnitude and evonomics might not be there for everyone, but the cars would just be at Hertz so it could be a positive thing for both parties.

</comment><comment><USER19> Happy to see Lyft dealing with the Breeze parasite [https://www.joinbreeze.com/](https://www.joinbreeze.com/)

<comment><USER20> Lol. Nice way to inadvertently plug them. What specifically do you hate about breeze?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yeah. That's what a taxi is.

</comment><comment><USER22> This seems very dangerously like W2 employees using employer provided equipment to do a task, even if it's rented by a rental company. (IANAL)

<comment><USER23> I mean, we're past that discussion aren't we? Uber and other rideshares are going to have to start classifying drivers as employers eventually (at least until self-driving cars get here). Legal determinations are already headed in this direction.

<comment><USER22> It'd be interesting if someone got in front of that and ran Uber-Prime with Uber-Prime, Inc. employees as drivers, driving vehicles leased by Uber-Prime, Inc. Maybe go upmarket of Uber by offering a 100% guaranteed rape-free experience for your minor children, borderline medical transport, incapacitated people, rich/scared people, etc.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't work because Uber pays per person, not to a company. You'd have to get drivers to voluntarily give a cut of their take home to pay for insurance, the car, etc. without having a way to track what they actually make.

<comment><USER12> >You'd have to get drivers to voluntarily give a cut of their take home to pay for insurance, the car, etc. without having a way to track what they actually make.

This is exactly what they do now, they just don't pay Uber, they pay those companies directly. But as a company with employees, they could negotiate a deal to get cars for cheaper, negotiate a better insurance rate, and save the driver the hassle.

But then we've come full circle, inviting regulations that drive up costs. This is an attempt to stay on the edge of that.

<comment><USER23> > inviting regulations that drive up costs.

Did you mean applying labor regulations where they're supposed to be applied? Of course employing people under labor law has a cost.

<comment><USER12> Yes, that's precisely what I mean. And that's what makes this kind of move from Lyft so interesting. They're walking a fine line. Banking on the time it takes to be regulated as runway for pivoting to automation. Google says they'll be delivering fully autonomous cars by 2020. If we give Google til 12/31/20, that's more than 5 years out. Seems like Uber/Lyft will be regulated hard before that, unless they've got something up their sleeve.

<comment><USER23> Ahh, sorry about that! I misunderstood.

<comment><USER12> Off topic: I'm always looking for ways to make myself better understood. I think by using the term "we", I gave the impression that I'm personally concerned about costs and that I actively support businesses skirting labor laws to save costs. Not my intention, but I can see how one could concluce that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> what if Uber/Lyft etc let you lend your car to drivers? So instead of sitting in the parking lot, an uber driver could be driving it. Uber/Lyft could background check the drivers. I wonder if it will be worthwhile for them to provide insurance against theft. The driver would also need to be added to your personal insurance I guess....the insurance companies might eventually come up with plans specific for this type of scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER26> So, I can't tell from Uber's site, but is Uber doing similar things for their drivers that actually save them money, as opposed to finding new ways to make money off of them?

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe I'm just not hip to the whole Uber/Lyft thing, but the idea of being chauffeured around by somebody in a Hertz rental car doesn't sound at all appealing.

<comment><USER28> What is the difference between someone's personal car you'll never ride in again or a rental car you'll never ride in again? Taxis are typically rented by the day too, but who cares other than the driver and the rental company?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Teenager with an idea that I'm passionate about, should I pursue it? - <AUTHOR> Hello everybody! A quick background about me, I'm a 17 year old interested in programming. Recently I thought of an idea for a web/mobile start-up that I'm really passionate about. I'm hesitant to disclose the full idea at this point because if it really is a good idea there are people on here who have far more resources and talent that could potentially build it much quicker than I could. Basically, it'd be a website/apps that I believe could greatly aid the treatment of mood disorders.
Why am I passionate about that? Well, I've dealt with serious depression over the past few years that has almost taken my life. If the service that I want to create had existed I think my treatment could have been far more effective. In any given year about 10% of the US population (at least among adults), suffers from a mood disorder.
However, even though I'm very passionate about this idea, there are some major obstacles involved. Namely, my service would need to be HIPAA compliant in the US. The more I've read into that process the more I've been discouraged. Ultimately after I build an initial version of the service I hope to run a Kickstarter, but I'm not sure how I would go about achieving the funding I would need to run the site in production. I'm estimating the cost at a few thousand in the first year alone, potentially more depending on the popularity achieved.
So this is where I want opinions, if you had an idea for something that you believed could potentially benefit many individuals' lives, would you pursue it regardless of the obstacles, costs, and time involved? I guess in my mind this could be my chance to change the world, and I don't want to miss out on that, but I don't know if I'm being realistic. <comment><USER2> My observation is that when I talked to friends about my amazing ideas, they are invariably less passionate about them than me. So, be prepared for lukewarm reception. Or worse, 'devils advocates', etc.

You might even be more susceptible to this type of reaction given your condition. So, be aware of it.

I would just do it anyway. Its worth it for the experience. A set of 4 or 5 solid projects from this age on a resume is likely to result in additional interviews, which might find you jobs worth an extra $10,000/yr. So, consider it an investment in your future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input! Having put some thought into it, I agree. I'm still in high school, and even though I have a job, I'd say overall I probably have a lot more time now than I will in two years. This might be the best chance I have to build this. And whether it succeeds or not, it'll at the very least be something I can throw on a Github repo and show potential employers in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _However, even though I 'm very passionate about this idea, there are some > major obstacles involved. Namely, my service would need to be HIPAA > compliant in the US. The more I've read into that process the more I've been > discouraged._

Out of experience I know that one quality that serial-entrepreneurs (e.g. Elon Musk) have is the ability to _fight successfully with the paperwork_. The laws are written, some make sense, others do not. Doesn't really matter because you can't change them. Most people are intimidated by the very sight of paperwork. Especially the kind that is written in lawyer's language. You can only become successful if you _learn to read_ this language. From what I've seen, it's extremely valuable asset, no matter what kind of company you want to create.

Another thing I've noticed is that only 10% of the people you'll ever talk about, no matter how they present themselves, really KNOWS what are they talking about. So keep your faith no matter what others tell you.

I would say, go for it. The experience of driving any such venture up to a point where you create _something_ or you _stop_ because you're over your head, will prove extremely valuable anyway. It's the kind of experience that you can't buy with money.

Wish you all the best :-)

ps. If you pursue this path, make sure to write a blog post a let us know how it went in about 1 year or 2 from now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been giving your idea some thought, and would be happy to discuss further over email if you like (in my profile).

I don't think HIPAA is the main problem you have. The biggest obstacle is whether any healthcare provider would be willing to participate. People in this area have little time, too much work/obligations, are generally not tech savvy, have fixed workflows that they're unwilling to deviate from, and even the smallest amount of friction in your product will make them give up.

If you're going to do this (and you probably should if you're passionate about it), then you have to think of a way to integrate seamlessly into existing workflows and minimize their time commitment. Your goal should be 5-10 mins per day, max, regardless of the number of people being "monitored". Think about the incentives to get providers to participate. How much turn-around time is realistic? I don't see how this will be an "imminent suicide" prevention system and there are already lots of hotlines for that, but it could be great to monitor mood over days/weeks.

Perhaps have a single daily aggregated and anonymized email to a provider's nurse at 7am (when most check their patient data) that updates them on all patients in the practice who are potentially in trouble. They click a link, enter a password, and see the non-anonymized data. Then the nurse can get on the phone and start calling people.

</comment><comment><USER5> If it is what you are passionate about go for it.

You describe it as a web/mobile start-up and later discuss the importance of it and the opportunity to change the world. I think it is worth being clear in your mind if this is a commercial project that you want to earn profits or a social venture (that may pay its own bills).

I would think about why you want to be secretive about it though. Even with businesses I think PG is largely right that secrecy isn't often worth it, you need to show people how good the idea is before they realise it. See AirBNB etc.

If you tell people what it is you can get some advice and maybe even help. At the crowd funding stage at least you need to let people know what your plan is.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I would say that it's a little of both. Profit wouldn't hurt, but primarily it's about the idea. Even if I never made a dime from it and just broke even, it would be worth it to me. And I say change the world, and I guess I mean it, but a small subset of the world. Perhaps 10% of the population of developed countries could gain benefit from my service. It's probably not even that good of an idea, however I have gotten quite a bit of support from communities of people with mood disorders that I've posted about it on.

The idea by the way, I'll write a more detailed explanation about it when I'm on my computer, is basically a mood tracker that your therapist/psychiatrist, and potentially friends and family, has access to if you as the user grant them that access. They can view your check-ins and mood graphs at any time from a professional/support account. It also automatically notifies your supports, mainly your mental health professional(s), but also family and friends if you're linked to them through a support account, through text and email if you mark yourself as having suicidal feelings, or feelings of harming somebody else.

Having dealt with depression I know for a fact that actively seeking help was not a concern of mine at my lowest points. However, something as passive as marking my mood as suicidal on an app or website, that's something I could do. And it would in turn have the same effect as if I texted my therapist about my feelings. Along with those features there's a bit more to it that separates it from other mood trackers but I'll only explain those if you're interested in hearing more.

So it's probably not the world changing idea I made it out to be, but I think it could help in the treatment of those facing mood disorders, by allowing their psychiatrist or therapist as well as family and friends to play an active role in monitoring their mood and helping at the lows or highs (for those with bipolar). Maybe it'll never catch on, but even if it got a few hundred users whose well-being was benefited by it, then it's worth it. If it helped saved even ONE life, then it's worth it.

<comment><USER5> Yes something like this can change the world at least for some people, I wasn't trying to mock or belittle the ambition just get you to think about where your priority lay between business and world changing.

There are other players in the market but that doesn't matter if you know what yours is better at. Have a short answer for someone that says "Why should I use your product rather than xxx". That can be that all the others suck or that yours is easy to use or more private or many other things but you should have an answer.

If I was trying to build a business around such an idea I think I would try to sell the to the medical professionals/practices. I'm sure it would be easier for them to track all their patients on one system than many different ones so they could hand out codes to their patients that would allow easy sign up and associate them with the correct doctor.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, I'm aware that there are huge technical challenges involved in creating the service that I want to create. However, I'm fairly confident in my ability to overcome these if I put the time and effort in and am willing to learn. I already have an idea about how I'd go about creating what I want to. It's just that in figuring all of that out I've realized that it's going to be a very expensive endeavor. And if I do things wrong I could potentially break privacy laws, which could have very negative results.

</comment><comment><USER6> Answer to whether you're being realistic? No, but so what.

It's instructive to know that the most innovative leaders behind game-changing ideas in arts, science, & business-- often pursued unrealistic goals. Many of them toiled & tinkered for years.

Here's a good read to keep you going> [http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Robert- Greene/dp/014312417X/re...](http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Robert- Greene/dp/014312417X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1403286483&sr=8-2&keywords=robert+greene%2C)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're interested in discussing the crowdfunding aspect, I'm happy to help. I manage the Hardware, Design and Tech team at Indiegogo. Software is generally more difficult to crowdfund, as it requires a very active community to get that initial momentum. Strategy will be key to success, and it's not going to be a walk in the park. But, if you're passionate about it, it's absolutely not impossible.

If you're seriously considering this, shoot me an email at evan (at) indiegogo dot com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your willingness to help out. I am passionate about it, and I'll definitely send you an email and see if we can discuss strategy. I had never seen your company before. Definitely could be a great alternative to Kickstarter for me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.truevault.com/](https://www.truevault.com/) , You may wanto check them out for hippa compliance.

Look asking for permission for pursuing your passion isn't ideal. the best that can happen is you're going to make it and realize your vision . The next best is you can learn way more than you would have by just thinking about whether to do it or not. Either way it's going to be a fruitful experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have checked them out and am planning on using them for the technical and physical requirements involved with HIPAA. But thanks for the link, would have been extremely useful to me had I not found them a week or so ago in a jobs post on HN haha. Also I am going to be using a start-up called Accountable that helps with the administrative requirements of HIPAA. The problem is just that neither of those services is cheap (TrueVault is cheaper at first than Accountable) once you actually release a public website. I don't expect them to be considering that they save a lot of time and money compared to becoming HIPAA compliant on your own. But as a 17 year old I just don't have a lot of money, which is why crowdfunding will be necessary most likely.

Yeah, I asked kinda planning to do it either way, unless there was a really strong negative reaction, which might have talked me out of it. I think it will be worth it in a lot of ways, even if it never succeeds.

<comment><USER8> Good luck! And as cliche as it sounds get started, things have a way of working out eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where are you?

Would it be possible to create a MVP and show that to commissioners / researchers / etc in your country?

You might want to get good quality research to support your idea. Good quality in this context means a cochrane review, or information from NICE (the UK organisation) or something equally rigorous.

I would be keen to hear your idea. Please feel free to email me.

Have you seen the Australian website "Moodgym"? And there are similar other sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the United States.

MVP referring to what exactly? Haha, sorry I'm not familiar with that term outside of it's usual usage and it's web programming usage.

Hmm, I'm not sure how useful that would be to me. I'll send you an email about my idea. It's really not that novel though, just a new take on an existing concept.

And I hadn't, interesting website. Not really a competitor to my idea, but still interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "if you had an idea for something that you believed could potentially benefit many individuals' lives, would you pursue it regardless of the obstacles, costs, and time involved?" \- without a doubt in my mind

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input! I think that's what I need to do. It's easy to get discouraged though when it feels like you don't have the resources to accomplish something you want to. That said, I think this is possible if I go about it in the right way.</comment></comment>


Light Table 0.5.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/08/22/light-table-050/

<comment><USER2> I love the little spinning glider in the lower left, I don't know what it represents or how I got it to appear but, COOL!

I want to like this so badly, but so far I can't justify spending the time to learn to use it just yet.

It might just be a problem with the docs, and maybe I'm just not understanding what light table is on a conceptual level but:

* docs reference tabs that do not exist in my version of the interface ( a trip to the view menu produced no option to show or hide them, so I assume they're from an older version?)

* they expect me to already have created files elsewhere?

* cmd/ctrl-o dialog? what does this do? (seems like nothing, looks like file prompt, but no tab-completion....am I supposed to type out /home/uname/file/x/y/z?)

* cmd-shift-o opens files....but not directories, how do I get a file tree like in the screenshots?

* if the browser tab has focus, cmd-shift-o dialog will not show (as I'm asked to do in the docs)

* control-tab doesn't switch between tabs

* what is the relationship between this browser window and my js file?

after this I gave up.

I guess I am late to the party? Where can I find the real docs?

I have high hopes for this to mature and someday become something that I can say goodbye to vim/sublime, but at this point, I'd need a better onboarding to really give it a go.

Despite their perceived difficulty to use, both emacs and vim provide extensive awesome help without having to resort to a third party.

Sublime may have help somewhere, but since it works just like every other desktop program I've never needed to refer to it.

If this is going to be something that's so wildly different from the text editors I'm used to, I'm going to need more hand-holding to get excited about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we haven't had a chance to update the docs yet - we didn't want to hold the release any longer. It's at the top of my priority list as soon as I get done moving apartments this weekend.

ctlr-o is the equivalent of ctrl-p in sublime or ctrl-t in textmate. It shows you the files available in your workspace. It used to tell you how to add files to your workspace when it was empty but that seems to have gotten nuked. [1] If you go to view->workspace you have a tree you can then fill in with folders and files. Click the folder button and off you go.

I'll add a menu item for opening a folder. [2]

> if the browser tab has focus, cmd-shift-o dialog will not show (as I'm asked > to do in the docs)

Unfortunately this depends on whether the site tries to be clever and capture keys, though, there could just be a regular bug here. Will take a look.

> control-tab doesn't switch between tabs

Ah, I used chrome's default ctrl-shift-[ and ctrl-shift-]. Makes sense to add that one too though. [3]

> what is the relationship between this browser window and my js file?

If you press ctrl-enter or ctrl-shift-enter you have now evaled that file into that browser window. Any time you eval again, you'll be injecting code into that frame.

> Sublime may have help somewhere, but since it works just like every other > desktop program I've never needed to refer to it.

Can you tell me more about what's missing here? Are there specific menu items, etc? If you tried to use it just like Sublime (as in none of the other fancy stuff), what is harder/more difficult to wrap your head around?

[1]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/695](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/695)

[2]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/694](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/694)

[3]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/697](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/697)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pgdn for switching tabs as well? It's a common shortcut in most tabbed interfaces.

<comment><USER4> Yup, this is the one I'm used to and it weirds me out when it's not supported. Apparently unheard of on OS X though, which is probably why so many web devs make sites that break it by stealing PgUp/PgDn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work, and I can't wait for plugins to arrive!

This should be the next great text-editor once it's open-sourced - I'm too young to bother with vim/emacs, and a bit too poor to buy Sublime Text, great though it is!

The fact that it's written in Clojure(script) makes me want to dive into the source, and find out how a modern desktop application is built using a Lisp.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how young is too young for emacs/vim

<comment><USER7> For Emacs your span has to be wide enough.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm what?

<comment><USER8> He means size of hands. Children with smaller hands may have trouble with some key combinations.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I would have never guessed. Even as a child I had big hands, so... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is it not packaged within the Lighttable.app anymore? Unzipping it's a folder with a .app inside and all the NW resources next to it instead of inside. Confused…

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the first release of LightTable I've experimented with, and I find it to be really promising!

One thing: I fired up the built-in browser and pointed it at a local static server which sits in front of some apps I'm building with Google Polymer[1]. The apps don't work at all in that browser environment -- the console reports lots of errors related to invalid html and css.

I was able to connect LightTable (per the docs) to an external browser, but that seems to lessen the LT experience somewhat.

Would it be possible for the LT team to look into why the Polymer polyfills don't work properly with the built-in browser?

[1] [http://www.polymer-project.org/](http://www.polymer-project.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The "watches" feature video actually made me say "wow" out loud in the office. Such a simple idea but I can instantly see how amazingly useful it will be.

<comment><USER12> You might be interested in this paper then:

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1898...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=189802)

(not lighttable, but more research on the topic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love python, but on my day to day I'm using GO and Ruby. I know GO would not fit into the LightTable philosophy but ruby support would be awesome.

<comment><USER14> Those would make for good plugins when the plugin api is released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, I'm a bit confused about how these watches work. I expected them to give me a live view of how a variable changes (like data-binding), but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems that it puts a hook into whenever the page evaluates that code, it updates the watch.

For instance, I put a watch on this javascript:

      window.scrollY;

I expected it to update every time I scrolled. In reality, I had to put an event hook onto the window's scroll event with window.scrollY inside of it. This is a bit confusing.

Also, Chris, anyone you can put an update somewhere when you get the docs finished? This is the first release that is stable enough for me to actually use, so I don't really know how to do anything. Seems like the docs are way out of date (ie: How the heck do I search for files in my workspace?).

Great release though! I'm pumped that LightTable is finally stable enough for me to attempt to replace sublime!

<comment><USER15> For the record, I now see someone else commented with the Cmd+o hint.. I guess that's how you search for files. Either way, I'd love to know when the docs are updated so I can really dig in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi Chris!

Thanks for the new release. Is it possible to reopen the open files from the previous session on startup? I find myself frustrated with having to look at the welcome screen instead of getting what I was working on in my previous session. It's also a bit annoying to reopen all the files at the beginning of each session. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER17> Any chance of getting paredit soon? Still the reason why I never use LT for more than 10 minutes with each release.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have someone working with us on basic paredit support :) So.. soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the change logs there's notes about an added Emacs mode; has anyone worked out how to enable this? Can't see anything in the command list and nothing in a brief glance through the .behaviours files.

<comment><USER19> As Chris mentioned elsewhere: In user.behaviors (ctrl+space, user behaviors), adding an element to my current editor vector activates vim mode:

         :editor [:lt.objs.editor/no-wrap
                  (:lt.objs.style/set-theme "default")
                  :lt.plugins.vim/activate-vim]

Instead of this, you can write :lt.plugins.emacs/activate-emacs to activate emacs mode.

Note that this page has nice completion-matching--for example, if you delete the interior of the string "default" you can see fuzzy completions, and putting the cursor within a keyword will explain what setting it's bound to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So far, started it three times, had it silently exit without being asked three times. No Style tab available, no findable way to change that ugly white on black. Such promising, currently unusable. OS X 10.8.4.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you tell me what you were doing when it silently exited? Can you put up a gist of whatevers in your logs/ dir?

To change the skin/theme you can put the following in your user behaviors:

      :app [(:lt.objs.style/set-skin "light")]
      :editor [(:lt.objs.style/set-theme "codemirror")]

<comment><USER21> Why take out the existing UI for changing these settings? Also, what happened to the settings for changing fonts and font sizes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a backer, but this is the first time I'm picking up the alpha. As someone primarily using Sublime Text, what can I expect to be different?

I get its still in Alpha, but just what difference.

</comment><comment><USER23> This looks great.

Can't find this in the documentation, so wondering two things:

1\. Is there a way to get a python console?

2\. I have a Flask app. Can I run it directly from LT?

<comment><USER24> 1\. in 0.4.x, no -- but you can have a buffer (say, scratchpad.py) and evaluate the whole buffer. This is a workflow I find more useful than an ipython session (although it's a little lame not having tab-completion and whatnot for inspecting unknown modules). I've not tried 0.5.x yet :).

2\. Yes!

<comment><USER23> #2 - Really? Nice. Any pointers on how? I'm mucking around with it right now and can't seem to get it to work :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I couldn't find any way of getting out of Fullscreen mode without killing LT through the task manager.

<comment><USER26> CTRL+Space "ful" <enter> ("Toogle full screen")

Admittedly, that's not too user friendly

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are we who pledged supposed to be in private beta?

<comment><USER28> There was a specific level that included the private beta privilege. Is the kickstarter page not there anymore?

<comment><USER29> [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light- table](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table)

Found via [http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/](http://www.chris- granger.com/lighttable/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> anyone else tried the linux tarball? The binary named ltbin seems to be missing.

<comment><USER31> i had to `tar -xzf` twice, the first time the ltbin executable was missing for me as well. not sure why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is Ruby support planed?</comment>


Nicehash.com haxored - <AUTHOR> Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15865613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15865613)</comment>


Superhero.js – One stop for JS Knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://superherojs.com/ <comment><USER2> For anyone looking for some good Javascript reads: [http://javascriptissexy.com/](http://javascriptissexy.com/)

Unfortunately Richard Stanley hasn't updated the blog in more than 6 months, but in any case. If you want to sharpen your JS skills I'd highly recommend the site.

<comment><USER3> Concur, one of the best JS learning sites I've found. He has a gift for explaining technical concepts well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Javascript Allonge is a great read and a must for newcomers and experienced devs. [https://leanpub.com/javascript- allonge/read](https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read)

<comment><USER5> I was just about to add that. I don't even know how many comments are in my archive echoing that sentiment. It's a fantastic book for any programmer.

Javascript is honestly a weird language if you're coming from the typical imperative languages (C, Java, Python, etc.), it's also not really functional enough to be in the spirit of Lisp, and it's doesn't have the type system to be familiar to Haskell or Scala devs. It's really a descendant of the Smalltalk/Self lineage, but with some major diversions. I always thought it was a shit language cobbled together with no consistent philosophy. Reading that book proved me wrong. Javascript does in fact have a soul and Reg Braithwaite totally changed how I view the language with Javascript Allongé.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We want more great stuff of Superhero.js, so we're open for suggestions here or in the GitHub issues: [https://github.com/superherojs/superherojs/issues](https://github.com/superherojs/superherojs/issues)

We are thinking about adding a section on the most used libraries or frameworks, such as Backbone, Angular and Ember, but we will focus on the core JavaScript essentials until we feel it's good enough.

<comment><USER7> That would be great. You can also add this site on the list:

[http://speakingjs.com/es5/index.html](http://speakingjs.com/es5/index.html)

A while ago it was being promoted here on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A nod to Roy Lichtenstein might be in order, since the graphics are almost literal copies of his work.

<comment><USER9> hahahaha

[http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html](http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html)

 _edit_ I'm laughing at the irony, not the claim of copyright infringment.

<comment><USER8> LOL, I did not know this... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This might be contrary to the "point" of the website, but you should touch upon Vanilla.js. [http://vanilla-js.com](http://vanilla-js.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to become really good at X, you have to study Y instead of X where Y is the theory of all the things similar to X.

<comment><USER12> If you really learn the Y it will be hard for you to come back to X instead of one of the much better Zs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice indeed! Douglas Crockford has a series of videos on JS and a book "JavaScript the good parts". An extremely great resource you should consider adding. [http://javascript.crockford.com/](http://javascript.crockford.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is great. Although books like 'eloquent javascript' or 'JS design patterns' prove themselves as stepping stones for one trying to get hold. However, when it comes to real world issues, blog posts by experienced professionals are ones only companions. Its good to see relevant posts in context, firstly describing problems that developers often face and then suggesting the solutions.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wrote this a while back to help some people on my team better understand some js quirkiness. Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but it trips a lot of people up.

[http://chadillac.github.io/2014/03/21/javacript-globals- poin...](http://chadillac.github.io/2014/03/21/javacript-globals-pointers- closures/)

<comment><USER16> This explanation seems to obscure more than illuminate. Maybe for a specific sort of person that loves pointers is it useful, but I both understand pointers and JavaScript's specific flavour of closures well and still found it confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The website is so nice, and I thought all the material would be from the Superhero.js team too. Upon further review, they link to other sites, and some of them are not as user friendly and nice looking. The change of UI between each lesson/source is kind of an eye sore and sometimes annoying.

Nonetheless, thanks for putting this together!

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome stuff. Although this has already been shown off here before: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=superhero.js#!/story/forever/0/sup...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=superhero.js#!/story/forever/0/superhero.js)

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://designpepper.com/a-drip-of- javascript/](http://designpepper.com/a-drip-of-javascript/) is a nice weekly newsletter-ish resource

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you add a section - "SuperHeros for Hire - Freelance/one off work"?

I think there would be a great demand for people specialized in memory leak / performance tuning etc

</comment><comment><USER21> Tried putting the rss feed in feedly, but the entries don't link to pages on the site :(

</comment><comment><USER22> Great additions there sould be more site like this. Definitely bookmarked.

<comment><USER23> Working on it: [http://jsrecipes.org](http://jsrecipes.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is nice. Already bookmarked. The only confusion is at first 'superhero.js' sounds like a javascript library or framework.

<comment><USER8> Average-looking Javascript by day, crime-fighting Javascript by night!</comment></comment>


A homeless woman's battle to prove Social Security owes her more than $100K - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/i-wasnt-crazy-a-homeless-womans-long-war-to-prove-the-feds-owe-her-100000/2016/08/22/3913e4c2-6541-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html <comment><USER2> Far too often, I see hackers looking for something to disrupt; a problem to fix. I implore you, this is a cause the requires fixing, more than almost any problem you'll find in Silicon Valley.

Social security is one of the bedrocks of the few social safety nets the US government provides [1]. It keeps seniors out of poverty, it keeps the disabled off the streets. It provides results, and its one of the most efficient government agencies at doing so (when you look at the cost of ingesting payroll taxes and distributing funds to eligible recipients).

Clearly, this Washington Post article highlights the dark side. The Social Security Administration is chronically understaffed, not just in providing customer service, but also in processing disability claims (last I checked, the backlog is approaching 15-18 months in some states) [2] [3].

Just last night, I exclaimed to my wife how terrible the SSA is at properly calculating someone's benefits (based on earned income history/credits, spousal/widow benefits, etc), and that this should be a solved problem. The SSA has all of the necessary data to compute the proper benefit amount someone should be receiving monthly.

I won't say this is an easy problem to fix. The pitfalls are numerous. The Social Security Administration is an unforgiving bureaucracy. There are entanglements with attempting to provide what might be considered legal advice through a webapp. Your users would not be what I would consider "receptive". But the data is there. The necessary algorithms the SSA uses to determine benefits are openly available. Earnings credits/history for a beneficiary is an authenticated XML call away. Marriage and divorce records can ingested (you have to be married to someone 10 years to be eligible to collect off of their spousal benefits).

My plea is simple: help me fix this. It's not ads, its not VR, it's not AI; it _is_ lifting people out of poverty. It's not glamourous. There is no glory. But you're helping people who otherwise might have nothing.

If you're at the USDS or 18F, put me in front of the right person. If that's not going to work, we'll work at it from an "automated legal aid" front (think of the bot Joshua Browder wrote to challenge parking tickets [4]; I've already reach out to him regarding this as well), and have an automated system for calculating the proper benefits and submitting the claim to the SSA. I refuse to believe the status quo is the best we can do.

[1] [http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy- basics-t...](http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-top- ten-facts-about-social-security)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/08/09/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/08/09/closed- social-security-offices-furloughed-staff-under-gop-cuts-agency-warns/)

[3] [https://oig.ssa.gov/audits-and-investigations/top-ssa- manage...](https://oig.ssa.gov/audits-and-investigations/top-ssa-management- issues/social-security-disability-hearings-backlog)

[4] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot- ai-lawyer-donotpay-parking-tickets-london-new-york)

<comment><USER3> Well said and well done! I think it's important to remember this could be ANY of us, given just one bad turn of events. How would we feel if programming, even new code, was totally automated overnight, how many engineers would be out of jobs? Especially given the high pay scale? If only because that could and very well may be us all one day, we should not let problems like this go unanswered and left for yet the NEXT generation.</comment></comment>


20 Brutal Truths All 20-Somethings Need to Hear - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/nicolas-cole/20-brutal-truths-all-twentysomethings-need-to-hear.html <comment><USER2> What a terrible article. Submissions like these leave me craving a downvote button.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've oft wondered what sort of internal monologue a person would have, if that person had been taught to read with the "Motivational Decor" section of the Office Max catalog. Now I know.

</comment><comment><USER4> We're any of these _brutal_ truths?</comment>


Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. - <AUTHOR> http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/01/we-need-an-independent-invention-defense-to-minimize-the-damage-of-aggressive-patent-trolls.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+UnionSquareVentures+(Union+Square+Ventures)

<comment><USER2> I would really like to see something along the lines of a TED talk in which the presenter stands up, spends a couple of minutes demonstrating some kind of really interesting new technology -- something that could really help people, either in their lives or in their jobs -- and then the presenter would pause for a moment and say, "...but none of you are going to get to use this", and continue the talk but on the subject of patents.

I don't think people really understand the extent of the problem. I think they need to see exactly the damage that's being done before there will be any energy put into fixing it.

I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain areas of research and development, but there are also areas in which patents are crippling development.

<comment><USER3>
        I do think that patents hold a valuable place in certain
        areas of research and development, but there are also
        areas in which patents are crippling development.

I hear people say this but they never give an example. Can you name an area of research and development where patents hold a valuable position? I myself have trouble coming up with any and I'm curious what others think.

<comment><USER4> Conventional wisdom says that pharma qualifies. Labs wouldn't spend the resources if anyone could come up with generic drugs once the hard work of finding out which drug works is done.

<comment><USER5> i don't know if this is true, but i heard somewhere that drug companies don't really innovate anything.

it's the NIH and universities (via government funding) that actually discover the drugs, then they sell the exclusive rights to manufacture it to big pharma (who then spends a lot to get it approved and market it and such...)

(this is the book, i haven't read it) [http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug- Companies-Deceive/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies- Deceive/dp/0375760946/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

so in this case (if true) patents fail again.

<comment><USER6> I don't know if that's correct, but if it is, it's patents that make it possible for the universities and NIH to sell the right exclusively.

Since manufacturing, testing and marketing a drug is hysterically expensive, the patent seems to serve a purpose there -- even if pharma companies are more akin to specialized investment bankers than scientists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > They pick on startups because undercapitalized small companies cannot afford > to be ideological. When faced with the prospect of extensive legal fees and > a huge distraction, they do the pragmatic thing - they settle.

Patent trolling reminds me of a game of chicken. I wonder whether chicken strategies have been tried to combat it.

For example, if the start-up could position themselves so that it is profitable for them to defend themselves if they are sued by a patent troll, and the trolls were aware of this (and rational), the trolls may be scared to litigate. This could be in the form of "insurance" that pays out when the company successfully defends itself against a patent claim. Ideally, the fact that the company is insured would thwart off trolls, so the premiums could be lower than what companies currently pay out in settlements.

<comment><USER8> That's an interesting idea for a company! An company that insures against patent lawsuits. It would have be staffed by lawyers who know whether there are any possible patent violations but it might work.

As you said, the fact that you are even insured by this company may already signal to the troll to back off.

<comment><USER4> Nice idea but it doesn't work because when I sue you with a bogus patent troll, you can't make money out of it. All you can do is make the lawsuit go away and lose as little money as possible.

So it's a win-lose scenario. So there is no insurance possible. The best lawyers in your hypothetical insurance company, at best could convince the judge that you are not infringing. But it won't make you any money. So there is no business insuring against patent troll.

Don't get me wrong, I wish there was.

<comment><USER9> The good guys pay me money for insurance, I promise to release my team of ruthless lawyers on anyone that sue them, the patent trolls see my scary lawyers and don't sue. Doesn't that work?

<comment><USER10> It doesn't work with Patent Trolls (AKA Non Practicing Entities). What is the team of scary lawyers going to do? Since the trolls don't actually have a business or product, you can't sue them for patents they infringe. And their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not exactly a deterrent. The trolls themselves are often lawyers, or just a company that employs lawyers on retainer.

<comment><USER11> > their whole business is litigating patents, so tying them up in court is not > exactly a deterrent.

Lawyers can make a considerable amount of money, any disruption to the Patent Trolls' game will severely reduce their numbers. These Patent trolls, as you said, are often lawyers and by tying them up in court you are costing them profitability. Every non-settlement _forces_ them to go to court and actually fight.

This is how the courts work: Out-of-court settlements are frequent and are preferred as it saves a Judge's time for real cases, however mass submission and withdrawal of suits are seen as a waste of the courts time and effort. A fair amount of cases end up in front of a judge before settlement, if these end up being withdrawn (and the judge will know it's withdrawn _not_ settled) you're going to be in bad credence with a judge. Pissing off a judge is a big no-no. Patent Trolls will be pissing off multiple judges, which is like putting a shotgun in your career's mouth and pulling the trigger.

An insurance agency that fights patent trolls would be ideal. Offer $X amount of legal fee coverage for $Y a month, get a few talented lawyers and a fair amount of paralegals. Once word gets out, the majority of the work can be performed by paralegals (essentially everything up until you're standing in front of a jury-or-equivalent can be performed by paralegals) as no troll will want their time tied up. Eventually, only Trolls with a fair-case will fight, you then have 3 options to give your clients: offer them your lawyers' services/suggest settling/wish them good luck elsewhere. It would be a sort of no-case-no-extra-fee's deal.

Lawyer's typically bill by the 6-minute interval, and frequently charge 100's of dollars an hour. In fact 1-2 billed hours is typically a lawyers daily pay, and they may still have 6-8 hours on top of what they're billing clients. If you start consuming these lawyers time, their profitability drops, especially considering they require settlements for their pay. They're invested in the 'easy win', which isn't conducive to fighting a drawn out case. If companies actually start going through with the court battles, the payment is potentially delayed anywhere from 3-months to 3-years.

<comment><USER12> _Eventually, only Trolls with a fair-case will fight_

Don't a lot of trolls actually have valid patents that read on whatever it is you do?

If this worked, why wouldn't Microsoft just "self-insure" and never, ever settle a patent claim?

<comment><USER13> because a license might cost $1m, but going to court to fight it might cost $100m or more. It's a no-brainer whatever size you look at it. The win-lose equation here is about risk management: it's too risky for Microsoft, with an 'endless budget', to go against a troll.

In this instance, Microsoft's attorneys risk alienation too by playing the chicken game, and they don't want to do that.

How it could work is to find a judge who thinks patent cases like this are ambulance chasers, and then ensure that all the suits against you are relocated into her court. If you have a friendly judge then it becomes much easier to play chicken.

<comment><USER14> _How it could work is to find a judge who thinks patent cases like this are ambulance chasers, and then ensure that all the suits against you are relocated into her court. If you have a friendly judge then it becomes much easier to play chicken._

How exactly do you do this? I've been wondering. It seems trolls are able to get these cases heard in disproportionate numbers by a strange little puppet court down in east texas that has become famous for being troll friendly. (and indeed seems to have based its entire local economy around it)

<comment><USER15> As a patent holder you are allowed to sue in any jurisdiction where your invention is made, sold, or used. So the trolls naturally pick a friendly court.

<comment><USER16> Has anyone tried boycotting this area of Texas? It would be amusing for PR purposes alone. Would they be able to run their courts without access to Microsoft products?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a little cautious about this post. He is exaggerating by stretching the definition of "patent troll", if I am reading correctly. A true patent troll is a company that produces nothing except lawsuits. With a company that produces something and also sues over patents, there is at least the possibility of a countersuit / crosslicense / armed truce.

I assume their portfolio companies pool their patents together for the common defense. If not, that might be a good idea.

Still, with 26 portfolio companies, he's claiming 8-ish concurrent lawsuit threats... that's alarming. On the other hand, their portfolio is pretty high- profile (Etsy, Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Indeed, etc).

Also he doesn't put this claim in historical context: is this normal for a maturing (and very nice) portfolio? Are they going after the tender young startups or the bigger ones?

<comment><USER10> "With a company that produces something and also sues over patents, there is at least the possibility of a countersuit / crosslicense / armed truce."

Unless you're a startup that just wants to make a good product and isn't interested in spending tens of thousands of dollars acquiring patents on software you think shouldn't even be patented in the first place. Then you have no defense. You also don't have the funds for a protracted legal battle, since you're living on investment capital, or are barely profitable.

<comment><USER17> I'm not arguing anything about the validity or wisdom of patents. I'm saying the poster (a VC) left out a lot of pertinent information and using the term "patent troll" incorrectly.

It's an interesting item but wrapped in self-serving omission and linkbaity style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An addendum from Fred Wilson (another one of the partners at USV): [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/why-we-need-an- independent-i...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/why-we-need-an-independent- invention-defense.html) -

"But anyone who has spent a significant time in technology based businesses will understand that two groups working completely independently from each other will often solve a problem similarly. One group is not copying or ripping off the other group. They are simply coming to similar conclusions about how to get something done.

In these cases, it makes no sense to protect one group from the other. Nobody has taken anyone's "intellectual property." Both groups should own their inventions outright without having to license technology from the other."

</comment><comment><USER19> I really feel for smaller companies here as I know people with great products who have been trolled out of existence.

I wonder if there is a non-legislative fix available because I've heard about programmers wanting patent reform for as long as I've been programming and I believe almost no substantial progress has been made.

Brad mentions that larger companies have more resources available for fighting patent trolls. What if VCs set aside a pool of capital for defending their investments from patent trolls as part of raising their funds?

The idea would be to create a pool money whose size would ward off patent trolls. I'm sure it would take a few victories in court, but it could establish a precedent and change the game.

It certainly seems easier than attempting to reform patents.

</comment><comment><USER20> Check out this patent. It appears to be for storing web page state in the web page itself and transmitting that state using HTTP POST. I'm not even kidding.

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=wIEoAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=wIEoAAAAEBAJ&dq=5623656)

It's especially interesting to read the "referenced by" list on that page. "Incorporating state information into a URL" ... "Method for transmitting images over a network" ... "System for tracking the purchase of a product over the internet."

Seriously, what are we going to do about this?

</comment><comment><USER21> The fundamental problem with patents is that it rewards the first person to file a patent, disregarding the possibility that two people can synchronously, or asynchronously come to the same idea independently of each other.

I guess the "American" (assuming you're in America) course of action is to speak to your senator to push for reform and help evolve our government. If that fails, ditch the government altogether and either start or move to another country.

<comment><USER22> U.S. patents go to the first inventor, regardless of filing order.

<comment><USER21> In any case first doesn't mean the only, or the only one deserving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious, has anyone ever seen a software patent novel enough that it could be considered a "non-obvious" solution to the problem that the inventor is trying to attack?

<comment><USER24> Sure. Cryptography is littered with them.

<comment><USER25> Except then you're patenting math.

<comment><USER24> Not true at all. Cryptography Research has patented most of the implementation techniques required to do hardware crypto without being susceptible to differential power analysis (btw: that? My favorite business model ever!). That was almost pure systems research.

<comment><USER26> What is the business model associated with differential power analysis? Why is it your favorite?

<comment><USER24> They discovered a horrible, systemic vulnerability and then patented most of the effective defenses for it. It's pure evil genius.

<comment><USER27> And that's why patents are broken.

<comment><USER24> Strong disagree. They found the vulnerability. It is a remarkably interesting attack. Without their work, we'd just be silently vulnerable to the problem. I think (for instance) the DPA patents are a decent example of good-faith patents.

RSA was patent-encumbered for a long time too. You can formulate a similar argument about that. "RSA makes systems safer [ed: no it doesn't, but continuing...], so it's wrong to allow it to be patented".

<comment><USER28> I think there are some steps missing in your argument. It seems to go something like this: (1) CR found the issue, spotted a business model, patented all the best solutions, and told the world. (2) Without patents, CR wouldn't have done this. (3) So without patents, no one would have done it. (4) So without patents, we'd all be silently vulnerable to a very general, very clever side-channel attack.

The step from (1) to (2) seems doubtful. If the CR people hadn't been able to patent a bunch of ways to deal with DPAs, they might none the less have published about them. It's not as if no one ever tells the world about a security vulnerability without a patent-based incentive.

The step from (2) to (3) seems doubtful. It seems more likely that without CR, sooner or later someone else would have thought of differential power attacks and published about them. Unless CR are just _much much smarter_ than everyone else -- in which case, the guys in black hats would have been just as much worse off as the guys in white hats.

The step from (3) to (4) is OK, with the proviso I just mentioned: it seems that the obvious way for (3) to be true would tend to make the vulnerability matter much less.

<comment><USER24> Regarding (2) to (3): sorry, I think it is --- in large part --- the fact that CRI is just _much much smarter_. They're a peculiar company: they do real- world implementation _and_ high quality research. Yes, there are Dan Bernsteins and Dan Bleichenbachers in the world, but for the most part those people don't get a lot of exposure to custom hardware.

Regarding (1) to (2): sure, maybe CRI would have published even without compensation. Just like maybe I'd do my job part-time for free anyways even if I wasn't getting paid. You can say that for anyone who's doing what they love: musicians, lawyers, architects. But what's the win for not compensating CRI? Huge consumer electronics companies have to pay slightly less NRE to build new products. I'd rather have CRI in the world.

<comment><USER28> If CRI really are that much smarter, then in a world without CRI the bad guys would probably never have thought of differential power attacks, in which case it wouldn't matter that they aren't there.

I don't think "maybe CRI would have published even without compensation" is at all the same as "maybe I'd do my job part-time for free". In a world in which CRI couldn't patent anti-DPA measures, I'm betting they'd still be able to get paid plenty well for doing crypto. A fair number of super-smart crypto people are, after all, and they don't all have CRI's patent portfolio. So the analogy is more "maybe I'd publish interesting and useful crypto stuff for free even though it isn't what I'm getting paid for". Which, in fact, you do.

(If you're inclined to object that what you publish for free is not innovative on the scale of the discovery of DPA attacks, let me remind you that you just claimed that CRI are much much smarter than you are.)

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not positively claiming that the world would be better with a patent system in which CRI couldn't have got the patents they have. I don't know whether it would. I just don't think your argument supports your claims very well on this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Personally, I don't value software parents much.

I think they are a giant waste of money. You spend $20K on lawyers, to get nothing more than the right to spend more money on lawyers in the future.

That $20K could be better invested elsewhere (like on product improvement).

I think it would be worth considering eliminating software patents.

However, I don't think an "independent invention defense" is a good idea. It would essentially eliminate all patent protection. Basically, the absence of proof that you knew a patent existed, would get you off the hook for infringing on it. This means that as long as you had the right set of rigorous policies in place, you could operate with complete immunity from patent infringement claims.

If all employees were trained (by mandatory corporate training) that "under no circumstances should you ever read any patents, ever", and "if you ever have any doubts about anything being patentable, direct the question to our lawyer", and you were very strict about enforcing it, you could make a case that pretty much every invention was discovered independently.

That would defeat the whole purpose of patent protection. The idea is that by getting inventors to disclose details of their invention (which benefits society), that they get a monopoly on its use. Without the monopoly, there is no point in having a patent.

If software patents pose a fundamental problem, then I think the best course of action is to eliminate software parents, not to undermine the entire patent system.

<comment><USER14> _If all employees were trained (by mandatory corporate training) that "under no circumstances should you ever read any patents, ever", and "if you ever have any doubts about anything being patentable, direct the question to our lawyer", and you were very strict about enforcing it, you could make a case that pretty much every invention was discovered independently._

Thanks to the "treble damages" part, this is _exactly_ how it operates right now, right down to the corporate training. Unless you're a patent attorney, "never ever read a patent" is pretty good advice for any technical professional.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls."

That quote astonished me, I never really knew the extent of the problem.

<comment><USER30> Depends on what the meaning of "is" is, actually.

What falls into the category "under attack"? threat of litigation? actual litigation? in process of settling? having settled?

<comment><USER3> Any one of those mentioned in your question are bad. If it's all of them it's still bad. No matter what meaning of the word "is" that you choose it's bad. That's kind of the point of the article really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Somebody should patent the process of patent trolling. Then, at least, there would just be one doing it...

<comment><USER32> "Halliburton Tries To Patent Form Of Patent Trolling"

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081107/0118162765.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Though perhaps there's a selection bias at work? Maybe 'competing' venture funds are doing more thorough IP due diligence?

</comment><comment><USER34> God damn I hate nothing more than patent trolls. I'm positive that Lucifer is reserving a special place in hell for them, because there's no question they're going to burn.</comment>


German Patent Ruling Threatens Microsoft's Windows Phone Earnings From Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/06/german-patent-ruling-threatens-microsofts-windows-phone-earnings-from-android/ <comment><USER2> Back in 2009 Microsoft sued TomTom[1] over what appear to be US versions of this patent[2][3] (EU version here[4]) and won. There were subsequently efforts to work around this patent in the Linux implementation of FAT[5].

1: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/02/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/02/microsoft-sues-tomtom-over-fat-patents-in-linux-based- device/)

2: [http://www.google.com/patents?id=bUohAAAAEBAJ](http://www.google.com/patents?id=bUohAAAAEBAJ)

3: [http://www.google.com/patents?id=cLAkAAAAEBAJ](http://www.google.com/patents?id=cLAkAAAAEBAJ)

4: [http://www.google.com/patents/EP0618540A3](http://www.google.com/patents/EP0618540A3)

5: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/07/vfat-l...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/07/vfat-linux-patch-could-circumvent-microsofts-patent- claims/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested, this seems to be the email/thread that was cited.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/0rgZpp...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/0rgZpprg_Eo)

<comment><USER4> In which Linus is calm, friendly, and helpful!

<comment><USER3> He's actually like this most of the time, it's a shame that the media only reports his outbursts. He's an amazing person and surprisingly accepting on other people and fellow developers.

<comment><USER5> To me, he just sometimes lacks tact. And there are way too many overly- sensitive people out there.

I think DeRaadt is in the same position (although I'll concede that he is more tactless than Torvalds).

<comment><USER6> So it's just a normal case of Dutch directness?

<comment><USER7> Linus is Finnish and Theo is South African.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So in other words, Microsoft _stole_ Linus' ideas, and then asked everyone to pay _them_ for it. At least going by Microsoft's own logic in general.

Frankly, I've always thought it's ridiculous that FAT isn't at the very least a FRAND patent, considering how much monopolistic power Microsoft had in the desktop OS space, and I'm surprised that in the anti-trust lawsuits against them, this wasn't raised as an issue. I guess back then they didn't really enforce FAT patents the way they started doing after Android took off, and saw it as an excellent opportunity for _rent-seeking_.

<comment><USER9> Well, patents, much like copyrights, only have value inasmuch as you are prepared to pay to fight it out in court. Copyrights are a little more straight forward, as "invalidation" (absent of plagiarism) is less common (though not unheard of).

The stack exchange guys have a whole site dedicated to finding prior art to invalidate patents. [http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior- art-...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art-request)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> US5758352 was filed on Sep 5, 1996, so it's still got another three years of life before we can bury the silly thing.

US5960411 A (One Click Shopping) Dies a year later (filed Sep 12, 1997)

A whole host of idiotic patents should be ending their life in the next several years.

<comment><USER10> For each idiotic patent that expires I would suspect that more than one idiotic patent is granted.

This nonsense won't stop until we abolish patents. And we really need to abolish patents. Completely. The patent system can't be fixed.

<comment><USER11> No, patents serve a good purpose outside of software and in many disciplines. It's just in software where we see the worst side of the patent system, i.e. "tack on computer to anything and it's 'original.'"

<comment><USER12> I don't think you can prove this.

I'd love to see research proving patents do more good than harm (in any field).

<comment><USER11> Actually in medicine we have both the good and bad of patents. For any drug to be brought to market in the U.S. there is, by necessity, a long and expensive process to ensure a drug does more benefit than harm. This process can cost millions of dollars but producing the formula + manufacturing is often not nearly as expensive. Hence, a patent, because of the legal framework for which these inventions are conceived within, granting a monopoly for a short period of time is the only thing that promotes or gives companys an incentive to continue on with FDA approval.

This, by the way, is no means or excuse for some of the shenanigans drug manufacturers take part in. It merely is one illustration of why a patent system should exist.

<comment><USER13> In medicine, patents are a government-granted benefit to inventors that sort of counteracts the government-imposed penalty of having to go through FDA approval. There's a nice symmetry here.

If we look at industries with less regulation, like software, the necessity for a patent system is a lot less clear.

<comment><USER14> > like software, the necessity for a patent system is a lot less clear.

Software is a terrible example, since every story such as this one demonstrates how absurd and stupid software patents are. It is plain as day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Avoid Forbes, use the source: [http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/12/federal- patent-court-of-g...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/12/federal-patent-court- of-germany.html)

<comment><USER16> Florian Müller is in no way an independent source. He has a huge bias towards patents and against Google.

He used to or he is working as a consultant for Microsoft and Oracle. Even though he used to campaign against software patents in the past.

As an old saying goes: He who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Edit: writing English on a Saturday afternoon shouldn't be that hard, right? Wrong! :-(

<comment><USER17> Huge bias _towards_ patents ? This is the guy that launched NoSoftwarePatents.com, right ?

<comment><USER16> I mentioned he was campaigning against software patents in the past. But his pieces are not critical about patents but very critical about Google. Maybe it is more a bias against Google than towards patents.

However the case, he is not a reliable or independent source in the smartphone IP wars.

<comment><USER18> Who is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another ridiculous software patent that should die!

I people had patented B-trees, there would be no MySQL or other free database and royalities had to be paid on any database of the world.

Or guess, somebody would have patented Quicksearch ... a thousand times more plausible thing to patent.

<comment><USER20> do you mean quicksort?

<comment><USER19> Oh right! You are so right! Unfortunately, I can't correct the comment anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The cynic in me says that even if the patent is thrown out, it will have little effect on the extortion that Microsoft is practicing against Android. They'll just find another vague patent to threaten manufacturers with.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure they'll try. But what matters most is that their patent threatening was already on shaky grounds to begin with. If someone like Samsung stops paying them, it might have a domino effect, and sooner or later more companies will try to actually test Microsoft's patents in Court. I think it's only a matter of time anyway, especially if this ruling remains permanent, which would embolden Android OEM's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Microsoft's earnings from Android trolling are not a matter of public record. Each agreement M'soft has made is secret.

In fact, there is no strong, solid evidence that M'soft is making any money at all off Android. When Barnes and Noble's Nook refused to pay the danegeld, M'soft sued and then settled to avoid discovery. Nook actually got paid by M'soft in the settlement, though M'soft ended up with considerable control of the unprofitable Nook in exchange.

Speculation is that HTC agreed to make and market Windows Phone phones instead of paying royalties. If that kind of agreement was common, it's no wonder that all the non-Nokia Windows Phone phones were garbage: They were produced under duress.

Also, my Android 4 devices no longer support any kind of FAT filesystems the way my Android 2 phones did. I think Google already started making FAT optional just so as to avoid paying for patents like this one.

<comment><USER23> Sounds like wild speculation, without any citations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Same thing happened at the ITC last year (except I'm not sure if an ITC ruling can actually invalidate patents):

[http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/VFat-patent-could- be-...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/VFat-patent-could-be- invalidated-thanks-to-Motorola-and-Torvalds-1486484.html)

However TFA is being silly in claiming it threatens any significnt portion of MSFT's licensing revenue. Companies that size don't typically license individual patents, they license portfolios of patents.

Now the following is all speculation, since these licensing deals are very closely guarded, but from the few I've heard of: I'm guessing Microsoft's "smartphone" (or maybe the "linux") portfolio has dozens of patents, each of varying value, of which this was just one. So the portfolio's value will decrease a bit, but I'm guessing not by much.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDo...](http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=20011212&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP&CC=EP&NR=0618540B1&KC=B1&ND=4)

<comment><USER26> Apparently, this is a link to the original patent, which automatically downloads PDF of its cover page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> TIL Microsoft makes (a lot) more money on Android than Google does.

</comment><comment><USER28> While I do speculate that Microsoft has more vague patents that it's using to sap Android OEMs, I do think this was one of the more prominent patents, as Microsoft itself went on the offense with it (IIRC it tried to get Motorola phones banned for violating it).

It made my day to see that a comment by Linus Torvalds himself made this patent end up in the garbage bin of IP harassments.

</comment><comment><USER29> This title is confusing.. "From Android" ?

</comment><comment><USER30> > _we don't really have a German or UK or whatever patent system any more, we > have a European Union one. So this German case doesn't apply just to > Germany, it applies right across the EU_

This has got to be false information. It was mentioned that this was a ruling of the _Federal Patent Court of Germany, BPatG_. Since when does a German patent court dictate EU patent laws and rulings? does this mean that if a patent court in another EU country ruled the other way that that is now the new EU stance? This makes no logical sense.

<comment> bjelkeman-again "A patent granted by the EPO does not lead to a single European Union-wide patent enforceable before one single court, but rather to independent national patents enforceable by national courts according to different national legislations and procedures."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_patent_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_patent_law)

<comment><USER31> Other information I find have the same consequence ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Patent_Convention#Oppo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Patent_Convention#Opposition)):

 _" A European patent is also non-unitary in that it may be revoked in one Contracting State while maintained in another. However, a national court in one Contracting State may not revoke a European patent in another Contracting State."_

This is a bit surprising. At the beginning of the Samsung vs Apple trials, also in Germany, it was widely reported that the german ruling would have EU- wide effects. Those were patent cases as well...

Maybe the difference is between invalidating patents and deciding whether a patent is infringed by another party.

<comment><USER32> Samsung v Apple did as far as I know not have any effects outside Germany so I believe that was just false information.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Secrets of BackType's (YC S08) Data Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/secrets-of-backtypes-data-engineers.php <comment><USER2> This illustrates that a staff of _three_ highly skilled innovative engineers can bring to market an innovative solution.

Jeeze, these guys developed their own _database_ and _language_ to accomplish their objectives. Others might take 10 million in funding, already be focused on the 2nd round, all the while not focused on delivering first.

You have to get there, before you can get there.

Congrats to the BackType team.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be more interested in hearing the results/reasoning of their recent introduction of a paywall.

Seems the business model pivoted slightly.

e.g. [http://backtweets.com/search?q=yongfook.com%2Fall-about- litt...](http://backtweets.com/search?q=yongfook.com%2Fall-about- littlecosm&ref=p1)

anything beyond the last few weeks, you need to pay $100/month.

<comment><USER4> The results in BackTweets haven't actually changed, we're just showing an upgrade button above them. What was free continues to be free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised they are still 3 engineers. They have been posting jobs for almost a year now and still haven't hired anyone, yet they keep saying in blogs and the job section they want to hire. I understanding waiting for the "best" yet at the same time you're growing a custom stack that requires specific skill sets and I imagine as time goes on it only gets harder. I mean, slow hiring is good too but at some point you need to give in and grow so that your employees can join in on your projects and grow with the company!

<comment><USER6> We've recently added two very talented interns to our team:

<http://tech.backtype.com/welcome-jason-christopher>

<comment><USER7> Are you looking for full-time engineers?

<comment><USER6> Yes, we are.

<http://www.backtype.com/jobs>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of that post by the ex-Facebook manager, who said that tools are top priority. This article really brings it home for me.

However, despite their purported effectiveness as engineers, I'm not sure what Backtype is really doing. I generally see them just below an article, in place of comments, with a long list of useless tweets referring to the article (usually of the form "article title - bit.ly/shortened". That's probably not doing them too much good for marketing, unless you think any publicity is good publicity.

<comment><USER4> What you're seeing is Disqus' Reactions feature, which we help power. Part of our business is data services, which companies like Disqus, Bitly, The New York Times, SlideShare, etc use.

Our own product is a marketing intelligence platform; essentially, it provides analytics for social media marketing programs so brands understand what's working, what isn't and how to improve.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this a good idea to onboard new employees? - <AUTHOR> We have this idea to maintain a log of 'events' or decisions we take in our team. So whenever a new employee joins our team, she/he is able to gain context in a short amount of time by just going through the log.
For starters, we can just maintain a repo and commit these decisions/events to it.
I guess, then, the question is:
1. Is this really needed ? 2. If go ahead with this approach, what are those events or decisions worth committing?

   some examples from the top of my head:
   * we decided to rewrite the auth flow. why? => ...
   * we chose language xyz for this particular module...
 We obviously have a wiki that has concrete things like setting up your laptop, information about existing products, blah blah. <comment><USER2> I think it's not a great idea for onboarding. New employees aren't going to have the context to get the most out over even the most well-written decision documents.

That said, this is a fantastic idea for all your current employees. Documenting why a decision is made is going to help people really think through the reasoning behind their decisions and is going to be incredibly useful 1-2 years from. Is when you're trying to figure out why you didn't do [something much simpler].

</comment><comment><USER3> A: because the last guy who knew how it works left three months ago

Q: why am I re-writing this mission critical thing wishing I had a time machine?</comment>


Spurious Correlations - <AUTHOR> http://www.tylervigen.com/

<comment><USER2> One of my friends made this one showing the effects of increased mobility for females: [http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation.php?id=2973](http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation.php?id=2973)</comment>


Startup(s) from (YC W14) still in stealth/completely unannounced? - <AUTHOR>

Now that demo day has come and gone I was surprised not to see any mention of a particular W14 batch member that had previously posted on the job board.
I know that occasionally companies do not finish the program but this one looks from external appearances like it's in pretty good shape so my question is, generally speaking, are there occasionally startups who decide they would prefer not to be featured on demo day and wish to remain under the radar?
I see no mention of the company on http://ycuniverse.com/ycw14 nor in any media summaries of demo day.  I am purposely excluding the name of the startup from this discussion because their particular circumstances aren't as important as the broader lesson to be learned here.
Is there a precedent for this? Seems like an interesting strategic decision.  Perhaps this approach would be beneficial to other incubated (YC & non-YC) companies too? <comment><USER2> Yes, there are companies in the batch that decide to remain in stealth a bit longer. Until they are ready to shine.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


Pocket Casts acquired by NPR, other public radio stations, This American Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/3/17314866/pocket-casts-podcast-app-acquisition-npr-wnyc-wbez-this-american-life <comment><USER2> This is huge news. One of the most popular / well-liked apps now owned by a major media player in the audio ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if this is good or bad news, because I really like Pocket Casts...

<comment><USER4> This is definitely bad news. Big media is dying to know everything that they can about the listeners of podcasts. I can guarantee you that the first update to Pocket Casts will be a new privacy policy, where they go Big Data on the user.

Podcasts is obviously going the way of the web, with extreme spying on the users.

Really disappointed because Pocket Casts was a great cross platform app, working super on Android, iPhone and even iPad.

I'm switching to Overcast, where the developer cares about privacy.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really worried about privacy with regards to my podcast listening habits. If that's the price of a really fantastic service like Pocket Casts, then so be it.

But if the app starts to suck, to insert ads and features no one really wants, and starts to remove the features I use... We don't really have a good alternative on Android...

<comment><USER4> Of course they will insert personalized ads. There is no doubt in my mind that the end goal is pervasive monitoring combined with targeted advertising.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gimp Forked over "Offensive Name" - <AUTHOR> https://itsfoss.com/gimp-fork-glimpse/ <comment><USER2> They're discussing rewriting code in D or Rust? I wasn't a fan of the rename to begin with cause I thought it was trivial. But rewriting the code in impractical languages cements my skepticism.

<comment><USER3> I feel like a rewrite of the UI would be very exciting even if it never succeeds, simply because it will be a good large-scale test of D or Rust GUI programming, and hopefully generate some good libraries in the process.

<comment><USER2> Power to them if they want to try. But I feel like there's more practical and needed work on an important and somewhat unique program like Gimp. Again - skeptical of anyone who calls for a rewrite of a codebase instead of fixing things or building new features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's the beauty of open source software - you're free to fork and I'm free to continue using GIMP. If GLIMPSE offers better functionality in the future then I'm free to switch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Glimpse sounds like a great name. If it brings new development into the project it can't hurt. I have no problem with the GIMP name, as a frequent user, but some times things need new names to evolve.

</comment><comment><USER6> GIMP (GLIMPSE?) had a number of interface and overall "jankiness" problems that, to my knowledge, it's core team never really sought to change. (I would probably have to install it again and play around with it again to have a more concrete idea of the osbtacles I remember). There was an old fork or plugin I think at one time that tried to make the interface more Photoshop-like, but I don't think it was very successful in the long run, not to say that painting apps should perfectly replicate Photoshop's interface - certainly there is room to explore potentially better alternatives. I just don't think GIMP is _it_.

That being said I think Krita has proven relatively successful in the domain of "open-source painting app". It has its own bits of jankiness here and there but it has grown to include a robust feature set (including some coloring tools which you won't find any analogue to in Photoshop) and has even acquired support for the G'MIC filter suite from GIMP.

As for names, sometimes people just don't know how to swallow their pride. I'm reminded of an incident with a certain Erlang package whose name had unintentionally coincided with a certain racist slur in America. When called out on this, it predictably bubbled into an argument; I think the author doubled-down on keeping the name but later just gave up and changed it to something less offensive. GIMP had the issue of people not wanting to use in the context of school computers and businesses solely because of that name, which I mean, if you refuse to do anything about that, you might have a problem.

<comment><USER7> "Krita has proven relatively successful in the domain of "open-source painting app""

Ok, but is there a good alternative to GIMP as an open source _photo-editing app_? Which is automatable? You use the past tense as though everyone already stopped using it.

<comment><USER6> Feel free to argue otherwise, but I think GIMP's relevance has waned over the years, which is why I speak in that "past tense" you take issue with. For what it's worth I think Krita has worth in the domain of photo manipulation as well.

Krita also has automation utilities:

[https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/main_menu/tools_m...](https://docs.krita.org/en/reference_manual/main_menu/tools_menu.html)

[https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/python_scripting/intro...](https://docs.krita.org/en/user_manual/python_scripting/introduction_to_python_scripting.html)

I'm curious how you use GIMP and whether or not Krita would prove usable for you, i.e. if there's some critical specific functionality GIMP excels at where Krita falls behind.

<comment><USER7> I never heard of Krita before this, but my background is of being a very casual user of Photoshop which was pretty unaffordable in the 90s (other people's licenses, plus there was a "lite" version included with a scanner once) and when I first learned of GIMP, it was extremely annoying how much it tried to imitate Photoshop yet be arbitrarily different, but eventually I learned to do basic stuff in it. So now typically, I just want to resize a picture, convert the format, change the gamma, do something simple with layers, etc, and don't want to pay _or_ learn anything new.

However, I never did learn how to script GIMP, and it seems like I will need to soon for maintaining a website, and if as I recall it has some sort of lisp like thing, I'm kind of allergic to that. I don't know python either, but it's probably more my speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Borderware firewall (from back in the 90's and Y2K) was originally called Janus (after the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.) which seemed apropos at the time. But their first big customers were in Sweden, where they kept pronouncing it like "anus." Realizing they'd have this problem all over Europe and most of South America, they changed the name.

That's a founding story that never made it to their website ABOUT page.

</comment><comment><USER9> Named partially after the movie Pulp Fiction and Ving Rhames's scene. "General Image Manipulation Program" was kind of fit onto it. Not quite a backcronym, but definitely thought of at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like a Scunthorpe problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> appropriating open source bit a bit...

</comment><comment><USER12> Finally! They should have renamed a decade ago.</comment>


Man Puts Computer Through Hell by Installing Every Major Windows Upgrade - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/guy-puts-his-computer-through-windows-upgrade-hell-by-installing-every-major-version <comment><USER2> The article is not coming up for me, but here's Google's cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X5wnGE...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X5wnGECDF7oJ:https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/guy- puts-his-computer-through-windows-upgrade-hell-by-installing-every-major- version)

a direct link to the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ)

and a link to the original 2011 experiment:

[https://rasteri.blogspot.com/2011/03/chain-of-fools- upgradin...](https://rasteri.blogspot.com/2011/03/chain-of-fools-upgrading- through-every.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "windows 10 was installed by simply leaving the room" lol

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd say he put _himself_ through hell.

</comment><comment><USER5> When will the cruelty to machines stop?! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_jLpd- _gdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_jLpd-_gdY)

</comment><comment><USER6> All I'm seeing is a headline and a still image of an installer dialogue box ???</comment>


Congresswoman interrupted during NSA interview for report on Justin Bieber - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/congresswoman-interrupted-during-nsa-interview-for-report-on-justin-bieber-9082109.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. Can't have a conversation about serious things when there's news that no one will give a rat's ass for in a year. I wouldn't think it would be so obvious, but what do I know? I don't watch TV. Or have a TV.</comment>