GPS industry rages: LightSquared 4G network would "defy" laws of physics - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/how-gps-interference-could-derail-a-new-national-4g-networkgps-industry-rages-lightsquared-4g-network-would-defy-laws-of-physics.ars <comment><USER2> One thing not mentioned is LightSquared misuse of the spectrum. The spectrum in question is the L1 band, which was set aside for satellite communications. These satellite transmitted signals appear weak from the ground.

A loophole in the FCC rules allows the use of ground based stations to fill-in weak areas of satellite coverage. This is called Auxiliary Terrestrial Component (ATC). LightSquared's plan is to use the ATC loophole to build out a terrestrial ground-based network with very little satellite usage. They are essentially getting valuable ground-base spectrum at the low price of satellite spectrum.

LightSquared blaming of GPS receiver manufactures is a bit ridicules. The GPS unit manufactures weren't expecting out-of-spec usage of the neighboring L1 band. The L1 band was set aside for satellite signals, not terrestrial. Somehow none of the press is pointing this out.

Here's a good write-up [http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/whats-the-deal- with-th...](http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/whats-the-deal-with-the- lightsquared-gps-clash/179780)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can find the report that LightSquared submitted in the right-hand column of the page at [0]. I'm reading it now to see if their suggestion to use filters (which was very vague in the linked article) really has merit. The "Save our GPS" consortium surely doesn't think it does.

[0] <http://www.pnt.gov/interference/lightsquared/>

<comment><USER4> I'm reading the Recommendations portion of the report. It is surprisingly light on technical details. LightSquared's claim seems to be that there is only a conflict on the "edge" of one of their licensed signal bands, primarily because a small subset of GPS devices (mostly survey, mining, etc. use devices) are improperly accepting signal in adjacent bands, either accidentally or intentionally in order to carry a little additional custom data. (?)

So far, after reading most of the Recommendtions report and without being knowledgeable in this specific area, I'm inclined to side with LightSquared. Groups advocating protection of wireless spectrum are frequently hysterical when it comes to anything that _might_ affect their signal. (e.g., the hams' strong and vocal objection to various proposals to carry telecom signals over power lines.)

<comment><USER5> I've glanced at the same doc, got a slightly different take from it. The higher precision devices are actually receiving data in LightSquared's licensed band (by having more receive bandwidth, they get better accuracy), on purpose. This is not the GPS devices' band to use, so IMO tough luck on them. (If you like analogies, it's like carving out a block of unassigned IPs for yourself, and then complaining when someone is actually assigned those IPs and wants to use them).

The one band they tested is the one that is further away, and therefore easier for devices to reject. They claim it's not a problem for "over 99% of devices" when they are at full power there. They concede that operation the the higher frequency band (that LightSquared has licensed) would cause trouble for "a significant portion of legacy devices."

The root cause of most of the problem (not the part where ultra-precision receivers use bands that aren't theirs) is that the GPS receivers expected things in neighbouring bands to remain quiet, when there was no guarantee that such would happen. This assumption made for easier and cheaper designs for them, and now all this hardware is out there that is susceptible to the interference.

<comment><USER4> Right. I might've done a bad job describing my take on the report, because I agree with all that.

It's also worth noting that LightSquared is offering to provide circuitry -- which they claim to have already developed -- to any device manufacturers that want to filter LightSquared's signal.

Regardless, I'm not yet seeing a single thing anywhere in this part of the report that would lead me to conclude that they're proposing something that "defies physics".

<comment><USER5> The "defies physics" part would be a filter that is physically impossible to implement. As you need sharper roll-off of your filter (more rejection of out- of-bands, and sooner), you start making sacrifices and attenuating the signals in your passband as well. GPS already needs very sensitive receivers, and attenuating the signals more than they already are could make them unusable. ("Oh!" you say, "just put more amplifiers behind the filter!" Well, no, at that point the signal is inderminable from thermal noise, which you will amplify just the same. And you can't put one in front of the filter, because then the LightSquared signals don't get filtered out and they interfere...)

Without seeing the specs they are being asked to hit, I can't speak to the challenges of realizing these filters.

And just to be clear, there is no way for LightSquared to use their upper band and not interfere with the ultra-precision stuff that's effectively squatting there. There's no happy compromise in that situation, but as I implied earlier, I have little sympathy for the guys who weren't playing by the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have any real worthwhile info of this entire issue? All I've seen is the few incomprehensible technical arguments and then plenty of over- popularised articles like this one. I think it's obvious that LS can't go ahead if these problems are real, but the whole debate seems to lack much real detail.

<comment><USER7> Lightsquared has a license to broadcast in the 1525-1559 MHz band. Since their transmitters are on the ground, the signals are powerful.

GPS is 1559—1610 MHz. These signals are very weak, since the transmitters are in orbit.

The pissing match is that even though on _paper_ the two ranges don't overlap, in _practice_ the Lightsquared transmissions tend to stomp all over the lower end of the GPS range, which make various interested parties unhappy.

There's additional humor in that while it's certainly _possible_ to get around interference like this, in practice that's dual-use technology which can be used to evade military GPS jamming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anybody was going to be outraged by this, wouldn't it be the FAA and the Us Military?

<comment><USER9> The presumption is that more expensive equipment based on GPS (aircraft navigation, etc) have the appropriate "filters" in place to prevent interference.

If LightSquared is to be believed, the problem is that commodity GPS makers did not take adequate precautions against interference.

<comment><USER10> There's probably a grain of truth to both positions. Dealing with RF interference is something of a black art, so given that LightSquared hasn't actually deployed their network yet, it's not surprising that existing GPS devices don't filter out those signals perfectly. At the same time, LightSquared seems to have assumed that they could avoid interfering with the GPS band to a greater degree than they were ultimately able to deliver.

Of course, it's also a question of money - from the GPS manufacturers' perspective, they will have to assume all the costs while LightSquared derives the benefits. From LightSquared's perspective, they paid to acquire their spectrum while the GPS manufacturers get access to government infrastructure for free and are effectively blocking access to a significant chunk of spectrum just to reduce their per-unit costs.</comment></comment></comment>


Students spent $3000 testing the Infinite monkey theorem using real monkeys-2003 - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3013959.stm <comment><USER2> Ummmm.... The students were testing the infinite monkey hypothesis not a "theorem". They do not appear to have thought through their experiment and data collection in detail. Had they done so, the result of their experiment might be relevant to the hypothesis they were testing.</comment>


Ask HN: Meaningful Data Science Jobs - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, I'm currently in the midst of a PhD (several years remaining) and am debating whether continuing is the most productive use of my time. I've got a few years' experience in industry doing data science/ML research and a background in CS/Stats/Econ. Lately, I've been looking at "data science"-type jobs to evaluate my outside option. However, the overwhelming majority of data science jobs are a rebranding of business analytics, ad analytics, etc., and are for companies with questionable societal benefit.
My question is this: if I'm looking to do "data science" type work (statistics/ML/experimental design/recommender systems), and want to either personally work on something meaningful or want to work for a company doing something meaningful, where should I go?
Are any HN'ers working on something they feel is genuinely making the world better, and looking for a data scientist? If so, what are you working on, and where are you located?
I'm open to suggestions of both specific jobs and general career avenues. Public policy seems like an interesting research area (I've worked w/ economists & quantitative sociologists on related topics and enjoyed the work), but I'm not sure whether there are any financially sustainable (non-RA) jobs available in that space for someone with just a masters degree. I'm interested in personalized medicine and medical trial design from an academic research perspective, but I'm not sure who operates in that space or whether a MS would be sufficient long-term.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I do some data science type work for a charity. This is only part time but I'd imagine larger charities could employ someone full time at this.

The work is not cutting edge data science at all but I do find it meaningful.

Happy to answer questions on here or email me at my gmail (in profile) if you want more thoughts from me.

</comment><comment><USER3> RTI International ([https://www.rti.org/](https://www.rti.org/)) does the type of work you're talking about. My understanding is they also pay better than what you'd typically see in some policy institutes or postdoc jobs. They have Data Science jobs that don't require a PhD.

Keep in mind with areas like public policy or other areas typically involved with government or NGOs, it's important to understand the subject area you are working in beyond pure quantitative analysis. Here's an example. I recently met somebody who is involved in a project that works with a government agency in Asia to build a model to predict the onset of a particular seasonal disease. The goal is to be able to predict where to allocate beds, doctors, medicine, etc.

The statistical model they are building for this is hard to build well. It's this way because the data collection process is still being refined and there are politics and money involved with the spread and treatment of the disease. No magic algorithm is going to build a great model. They really need somebody who understands the data, the geopolitical climate, and the medical system to build a solid and useful model.

You can train somebody in 4 weeks to blindly try algorithms and pick the model with the lowest error. But only somebody with expertise in at least one areas (e.g. medicine, government) can handle the other parts of this project. So they don't need a pure data scientist. They need a PhD or MD with expertise in other aspects of this particular problem to work with a statistician. It's hard to really get the traction you need in this type of problem without a PhD, MD, JD, etc. If nothing else, take a solid sequence of courses in statistics.

If you don't mind, I'd also like to offer a counterpoint to your thinking about what makes a Data Science job meaningful. I used to work in Data Science consulting and worked with a lot of different companies. Some of these are perceived to be much more evil than good (e.g. Oil and Gas, beverages companies, etc). But you can do good work in these companies despite what they do in the larger scheme of things. For example, we helped an Oil Company build tooling for sensor monitoring so they could prevent chemical spills. In a small way, this helped the environment a little bit. For the beverage company, we helped their supply chain so they were driving fewer miles - a little less crud in the air and less fuel consumed. Not all of this was super-duper ML. Some of it was mundane BI.

I'm aware some of this is rationalization. I've worked on "Personal Offers." This is portrayed as an extreme focus on customer satisfaction, but it's really just about getting people to buy stuff. I didn't enjoy it. Facebook has plenty of this kind of stuff, but they also have their data centers. Maybe a data scientist can help figure out how they can save some electricity and heating in those data centers, or keep servers running for longer so less hardware ends up in a landfill.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should always be interested in what you are doing and think about how you can use it to better the world. But you also have to think: Is it going to pay me enough to live my life?

I'm not sure what kind of programs you use or if you use any programming, though I encourage you to learn the programming languages that are most used in your field, which I believe is R. I have met some scientists and researchers in my travels who use the R programming language who are making great money and love what they do. As it stands right now, the yearly salary is over $100,000 a year.

Not to say that money is the most important thing in the world, as you should really find something you love to do and enjoy doing it, as well as hopefully contribute something positive to the world. Once you acquire that PhD, you have, in a way, developed this sense of commanding respect no matter what company you work for. More education? You can never go wrong!

I've only got a bachelors psychology degree yet work in the field of web design. Can't say it lacks psychology... from the fonts, the font size, and the colors and placement of everything. We do tend to strategically place things on those pages in certain areas that are more prominent to the eye and make people want to buy. For my professional work, I build landing pages for companies and to sum it up: It is basically the media and advertising industry that I work in. Do I feel like it helps anyone? It helps the consumer world, and businesses, the economy, and drives business engagement to companies so the world can continue to function the way it does. Do I feel it helps anyone personally? I make a living doing it.. so definitely me. But mostly companies and the consumer world.

As for the side projects I work on, I tend to focus on two things: the individual and small business. I do actually feel that my side projects help to make the world a better place, at least, to help people in their everyday lives.

You have to be creative. You have been alive long enough to know that every year, jobs disappear, just as new ones are created every year. Jobs that existed when you were younger don't exist, yet tons more that no one would have ever imagined would ever exist do actually exist today and still many more that have yet to be thought of or dreamed of (Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will soon possibly created hundreds of thousands more jobs)-- imagine surgeons-in-training using that technology to practice on virtual patients).

Find your place in the world and if your job doesn't exist, imagine it, create it. If it already exists, well then, utilize it! My suggestion is to gain experience in the work world, work for a company for a year or so, and if you like it, keep doing what you're doing, and during that time, if you don't like it, think of something you can do to create your own job and meaningful purpose in this world. You sound like a very intelligent individual who already knows what you have to do. You just have to acquire and apply the knowledge and research to do it!

Good luck :)</comment>


A Russian Train Stop That Serves One Schoolgirl - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/russian-train-stop-schoolgirl <comment><USER2> Similar stop in Japan (or at least was in 2016, according to the article the station has now closed):

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-339582...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3395828/The- train-company-stops-station-everyday-pick-ONE-passenger-school.html)

<comment><USER3> That is mentioned in the article, still relevant though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So Russia and Japan can arrange train stops so public transit serves a single school child, but the US cannot even arrange decent bus service in many cities?

The excuse that we (the US) just lack population density sufficient to make public transit work begins to ring hollow.

<comment><USER5> What I collect from my discussions with HNers on car use / public transit (I believe car use should be severely limited to cases where it's indispensable, and general public use public transportation, including taxis) is that Americans just don't like public transit. A frequent theme is the fact that in public transport you need to share space with other people and sometimes it's uncomfortable and crowded. Many think they're too good to "suffer" that, and they want to be in their private tonne-heavy metal and plastic bullet possibly speeding along or drowsily waiting in traffic. Public transportation is for those who can not afford a car.

Also, running public transportation is not a very profitable, if at all, business, so government enterprise is required to run it. And the US seems to lack that.

<comment><USER6> Lived in USA all my life. Wish that private autos were illegal. Have always been considered insane.

<comment><USER7> What is insane is that most people who love driving would probably be happier if those who didn't want to drive were happily serviced by decent public transit.

So everyone has to be more miserable because of myopia and indifference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An article about Poyakonda: [http://kandalaksha.su/poyakonda/](http://kandalaksha.su/poyakonda/)

<comment><USER5> .su is the TLD for the Soviet Union! It exists today because it was registered 8 months before the dissolution of the union. Mildly interesing side-fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kindof related: Geoff Marshall does a video series where he travels to the least-used stations in various parts of the UK: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt4q5oaptyI9U2zddss8d...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt4q5oaptyI9U2zddss8dm8srzuJj6nRz)

</comment><comment><USER10> Those who lived at the end of school bus and train routes are part of a very special (and elite!) club that nobody else can understand, and that we don't have the words to discuss. If we didn't do it, somebody else would have, but we did do it, and it weird.

</comment><comment><USER11> Violation of privacy?</comment>


Archiving Twitter on Your Own Server - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/archiving-twitter-on-your-own-server/28030 <comment><USER2> Nice post, especially because it never occurred to me that twitter could be a way to arrange my own thoughts and so worth of a backup!</comment>


The Future Of Libraries In The E-Book Age  - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135117829/the-future-of-libraries-in-the-e-book-age?ft=1&f=1008 <comment><USER2> Wow, how much will constantly relicensing an ebook cost our library system?

Sounds great for publishers, they finally get more money out of those damn public libraries who have been undermining their profits for over a century!

<comment><USER3> Today, the books at the library are used and handled so they don't last forever either.

What really is the difference then?

<comment><USER4> _What really is the difference then?_

Artificial scarcity imposed by incumbent interests will be considered a bug, and someone will "fix" it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "File sharing is the library of today" - Mika Sjöman

<comment><USER6> "If I buy a book and read it, and then give you the book to read, I have broken no laws. Why is that not true for all media?" - Michael Moore

<comment><USER7> Obviously, because you didn't 'give you the book', you made an (illegal) copy and kept the book too.

<comment><USER8> so will you be happy if I overwrite the original file with zeroes 7 times?

<comment><USER7> Not the issue. Its different to give a book away, versus copying and giving an unlimited copy to someone. You retain the right to own the original, regardless of whether you burn it, lose it, put it in your library. This is not rocket science.

<comment><USER8> you don't prohibit a person who loaned a book from you to photocopy or take notes from it, do you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article forgets a step; it puts the question "will libraries become obsolete?" on the table. That assumes the book itself will not disappear, which is a very questionable assumption.

My prediction is that books eventually will disappear completely, and only nichebooks will be left. Encyclopædia Britannica becomes Wikipedia, novels become blogs, FAQ books become StackOverFlow-like websites, education materials become wiki's, how-to books become tutorial websites. And so on.

Print books will remain, but as a print edition based on the digital incarnation. The next generation will look to books as we look to magnetic tapes and CD's.

<comment><USER10> I've got to disagree. Libraries are not just a book repository. They are community centers and often the location of free or low-cost workshops. They are places to bring your kids on a Saturday to listen to stories. And librarians are a vast treasure trove of information. Libraries also provide free internet to those who don't have it, access to computers to those without. I take for granted the 3 computers I own with the internet connection that is always available but this is still considered a luxury.

As for losing the print editions or print editions being based on the digital ones, I certainly hope not. I can't imagine sitting in front of my laptop, or holding a nook, or reading on an iPad for hours. But that's my personal feelings and often see people on the T with their ebook readers.

<comment><USER11> Yea, they really need to emphasize the community center / place of learning aspect. Dale Dougherty from MakeZine was discussing how we might start to including a workshop for making things in a library. If you guys haven't seen <http://techshop.ws> \- I think it's a great model what libraries could incorporate into their services to maintain relevance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> HarperCollins says "unlimited access to books isn't commercially feasible" - well boo hoo HC! The VAST majority of book authors don't make enough money to survive, yet we still have those books don't we? Maybe youre little more than irrelevant and exist only because youve got the lawyers to back you up.

This shit pisses me the fuck off... Where am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER12> Can't libraries just own the digital content for unlimited licensing but restrict membership to people within residential limits? You must live within x miles of library to rent the book. The only hard part might be proving residence.</comment>


Humble Book Bundle: Cloud Computing by Packt - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cloud-computing-books <comment><USER2> Has anyone read/used the books here?</comment>


Better Starts Here – Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5WYvFOMtAA

<comment><USER3> Big Brother Starts Here - <USER2>

I find it interesting that Apple doesn't allow comments on their youtube videos..

<comment><USER4> So they are making an effort at creating not only sustainable energy solutions for their operations but also a good example for other big corporations.

You clearly hate this.

Poor Apple, can't do shit without being shat on.</comment></comment>


That's a Big Growth. Better Get That Checked Out. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/thats-a-big-growth-better-get-that-checked-out/

<comment><USER2> I'd be pretty happy to be Turntable.fm right now (I know Seth and Billy). I'm amazed that they pivoted so completely from Stickybits to Turntable.fm.

There are definitely licensing issues, but with phenomenal growth, and at least some viable business model (embedded rooms, celebrity appearances, etc.), they should be able to negotiate with content owners.

Once they hit escape velocity, they could start restricting the catalog of music to lower licensing costs, and maybe partner more deeply with content owners (to promote new artists, etc.) Until then, subsidizing relatively low licensing fees with cheap VC money is a great strategy.

BTW, if anyone is an amazing backend engineer (python, streaming, etc.) (www.quora.com/Turntable-fm/What-is-the-technology-stack-behind-Turntable-fm) please contact me (firstname.lastname@example.com); I think they're looking for help scaling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would definitely be happier owning Turntable than Stickybits.

That being said, there is no reason for mainstream content owners to negotiate with them. If Pandora has no bargaining power, why would Turntable? Pandora has even more ability to promote at will, since they pick the music. Some content owners may let them use the music for promotional reasons, but it's likely to be dwarfed by the use of mainstream music by most people using the service. Take away mainstream music and it makes it hard for most average people to DJ anything.

I do think that they have a better chance at monetization than a standard radio service, both by charging fees to get into popular rooms, or getting people to pay for cooler avatars, plus by having more engagement with the monitor (higher display ad revenues). However, they also pay even more for their music than Pandora, since at least one out of 6 users or so is an on- demand stream.

The major point of the article is, growth is great. Growing too fast to figure out how you'll make money before your costs are burying you is not a game you want to play in the music industry. In any other industry VCs will tell you to figure out monetization later. In music, very few will give you that benefit of the doubt anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice article. Also possibly worth mentioning that if you're raising tens of millions and hoping to exit for billions, you'll be giving away almost all your stock.

If your valuation is more modest, you'll keep much more control.</comment>


There's no way to recover data from the new MacBook Pros - <AUTHOR> https://bgr.com/2018/07/23/new-macbook-pro-2018-problems-ifixit-lol/ <comment><USER2> Since the encryption key is (by design) not extractable from the T2 chip, having raw access to the flash isn't particularly relevant. From a security perspective this is good, because imaging the encrypted disk can also reveal information, and potentially allow replay attacks (like patching the sectors where a password is stored back to a prior version).

[https://duo.com/blog/apple-imac-pro-and-secure- storage](https://duo.com/blog/apple-imac-pro-and-secure-storage)

<comment><USER3> you never had raw access to flash, those are NVME(variant specific to apple) drives

<comment><USER2> They are normal NVME chips, but only connected to the T2 co-processor. If they were connected to the processor then kernel code (and peripherals) could read and write to them directly using PCI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And this is a very very good thing. Period. I am glad they removed the backdoor. Backdoors are front doors for evil doers and, well.

Yes, it means that backups are even more important, but srly Apple make it so stoopidly easy with Time Machine that there really isn't an excuse. Besides, the SSD itself could die and there wouldn't have been a way to recover anything anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, to hack such a mechanism, a $10,000,000 reward seems fair. To the right buyer, the value is potentially open ended.

Some victim out there will rely on this as a turn key security solution to protect their high value data.

<comment><USER6> Watch as someone hacks it using an SDR.</comment></comment>


Who uses a CMS to manage their sites? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone run an open source cms to manage their startup's site?  What do you guys use?  Drupal?  Joomla?  something else? any huge downsides to running a cms and not going from scratch? <comment><USER2> Our website started on OpenACS, and then moved to Joomla. I've also built a large website with Zope/Plone.

All of them suck so bad they make me want to kick someone.

If I were starting today, I'd probably choose Drupal, but I'm sure I'd live to regret that as well. The smart money is probably on picking a "good enough" implementation of all of the individual features you need, and then make them all share session, and then write a custom login and user management page or two. You shouldn't imagine that any of them is a cohesive set of tools with a standardized codebase using a common set of functions.

That's pretty much what our Joomla site ended up being, only with the added pain of having to manage all of the content through Joomla (which is atrocious...give me flat files over that any day). So, I've spent months learning this big pile of code only to end up using it as a glorified session and authentication handler--the more I use the "native" Joomla tools, the less I like them. And it forces horrible URLs onto you unless you build a custom URL mapper for every application and use one of the SEF tools.

Admittedly, I'm not a fan of PHP, and so my discomfort is increased by working in a language that makes me feel a little ill (no first class functions? how does that even happen in a modern language?)...but nonetheless, the more work I do with websites like this, the more I think content management systems are a bad idea unless you're using them for the very, very, very specific set of problems the developer first set out to solve (I can't figure out what that is for Joomla, since it's so painful to use for just about anything, including managing content, but I'm sure there's a core of useful functionality in there that the project was first started to provide).

I'm going to try Drupal for a community site I'm planning for our Open Source tools, but I may end up giving up on that. It's just hard to know how painful things are going to be until you have users banging on it, and you have to dig deep to address problems they find. It wasn't until we'd actually launched our new site that all of the bugs in Joomla, Fireboard, Flyspray (mainly the bridge), VirtueMart, and other components came to light. Many still remain...If I knock out one bug a week, I'm pretty happy (the system is big, and the bugs run deep). Note also, that all of those apps have their own stylesheets and templates--you aren't even getting cohesive styling, unless you build the templates to match for every single application.

My ideal would be if every application out there had a very simple authentication callback interface, so you could tell it to get the session state from anywhere (maybe OpenID will make this a reality). It'd make it so easy to build a full-featured website--and no big over-arching framework needed. You could even use different languages for your apps...

<comment><USER3> Ive had to use Joomla in the past, and I agree with you. I hated it.

A CMS is good to get you kick started, after all who wants to build another boring login script? But if you are serious about your app, I think you have to roll your own. Simply because with any set of code provided for general use, it will never fit perfectly to your needs. And I think it is that extra bit of perfection, the 'icing on the cake' that makes your app special and stand out. It is much harder to accomplish that using someone else's code than writing your own specifically for your own purposes.

Cal Henderson in his excellent book 'Building Scalable Websites' mentions writing his own file transfer protocol for a middle-ware file storage system. His reason was that it was custom made for Flickr's needs and thus was faster than anything available.

A quote I heard somewhere about Catering Fake, when asked what tools she recommended to build a web app, she responded 'PHP' (in other words, she suggested using no tools, and to build your own).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We use Pagety, but we built it, so it's normal we really like it! ;)

<comment><USER3> uh, not that my above comment was to say that all CMSs are bad. What I meant, was that like everything else, they have a time and a place. I checked out Pagety and liked it</comment></comment>


On the dangers of a blockchain monoculture - <AUTHOR> https://tonyarcieri.com/on-the-dangers-of-a-blockchain-monoculture <comment><USER2> Refreshing to see a critique talking alternatives instead of another fanboy post on Bitcoin's blockchain. Monoculture is a good word for it. Almost all the research and attention is going in one direction when there are _many_ valid directions worth exploring with _fewer_ issues than Bitcoin. Some leverage proven approaches in finance, databases, or transaction processing. Just need extensions, more analysis, open implementations, etc.

So, I look forward to more articles like this to draw attention to solutions other than Bitcoin architecture. Another thing I look forward to are links to interesting alternatives like SCP and Interledger in this. I haven't reviewed them yet but brief descriptions seemed more exciting than "Cut-and-Pasted-Coin launched yesterday while promising to change the world."

<comment><USER3> If there's no work - it's not a blockchain. Distributed ledgers are a completely parrallel movement that was taken up by those who wanted to leverage the marketing momentum of blockchain, for their own database projects. Which is fine, but shouldn't get confused with blockchain innovations.

<comment><USER4> There can be proof-of-stake blockchains, proof-of-use, proof-of-minimum-aged- time, etc. etc. The blockchain is just a chain of blocks, there are innumerable ways to protect it, verify it, and distribute the data.

<comment><USER3> If the blockchain is just a chain of blocks, then every database designed after 1985 is also a blockchain. Is that what you believe?

Also- proof of stake always forks due to work attacks, so that's probably not a secured database.

<comment><USER4> I think the core value of a blockchain (as opposed to any general database) is that the most recent blocks contain a hash of the state of the system up to that point. This provides a tamper-resistant historical record of what's occurred previously.

I think your second point is what some of the critics of the bitcoin obsession are talking about. Not every blockchain _needs_ to be as attack-resistant as the bitcoin network. Many of the speculative blockchain uses like for the Internet of Things could benefit from a history of all transactions but don't depend on it. Proof-of-stake might work fine for many cases.

<comment><USER5> What you are describing has been a core of any ledger/immutable database. It isn't new and in fact has been around for ages. You don't really think a bank keeps all you money in a sacred database cell do you?

<comment><USER6> Plenty of banks use pretty horrifying technology. Append-only databases have been a cool research project for ages but I've never seen one in production.

<comment><USER7> You can find some here: [http://www.datomic.com/customers.html](http://www.datomic.com/customers.html)

<comment><USER6> Are any of those dividend-paying companies? At the risk of no true scotsmanning, I wouldn't count it as "production" if the company isn't making money off it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It took me a while to understand why Certificate Transparency is sound without requiring proof-of-work, and Bitcoin is not, but the answer turns out to be fairly simple: you can merge two CT log entries without conflicts, but you can't merge two Bitcoin transactions. If I want to log "Certificate A exists for bitcoin.org" and you want to log "Certificate B exists for mtgox.com", both of our data items are valid on their own (and can be independently verified, just by checking the signature on the cert) and the ordering doesn't matter. So as soon as a write goes to _some_ log server, as long as I trust the log server to propagate writes via the gossip protocol, I'm done; I don't need to care about merges or retries. (Also, it's possible for the log server to send me a signed promise to propagate writes, that I can later use to prove its misbehavior if that entry never shows up.)

On the other hand, if I have a transaction "Transfer 1 BTC to bitcoin.org" and you have a transaction "Transfer 1 BTC to mtgox.com", they don't necessarily commute or merge because of the double-spend problem: they might both be trying to spend the same 1 BTC.

There are a number of nifty decentralized systems you can build that don't have to think about double-spend problem, where all transactions commute/merge. Associating names with public keys _seems_ to be one of them, as long as you allow a name to be validly bound to multiple keys. (A Keybase- style binding of external service usernames to public keys would permit this, since you simply have multiple valid Keybase proofs; the external usernames are arbitrated by the various centralized services. A Namecoin-style approach doesn't, since names are first-come-first-serve, and you don't want multiple people to be served the same name.)

There appear to be ways to make a money-transfer system avoid the double-spend problem: as I understand Stellar, it simply just makes the spending account legitimately owe both people money (and puts limits on how much each link can transfer at a time, so that the money is actually recoverable). But for non- money-transfer systems, if you can arrange your problem statement such that double-spending isn't a concern in the first place, you can use regular Merkle trees and avoid the entire proof-of-work overhead.

<comment><USER9> Blockchains can count, and thus handle mutations. That's the key difference:

[https://medium.com/@arthurb/what-do-blockchains- accomplish-e...](https://medium.com/@arthurb/what-do-blockchains- accomplish-e9a5efa246bf)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that post is very clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Roughly half of the author's criticisms of the bitcoin blockchain are just growing pains, which will solve themselves with time. The other half are just feature requests that are outside of the blockchain's scope. Blockchains are distributed consensus networks, not databases. It's like asking MySQL to fix email spam.

</comment><comment><USER11> At least now I have something resembling an understanding of how this is being applied. The concept always seemed a bit odd when I'd hear how banking establishments planned to use bitcoin for contract transactions, etc, without bitcoin being the currency of the transaction.

Such a bad implementation of a potentially good idea.

</comment><comment><USER12> Blockchain shouldn't include Proof-of-Work. Proof-of-Retrievability at least provides the same properties(paper: [http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf](http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf) impl: [https://github.com/ScorexProject/Scorex- Lagonaki/tree/master...](https://github.com/ScorexProject/Scorex- Lagonaki/tree/master/scorex-perma) ). And Proof-of-Stake also could do the same under some assumptions(please see a new paper of mine [http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.00275](http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.00275) ). Formal model of a lottery with anti-Sybil identity tools is definitely needed to shape borders.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bitcoin is one protocol that establishes trust between two parties for an arms length transaction. That it uses cryptographic hashing is an implementation detail to the same degree that pieces of paper are an implementation detail of Wells Fargo money orders. What matters is that one person can reliably pay another person. The fact that people speculate on Bitcoin and not on Wells Fargo money orders should not cloud our thinking.

The Bitcoin protocol strives for absolute consistency to mitigate risk. Other cryptographic hash based protocols that are described as "blockchains" may trade the overhead of absolute consistency for speed and lower computational overhead, e.g. Ripple [1] uses consensus between `n - c*n` nodes as the basis of trust along with transaction costs to mitigate the odds of Byzantine failure that would result in double spend; in exchange transactions execute more rapidly and with less computational overhead. Again, there's nothing magical about the implementation details. What matters is reliable trusted transactions of value. Bitcoin transfers can happen on the order of minutes, Ripple transactions can happen on the order of seconds.

What technologies that are described as "blockchains" tend to provide is low transaction fees. The time and expense of moving value via blockchain from Berlin to Cartagena is low compared to wire transfer independent of the blockchain's provenance...provided of course that the end units of the exchange are suitable to all parties. There's nothing magical beyond it being easier than using goats as the medium of exchange.

[1]: [https://ripple.com/](https://ripple.com/)

<comment><USER14> People seem to vastly over-estimate the time and expense of moving money internationally. It is not difficult, nor expensive at the moment. Bitcoin has very poor liquidity and enormous volatility compared to regular currencies at scale.

<comment><USER13> Volatility doesn't matter much if Bitcoin is just a medium for transferring value within a transaction in normal business circumstances, i.e. slight fluctuations in exchange rates over the course of an hour can be built into the offer. Forex style arbitrage and speculative investments are of course another matter...one in which Bitcoin is no different from other currencies.

The liquidity constraints of Bitcoin may ultimately limit its general adoption and perhaps encourages speculation over use. And is why, despite my lack of clarity, I did not intend to suggest that Bitcoin was better than Wells Fargo money orders for moving money internationally. That doesn't mean that blockchains may not prove to be significantly better.

<comment><USER15> I agree liquidity is a weakness.

However it's a classic disruptive technology scenario. Bitcoin is weaker than other currencies in almost every way, but it has its few very special advantages.

For now the only users are people for whom those advantages are paramount. That small group of dedicated users will use it dedicatedly and slowly the ecosystem builds up around it until other limitations are mitigated.

At that point we'll need to reassess its competitiveness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "But perhaps my concerns are overblown"

They're certainly not new or unaddressed. Or politically neutral within Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, a blockchain is just a special kind of distributed ledger; and a ledger is just a particular thing to store in a distributed database. What makes a blockchain special (and thus, I think, what informs the common usage more than any technical definition involving proofs of work) is basically what it accomplishes, that a regular distributed database cannot: a blockchain allows N mutually-untrustworthy parties—that is, people who would pick one-anothers' pockets if they could—to co-author a history they're all happy with, without having to put their trust in any particular party (who, again, might want to pick everyone's pockets), but instead only in the system as a whole.

My favorite comparison is to leaderboard ranking in competitive games (let's use Starcraft 2 as an example.) This is another place where everyone would love to cheat if they could.

Let's say you set up a blockchain where each "transaction" contained someone's SCII 1v1 gameplay-record from their perspective (i.e. their own input events, and the received network movement- and action-events from their opponent) for a ladder match they played. You'd get two "transactions" in a pair for each match—each submitted by one player—and each one would would move the players' ladder rankings and leaderboard positions around (though in an idempotent way, if both records happen to be valid.)

In this model, instead of having to have an authoritative "ladder server" that simulates all the game's physics for the players, or building any sort of anti-cheating tech into the game-client, each player would just be part of the _ladder blockchain_ and therefore would "audit" each entered game-record after the fact, by running the game's physics engine against the gameplay-records to determine their validity, and translating the valid records into changes in the ladder-ledger.

Every player that bothers to run the ladder-chain daemon (which might-as-well just be embedded into the game-client as a nice'd background process) would be auditing every other player's game-record for physics discrepancies. Records from matches where either player was using a hacked game-client would simply be dropped from history rather than affecting the ladder (or could be encoded as a forfeit for the hacker.)

The game's manufacturer _could_ have server-nodes of their own, purely for auditing—but they likely wouldn't need to. In fact, there wouldn't even need to _be_ a game company; the game could be completely abandonware with no server infrastructure, yet the ladder and leaderboard system would continue to function indefinitely.

The properties that let you do this are what make a blockchain a blockchain. The other properties are implementation details.

</comment><comment><USER18> Article seems to quickly call "Lightning Network" a "sidechain". Not only is this wrong, it's similar to calling "zero-confirmation Bitcoin transactions" a "sidechain". It's not anything like a sidechain. Examine the evidence yourself,

sidechains: [http://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf](http://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)

Lightning Network stuff: [http://lightning.network/](http://lightning.network/) like [http://lightning.network/lightning-network- paper.pdf](http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf)

For a high-level overview of Bitcoin scalability proposals, see my 2015 scalingbitcoin.org Montreal presentation: [http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin/scalingbitcoin- review.pd...](http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin/scalingbitcoin-review.pdf)

Lightning Network and Bitcoin payment channels are more like restrictions around the permissible possible undefined behavior of zero-confirmation transactions (which otherwise have more broadly undefined behavior), which are inherently unconfirmed in the Bitcoin system. By using an initial committed transaction, rules around the behavior of zero-conf transactions spending the UTXOs can be locked down, while still using Bitcoin transactions, not a separate consensus system and not a sidechain.

For an overview of criticism regarding the "consensus" mechanism in non- fuggerian Ripple (aka Ripple 2?) and Stellar, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348) and [https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin- wizards/msg/36135395/](https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin- wizards/msg/36135395/)

For an overview of why proof-of-stake doesn't sem to be secure, see [https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf) and [https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf) and [https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic- faq.pdf](https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf)

For an overview of what Bitcoin Core developers are working on regarding capacity increases, see the recent [https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin- core/capacity-increases-faq](https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity- increases-faq) which is regarding [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2015...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2015-December/011865.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Tendermint founder here. What we're doing with Tendermint _is_ creating a new protocol. See TMSP from the tutorial from Tendermint.

[http://tendermint.com/posts/tendermint-socket- protocol/](http://tendermint.com/posts/tendermint-socket-protocol/)

Yes, we're moving away from "PoS" from the time being, because our clients are more interested in posting collateral external to the blockchain. That said, the original security properties still hold. It's the combination of three things that create security on a non-PoW blockchain, for Tendermint.

* Validators have posted collateral (either on chain or off chain) that is not immediately transferrable, so there is something at stake.

* The BFT consensus algorithm ensures that at least +1/3 of validators must deviate from the protocol to attack the network.

* If there is a fork, then we can find out who had caused the fork. The validator-set is held accountable.

That hasn't changed. What has changed is our client base. We don't want to launch a cryptocurrency ourselves because as US/Canadian residents, that's a legal gray area. On the other hand, fin-tech clients and banks _are_ interested in utilizing this technology for creating a distributed multi-write database. Thus the change in direction.

That said, we're very much interested in support the original PoS design. Other designs as well. For example, we're building out an experimental governance app that allows for arbitrary proposals. Perhaps we can use that to empower users or designated administrator groups to decide on updates to the validator set.

[https://github.com/tendermint/governmint](https://github.com/tendermint/governmint)

There are many ways to update the validator-set, PoS just being one of them. We will build out our platform to accommodate a wide variety of strategies for managing the validator set. For all strategies, they will make use of our robust BFT consensus algo.

Finally, there are sound technical reasons why a BFT ledger should utilize a hash-chain of blocks (list of txs). It is both a speed optimization (validators only need to sign block hashes, not each tx) as well as a security requirement. To expound on the latter, note that the original PBFT implementation does not provide any guarantees when more than 1/3 are Byzantine (see [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.121...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.121.9617&rep=rep1&type=pdf)). But the hash-chain ensures fork consistency. So there you have it, a chain of blocks of transactions is fundamentally important for non-PoW ledgers. That's why we use the term "blockchains".

</comment><comment><USER20> > or some transactions could be moved to "sidechains" as proposed in systems > like the Bitcoin Lightning Network. But the Lightning Network is useful only > for a ledger that is denominated in Bitcoin, and we still have to deal with > the "central" Bitcoin blockchain, whose size is likely to continue to > increase despite the addition of various "sidechain" mechanisms.

This is incorrect for multiple reasons.

> "Takes over 10 minutes to "commit" a transaction"

Incorrect. Average wait time would be less than 5 minutes.

> "Turning your Bitcoins into cold hard cash denominated in the currency of > your choice is perhaps the cryptocurrency's biggest problem"

It is author's world view based on pre-bitcoin times that cold hard cash is better. It can be said that turning cash to bitcoins is fiat's biggest problem.

>"moving money between ledgers actually involves integrating with those ugly legacy systems"

Assets on different blockchains can be swapped using various methods and does not need third parties.

> "there are far more efficient distributed consensus algorithms than this > which don't involve a proof of work."

Author gives the example of Interledger and SCP. Without proof-of-work origin of money will always be controversial. Both Ripple and SCP create money out of thin air.

>a very cool feature I will acknowledge exists and give a quick hat tip to Ethereum

There is NOTHING that ethereum can do that you can't do with bitcoin.

> Bitcoin-NG (paper), a protocol that inverts the ordering of Bitcoin > consensus: a miner is first elected leader by winning the proof-of-work > "lottery" by mining a "key block", and then once elected leader becomes a > transaction broker who can mint "micro-blocks" via digital signature until > the next leader is elected.

Many problems linked [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3or365/bitcoinng_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3or365/bitcoinng_proposal_for_a_secure_faster_better/cvzoha1)

I did not read last 3 paras. The author is damn right that Blockchains are world's shittiest databases and should not be used so.

In my personal understanding of what blockchain is, the author didn't mention it as a DMMS(Dynamic membership multiparty signature). This has been explained in the sidechains whitepaper, which most people do not read due to another myth that the employees of a private company 'blockstream' are majority of Bitcoin Core devs. Anyone trying to understand the blockchain should read the introduction of that paper. [https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf](https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)

<comment><USER8> > Both Ripple and SCP create money out of thin air.

So does fiat, and fiat _works_. It may not work well all the time for 100% of use cases, but in general it works well.

As long as the mechanisms by which money is created out of thin air are well- understood by the people receiving this money (which they are for fiat) and the recipients give informed consent to that (which they... sorta do for fiat), this doesn't seem like a negative.

<comment><USER14> Fiat money works because governments pay for services in it, and demand taxes in it.

If you are not a government, fiat money does not work for you.*

* Quasi-government entities have a long history of issuing currency like this - company scrip was one such practice, but its important to note that this is a situation of a company becoming more government-like.

<comment><USER8> I'm a little confused, I think I paid for groceries last night in fiat currency and I certainly got goods in exchange for them, and I don't believe the grocery store was run by the government. Can you clarify what you mean by "does not work for you"? I suspect we mean different things by the phrase.

<comment><USER14> The general "you". You (some entity) can't issue your own fiat currency successfully unless you are sufficiently government-like.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but a) I have no interest in _issuing_ Bitcoin or any other currency, just using it as long as it works, and b) if I were to issue an altcoin, I would be creating money out of thin air!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21>
        †Note to "that guy" on Hacker News: yes, there were cryptocurrencies before
        Bitcoin. I'm aware. You don't need to educate me on them. But they don't count,
        sorry.

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

<comment><USER2> Btw, did you know that... in addition to cryptocurrencies... there were distributed, resilient database and transaction processing designs without Bitcoin's biggest problems (esp scalability & commit time)? And that people ignored them until a large gold rush appeared in 2008 using a clever, but inefficient, version of the ideas? And it took many years for people to rediscover some of the old work and start making wiser investments of developer time?

I know, it all blew my mind too.

<comment><USER15> This would be a valuable comment if you included names. As it is the only thing I can glean from this is that you know things other people don't?

I guess... congratulations?

<comment><USER2> Can't do that _every_ Bitcoin post on HN as too little time. Instead, I included some of the terms to Google in that and other comments here. Googling such things, especially with "pdf," is how I found the work. Following the references and related work sections helps, too.

Doing their homework for them just ain't productive. Not people riding a fad that is.

Note: A quick Google in response to one comment here led me to two, new papers with one having pretty awesome properties. Just goes to show how easy it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon has patented the milkman, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/104716271353648708358/posts/Q7xrJaMru93 <comment><USER5> No, that's just the abstract. Claim 1, for example, reads as follows:

        1. A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of
        products, the method comprising performing instructions under the control of
        a computer system for:

        receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and
        a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of
        the one or more list items identifying a product, a quantity to deliver,
        and a frequency of delivery;

        periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having a date
        and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the delivery slot, the
        order being generated in advance of the date and time for delivery such that
        the order has a period of time of pendency prior to the delivery;

        creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order
        based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each
        list item in the recurring delivery list;

        receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item of the
        recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency of the order;

        in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system,
        whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first list item;

        in response to determining that the order includes an order item corresponding
        to the first list item, modifying, by the computer system, the order
        item corresponding to the first list item based on the change made to the
        first list item of the recurring delivery list; and

        providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment system
        capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered
        substantially on the date and time for delivery.

Now, I consider myself a creative person. But I would have a hell of a time trying to read that claim on a fucking milkman.

Learn to read patents, people.

edit: Formatting is really hard apparently.

<comment> j-g-faustus It still doesn't sound very impressive if you translate it to plain English:

        A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of products,
        the method comprising performing instructions under the control of a computer
        system for:

Create a list on a computer.

        receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and
        a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of
        the one or more list items identifying a product, a
        quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery;

Listing where, what and how often to deliver.

        periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having
        a date and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the
        delivery slot, the order being generated in advance of the date
        and time for delivery such that the order has a period of time of
        pendency prior to the delivery;

Each day, create a list of the deliveries to be made today

        creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order
        based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each
        list item in the recurring delivery list;

For each delivery, list which items to deliver.

        receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item
        of the recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency
        of the order;

If the customer updates their order, change the delivery.

        in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system,
        whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first
        list item;

Compare the customer update to the delivery stored in the system.

        in response to determining that the order includes an order item
        corresponding to the first list item, modifying, by the computer
        system, the order item corresponding to the first list item based
        on the change made to the first list item of the recurring
        delivery list; and

Change the deliverly list in the system to reflect the customer update.

        providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment
        system capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered
        substantially on the date and time for delivery.

Give the list of "today's deliveries" to someone who can actually make the delivery.

I still fail to see how this differs dramatically from pretty much every delivery service ever. The delivery guys may not create these lists themselves, but their dispatchers do.

The only thing that differs from say UPS is the 'recurring order' part - <USER2> "send me three lettuce every Friday". But grocery deliveries have worked like this for quite a while.

<comment><USER6> Also, wouldn't all those hundreds of "box of the month"-style subscription sites where you can pick a product to send and get it periodically be prior art?

<comment> j-g-faustus I believe patents work by making the description impenetrable enough to make the examiner's eyes glaze over.

So they approve the patent in self-defense, and don't notice that it's just a list of trivialities.

<comment><USER5> Do you believe this based on anything in particular?

<comment><USER7> The OP.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but we already discussed how the OP doesn't know what he's talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> @FOSSpatents tweeted about this:

"The grant of this patent to Amazon renders me speechless. <http://t.co/bMh7qwkh> "Recurring Delivery of Products". prior art = milkman"

Usually he's rather supportive of most of the tech patents HN likes to deem "obvious", so if even he finds this astonishing, perhaps there really is something wrong here :)

<comment><USER9> Florian Müller finally admitted a few months ago that he is a paid shill.

<comment><USER10> Source? Relevance?

<comment><USER9> FOSSPatents == Florian

And sources: [http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mue...](http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mueller+is+Being+Paid+by+Oracle/article24633.htm) [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft- legal...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal-win- over-google-may-signal-ceasefire/?tag=mncol;morePosts)

As fair as I am concerned, anything he says he is saying because he is being paid, wants to be paid to continue saying it, or wants to be paid to stop saying it. Well, that or because he is bored and hasn't harassed PJ recently; his obsession with Pamela Jones is rather unnerving.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+dis...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+disclose)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428809>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428141>

<comment><USER11> "Has done legal consulting work for Microsoft" == "paid shill"

I'd love to live on your planet and see what color the sky is...

<comment><USER12> So you don't believe the "legal consulting" was "posting legal analysis on his blog"?

I wonder what you think it is, since he has literally no legal background at all. He also finally admitted he was engaged by oracle to do roughly the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is abundant prior art on this one.

E.g., one casualty of the dot-com bubble was Streamline, an online grocery delivery company. They called their version of the invention Don't Run Out. Fast Company raved about it in this article dated July 31, 1998:

        What happens when customers depend on you - and you deliver?
        They decide to depend on you even more. One of Streamline's most
        popular services is called Don't Run Out. Families identify
        their must-have items - milk, toilet paper, diapers, pet food -
        and authorize the company to replenish their stock of each item
        automatically. Today almost every Streamline household uses
        Don't Run Out. The average household has standing orders for
        more than 10 items. "It's extraordinary," says [Gina] Wilcox. "The
        consumer makes a purchase decision once, and we fill the order
        throughout the year. It redefines brand loyalty. It redefines
        marketing."

<http://www.fastcompany.com/34524/streamline-delivers-goods>

</comment><comment><USER14> If there was ever an argument against broad software patents it's this. Also if there ever was an argument that the patent system is a money making sham, it's this.

Prepending existing ideas with, "A computer-implemented method" does not make them patent-worthy and everyone in the entire world knows it.

<comment><USER15> Enjoy what a federal judge hearing CLS Bank v. Alice thinks:

> Judge: Why don't we actually look at a claim? Why don't we start with claim > 26 of the 375' patent. It begins, "a data processing system to enable the > exchange of obligations between parties, the systems comprising: a > communications controller, a first-party device coupled to said > communications controller, a data storage unit having information stored, a > computer coupled to said data storage unit, said communications controller > that is configured to do the following"

> Judge: That doesn't just sound like somebody saying a "method" with maybe a > computer, I mean there are four separate physical tangible components of a > system articulated.

> Lawyer: Your Honor, you're right. There's a computer, a hard drive, and a > telephone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the inventors listed should be matched with likes of Edison and mocked. If society mocks them the social pressure might work better than legal means to avoid such non-sense.

So better make a web page with Amazon's hall of fame of inventors and add them to this list.

</comment><comment><USER17> So we're at the point where the actual patents are entirely pretext. The words written on them are now completely irrelevant. They're just proxies for money.

<comment><USER5> No, we're still at the point where alarmist headlines from people who don't know how to read a patent get lots of karma. We've been here for a long time now.

<comment><USER18> You seem rather strident in your defense of this patent. What _exactly_ are they claiming, beyond scheduling milkman-like deliveries with the added text "with a computer"?

If that's all there is to it, then why would you defend such an outrageous patent? If that's not all there is to it, what else is there?

<comment><USER5> I don't have a dog in this fight. This is the first I've seen of this patent, and I've only just barely glanced at claim 1. I'm not here to argue the merits, which could easily take hours and pages.

What I have a problem with (and what happens so depressingly often) is people saying "OMG they got a patent for {what the abstract says}! I can think of so much prior art, the examiner must be brain dead!"

Now, various examiners do work all along the quality spectrum. But it is _almost never_ that simple, and this ignorant, arrogant shit has got to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "What is claimed is:

1\. A computer-implemented method(...)"

Mmm, I'm to young to have seen an actual milkman, but television never depicted them as "computer-implemented"

<comment><USER20> Yet if you carry on reading that section it also says, _"identifying a product, a quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery"_ [1] - <USER3> delivery systems do that on a computer, even the milkman.

The patent they've been granted is extremely broad especially when you consider that a majority of delivery companies actually do what the patent says.

For instance, you can request a delivery slot and the majority of delivery systems identify the product, the quantity to deliver and the frequency of delivery. The patent they have been granted covers all aspects of that.

[1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,370,271.PN.&OS=PN/8,370,271&RS=PN/8,370,271)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The big question is, how to solve it? How to improve the communication between programmers and lawyers? How to lessen the burden on the people that provide patents? How to involve the vote of the general public? Can there be a class of 'defending' patents instead of 'attacking' ones with which you can sue? Can there be specific IT judge educations?

</comment><comment><USER22> An actual milkman would be great, Berkeley Farms makes the _best_ Eggnog (my opinion) but trying to find it in stores is getting harder with the Safeway monopoly. I emailed their bizdev team in hopes of establishing a way to get deliveries but alas, to no avail.

</comment><comment><USER23> fuck patents.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thus a public system intended to engender fairness and creative behavior profitable to all society is made its own negation.

</comment><comment><USER25> And yet, Amazon only sells condensed milk and powdered milk, not fresh milk. [1]

I really do like their 'Subscribe & Save' service though [2] (which is what the patent describes).

[1] <http://amzn.to/14KeLIH>

[2] <http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and-save/details/>

<comment><USER26> I don't know, this milk is pretty amazing.

[http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/dp/B00032...](http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

<comment><USER25> Doesn't appear to be eligible for 'Subscribe & Save', but I love the meme anyways.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of companies file patents to cover their asses against patent trolls, not to enforce them. I would imagine that this is something similar.

<comment><USER28> I disagree. Amazon has a history of enforcing terrible patents they own - <USER4> the one-click patent.

<comment><USER29> Can you provide another example? A single large suit over 10 years ago doesn't really indicate a 'history of enforcing patents'...

<comment><USER30> It still suggests not to trust them</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Use Rubinius - <AUTHOR> http://rubini.us/2011/02/25/why-use-rubinius/

<comment><USER2> I'll put forward a more blunt answer: because Rubinius is the only tenable way forward, long-term, for Ruby.

MRI is a steaming pile. (Note: You're not allowed to disagree with this unless you're a C programmer that's spent some quality time with MRI's code.) It seriously shook my faith in Ruby the first time I had to dive into MRI's code: "Could someone who waxes poetic about elegance and fun in coding really produce something this fugly? Does Matz have any idea what he's talking about?" Rubinius has a sane design and is a pretty clean base to build a Ruby implementation with some staying power on. I basically see Rubinius as the rewrite that MRI was going to have to have at some point.

That said, at present, I still use MRI. I try Rubinius every couple months to see how it's progressed performance-wise for the cases that I care about, and while it's not there yet, this seems to be mostly a matter of time.

<comment><USER3> I'm all jruby all the time these days, and I couldn't be happier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is Rubinius going to tackle the GIL issue? They say they're working to get rid of it, but I'd assume that a sizable chunk of the Ruby standard library isn't thread safe, especially C extensions. I guess I'm just not sure how they plan to avoid the issues that Python faces: [http://docs.python.org/faq/library#can-t-we-get-rid-of- the-g...](http://docs.python.org/faq/library#can-t-we-get-rid-of-the-global- interpreter-lock)

<comment><USER5> A few points:

a) The ruby standard library is written in Ruby and is actually surprisingly well-behaved from a threading perspective. The code is not super-pretty, but it uses appropriate locking strategies and has been well-tested in threaded environments. All three major implementations (JRuby, MRI and Rubinius) share the vast majority of the Ruby standard library, so if JRuby works, Rubinius will work.

2) For the part of MRI written in C (which Rubinius calls the "kernel"), Rubinius has reimplemented the entire thing mostly in Ruby with some primitives. Since they own that code, it is their responsibility to define its semantics when run in parallel.

3) Rubinius implements its locking classes (like Mutex and ConditionVariable, see [https://github.com/evanphx/rubinius/blob/master/lib/thread.r...](https://github.com/evanphx/rubinius/blob/master/lib/thread.rb#L40)) on top of its own low-level Channel implementation (see [https://github.com/evanphx/rubinius/blob/master/kernel/boots...](https://github.com/evanphx/rubinius/blob/master/kernel/bootstrap/channel.rb#L15)), which can be used to implement more sophisticated locking strategies. They have been working on this for a long time, and have been planning for it even longer.

<comment><USER6> grandparent was probably thinking of how you avoid the GIL if existing extensions are written expecting to be used by a single thread.

Since rubinius provides the same C-api ruby does (ignoring FFI for now) wouldn't all the accesses to external libraries need to be wrapped in a shared big lock?

<comment><USER7> For the time being, we use a lock that has to be held to run methods defined in C extensions, a GEL (Global Extension Lock) if you will.

We've got some other ideas to increase concurrency in extensions, but the crux is that yes, we have to perform some locking because people wrap thread unsafe libraries.

Because Rubinius does not use the C-API to implement anything in the core, this doesn't impact general concurrency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another great read by Brian Ford. I mainly use MRI 1.9, but I have been experimenting with Rubinius of late. And it is getting better and better. Not only is the way Ruby in implemented cool, but the VM upon which languages like Fancy are being written is very exciting for the Ruby community.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not use <http://jruby.org>?

<comment><USER10> C extensions are a very big reason why not; the pain of demand-starting JVMs is another minor reason.

<comment><USER9> I suppose it depends on what you're using ruby for. I use it for long running processes like rails apps so the jvm startup time really doesn't matter. And jruby has support for c extensions that use ffi.

<comment><USER10> Nobody's saying not to use jruby. You asked a question, I gave one answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is more "Why use Ruby" than "Why use Rubinius."</comment>


Show HN: NewsletterHunt – RSS-like feed for newsletters - <AUTHOR> https://newsletterhunt.com/ <comment><USER2> This is extremely cool. Do you use any specific API to grab the newsletters' data from your mailbox? (i.e. contextIo's or similar?)

<comment><USER3> Hey, big thanks! Nope, just a rails app to process incoming emails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, this is definitely something cool! Have you thought about looking at the directory from Revue? [https://discover.getrevue.co/](https://discover.getrevue.co/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Yep, there are quite a few newsletters I am adding. Also, working on a feature for users to request a newsletter they'd like to see on newsletterhunt</comment></comment>


London Rents Eating Up 57% of Twentysomethings' Income - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/london-rents-eating-up-57-of-twentysomethings-income-chart <comment><USER4> And an annual season train pass into London can be £3-5K. Not cheap either, in fact several months' rent.

I do wonder whether people feel trapped. You get paid a lot working in the City, but you have to spend a lot, too. You can try your luck elsewhere, but it's hard to think of where exactly, and you know for a fact there's this huge network that's the big city.

<comment><USER5> I got the hell out of London ten years ago, moved to the south West, started a web development company.

We're now 40 people and we're struggling to hire developers fast enough - <USER2> mopped up the local talent, and we're now hiring EU nationals mostly, as while we offer a relocation package etc., the cost of living here is a fraction of London - but folks coming from London usually want a London salary - <USER3> aren't willing to negotiate. So they stay in London and moan about their rent trap, while most of our employees now own their homes.

Shrug. Inertia's a bitch.

<comment><USER6> > now own their homes

Most londoners don't consider that a plus if it's in the middle of nowhere with no culture or anything to do.

<comment><USER5> And most Londoners consider Bristol to be the middle of nowhere. I rest my case.

<comment><USER7> Would like to move to Bristol, but doesn't seem to be enough contracting work doing python to sustain a career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Solution:

people: get the hell out of there.

companies: make more remote job positions.

<comment><USER9> I think remote job positions are the way forward. However, I think we're going to need an entire generation of management to get out of the way before BigCos in the city start to take this approach mainstream.

<comment> jon-wood Startups are somewhat more open to remote workers, but even then I've had to be in the office anywhere from twice a week to twice a month. My aim at some point is to completely remove the commute from my life, but at this rate I'm going to have to start my own company to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well going solo is always more expensive so I am not really surprised or dismayed. The rapid rise is an issue but usually can be traced back to some over zealous restriction on what can be built and where.

Cities have expensive housing because those who own housing either want to keep their property values up or don't want a different class of people near them. They also tend to be very good at communicating the need by misrepresenting the reasons, hide behind protecting historic area, quality of life, environment, and such.

</comment><comment><USER11> Caveat: I'm the OpenRent Founder.

I would dispute the research slightly, not only is CountryWide data probably not the best out there (they'll deal with higher end vs. _huge_ non-"high street agent" market), but grouping all of London together will be massively skewed by the unbelievably high rental values in prime central london.

That's not to say London isn't expensive, and a big chunk of income goes towards it, but in terms of the actual percentages - I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

Most referencing companies will look for 2.5x rent -> gross salary. So if you earn 30k annual salary, you can afford 1k per month on rent. If you look at:

[https://listentotaxman.com/30000?plan=0](https://listentotaxman.com/30000?plan=0)

You'll be taking home roughly £1,950. So that's roughly 50% of take home going on rent (54% if you're repaying student loans). Anything higher than that, and a referencing company won't pass you - so it seems odd CountryWide are suggesting their _average_ is 57%.

<comment> UVB-76 I should think the vast majority of twenty-somethings in London on £30k+ salaries are repaying student loans, so you'll be taking the 54% figure.

<comment><USER11> Of course - but I'm taking the _top-end / maximum_ eligible rent, whereas the article is talking about averages, which are unlikely to be accurate in relation to what the majority of people are paying as a % of disposable.

<comment> UVB-76 You are assuming, of course, that landlords stick to conservative affordability limits and turn down willing tenants who fail the test, even by a small margin.

I agree this dataset is not ideal for these sort of calculations, but the figures are supported by my anecdotal experience.

<comment><USER11> I am not assuming - we reference more tenants than any other rental company in the UK and know how a reference decision impacts a tenancy going ahead (it has a _massive_ impact). We also know how many landlords order references (again, nearly all).

I kind of wish the data presented was more thorough, but that's probably because I'm too close to the industry - the headline is certainly catchy, and the comparison over time certainly more interesting, I just wanted give a heads up about the actual % figure not being representative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's only going to get worse, everything new built in London (very very small studios/1 bed flats) cost about £600k+ in the area I live in. Property developers are laughing.

<comment><USER13> Not for long. There's a glut at the very high end >£1m and prices are already dropping fast. This will only get worse when the foreign money dumps all its empty "investments" on the market.

The high end >£600k will follow.

I'd guess prices in the cheaper brackets will remain stable unless there's a big rate rise, because they're kept inflated by buy-to-let.

But landlords with big mortgages are in a precarious position after the tax changes, and it won't take much for them to start losing money.

The rental income on a typical BTL with an 80% mortgage used to be just £2k a year, now it's less than half that. Mortgage relief is dropping already, so expect to see some changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds about right.

Hello from San Francisco.

<comment><USER15> But if your salary is huge the 43 percent left could be very significant. Thats why you need both absolute AND relative metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably the only good reason for anyone to vote to leave the EU is to reduce demand on housing stock.

<comment><USER17> true, but that will probably decrease wages too

<comment><USER18> The aim of BREXIT is to reduce immigration.

_IF_ that truly happens (and i seriously doubt that the "Borrises" are actually genuine about this) then local-uk wages will increase especially for skilled labour. Low wage producer's will simply be replaced by foreign imports, increasing the deficit unless of course the UK engages in a protectionist war with EU and EVERYONE else... (which it won't do).

<comment><USER19> > "The aim of BREXIT is to reduce immigration."

That's not the only aim.

The EU isn't truly democratic. The central body of power in the EU is the European Commission, and they're not democratically elected. The European Commission is the only group in the EU with the power to propose new legislation, no members of the European Parliament can do so.

I'll be voting to leave purely because I believe in democracy. I want elected representatives to have the power to represent the public, instead of being employed provide a veneer of respectability to a deeply flawed institution. I certainly won't be doing so over immigration as I believe immigration provides a net benefit to the UK.

<comment><USER20> > I'll be voting to leave purely because I believe in democracy.

Without looking them up are you able to name all your local councillors?

<comment><USER21> I can't, but I did get a vote to pick them. I don't think your question speaks to the issue of the European commission being unelected.

<comment><USER20> It might not be the case for HN readers, but a lot of people who complain about the undemocratic nature of EU never vote in local elections.

Being interested in democracy means using your vote (or making a decision to abstain). Not bothering to vote is incompatible with the declared interest in democracy.

<comment> UVB-76 > Being interested in democracy means using your vote (or making a decision to > abstain). Not bothering to vote is incompatible with the declared interest > in democracy.

That's a strawman.

Plenty of people are not _interested_ in all or part of a democratic system, but appreciate that it exists, and that it provides channels through which they can influence the way they are governed, if they deem it necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AI problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/ai-problems.html <comment><USER2> "we'll use yosefk's Mind Expansion"

What bullshit - how does it hurting prove that pain is not just information? Just because the brain is hardwired to react to it in a certain way does not mean it is not simply information. You could easily program a robot that is incapable of pushing a needle into it's hand (provided there is a sensor there).

Disclaimer: I stopped reading the article after the description of the "experiment".

</comment><comment><USER3> The "mind expansion experiment" reminded me of Mencius's "diversity experiment": [http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/real- me...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/real-meaning-of- diversity.html)</comment>


Show HN: A simple resource for finding and trying variable fonts - <AUTHOR> https://v-fonts.com <comment><USER2> Super cool, reminds me of metafont. See here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU)

</comment><comment><USER3> Zycon looks fun — [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/zycon](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/zycon)

<comment><USER4> I like Wind VF — [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/wind- vf](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/wind-vf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also Metaflop Modulator: [https://www.metaflop.com/modulator](https://www.metaflop.com/modulator) (It has four variable fonts, each with a lot more parameters than here.)

Creating a variable font is a lot of work, which is probably why Knuth's METAFONT never took off, but it can be a lot of fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice idea! I have heard of and seen some variable fonts at work in active gifs, but not in a sandbox setting. So I guess I am your target user ;-).

The demo works for me on Chrome, but not on Safari (12.0).

<comment><USER7> Agreed, nice site. On Windows 10, the sliders do not work in Firefox 62.0.3, and they do work in Chrome 69.

<comment><USER8> Works pretty well for me in FF mobile on Android, some sliders for visual size make the font grow as you decrease the size though.

Hadn't heard of this - I like the bevel and shadow example ... reminds me of titles in Flash ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have a good resource on how variable fonts work? What kind of programmability does it support?

<comment><USER10> This article seems to be a good introduction: [https://medium.com/variable- fonts/https-medium-com-tiro-intr...](https://medium.com/variable-fonts/https- medium-com-tiro-introducing-opentype-variable-fonts-12ba6cd2369)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool. Is it also possible to request fonts for customizations? My [http://draftss.com](http://draftss.com) team can definitely use something like this in designing logos.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow! What is the total number of available fonts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, more than 60 and counting :)</comment></comment>


How to get a job programming: fix 200 bugs on a well known open source project - <AUTHOR> http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2015/02/how-to-get-job-in-programming-fix-200.html

<comment><USER2> It probably isn't a bad idea to get a job programming. Depends on the bugs though, and, well, working for free. I'd like to think that won't be the only way to get a job in programming.

I hate this focus on "Show me your Github account etc". Some people work commercial jobs where all their work is done for private companies - the lack of open source work has absolutely no bearing on how good you are. If you choose to do open source work, well, I applaud that, but this kind of thing annoys me.

</comment><comment><USER3> What an asshole answer - some of us have a wife, kids, and/or a life offline and can't afford to dick around for 200+ bugfixes for zero dollars just hoping to get noticed. Fuck this attitude.

<comment><USER4> Your feedback isn't very constructive, and reflects poorly on your time management skills.

200 bugs is just two bugs per week for two years. At three hours per bug, that's 6 hours per week - 312/yr and 614 total. Significantly less than a college degree.

Alternatively, spend some time learning to code: [https://www.youtube.com/devfactor](https://www.youtube.com/devfactor) \- build some cool projects and present them to your employer.

<comment><USER5> I think that's a bit optimistic. To be honest I don't come across that many bugs in open source software. Google and Apple products, yes, but I generally don't have access to their source. Right now there are just a couple of open source bugs that are annoying me, but each of those would likely take me at least a few weeks of full-time work to track down.

IMO you're much better actually building something impressive rather than fixing a bunch of bugs if you're looking for a job.</comment></comment></comment>