CaDNAno: design three-dimensional DNA origami nanostructures - <AUTHOR> http://cadnano.org/ <comment><USER2> Incredibly cool, I watched the tutorial videos. I can't imagine how you would create large complex structures with this, but I'm impressed with whoever is able to do it.

On the github repo I noticed that you can convert your designs into 3D printable STL models, very cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so yummy.

Wonder if you could do something similar with 3D printed shapes. Using static or something - design the shape of the elements to express an uneven surface charge and then design a range of such shapes to express a composite shape when shaken...</comment>


Slack Users: Get Vocal with Kookoo Integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/slack-voice-kookoo-297/

<comment><USER2> Looks great. Although my Slack is continually pinging with ideas and tasks from my boss this morning. I'm not sure that him being able to talk to me as well would help! In all seriousness though sounds like another great tool that slots into Slack and helps make virtual teamworking SOOOO much easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Dont tell my boss, but I too agree with you :)</comment></comment>


Value is created by doing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/value-is-created-by-doing <comment><USER2> All advice is a two-way street. I think at this point, the proverbial "advice market" is saturated with this idea that "doing" is far superior to "thinking". This is because, traditionally, hackers tend to lie squarely on the "thinking too much" end of the spectrum.

I'm interested to read at least one post on the opposite advice -- what happens when you're too heavy on the "doing" end of the spectrum? Are there examples of startups failing because of too much emphasis of execution? At the very least, the "ideas are nothing, execution is everything" meme is clearly logically flawed. You can execute as fast as possible while creating zero customer value.

<comment><USER3> I am of the opinion that "ideas are nothing, execution is everything" grows in part out of the lack of adequate language and mental models to distinguish amongst ideas of the _armchair politician_ variety and ideas with legs. There are some words to distinguish such things, like hypothesis and theorem, but they mostly don't apply in the realm of business. I have been trying to sort out how to do a post on that very topic but I am not ready for it.

<comment><USER4> That is very well put. I am often amazed what a big difference certain ideas make it possible to build complex things quickly and with low amounts of bugs. For example building a parsing subsystem "properly" as taught on compiler courses vs haphazard combination of regexps. It is mentally much more demanding, and requires more effort up front, but then to your surprise, every change you make just works almost immediately, and there are no hairy corner cases to resolve (this is kind of declarative vs imperative, but not quite). Another example is mathematical models, such as Markov Models and the like, where you can have a really complex behavior, but your parameters are simply matrices and all operations are some sort of matrix algebra. Difficult to understand at first, but very powerful and "clean" once you do.

In contrast, as you say, there are huge amounts of armchair ideas that are not worth very much even if they are correct. For example "software will eat everything" is something I believe is mostly right. It is also a business idea with direct implications for action. Despite this, it is only valuable to set the general direction (let's do software), but not any specific cases. It does not mean that every case of transforming a traditional business into a software one is going to be a grand success, or even profitable. In fact, these types of ideas have a tendency to cause one to forget the exceptions from the rule, and thereby being actively harmful.

<comment><USER3> Thanks to everyone who replied (or upvoted me). FYI, I am going to try to start exploring these ideas here:

[http://dorintheflora.blogspot.com/](http://dorintheflora.blogspot.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree, although this makes me think of the great number of people who have the potential to create value but cannot, because their ability to "do" is blocked. Most people I know who cannot create value have an issue of time. Most everyone is locked into their job with rent payments, student loans, and other debts. Its frustrating to see that those with wealth can also purchase time for themselves to use to get more wealth, while the majority of people are strapped in for the ride.

Of course non-wealthy people can build things in the evenings and weekends, but, then they begin dealing with issues of stress and burnout. I'm glad YC helps to give folks a chance. I do think one of the less talked about benefits of a strong middle class and even wealth distribution is people have time/ability to innovate on their own.

<comment><USER2> This is an incredibly important point. I think when people talk about "universal basic income", the traditional narrative concerns the social injustice of poverty, hunger, etc. For me, all I really want is the space to work on the projects I care about and learn the skills to let me accomplish my goals.

For now, it looks like I'm going to be working for a while to pay off my student debt and save money before I can even dip my toes into working on something interesting.

<comment><USER6> I think the aristocratic wealthy (i.e., wealthy people who are wealthy because they use their wealth to make more wealth, not create value themselves) have created a societal structure where it's difficult to create a basic income scheme, both politically and logistically.

The idea that people should be allowed to work on their own projects but is funded by "others" (say, via taxes) is made to look like leeching off the group. The benefits are, while still theoretical, never talked about.

The value i see in a BI scheme is that the natural geniuses of the world gets to do what they are a genius at doing (e.g., somebody might be a really genius teacher), instead of doing the thing that earns maximal amount of money. I know somebody who is a great teacher, and he, at a great financial sacrifice, quit his job to be a teacher instead. He raised so many good students, which go on to bring priceless value to society, and yet the money he recieves is a pittance. He would've made at least a 6 figure income easily, working less hours had he remained in industry.

some people might call me a communist, but i really do believe they had some good ideas about equality (just that i don't see a way of governing such that corruption and inequality doesn't proliferate...).

Imagine a world where necessities of life is produced enmass by the government, in such a way that the cost is so low as to allow it to be provided to each citizen for free. Then BI would become possible. But i don't see it comeing any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Writing software no one wants does not create value—that's called a class project._

My corollary to that is that if you write software that does create value, it doesn't matter what editor or language you use. So if you're super duper productive in Perl (or whatever) don't worry too much about chasing after whatever language HN is fetishizing at the moment. It will change in a few months anyway.

<comment><USER8> A while ago I met an older friend for lunch. I used to work with him years ago in my first job (failed startup). He was out on his own again building out an innovative idea he had in Smalltalk, (which is what he knew). I was talking to him about FP and type theory about all the debates that were going on about it. He just said that its a waste of time listening to most of the people on these kinds of sites because you can tell straight away that most of them don't build anything. Of course that's not quite true, but there was enough truth in it for me to feel like it was a friendly kick in the ass.

<comment><USER9> FP? floating-point? functional programming? firepower?

<comment><USER10> On this site, in this context? Functional programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seriously, this _is_ the labor theory of value. Don't know why the other comment to point this out is dead. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)

It's completely inadequate. See, for example [http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_a...](http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html)

<comment><USER12> I've always been fascinated by people's propensity to write about things they don't know, with the excuse that it's just humanistic sciences. There's a huge body of work that's largely ignored on the Internet, because while the average geek knows a lot about hard sciences, they're very ignorant on humanities (maybe because it's not taken as seriously).

(As a side note, it's ironically hard to find out what this guy actually _does_!)

<comment><USER13> The average geek doesn't know a lot about hard sciences. The average geek is self taught and knows how to impress other people with scientific language. Rarely do I run into "geeks" that make me think, "Wow, this guy could write a novel paper on this". More often it's more a matter of "Wow, this guy knows just enough to completely misunderstand the subject but speaks like he has all the answers."

<comment><USER14> You should hang out with better geeks. Geeks that _do_ , instead of just talk.

<comment><USER15> I do not think that you'll find geeks who _do_ without gaping holes in their knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I realize this is pointed out in the original post but it's important to state for those of us who only read comments and headlines. The longer I do this the more I believe that value isn't created by doing. It's created by selling.

As hackers and engineers the idea of "creating value by doing" resonates with us. We're happy to hole up in a dark room and create. It feels great. Wish I could do that for the rest of my life.

The reality is if you're selling something then that's the only validation you should be looking at to know if you're creating value.

 _I say this from the perspective of starting up where the point is more easily defined as creating direct economical value._

<comment> a-priori _The longer I do this the more I believe that value isn 't created by doing. It's created by selling._

You can't sell something that doesn't have value to the buyer. Therefore, if someone buys a thing from you, it already had value before you sold it.

But don't get me wrong here, effective sales is an essential part of the value-creation process. It's the other side of the coin. Like the old tree-in- a-forest adage, if someone made a valuable thing and no one bought it, did it really have value? It's hard to say.

Selling something may not create value, but it does _realize_ it: it quantifies the value -- value that already existed -- and turns it into money.

<comment><USER16> _Selling something may not create value, but it does realize it_

Well put. What we have to be careful of is being fooled into thinking we're creating value if in the end that value can never be realized. Essentially, not having value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What work is for an investor and an entrepreneur are quite different.

As PG says entrepreneurs should "Live in the future, then build what's missing."

Investors allocate capital to what will be more valuable in the future: whether it is something that is missing now or whether it is something that will simply continue to grow in value.

Venture Capital is an interesting middle ground because not only do you allocate capital but you also assist the companies in creating value and you have to compete to be able to invest in the most promising companies. By blogging well you are building your brand and this will help you meet great entrepreneurs and increase your ability to have access to invest in their companies. Of course your reputation will mainly be based on the track record of your investments and how much you help the founders you work with but writing well and having it consistently on top of hacker news helps.

Plus, your writing helps clarify your thoughts and provides you with useful feedback which can help you refine your investment thesis.

Warren Buffett has said he spends 80% of his days reading and 20% talking on the phone. He only has needed one good idea per year to be the best investor of all time. His schedule doesn't sound like work to most people but it clearly has worked well.

<comment><USER18> I don't know much about his origins, but surely that's not how he used his time when he was getting started, is it?

I'm guessing his work activities were far more conventional (though still well selected) and only after building wealth did his time allocation change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Value gets created when a company does things like build widgets and sell them to customers. As a rough guideline, it's good to stay in roles where you're close to the doing.

It's easier to sit around and talk about building a startup than it is to actually start a startup. And it's fun to talk about. But over time, the difference between fun and fulfilling becomes clear. Doing things is really hard—it's why, for example, you can generally tell people what you're working on without NDAs, and most patents never matter. The value, and the difficulty, comes from execution._

A corollary of this seems to be that investors (such as YC) provide little value because they don't execute. This seems incorrect on its face; most YC founders find the experience to be very beneficial. Maybe I'm missing your point, Sam?

<comment><USER20> YC is itself a startup that produces startups, so its employees/partners are certainly executing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> you should try to work on what you really care about

So Good They Can't Ignore You[1] calls this the Passion Hypothesis[2], and argues (very well) that this is the wrong way to think about finding a career.

Instead, create a craftsman-like mentality and work ethic, and then use deliberate practice to get very, very good skills. With great skills, you will enjoy your work much more.

I believe this advice aligns with the rest of the blog entry very well. Creating value (and doing it well) requires an advanced skill set.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/145550912...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/1455509124)

[2] This is an arguable point, since caring about something could be different than being passionate about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was hoping there would be 0 comments on this - that would have been people paying attention!

</comment><comment><USER23> You know, coffee and chat and conferences and whatnot are to the startup world as meetings and hierarchy and process are to big companies. They're both excuses not to get anything done.

</comment><comment><USER24> Trouble is not much publicity is given to the boring "doing" stuff that successful people go through. We are shown the successful people having Q&A sessions on Slashdot or being the keynote speaker at a conference. So you have to constantly remind yourself that, it is the result of the work they put before they "made it". So you need to put in your work. Thanks for this timely reminder

</comment><comment><USER25> There seems to be an optimal mix between "work" eg:designing and "pseudo-work" like having meetings to discuss ideas. Which of those activities will lead to a better design is unclear, since much of the "deep thinking" which is the basis of coming up with something original happens outside of consciously focused thought eg: many writers only write 4 hours a day and do something else the rest of the day, or the common belief that many problems are solved in your sleep and "realized" in the shower.

So, lets not go in either direction for any one person; and let everyone optimize towards their own mix of work and pseudo-work to come to their own original ideas about X.

Some people will not have any original ideas and will therefore advocate work as a method to "focus" on derivative outcomes that make money.

Other people will "find inspiration" while taking a bath and run out of the bathroom to write down the genuinely valuable result and advise everyone to do the same.

These two groups are very different and most of us are somewhere in between.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why does this truism get endlessly repeated? Is this news to anybody that if you don't make something that people will pay for, your business won't make money? In any case, it's so simple minded that I think it's wrong. It seems obvious to me that a successful enterprise needs the whole system to work: ideas (for a product), all the different kind of makers, sales, marketing, legal, various managers. Or at least these tasks need to be done.

Seeing big companies with money to blow on a product that no one wants take it all the way to market is sort of incredible to me.

Guess I'm just grumpy right now, but I sometimes feel like these posts are jokes put out there by successful people to see if they can make non- successful people feel stupid.

</comment><comment><USER27> _If you can't figure out to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, go work for SpaceX (joining a great company is a much better plan than starting a mediocre one)._

I love Altman's stuff, but I'm not so sure I agree with "joining a great company is a much better plan than starting a mediocre one". Why? Because no matter how great a company is, if you're an employee, you're still just an employee. You have a "boss" (OK, maybe, just maybe Valve aside), somebody who has you "under their thumb" and who can boss you around and redirect your energy and time, and/or fire you at a whim. And it doesn't matter how great your boss is, or how much you like him/her, you still _have_ "a boss". That sucks. It sucks major donkey balls.

Well, it does for certain kinds of people anyway. It's a mindset thing. I cannot stand having a "boss" in the traditional sense. I'd much rather be running my own show, no matter how mediocre it is (assuming it gets at least to the point of qualifying as a "lifestyle business" and I can pay myself enough to pay the rent).

And yeah, yeah, I know that "you always have a boss" in a sense. Pedants don't bother replying to this. I'm not talking in metaphorical senses or generalities here. A Board of Directors, or "the market" or "your customers" are your "boss" in a metaphorical sense, but that's not the same thing as having one discrete person who can come into the room and go "Sooooo, Peter, you DID get the memo about how we're putting the NEW cover sheets on the TPS reports now, riiiiight? Yeeaaaaaaaaah" and yank your chain.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think there is a little bit of "black and white" fallacy happening here. There isn't an "either/or" when it comes to an idea and executing. An idea without execution is nothing, but executing without an idea is also nothing. Successful people have an idea, and they execute.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've never agreed with the idea that labor is the "sole" or even "primary", source of value.

For example, I find nothing more valuable than clean air and water.

Off topic, but I believe this should be the basis for funding society rather than appropriating a portion of people's productive labor.

Land is valuable. But you don't really "own" it because no one made it. Likewise the Aluminum in a can or the steel in your car. You just borrow them for a time. When we are all dead and gone these things will still be here and people will likely use them.

Society should charge for the use of what really belongs to everyone instead of this part time modern indentured servant hood called payroll taxes. It seems much more just.

As a side benefit... consumption is discouraged and production rewarded. What better for society than that?

<comment><USER6> > consumption is discouraged and production rewarded.

how can this both be true? if consumption is discouraged, then what would be the reward for production? if it is something that is to be consumed, then by definition consumption is desirable. If the reward is not something that is consumed, the what is that reward?

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure I understand your point. Or maybe you don't understand mine.

Mine is that one should be taxed on the use of land and materials (which, from a larger perspective, belong to society and humankind as a whole) rather than on innovation and labor (which is, from a larger perspective, a form of theft and slavery).

By taxing like this, you reward innovation and production while discouraging wanton consumption of resources (leading to more efficient use of resources and more investment in innovation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This was a pretty thought provoking read for me; it put into words some of the beliefs I have operated by. However it's also important to remember that to be 'doing' you need to have a clear picture of why you're doing what you're doing. A lot of people I've met(and myself at times) do not know what they want to do; they've only learned about things they don't want to do in their experiences. I do agree it's best to gravitate towards projects that truly interest you though; if you don't believe in what you're doing you risk drifting into complacency.

</comment><comment><USER31> I feel there are two kinds of people, those who have the ability to sit down and talk about things without feeling the guilt of not doing it and those who feel I posters for just talking all the time. There are people I know who are talking about the same ideas for more than a decade without doing anything about it, yet they can come back the next day and talk with all the excitement and ambition in the world as if they're oblivious to the fact that they won't do squat about it

</comment><comment><USER32> The fact that the notion that "we need to go to space" is a foregone conclusion at the dinner parties this person goes to is exactly the reason I avoid San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER33> In business, money is how we keep score. Like in a game, the score doesn't lie. i do not mean to imply that money is the ultimate why: money is rarely why we do what we do. But in this game of business, it is the score.

If you're not making money by doing it, its a hobby. There is nothing wrong with hobbies, but they aren't business. Want to know if you are heading in the right direction? Are you headed towards money positive? That's your answer.

<comment><USER34> I don't believe money is 1:1 with value. Consider for example a "Craigslist Flipper" \- someone who finds items for sale on Craigslist, buys them, and turns around and sells them for a profit. Did this person create value? Not at all; I would argue they created negative wealth in the world. See also: people who run window installation companies and go around breaking people's windows at night.

<comment><USER35> I agree with you on the breaking windows guy but not with the Craigslist Flipper in the pure form(just buy and sell locally with no shipping or repairing which would add value besides flipping).

Why does the Craiglist Flipper add value? The Flipper takes away the random luck factor and distributes goods to those who can best utilize them.

Consider an iPad 1 listed for $10 on Craigslist by someone who just wants it gone. Almost anyone would buy just for the heck of it and take it away from the market even if they already have iPad Air and 3 other Android tablets gathering dust at home.

However, if the Flipper buys it and puts it back on the market at say $100, the person buying from the Flipper will actually have to think before making such a purchase.

So a reasonable Flipper adds liquidity and stability to the market. Unreasonable Flipper (one either putting prices too high or too low) does not stay in business for too long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This definition of value ignores ancillary departments such as marketing, office management, HR, and legal. These are sometimes known as "cost centers" in a business organization, but in that they support the engineers/artists/makers, they most definitely are creating value. Sometimes the chain can be long, but it's usually present.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have not have noticed that Sam Altman was bad at writing, most of the posts that made it to HN are pretty solid. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Couldn't agree with you more. And I think the effervescence of the Silicon Valley tech scene creates tons of events, roles and initiatives that are a complete waste of time (For example: some meetups, happy hours and incubators of incubators of incubators). The value is created by making and selling things!

</comment><comment><USER38> This reminds me of when I see friends in the industry go mostly radio silent for weeks on Twitter or Facebook, only posting once or twice in a timespan they used to post 20 times or more. It usually means they're busy _doing_ and that I need to get busy _doing_ as well, not surfing and reading.

</comment><comment><USER39> It was quite surreal reading this article right after reading Betrand Russel's "In Praise of Idleness." But I agree with the author, the worst idlers are the ones who think are working.

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Value is never created, it is a human construct assigned by humans to something for a variety of reasons. It isn't tied to work or any type of currency. So "commenting on HN, tweeting, reading about other companies" can indeed have value if humans deem it having a value.

</comment><comment><USER41> A minor quibble here... while value is created by doing, value doesn't necessarily reflect in something that can be sold to other people for money.

"Writing software no one wants" can create value if the person writing it wants it. Just not monetary value.

</comment><comment><USER42> > As a rough guideline, it's good to stay in roles where you're close to the > doing.

Why? It seems to me like the further you are from the doing, the more likely your role is to be prestigious and highly paid.

<comment><USER43> It sounds so true. The it's the other way round. They have the prestige to talk and if you don't, you have to do it. At the end of the day, no doing, no talking. As a startup, we have to do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> OT: can someone explain why some bloggers do not include (or as here, minimize) the date of writing the post? It strikes me as a conceit that their writing will remain timeless.

</comment><comment><USER45> I dont really agree with this, there is always value in mentoring the creators rather than being a creator yourself.

</comment><comment><USER46> At first I read " _Valve_ is created by doing" :-$

</comment><comment><USER47> But the Fed can just prints money and out compete you.

</comment><comment><USER48> Value is created by caring.

<comment><USER49> Caring isn't if you don't do something about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> set noprocrast = yes;

</comment><comment><USER51> > Another example of not-quite-work is every night in San Francisco, there are > dinner parties where people get together and talk about the future. It's > always fun and usually not very contentious—most people agree we need to go > to space, for example. But at the end of it, everyone goes home and works on > something else.

except for Elon Musk and team at SpaceX</comment>


A Quad-Core 2.5Ghz Chipset For Mobile Devices from Qualcomm - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/02/13/snapdragon-bites-back-qualcomm-announces-a-quad-core-2-5ghz-chipset-for-mobile-devices/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me a lot of the processor clock speed arms race that desktop computing went through a few years ago. Mobile devices have the added constraints of heat dissipation and battery life. I'd love to have a quad-core 2.5ghz phone to develop games for but if I can't expect users to have more than 5 minutes of battery life then what's the point?

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article? All these speed gains are also coming with huge power reduction gains as well.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I read the article, but nothing was said about the conditions under which those power reductions happen. Is it 75% at max load? Probably not. Is it 75% to achieve the same data processing throughput? I'd believe that.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Codenames for proejcts? - <AUTHOR> Our company culture is such that all the software project names are very "boring". I am trying to change that and would love to have better internal product names.
I can't find a good argument to achieve this. For example it would be fun to refer to our testing framework as "kraken" instead of "Tester"
how do you decide your project names ? <comment><USER2> Well, you do want them memorable to the people in-house but obscure to outsiders (such as anyone sitting at the next table in the coffee shop).

Back in the day, the much-waited-for Version 3 of Lotus 1-2-3 was called Godiva. (Just because everyone liked the chocolate, I think.) But Lotus knew that a lot of customers wouldn't own the high-end computer that the new version would require (hoo-boy a 386!), so they also created Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.2. That was far less sexy of a project to work on, so its code name was Chunky (after the much cheaper chocolate candy).

At the same time, Lotus worked on a SQL database that never _did_ see the light of day. Its lead designer was one of the original 1-2-3 programmers, who'd gotten tired of people asking him what he was working on next. So the code name for our project was, "No comment." Then when he responded, "No comment" to "What are you working on?" he was being explicitly correct. (...I still have the polo shirts and other swag from that project, too. Cool logo of /* */ )

</comment><comment><USER3> I HATE clever names. Clever names are fun. They tickle that little corner of the developer brain that delights in obscure trivia, and makes everyone smile and nod and pat themselves on the back as they celebrate their cleverness.

Fast-forward 2 years, and no one can remember what thing does what.

1\. New devs on the team have to learn a long list of acronyms and code names, slowing down their ramp-up.

2\. Trying to find information is nearly impossible, since you can't just keyword-search for "test" and see all the related dependencies, but instead have to reference some internal code sheet.

3\. Duplicate work often results, since you can't easily see the thing you did last time, and if you forget where you put it you'll never find it again. "Wait, is this Kraken? Or was that supposed to be Ahab? Is Nemo the search indexing service or was that Marlin?"

In my teams, I've always dictated boring but descriptive project naming, along with a nice README that includes a description of what the thing does, why it exists, and a handy list of keywords in case you try to find this information later. BTW this also works well for class names, variable names, etc.

Or you could, you know, do something fun and not boring. And have all the developers who come after you curse your name.

<comment><AUTHOR> humm good points. I will go and do something fun YOLO</comment></comment>


If a scientific theory doesn't make any testable predictions, what good is it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Physics/If-a-theory-doesnt-make-any-testable-predictions-what-good-is-it

<comment><USER2> Ah, time for one of my favorite lines...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong>

> An argument that appears to be scientific is said to be not even wrong if it > cannot be falsified (i.e., tested) by experiment or cannot be used to make > predictions about the natural world. The phrase was coined by theoretical > physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to > incorrect or sloppy thinking.[1] Rudolf Peierls writes that "a friend showed > [Pauli] the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great > value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not > even wrong.' "[2]</comment>


Ubuntu and Its Leader Set Sights on the Mainstream - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html <comment><USER2> Until someone spends a good bucket of cash on hiring UI talent to clean up the abortion that is the linux desktop, they'll still be lagging way behind OSX and Windows, both of which offer a superior and consistent experience.

I love linux, btw, and know my way around the command prompt fairly well. And, of course, it is my first preference for _most_ server scenarios.

That said, my opinion is that it's a near failure as a desktop OS.

I have Ubuntu installed on my Dell laptop and have had it on there for about a month. It's certainly usable, and I certainly get my work done in it, but it always feels like I'm using something that has been duct taped together. Everytime I climb back aboard my Mac Pro at work, it feels like I just took a shower.

For starters, X has to go the way of Quartz. I still can't get this laptop to play full screen video at a decent frame rate. No problem when I dual boot into Windows. No problem when I had hackintosh installed on this laptop. Why is this so hard? It's not the decoding, it's the drawing.

Basic shit like window ornamentation is always "almost there" and it frustrates me that it isn't "there". It's like the uncanny valley of UI, this linux desktop.

Compviz is cool, but feels cheap and has all kinds of redraw issues.

Most of the free replacements for professional tools feel like they're designed by people with severe visual disabilities. Froo, you are in for a rude awakening thinking you can replace photoshop with Gimp, even Gimp 3.0 is still a long shot away.

Thankfully, I can get my work done in a full screen terminal for most of it, Eclipse for the rest.

That's my opinion after using it for a month. So not ready for prime time.

<comment><USER3> Let's get one thing out of the way, first: the simple fact that you can _compare_ Ubuntu (cost: $0) with OSX ($120 + custom hardware) and Windows ($117) is _utterly amazing_.

You make a valid point that certain things break and take coaxing and searching message boards to work. That's definitely bad.

The point I would question is that of the UI. There are many aspects of OSX that are weird -- the mouse tracking, installing applications, setting a background color for your desktop, bringing up a terminal. Other issues exist for Windows. I can see how it's hard to detach yourself from something you're used to, though.

Those are going to be the two main issues in getting Ubuntu off the ground with average users. Having shit not break, and being close enough to users' existing habits to make the switch easy.

My hunch is that things are pretty close to where they'll end up. Linux will be an attractive alternative among techies, hobbyists, and average folks with spare/old machines. Microsoft and Apple will respond by cutting prices, and in the end, won't lose a substantial share of the market to Linux on the desktop, but suffer decreased margins. The user wins.

<comment><USER4> What is exactly is weird with "the mouse tracking, installing applications, setting a background color for your desktop, bringing up a terminal" in OS X?

<comment><USER3> Mouse tracking: the acceleration is different than what I expect; slow moves don't seem to get me anywhere, quick ones make me overshoot. I've played with settings and downloaded third-party fixes, nothing seems to make it work the way it does in Ubuntu or Windows.

Installing applications: they usually come on a disk image, which you mount, open, and then find the program. Natural inclination is to double click the program and run it. That's great until you unmount the disk image. What you really have to do is drag it to the applications folder. This is never explained, nor do average users know what a disk image is. Windows install wizards are pretty nice; Debian/Ubuntu's package manager is also super nice.

Background color: try setting your OSX background to black. When I tried it, I found that I couldn't. I had to get a purely black image, and then stretch it. Not a problem with Ubuntu or with Windows.

Terminal: by default, the terminal program is not part of the dock, it's buried in the Applications folder. Given that "it's BSD! you have a terminal!" was part of the hype around OSX, I was terribly confused the first time I went on an OSX machine to actually run it. Not a problem with Ubuntu. Moot in Windows, you download Cygwin if you have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linux has been pretty solid since 1999/2000, before that it was OK for home use but you had to like messing around with it (although it's no worse than Windows was in '93...making a boot disk to play games to get around the memory limitations). Ubuntu blew the doors off when it came along and made it a Mom and Pop OS i.e. anyone could easily install and use it, I put it on my 60 year-old Aunt's computer.

Also the other reason Linux is gaining in popularity is not due to Linux, most average home computer users all do the same things; check e-mail (web based not ISP), IM (web), browse web pages - all of which are not OS dependent.

<comment><USER6> Hmmn -- surely, if something were completely independent/neutral of OS, by definition then it would not be able to exert any influence on the popularity of any OS?

So if Linux arguably is gaining in popularity because of average home users checking webmail, browsing etc; then it seems to me this must in fact be ascribable to some fundamental differentiating characteristic(s) of Linux applicable to these users.

Possible differentiators might be cost, ability to arrange for fast boot to a usable web browsing environment, reduced virus concerns, etc. etc.

<comment><USER7> There's a theory that any industry category will naturally support three competitors, in a certain market-share ratio like 60%, 30%, 10% [1]. This happens free of market manipulation, and mostly depends on marketing strategy rather than the competitors' actual merits. Think Google, MSN and Yahoo right now, for example, or car brands in the past, soft drinks, car rental companies -- there's a market leader, a rival/also-ran, and a something-different. Anyone else has trivial market share.

Following this rule, the market for operating systems is clearly out of whack. Windows' share should be much smaller, but still majority, because that's how it's marketed -- the market leader, the one everybody else uses. Apple should get the Avis spot -- #2, but we try harder. And Linux should still hold onto around 10% share, by adapting to meet the specialized needs that Joe User- oriented OSes have to leave behind.

The rise of cross-platform and platform-independent apps, and mobile devices where the OS shouldn't even be noticeable, break the network effect that supports Windows' considerable lead and allows the market shares to drift back toward the natural ranking.

[1] Closest citation: _22 Immutable Laws of Marketing_ , Law of the Ladder. I think Laura Ries has supported the 3-player claim more specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A feature on R a few days ago, and now Ubuntu? What, did Stallman's airship raid the NYT over the holidays?

</comment><comment><USER8> Could 2009 finally be … [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22year+of+the+linux+desktop%...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22year+of+the+linux+desktop%22) ??

<comment><USER9> I had a dual boot xp/ubuntu system for the last 18 months now and last night around 1am I reformatted and am on a pure ubuntu system as Photoshop was really the only thing that kept me tethered to Windows (I bit the bullet and have instead decided to learn GIMP)

I read the article this morning, good read.

<comment><USER8> > _(I bit the bullet and have instead decided to learn GIMP)_

Don't do it. You're artificially constraining yourself with a tool less common, less powerful, less stable, less elegant. If you instead spend that time learning about color science, the benefit to your work (assuming you do any kind of art or design) will be much more significant.

<comment><USER9> I agree that photoshop is the better of the two tools, I'm mostly using gimp BECAUSE it's a less powerful tool.. it's an experiment to see what I can create using lesser tools so that I rely more on my creative abilities and less on an elegant solution.

I may well end up hating it, but I wont know that until I give it a try.

<comment><USER8> Using bad equipment as a constraint on your art is not likely to spark creativity, but instead just give you a worse result. It's like saying you're going to start programming in Cobol instead of Python because it might make you rely more on your creative abilities, or you're going to start running in wooden clogs instead of running shoes, or replace your computer display with a 10" one. If you want to guide creative thinking, put a constraint on the output, not the toolset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If only Autodesk products ran on Linux! (I think they made a pact with MS years ago to be exclusive on MS though)

<comment><USER9> You're statement is wrong unfortunately.

Maya (arguably the premier 3D modelling program for film and games) runs on Windows, Mac and Linux systems

<comment><USER10> Well, their primary applications, such as AutoCad and Revit, only run on Windows. They own roughly 80% of the world market in these cad applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article: "Ubuntu (pronounced oo-BOON-too)" -- intended pun or involuntary irony?</comment>


Ask HN: Recommend a decent ARM Laptop to run Free/OpenBSD? - <AUTHOR> I'm pondering getting a new lightweight arm based laptop to run FreeBSD and/or OpenBSD. I don't do a lot of heavy development - I'm more keen on low weight and good battery life. Intel based ultra books may be of interest too but I don't want to pay more than USD 1200. I'm in AU so may not be able to access the US market and generally prices are higher here. Can anyone recommend a decent machine? <comment><USER2> The only ARM based laptops that I know of are all ChromeBooks. Have a look at officeworks.com.au. But I don't know if any of them will allow you to install BSD over them. I have used Crouton on a Samsung ChromeBook and it is sorta Ok, but that is now a rather out of date laptop.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707](https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707)

NetBSD runs on the Pinebook. Firefox wasn't too stable the last I tried a few months ago but they're making constant improvements.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've plugged the upcoming MNT Reform before, but I know you're looking for BSD and not Debian.

[https://mntmn.com/reform/](https://mntmn.com/reform/)</comment>


Full Screen Mario Takedown Notice - <AUTHOR> http://www.fullscreenmario.com/index.html <comment><USER3> Of course they did. Everyone told you they would. Copyright is not just something that a bunch of greybeards imagined and have been lying to young programmers about.

Simple steps to protect yourself:

* Try not to clone commercial products to the pixel

* Pay attention to software licenses. Sometimes they matter

* If prominent news websites accuse you of doing something illegal, consider what they have to say

<comment><USER4> Some mobile users can't read your pointers because you're using source code formatting instead of italicizing with asterisks, fyi.

<comment><USER5> You can drag the "source code" text to scroll it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its a real pity, but consider it to your advantage that this occurred, because it means that all your hard work can be pushed further into newer territory. While you would have been limited by how far you can promote a Super Mario clone, now the engine can be re-purposed to something else instead - <USER2> creative, perhaps? (It wasn't something I would have considered to be terribly creative, btw: the correct word to use is derivative..)

So, if you take the perspective that Nintendo are doing you a favour by pushing your next phase of development away from derivation and instead into creation, and if you do indeed re-factor the codebase to do something else, then you will have experienced a positive effect from this experience. If all you do is take it down and not think about the next generation of product that you can base on your proven, demonstrated working technology, then I think you will have kind of missed an opportunity. Of course, easier for some random stranger on the internet to say this: but if you roll your own content on top of this layer, then you'll have really made something ..

<comment><USER7> So since the source code is written from scratch and the only thing copied were art assets and level design. And since there is a level editor available. They would be able to release it again without prebuilt levels with different art.

It's already not derivative other than cosmetically, I can understand trying to find silver lining but the whole DMCA thing is a ridiculous grey fluster cuck.

<comment><USER8> > _It 's already not derivative other than cosmetically_ //

Appearance matters, form matters the moreso I'd say.

If the appearance and level structure and such didn't matter there would have been no reason to duplicate them would there?

<comment><USER7> I'd be hard pressed to come up with any way in which Nintendo was losing money here though.

<comment><USER9> It's not about losing money. It's about protecting their brand.

Precedent is a slippery slope. Once you allow the "first" to copy your product, its so much harder to fight the 2nd or 3rd attempt.

<comment><USER7> They can licence the dude that made this html5 demo so he can use their assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So if I understand, they had a huge website traffic and made lots of money (donations) thanks to stealing the product (Mario character) from another company (Nintendo), who invested lots of money and hard work into it, and they are still complaining about it?

<comment><USER11> They made a derivative work that added value to many people. And the law said that derivative works are generally banned, and society should be deprived of them. So their hard work to make Mario work for many people in the browser should be thrown away.

The word "theft" is unproductive, because as this case shows, it might be more descriptive to claim that copyright is theft, as society was deprived of value for no good reason at all. Nintendo won't make more and better games because this website does not exist. People won't enjoy a single nice thing. Copyright stole this value from everyone.

<comment><USER12> Nintendo still sells the original mario bros. game through multiple avenues. This site existing absolutely takes away from Nintendo's profits off the game in a real sense.

<comment><USER13> I disagree, Nintendo has never distributed a PC- or browser-based version of this game. Also, it's debatable whether or not profiting from a thirty-year- old game is adding social value. Nintendo seems to fashion themselves after Disney, in the sense that they place extreme value for themselves on copyright protectionism.

<comment><USER9> They haven't but they might license someone else to do it.

<comment><USER11> Creating derivative works is the most productive avenue for creativity. By requiring a license for it, it is virtually banned. Society loses out on a huge body of derivative works.

Note, virtually all works are derivative works, except that now, we're only allowed to derive from stuff created at an arbitrary point when copyrights became perpetual.

If this mario game was allowed to benefit the many users it did -- would Nintendo lose their incentive to create new games? Would it make Mario not profitable to develop retroactively?

I think the answer to these questions is clear. As is the fact that society is deprived of a huge amount of value here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Full Screen Mario was enjoyed by nearly 2.7 million unique visitors during > almost a month of popularity, across 6 continents and dozens of languages. > I'm glad so many people got to enjoy the game, and look forward to working > on new and exciting (and legal) projects.

Handled like a pro. Josh, I admire your dignity.

<comment><USER15> Yes. Don't know how much he ever got in donations, but at least it was a good showcase for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> looks like the repo is still up [https://github.com/DiogenesTheCynic/FullScreenMario](https://github.com/DiogenesTheCynic/FullScreenMario)

<comment><USER8> Does github get a pass based on safe harbour laws?

Do those laws apply even now when github are going to be on very thin ice arguing they had no knowledge of the infringement or their hosting of copyright infringing content - seems like they'd be an easy target for a contributory infringement suite?

A cynic might imagine that they're waiting for the usage statistics to go up so as to inflate the claim.

<comment><USER17> Github.com is protected by the DMCA. If they get a takedown notice then they have to comply, until then they aren't liable. One of the whole points of the DMCA is to prevent hosting companies like Github from being held liable when their users upload infringing content.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Title_II:_Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A relevant issue from several weeks ago: [https://github.com/Diogenesthecynic/FullScreenMario/issues/3...](https://github.com/Diogenesthecynic/FullScreenMario/issues/34)

<comment><USER19> It would be good if Nintendo worked with him/them to release this on their own site. It would be some good publicity for them.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Nintendo seem to be well within their legal rights, but surely there was a more constructive way to handle this situation than lawyering up first and asking questions never. They could have offered to buy him out and put the game on their own site to bring in traffic, or even just come to some arrangement where his site operated with their blessing in return for promoting newer Nintendo products in a useful way. There was a missed opportunity here.

<comment><USER21> But Nintendo doesn't need his traffic, nor do they need him to help promote their products. And if they wanted a browser-playable version of Super Mario Bros. I'm quite certain they could find their own people to develop it.

Literally, as nice as this was, it has nothing to offer Nintendo (that wasn't taken from them to begin with).

<comment><USER20> _Literally, as nice as this was, it has nothing to offer Nintendo (that wasn 't taken from them to begin with)._

Well, apparently he had 2.7 unique visitors in a month. That's a lot of advertising they could have had for their current product range, and I don't imagine most of those people are going to go out and buy some new gear from Nintendo just so they can play a nostalgic game of Mario.

No doubt Nintendo could have developed a similar web-based implementation of Mario if they'd wanted to, but the facts appear to be that they didn't and someone else did. They could probably have benefited from that, and maybe earned a bit of goodwill from the community in the process, for the cost of a mid-level rep spending a few minutes talking with legal and writing a couple of e-mails.

<comment><USER21> They may legally have had no other options but to point and shoot, especially when it became clear that Full Screen Mario was popular, but IANAJL so I don't know.

I see your point, though i'd still contend Nintendo doesn't need eyeballs or goodwill when it comes to their flagship products. They can pretty much stick Link or Mario onto anything and it will still sell. You can play the original Mario officially on newer platforms. One of my favorite desk toys is a power- up mushroom I got from Hot Topic that had candy in it which I immediately poured into the trash because the thing it came in was so cool. The popularity of Full Screen Mario demonstrates that - people _love_ Mario, especially the old 8-bit version. It's quite possible that Nintendo discovered there was a market to be tapped with browser-based games that they were unaware of (or unaware of the scale of), but they own Mario anyway, and they don't need to do Josh Goldberg any favors.

Although I completely agree that a great deal of potential creative value is being lost by not allowing classic games to be legally remade (I would love to take a crack at some Intellivision games, especially the old TSR adventures) that's an abstract issue. Nintendo's not an indie game factory that needs to build cred within the gaming community, and while the discussion about the value of derivative works and copyright is worth having, _this_ outcome was pretty much a fait accompli.

<comment><USER19> While I agree with your point, and no one is disputing that Nintendo owns all rights to Mario and they may not need more visitors, goodwill is a difficult thing to earn. It's even easier to lose. Time will tell, but hopefully they will either take this or have their own dev team release something.

That fact is that this project is now public domain, it's right there on Github and any of us can take the source code and build it. Of course it's illegal to host it, but that doesn't mean that those more techincally inclined couldn't run the game locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nintendo is known to be protective of their largest franchises. If you look at your average ROM site, there are only a few games they try hard to prevent downloads of - Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong.

How about picking a less well known, but just as entertaining platform game? Many for the Sega Master System are either abandonware or close enough.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can those of you who just want to advocate or share techniques for knowingly breaking the law please do it somewhere else?

HN is one of the better forums on-line, and it would be a shame if it started getting associated with illegal activities, however much you personally might feel that law is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER23> The internet archive still has it.

<comment><USER24> [https://web.archive.org/web/20131019203859/http://www.fullsc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131019203859/http://www.fullscreenmario.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This took longer than I expected.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. This is the only part of the situation that has been surprising to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> But you can make this an extension and people can just play off their browser. They can't go after everyone downloading the source code and they are not in a position to stop people from playing off their browser.

<comment><USER8> > _They can 't go after everyone downloading the source code_ //

They could. But it's highly unlikely and probably in some jurisdictions they would fail.

<comment><USER27> I don't think it is the source code that the jurisdiction has problem with; I think it is the fact that he is offering a hosted service to play this in an emulation/js implementation. In my narrow opinion, anyone could share the source code that they wrote and playing off our own browser does not violating copyright and is entirely altruistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm going to go out on a limb here: nearly everyone on HN respects and admires Bill Watterson, the creator of "Calvin and Hobbes." And yet Watterson has been quite protective of his cartoon creations, basically not allowing anyone to re-use them to make merchandise or new content, even though Watterson would become filthy rich off of it, and the world would likely be a better place with more Hobbes window-suction dolls than Garfields.

But isn't it Watterson's right to do this? He's an artist, and he wisely saw that the crass commercialization of his beloved creations would, in the long run, reduce their nostalgic value. Hell, maybe he isn't even thinking in that way. In any case, I think it's possible that C&H holds such a special place in our consciousness because of Watterson's reluctance to license his characters, and _good for him_.

Now imagine a situation in which a hard-working t-shirt maker puts the images of C&H on shirts -- shirts for which he risks a tremendous amount of capital to produce -- and makes a boatload of money selling $8 t-shirts? Is Watterson harmed financially? For some people, the answer is "No", because Watterson was not making money off of C&H t-shirts in the first place. And copying static images certainly doesn't remove them from Watterson's possession.

Yet I would argue again that Watterson's artistic intent has been damaged...and that even though he hasn't been _physically_ robbed, a well- intentioned t-shirt maker has watered down the value of Watterson's creation.

Is this not the same situation as the OP here? Is it different because Nintendo is a big corporation that should be doing better things with its time? Perhaps...size does matter. But the principle is arguably the same, and for anyone to say that Nintendo is going overboard and doesn't need to protect its intellectual property, that requires making a huge assumption about Nintendo's strategy on how it wishes Mario Bros. to be experienced, same as it's a huge assumption to say that Bill Watterson doesn't know what he's doing when he refuses to license the use of C&H.

More context. This is Watterson's opinion on turning C&H into a film:

[http://www.salon.com/2013/10/17/calvin_and_hobbes_creator_bi...](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/17/calvin_and_hobbes_creator_bill_watterson_gives_rare_interview/)

> _Watterson also confirmed that an animated "Calvin and Hobbes" movie won't > happen:_ > > > _The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have > zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you've ever compared a film > to a novel it's based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It's > inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and > when you make a movie, the movie's needs get served. As a comic strip, > Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There's no upside > for me in adapting it._

Watterson is incredibly protective of his own creation, so far as to not even give Pixar -- legendary artists in their own right -- a chance to entertain millions of people with the goodness of C&H. Yet I don't think that makes him a copyright-villain.

<comment><USER29> Sure he is -- not in a legal sense, but certainly in a cultural sense.

To pick another comic from the era, the Far Side doesn't have a central character or set of characters like Calvin & Hobbes. There may be a recurring cast of similar bovine, but they aren't characters in the same way Calvin and Hobbes are. Is C&H more worthy of copyright protection? Copying any one comic would be violation of copyright, but if I make another comic with talking cows, no one will say that I sole from the Far Side... well they may say it, but it would be hard to prove.

Once published, these original works become part of our culture. If someone draws a young boy with a stuffed tiger and makes no claim that the characters are to depict Calvin and Hobbes, how can someone claim that they are protected from copyright anymore so than taking cows?

If I have the choice of buying a t-shirt that Bill Watterson illustrated, or some knock-off imitation that claims to be illustrated by Bill Watterson, Bill should be able to sue to protect his name. But if the illustration makes no claim to have been authored by Bill Watterson, why shouldn't this be allowed? Side by side on a clothing rack, I'd buy the official C&H design over an imitation, provided that the official design was the funnier shirt. If the "imitation" design is funnier, then do we as a culture not benefit from what would today be categorized as copyright infringement?

With Full Screen Mario, no claim is made that this is created by Nintendo. If you recolored the art, so that Mario had purple overalls and a yellow shirt, is that sufficiently different? At what point has something been altered enough so that the derivative work isn't a "copy?" Can Nintendo lay claim to the color palette chosen?

The reality is that the line drawn between what is the original and what is copyright infringement is indefinable. More to the point, it is a legal question answered by a court, and therefore an objective decision. Characters are just as much a part of the culture as are the style and format. It just so happens that our current laws favor the protection of characters. If your character is overwhelmingly recognizable in "derivative" works, copyright holders can claim infringement, even when copying wasn't a part of the creative process. Even if the "derivative" work is substantially different in terms of how the asset is used.

As a culture, we really need to reflect upon why we have copyright protection in the first place. I'm convinced that it is causing more harm than good. Copyright is meant to expire so that the culture can build upon concepts and ideas that are still relatable to the culture in which the original was established. 25 years is more than ample time for the original copyright owner to have benefited from an idea. There is no harm to our culture if those ideas are allowed to flourish under the stewardship of others. With the accelerated pace or society evolves today, 25 years is downright ancient.

Full Screen Mario is obviously intended to look and feel like the original game Nintendo published 30 years ago, but so much has changed since then. If Nintendo created Super Mario Brothers today, and they were just getting into the gaming industry, I don't think they would have even built the game using web technologies... they probably would have created a game that runs on cellphones and tablets and they would have called the game Angry Birds.

Rovio understands current copyright law as much as anyone, which is why their games have recognizable characters. Sling shots can be replaced with catapults and birds could be replaced with squirrels, and no one would mistake that game for Angry Birds, even with similar game play mechanics. If you were to put a red bird with a yellow beak in a racing game, I would be terribly surprised if the creators of the driving game weren't sued. Has our culture been harmed in either instance? Has Rovio been damaged in one instance more than the other? Does our culture benefit from any of this copyright debate?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If they wanted to Nintento could have actually made use of the programmer to create a new empire in HTML gaming in partnership. But they choose to go for the same old 'its my stuff'.

<comment><USER30> It _is_ their stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh Nintendo. You used to be so fun and innovative.

But now, it seems you can't make anything newsworthy anymore. (Or when you end up in the news, it's because of some silly takedown like this one.)

<comment><USER32> C'mon man, if there is one innovative video games company it's Nintendo. At least in that scale.

I agree with @kamjam that it would have been great if Ninty put it on their site but I didn't have the expectation from them to let anyone use their whole game.

<comment><USER4> What innovative things has Nintendo been doing besides the Wii? Nintendo is the opposite of innovative when compared to Valve.

EDIT: Hmm, I've touched a nerve. Good. When proponents of Nintendo need to resort to "They invented the thumbstick" as an example of their innovation, it becomes obvious that they're not innovating in modern times, else it would be easy to give examples. Nintendo has no recent innovations when compared to other game companies. (The Wii isn't recent, and the WiiU is dead.)

<comment><USER33> _What innovative things has Nintendo been doing besides the Wii?_

Of top of my head and I am sure there are plenty more.

\- D-Pad (1982 on donkey kong)

\- L-R buttons on SNES

\- redefining handheld console as we know it today (gameboy)

\- Analog stick on a joypad (N64 had it first)

\- Rumble actuator on a joypad (N64 had it first)

\- revitalization of game and game console market with NES

\- Touch screen interface on handheld consoles with dual screen (before iphone)

\- portable handheld console with 3D without glasses

\- 'portable' 3d console (virtual boy)

\- (re)defining 2d platformer genre as we know it today

\- (re)defining 3d platformer genre as we know it today (N64 super mario)

\- vast collection of super brands of games and characters

\- Wii and that whole thing with motion controller

\- Wii U with separate screen on a controller

.... many many more

So, what has Valve done exactly? They created a marketplace for games which has revitalized PC gaming (debatable on revitalized - more like set direction) and several popular games. Don't get me wrong, Valve is successful and likable company now (remember when everybody hated Steam?). They are just not in the same category with Nintendo as far as innovation goes, not technically nor creatively. Maybe some day they will be, but they are definitely not there yet.

<comment><USER4> This feels bizarre. Maybe HNers don't actually play videogames?

The Wii U is dead. It completely flopped. The original Wii may as well be ancient, in terms of game industry time.

Nintendo _was_ innovative. But they haven't been for awhile. When they have to resort to lawyering their fans, it's a bad omen. And they don't seem to have anything else up their sleeve right now, as Yahtzee elucidates: [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero- punctuation...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero- punctuation/7417-Next-Gen-Buyers-Guide?hq=1)

It's interesting that most people aren't recognizing what Valve's controller represents. The future of console gaming is Valve. I'll be happy to refer back to this comment in five years. Shall we bet $10?

<comment><USER33> Those are two different things though. Success and innovation. I was referring to innovation alone. Success is a whole other beast and I am sure it can be debated to great lengths. Especially in this context where it's not a zero-sum game. In order for Nintendo to be successful Valve doesn't have to lose and vice versa. They have to successfully capture whatever the market they are after. Is it the same market? I doubt it. Is there some overlap. Sure.

 _The future of console gaming is Valve_

I don't bet because I am strongly opposed, for personal reasons, against gambling. We can bet on proverbial 'I told you so' if you will. Even though I haven't alluded that I think Valve isn't the future of console gaming in any way, now that I think about it I am sure it won't be. There's a possibility they will be a major player in console market, but I don't see that happening any time soon. I am quite sure they will disrupt PC gaming market once again... console gaming? no.

So if you will, we can bet on that and come back to this 5 years from now for an 'I told you so' moment :)

PS

As long as I remember (and I remember back to the dinosaurs age) Nintendo has been regarded as 'soon to be dead'. Same with PC gaming. It just didn't happen over and over again.

<comment><USER4> _Even though I haven 't alluded that I think Valve isn't the future of console gaming in any way, now that I think about it I am sure it won't be. There's a possibility they will be a major player in console market, but I don't see that happening any time soon. I am quite sure they will disrupt PC gaming market once again... console gaming? no.

So if you will, we can bet on that and come back to this 5 years from now for an 'I told you so' moment :)_

You're on! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are Uber Drivers Employees? The Trial That Could Devastate the "Sharing Economy" - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/03/12/uber_lyft_employment_cases_juries_could_decide_the_legal_fate_of_the_sharing.html?wpsrc=fol_tw <comment><USER3> Here's a link to the IRS's general test on misclassification of employees, can be interested in walking through

[http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/shared/Documents/Publications/Natu...](http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/shared/Documents/Publications/NaturalResources/20FactorTestforIndependentContractors.pdf)

There are 20 points to consider in total. some of the ones that don't come up in these discussions but probably should:

• Degree of business integration. Workers whose services are integrated into business operations or significantly affect business success are likely to be considered employees.

• Control over discharge. A company's unilateral right to discharge a worker suggests an employment relationship. In contrast, a company's ability to terminate independent contractor relationships generally depends on contract terms.

• Right of termination. Most employees unilaterally can terminate their work for a company without liability. Independent contractors cannot terminate services without liability, except as allowed under their contracts.

<comment><USER4> >...significantly affect business success are likely to be considered employees.

If all the drivers were fired, Uber / Lyft would be out of business. If this point holds any weight, I'd say they'd have to be considered employees. Applies to taxi drivers as well.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand individual drivers have next to zero affect on business success.

And people contract out critical things all the time, it's not _that_ simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Their hours are flexible—but only to a point. Uber, for example, has > threatened to suspend the accounts of drivers who accept less than 90 > percent of rides.

The second statement does not follow from the first. Uber is probably saying that if you're on the grid, you have to accept 90% of the rides. This totally makes sense; otherwise users will not be able to get a ride even when they see cars all around. Uber is (probably) not saying that drivers should log in for a certain number of hours every day.

<comment><USER7> And what does this mean: an employer's "right to discharge at will, without cause" as "strong evidence in support of an employment relationship."

Aren't contractors easier to discharge?

<comment><USER8> Contracts typically have a term length.

<comment><USER9> As a Kiwi it seems bizarro land - you have to have cause to fire someone in permanent employment, but you can (generally) end contracts prematurely with appropriate terms.

<comment><USER8> What exactly is a contract if it doesn't have a length attached to it?

In most US states it is legal to have, and most companies do have, policies that state something to the effect (and yes, it's often in all caps): EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP IS AT WILL, NEITHER PARTY HAS ANY OBLIGATIONS TO THE OTHER PARTY AND EITHER PARTY CAN TERMINATE THE RELATIONSHIP AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON.

<comment><USER10> This notion is extremely foreign to me as a French and I think most of Europe (except UK) find this type of clause completely abusive. Our standard employment contract here is the CDI : contract of indeterminate duration. Both parties have an incompressible time window to respect if they want to terminate the contract, usually several weeks.

<comment><USER11> Standard in the UK is one months notice on both sides - I've never had a contract that stated anything shorter and have had friends who have been on 3-6 months notice period.

Though it looks like the Statutory notice period can be less.

[https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/notice- periods](https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/notice-periods)

<comment><USER12> In Norway it is near impossible to create a valid employment contract for full time workers with less than 3 months notice (doesn't matter what the contract _says_ , on the basis of the principle that employers are expected to have massively more power during negotiation; you can deviate from it, but it generally requires consideration above and beyond the potentially lost pay).

In general employees not only have the right to keep getting paid, but have a legal right to continue to carry out their duties unless there are specific circumstances (e.g. they've been fired for gross negligence or for losing an essential license). The right to work was even embedded in the 1814 constitution, though that right is pretty tooth-less.

Moving to the UK was a major culture shock.

The US seems like a different planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "sharing" economy is a misnomer--what Uber represents is the "mis- classified contractor" economy.

<comment><USER14> Taxi drivers were already classified as independent contractors, even when working for large cab companies. In fact, they sued four of them in Chicago just last year[1].

Despite of the jab in the headline, Uber et all didn't create this situation, and they may in fact have the (unintended) consequence of fixing this and other long lasting issues with the taxi industry.

I don't like Uber, nor their business practices, but I do appreciate the kick in the status quo.

[1] [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi- suit-...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-taxi- drivers-should-be-considered-employees-20140326_1_taxi-drivers-yellow-cab- taxi-industry)

<comment><USER3> I don't get the kick in the status quo,since they're doing exactly the same shit other taxi companies are doing, but with a nicer app and sidestepping regulations.

At least for drivers, this doesn't seem like a better deal in the long term

<comment><USER14> Not the same thing. First, taxi drivers used to have to pay to lease the medallions. This article from 1995¹ talks about paying ~$100 _per shift_ just for the lease. A quote from that article:

 _In 1993, 32 to 45 percent of the income of a fleet or lease manager was profit, or $16,000 to $21,300 per car, up from $5,500 to $9,800 in 1986, according to the taxi commission._

I very much doubt Uber makes anything close to that per car - <USER2> disregarding inflation.

But besides that, do you think it's a coincidence that taxi drivers sued the companies last year, after decades of that system being established? When I said "kick the status quo", that doesn't mean they have any _intentions_ of being better to drivers than taxi companies; but they still shook a broken system from its torpor and forced society to reevaluate it. To me, that's almost always an advantage.

¹ [http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi- di...](http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-difficult-in- best-of-times-gets-tougher.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With the amount of money on the line I can only assume they'll get the laws changed in favor of those with the deep pockets.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Independent contractors are generally treated as workers who serve multiple clients, have a high level of control over their work, and complete specific jobs over a limited period of time that fall outside the usual scope of their current employer's business."

By the definition looks like Uber and Lyft are in serious danger.

<comment><USER7> By that definition is looks like they are in the clear. Many drivers drive for multiple clients. They have a high level of control over their work. Not exactly sure I understand the third part beyond "specific jobs over limited periods of time" which is also the case.

<comment> vertex-four > They have a high level of control over their work.

No, they don't. They are told when to pick up their passengers, and which route to drive, by their employers. They may not deviate from that route, they may not pick up passengers without Uber's say-so. They may not decline passengers without being penalised. While they are signed in to Uber, precisely what control do they have over their work?

Additionally, "complete specific jobs over a limited period of time that fall outside the usual scope of their current employer's business" means that the test falls on the side of being a contractor if you are doing a one-off job that is not usually what the company does, and an employee otherwise.

The point is, a contractor is that person you bring in to write code for your SAP system, or fix the IT infrastructure, or build a new building, or program the A/C. Things where you give the contractor a task, and they complete it using their knowledge, where you don't get to define the specifics of how it's done.

If you want control over precisely how they do their job, and it's part of what makes the company money on a day-to-day basis (you can argue that Uber are selling their software platform all you want, but the service it actually provides is getting you a taxi, not access to its software), I don't see how they're not employees.

<comment><USER17> Anecdotally, what you're saying simply isn't true on many counts. On my twice- weekly airport run, I usually ask the drivers what they think of Lyft and Uber. Their characterization of the relationship is diametrically opposed to what you wrote.

One of the benefits I hear most frequently mentioned is being able to simply shut off the app any time they like (while not actively carrying a passenger, of course). Drivers, in other words, have complete control over their working hours. In addition, drivers, not Uber/Lyft choose _where_ to work: They can hang around the airport, downtown, or out in the suburbs.

Drivers are also not penalized for refusing individual fares--only for refusing greater than some threshold fraction of fares offered. Uber. Uber and Lyft do not prescribe the route a driver must follow, either. The app does offer a suggested route (which is not usually the best on Uber--maps in their driver app are notoriously poor), but the driver and passenger have the flexibility to use a different one.

This is how it works _in practice_ , and frankly it seems to me that they are bona-fide contractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How about instead of trying to regulate Uber/Lyft, fix traditional taxis instead? Force them to accept credit cards, abolish tips, support e-hailing (make it a standard protocol that apps can adhere to), make empty/full indicators that actually work for street hails, don't artificially limit taxi supply with an idiotic medallion system, etc.

Or make public transportation that works for the people so they don't need Uber (looking at you, Seattle and SF). I actually hate Uber and don't like to use them. But I've been burned so many times by traditional taxis that I hate them more. I'd rather use a subway.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really hope we get some clarity out of this. Right now? The IRS has a very complex test for what constitutes an employee vs. a contractor.

Personally, I don't much care where they draw the line, but my life would be easier if they were more clear about exactly where they were drawing the line.

</comment><comment><USER20> We play in the sharing economy too though not in the states. But some much needed clarity would be welcome and so will keep a keen eye on this. Would Uber/Lyft relaxing their regulations make the drivers more like contractors?

</comment><comment><USER21> It will not devastate the sharing economy. It will devastate the "sharing" economy where you try to bypass government regulations by pretending you are not some kind of service.

There are a lot of ways of people to share car rides, small jobs - just not so easy to heavily monetize.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that's what "sharing economy" means. And it's not even true to that extent; I don't see how this would have any effect on things like airbnb.

<comment><USER21> No it does not. A carpooling app for people that want to get from A to B and everyone chips for gas is sharing. Ordering a ride for person that does this all day is taxi.

Couchsurfing - sharing. AirBNB - hotel. It is really simple.

<comment><USER5> That's just sharing. You have to build mass infrastructure around something like that to get "sharing economy".

I agree that the distinction between at-cost sharing and for-profit "sharing" is a mess.

When you say hotel, I hope you mean that the person renting the room is running a hotel. That I can agree with. But I would not call AirBNB itself a hotel, as some people do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The best counterargument is that Uber drivers are very much allowed to work for other rideshares simultaneously, and very often they do.

</comment><comment><USER23> Of course they are bloody employees, end of !</comment>


According to Forbes many companies are failing to meet basic GDPR requirements - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajdellinger/2019/05/31/a-year-later-many-sites-are-still-failing-to-meet-basic-gdpr-requirements/ <comment><USER2> This is wholly unsurprising, given that GDPR requirements will fundamentally break many popular business models. I think we're likely still in a place where "pay the fine and carry on" is still the most financially viable option for some companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> why should we listen to the EU britain doesnt want to</comment>


$PHP = ; - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8 <comment><USER2> While being sarcastic and not really giving any meaningful technical information (which is fine!), this quick read made me remember that I definitely became more productive when I stopped seeing myself as a '[php/node/ruby/c/whatever] programmer' and started describing me as a 'problem solver using the best tools for a given context'.

<comment><USER3> However, some tools are not interesting for any job anymore and the only reason we use them is because of inertia. I've done a lot a php in the past, and i can't think of a single task thar I, as a professional developper, would benefit from using php to perform instead of something else in my toolbox.

The only reason i still do php at all is that some clients ask for it. Inertia.

I can, using my imagination, picture a situation were using php is better for someone, for something.

I can also aknowledge that php has been used to create very nice products at the time, including wordpress, joomla and prestashop.

But there is such thing as evolution in programming. And yes, php has been outperformed by several modern dynamic languages out there. There is no shame in it. That's life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I get that the author is joking but seriously Php is still the best language to get shit done even today. For small businesses Php is still the best thing that has happened for them.

Also just yesterday I found this tweet by the creator of nomadlist which really puts things into perspective :)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488...](https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/938707166508154880?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, the reason there is an empty space after the equals and before the semicolon is because there's supposed to be a poop emoji -- i.e., PHP is "poop". It's a pity, my initial reaction seeing the headline was somebody had found an interesting hack with that particular syntax.

<comment><USER6> $=${$}[$]; $($);

Actually some time ago I found some piece of alien PHP code (a backdoor) in my server, and I couldn't understand it! I did't know the _$($);_ syntax. After searching for that and not finding anything I discovery that exist one special Unicode character that is _invisible_.

Full code here: [https://imgur.com/a/Cggdx](https://imgur.com/a/Cggdx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Both are terrible languages, popular only because of being the first to target some important niche. There is no flame war to make here :)

</comment><comment><USER8> This made my day: Things You Can't do as a PHP Developer \- Tell people you're a PHP developer

<comment><USER9> Especially at non-language specific conferences. I was at a talk once on Clojure where the speakers spent quite a bit of his opening bashing PHP.

Later he asked the audience what language they use, and as everyone blurted out theirs, I blurt out PHP. There was a literal gasp from the audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me, was author sarcastic all along? Hearing for the first time that reinventing the wheel is a good thing.

<comment><USER11> I could tell it was sarcastic all along: he mentioned mongodb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many languages WISH they were as popular and as useful as PHP.

<comment><USER13> I know people hate PHP, but I love it. I was able to completely automate my home theatre using it- it uses an Insteon Hub and HTTP commands to drive my dimmers, projector plug, and motorized curtain. I can control the whole room with a website. I can schedule shows or start something immediately and my PHP cron job runs everything, even bringing the lights up for the credits.

To me, PHP is extremely versatile and powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Over the years I have come to notice that programming languages are, most of the time, not important at all. However, tooling and ecosystem around a language is.

Turns out, yes, PHP is not a very elegant language and there is still quite a bit of phpclasses style gunk out there to be found. But, PHP has a fantastic mature ecosystem. Projects such as Symfony, Doctrine, Composer, The PHP League and PHP The Right Way, to name but a few, are all great examples of this.

To me, for building business type CRUD apps, PHP is still the most productive.

</comment><comment><USER15> Now lets move to Perl 6.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16211864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16211864)

</comment><comment><USER16> This past July it was adorable to see DHH and the RoR community excited over the release of Active Storage, an abstraction layer for local and cloud files.

Flysystem for PHP had been around for almost 5 years prior, and Laravel had it integrated almost 2 years by that point.

There are very innovative things happening in the PHP world that most Ruby/Python elitists don't even know about. I encourage everyone to take a look.

</comment><comment><USER17> Syntax error in a headline because HN can't do emojis

<comment><USER18> > HN can't do emojis

I hope it is more a case of don't wish to do emojis.

 _parrot party_ , _parrot party_ , _parrot party_

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Brilliant caption to the jobs graph.

After 15 years of PHP I went to .net last year. Their are many things PHP gets right and IMO are still better than ASP. For example, configuration is silly weird and complicated in ASP net core, php.ini still handles all the main settings just fine even after all these years.

</comment><comment><USER20> One serious thing one can get from the article is "By writing their own framework, a developer can truly separate themselves from their competition (...) I wonder how many people/companies actually just use this a business strategy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Written as a sarcasm but reveals indeed the narcissistic deficit faced when developping in php. For some good or bad reasons the stigma related to php means that as a php dev, you can't be a cool dev.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is node really single threaded?!?

What do people use it for? Interactive Prodigy games, or trawling AOL forums?

<comment><USER9> They use it to spend hours of their day hiding the fact that it's single threaded by doing EVERYTHING asynchronously.

It's a great time sink.

<comment><USER23> After spending quite a lot of time trying to track down a memory leak in asynchronous JavaScript, opening up a PHP project felt really comfy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sarcastic remark about the latest fad inconclusiveness.

</comment><comment><USER25> Disclosure: Till today I program in PHP. Yesterday to get a CORS proxy to a brain-dead API without Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. But I use PHP only for quick throw-away solutions.

</comment><comment><USER26> "It's well known that PHP is a dead programming language" [https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8](https://medium.com/fuzz/php-a0d0b1d365d8)

"29% of the web uses WordPress" [https://wordpress.org/](https://wordpress.org/)

Are these statements mutually exclusive?

<comment><USER27> The article is satire.

<comment><USER26> Oh, woosh. I didn't read much further than that first sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone familiar with cloud service providers in South East Asia? - <AUTHOR> How's the performance of AWS/Azure compared to Alibaba Cloud in South East Asia? Is one better than the other or are they relatively comparable? <comment><USER2> Alibaba Cloud seems a bit user unfriendly. AWS/Azure/Google Cloud seems to be the preferred choice. Softlayer is pretty unpopular and only seems to have caught on because of marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of AWS/Azure/Google Cloud, which one would be better in terms of connectivity and reliability? We're deploying a solution that's quite critical to our client's core process so we need to make sure it's always there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Huawei/Alibaba/etc has local peering, significantly better in general.

Softlayer APAC is generally kind of ass - decent to out of country targets but little domestic.

In SEA almost everything is country and ISP dependent.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the best provider for Malaysia? Which would you recommend?

Additionally, what type of support does Huawei/Alibaba offer for startups?</comment></comment>