The programmer behind the THERAC-25 Fiasco was never found - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/zgryphon/status/1201292269787238400 <comment><USER2> Exacting revenge on people who make mistakes is the wrong way to improve safety. Even the best people make mistakes. Fixing the process is how safety is improved.

All revenge does is halt progress on new technology, and cause all involved to cover up problems rather than expose and fix them.

<comment><USER3> A chilling example of this from another field: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid- air_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid- air_collision#Murder_of_Peter_Nielsen) \- here also, the air traffic controller who was responsible for the two planes that collided was singled out (and later murdered by the aggrieved father of a victim), but arguably the lax procedures used at Skyguide were also a major factor in the accident.

<comment><USER4> Wow, and the murderer was released in 2 years due to his "mental condition", and 9 years later received a (unrelated?) award that represents, among other things "for educating the younger generation and maintaining law and order". Talk about a miscarriage of justice!!!

> He was released in November 2007, because his mental condition was not > sufficiently considered in the initial sentence. In January 2008, he was > appointed deputy construction minister of North Ossetia.[32] In 2016, > Kaloyev was awarded the highest state medal by the government, the medal "To > the Glory of Ossetia".[22] The medal is awarded for the highest > achievements, improving the living conditions of the inhabitants of the > region, for educating the younger generation and maintaining law and > order.[33]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the things the author fails to mention in the tweet summary, is that the same software was in use on a previous version of the machine and had absolutely no problems.

I believe (from memory) the previous version had hardware interlocks that masked the issue and the T-25 did not have the hardware interlocks installed. This lead to a situation where the software was viewed as heavily tested and therefore trusted, even though it shouldn't have been.

I've always seen this as an example of why physical/hardware interlocks are really important when you're mixing software with hardware that can easily hurt people.

I'm also always amazed by how few people seem to know about the Therac-25 incident, especially people that work in therapeutic radiation roles (in the UK anyway).

<comment><USER6> > I've always seen this as an example of why physical/hardware interlocks are > really important when you're mixing software with hardware that can easily > hurt people.

Not only that, but running in to the interlock should be considered a notable event. The machine should not just continue operating as normal, it should be clear to the operators that something potentially dangerous has occurred and should be investigated.

It seems like they had just assumed that because no one had managed zap someone with the previous models that the software must have been perfect, even though the previous models had hardware interlocks preventing the dangerous scenario. Those interlocks had presumably been tripped many times, just no one ever brought it to the attention of the vendor.

If a system trips a safety interlock it should fail to a safe configuration and remain there until reset by someone capable of investigating why it was tripped in the first place.

Modern traffic lights are a good example of doing it right. In those cabinets you see at every intersection, right next to the traffic light controller will be a device called a conflict monitor. This device will be wired to the circuits feeding the light heads themselves. If two conflicting movements are indicated for whatever reason, be it a failure of the controller, a short in the wiring, etc, the conflict monitor will trip and set the intersection to a fail-safe mode (usually either all-red blink or yellow blink for a main road with reds elsewhere) until manually reset by a human.

\---

> I'm also always amazed by how few people seem to know about the Therac-25 > incident, especially people that work in therapeutic radiation roles (in the > UK anyway).

That's interesting, at least amongst my "techie" friends it's common knowledge. Many of us who went to college for computer science related things had it used in one class or another to get across the point that bad software can kill people in really unexpected ways.

I guess maybe the medical side of things doesn't find it worth as much attention because they don't have as much to learn from it.

<comment><USER7> We have physical interlocks all the time and they make intuitive sense to us.

If you park you car, and crank the steering wheel all the way to one side, it won't start unless you put it back. If you have an automatic transmission vehicle, if you turn the key without pushing the brake, it won't start. If you have a manual, it won't start unless you push the clutch in. (This didn't used to be true. Citing Ferris Bueller.)

Lots of stuff goes wrong when the hardware people depend on the software people for correctness and the software people depend on the hardware people for correctness. Insert <Group A> and <Group B> for hardware and software. Could easily be writers and editors in journalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "...The man (the authors seem to know it was a man, at least) who wrote the software for this machine did so alone, without documenting what he was doing. The company then sort of vaguely tested it."

Lone wolf programmer, no docs, vague testing. What kind of manager(s) would let this out the door knowing this? Never mind the lone wolf programmer. Find the managers and beat them with sticks

<comment><USER9> If I remember, the earlier systems had a hardware lock that prevented an overdosing for whatever reason, including software fault. Sure, the software was still faulty, but don't forget if software was developed for a particular hardware such that a certain concern could be discounted (even if it ought to have been tested for) - is it really the developer's fault when the manufacturer (presumably for economic reasons) decides to remove safety features and increase the risk surface?

<comment><USER10> According to Wikipedia, the new model was actually deemed _safer_ in an audit on the grounds that unlike a mechanical lock, the software could wear out or get damaged. So it seems more likely that people generally had a very mistaken view of software reliability.

<comment><USER11> I assume you mean software could NOT wear out or get damaged

<comment><USER10> correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is their name really important? The deaths weren't from a bad programmer, they were from a lack of software quality methodology. The entire field of software quality assumes that all programmers will write bugs.

<comment><USER13> People are responsible for their actions. There were many things wrong with this project, but one of them was fatally bad code, which this guy took money to write. Having him be named strikes me as the very minimum in accountability.

I think it's also important to name him, to interview him. To understand how he came to kill. So that anybody writing life-critical code today can say, "I'd better not end up infamous like that guy. I can't make the same mistakes."

Maybe if he had been held accountable, the programmers at Uber wouldn't have been lax enough to code up the negligent homicide of Elaine Herzberg.

<comment><USER14> A culture of blame leads to programmers of safety critical software hiding their mistakes.

<comment><USER15> A culture of refusing responsibility is better how?

<comment><USER14> The opposite of a blame culture is not a culture of refusing responsibility, but a system where you look for problems in the process when a fault makes it into the final product. It's always a mixture of specification, implementation, and QA that makes mistakes possible. Putting the blame on the engineer is not very helpful, it does little to prevent future problems. Trying to figure out how it was possible that an implementation bug made it through QA allows you to prevent similar mistakes in the future (at least if you're lucky).

<comment><USER13> Just to be clear, I'm not putting the blame on the engineer. Many people are responsible for this failure. What I'm saying is that the engineer is one of the responsible people, and that as fellow engineers we should be especially concerned with making sure that responsibility is correctly performed and has appropriate accountability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is the assumption that this is to protect the programmer -- however I feel it's much more likely it's there to protect others.

As others have pointed out, this was a systemic failure. Pointing out the individual highlights those upstream.

<comment><USER17> _Pointing out the individual highlights those upstream._

Exactly. Look at Experian. Attempted to blame an individual engineer for not applying a patch, then the next thing they know, the entire world is asking, why is your CISO a music major?

<comment><USER18> > why is your CISO a music major?

The implication of that question is nonsensical. Experian had/has many problems, but the fact that their chief security officer got a degree in music decades earlier wasn't one of them.

Some of the very best programmers I know were music majors - it's actually not uncommon at all. I mean, Steve Jobs only went to college for 1 semester, and afterwards he audited creative classes like calligraphy. Is the implication that he wasn't qualified to be CEO of Apple because he didn't have a degree in management?

<comment><USER17> _The implication of that question is nonsensical. Experian had /has many problems, but the fact that their chief security officer got a degree in music decades earlier wasn't one of them_

You've managed to completely miss my point about attempting to blame an individual engineer backfiring and hitting senior management. No one would have cared what her degree was in otherwise. But it became a stick to beat the organisation with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The developer in question has probably lived some pretty bad 40 years with nightmares about the issue. They might be 60 now, or 80, or already passed away. Only bright spot was probably the fact that they were not known and thus it didn't have a wide social effect on their life. I have a hunch that last part is about to end in a few months.

<comment><USER20> It was one "John Smith". I almost feel as though it must have been many programmers and they pinned it on the guy who left before it blew up. No one wants that black mark on their record and it would be insane to think most people didn't remember anything about him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From reading Nancy Leveson's paper, I get the impression she probably does know the programmer's name, but little or nothing beyond that, and has chosen not to publicise his name. (She probably thinks that is the ethical course of action.) The lawsuit depositions to which she refers, quite likely include his name, but not much else. You would think you would remember the name and gender of a former colleague, but that doesn't mean you could answer any questions about his past work experience or qualifications – most of us know very little of our current colleagues' past work experience or qualifications – even when they tell us, that kind of information often isn't very memorable.

</comment><comment><USER22> Since the real solution to the problem ended up being a hardware solution (a rate limiter) I have trouble believing the culprit is the "guy who wrote the code".

Boeing is having these same question asked about them and I wouldn't be surprised if their "solutions" would essentially be hardware solutions.

<comment><USER23> The solution was to fix the software, not add hardware. A piece of hardware was added to the system to overcome software errors, but that was not the solution.

The software was badly broken, and had been for years. The difference between the 25 and previous models is that previous models had interlocks that did not allow the software errors to manifest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> re: the actual bug - it took a long time for people to reproduce it and figure out what it was.

This article gives an overview of the bug:

[https://www.bugsnag.com/blog/bug-day-race-condition- therac-2...](https://www.bugsnag.com/blog/bug-day-race-condition-therac-25)

A much longer paper about the system here (linked from the OP twitter thread)

[https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/the...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/therac-25.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> It is unbelievable to me that nobody knows who this was. It makes me wonder if somewhere out there is some software engineer, nearing the end of their career, who carries this in their conscience. Do they know about it? It seems it is such a famous case and the medical device industry so small that surely they must.

</comment><comment><USER26> > The programmer behind the THERAC-25 Fiasco was never found

It was known.

It's a shame we live in such a vengeance culture what we really want is for it to be public.

People die weeky in most hospitals because doctors and nurses don't wash their hands.

Get over THERAC, is saved lives and the programmer helped with that.

From Reddit AMA -

"My teacher does know the name, but is bounded by the courts to not release it. He knows the programmer is living in guilt and did say that he has left programming as his career. Although, it was not entirely his fault, as my teacher explained, the necessary software development process for a machine like this was not there, and no checks were in place.

tl;dr Cannot be revealed, but wasn't entirely his fault."

<comment><USER27> "wasn't entirely his fault"

Nobody says it was; such disasters are often multifactorial. But given to his position that person holds key knowledge and insights into what went wrong that no-one else has. Without access to that information, investigators can only hypothesize.

This is why things like whistleblower laws and indemnity insurance exist, to enable the full and unvarnished truth to come out. How are errors meant to be fixed correctly when you don't have all the information as to the cause?

Compare how air crash investigations work. Or research into procedural improvements to hospital hygene. There are things far more important than just finding people to blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many years has an attorney prosecutor to investigate this cases? I mean both Canada and USA.

In my country, if something like this is considered violating human rights, then the general prosecutor could re-open the case, it doesn't matter how many years after (this was intended for investigations on the disappearances during last dictatorship, but I think our constitution abides my reasoning if something like this happens).

</comment><comment><USER29> I think the search for the programmer was not about blaming him but to find information about his background and question him about the actual software development process.

In any case, the only person who has all the details about the development towards this incident is the guy that wrote the program. He is the only one that can shed any light into this. I think it's worth finding him even nowadays.

<comment><USER30> Funny that git chose "git blame" as the name for that piece of functionality.

<comment><USER31> Isn't that just an alias for `git praise`? In any case they're on equal footing.

<comment><USER30> It's the other way around. Blame was the original, and did not initially have a polite counterpart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> No news here. This 21-year-old college report [0]from 1998 (Porrello, cites include 1993 Leveson, Nancy G., and Clark S. Turner.) has -a lot- more facts without the hysteria. It states:

"<b>One</b> programmer, over several years, revised the Therac-6 software into the Therac-25 software (AECL has not released any information about the programmer or his credentials)."

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/19980201101244/http://cobra.csc....](https://web.archive.org/web/19980201101244/http://cobra.csc.calpoly.edu/~dbutler/papers/THERAC25.html) \- "Death and Denial: The Failure of the THERAC-25, A Medical Linear Accelerator"

Previous Therac models had hardware interlocks to prevent some modes; they were removed in favor of software for the 25. No doubt there were some engineers who knew more about this.

<comment><USER33> This is amazing - I would have thought that any medical equipment would go through exhaustive testing and an order of magnitude more for systems involving radiation and a machine capable of lethal doses.

At my first job we even had a separate safety officer for our low powered sources used for tracing waterflow.

<comment><USER34> Part of the problem is likely that the AECL is a quasi-public entity, and governments tends not to be nearly as vigilant when regulating or policing other branches of the same government as they are when regulating a 100% privately owned company.

<comment><USER33> Yes I saw that relying of crown immunity

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps it was a relative or friend of someone way high up in management. Otherwise he or she would have been thrown to the wolves.

<comment><USER36> Could be. Alternatively, he might have had a long paper trail of dissent on the topic of removing the hardware interlocks and they just wanted to keep him off the stand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Such a fatal failure is never the result of one person making a mistake.

It's always the result of many mistakes piled one atop the other, and you'll always find a bean-counter on the top adjusting an Excel spreadsheet somewhere to make the numbers come out in a way that pleases some executives.

Did they ever find the name of the accountant behind the fiasco?

</comment><comment><USER38> My first job was working for a software company that had killed people in the past. This was part of the London Ambulance scandal in the early 90s. The official inquiry had mostly exonerated the company.

It has a crazy impact on corporate culture, it was rarely talked about except in hushed tones over beer, the management was extremely averse to any publicity, no press contact for any reason (compare to my next employer putting out empty press releases at least weekly if not more often), sales staff had an extensive playbook for not answering questions about it

I can understand an individual developer wanting to disappear in this scenario. If they had internalized blame for this, I can certainly imagine them choosing never to work in the industry again (or making more extreme choices)

</comment><comment><USER39> I think its amazing to think it wasn't so long ago you could actually disappear by simply keeping out of the spotlight. Now in most western countries there are few people who could pull this off, and would need to activity be masking your identity.

</comment><comment><USER40> Tweeter is obviously not an engineer. In engineer land (licensed, that is), entrusting the design of components with life-and-death consequences to a single person--without review--is malpractice.

We get away with that kind of thing in software shops because a) we're relatively new, b) rarely deal with life-and-death designs, and c) haven't racked-up a large enough body count ( _empirically speaking, rather than morally_ ) to warrant regulation.

Give Uber & Tesla a few more years of running people over, and engineer-style licensing for certain types of software development will probably be in the mail.

<comment><USER41> >engineer-style licensing for certain types of software development

It was. There was a PE for software engineering until relatively recently in the US but no one took the exam because it basically wasn't required for anything.

Be careful what you wish for though. The requirements typically include a formal degree and some number of years working under a PE.

There's nothing magical about such a certification though. Other than the education and experience requirements, it's pretty much a GRE-type exam. I took the engineer-in-training exam way back when in a different engineering field but I stopped practicing before I sat for a PE.

<comment><USER42> > _no one took the exam because it basically wasn 't required for anything_

No, no one took the exam because it was effectively impossible.

To become a PE, first the candidate has to pass one of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to become an engineer-in-training. Except, whoops, there wasn't ever a software specific FE exam; the most relevant one is the EE/Comp. E. exam. Take a look at the list of topics: [https://ncees.org/wp- content/uploads/FE-Ele-CBT-specs.pdf](https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/FE- Ele-CBT-specs.pdf) Most developers aren't going to pass that even with a CS degree.

Secondly, you need 4-8 years of supervision by a licensed engineer. Again, whoops, there are barely any software developers with a PE license, so who would they get to supervise them?

Only then do you get to take the PE exam for software engineering. Frankly, the situation was so absurd that one has to suspect that NSPE didn't want to certify software developers as PEs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is the code available, after all these years?

<comment><USER44> I don't think it was ever publicly released, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Deaths are clearly on the company, not on the programmer guy

</comment><comment><USER46> Does this programmer actually exist? Sounds like they have "invented" a person to blame, who, strangely, people can barely remember.

</comment><comment><USER47> I read that 1993 THERAC-25 article when it first came out. One factoid which stuck with me was that after the accidents, the manufacturer, AECL, retreated to their core business: "AECL's primary business is the design and installation of nuclear reactors."

</comment><comment><USER48> How possible is it that the only programmer was a minor and that's why we never got any testimony or explanation? I've heard stories of companies or governments hiring extremely young programmers to do some pretty serious work. (John Romero comes to mind)

Edit: It would also explain the lack of provable credentials.

</comment><comment><USER49> I studied this in a computer class in college. I can't remember if it was a computer testing class or a computer ethics class. But it was the first thing we covered and the point was, as you embark on a career writing software, BE CAREFUL!

</comment><comment><USER50> turning the Twitter hounds of hell loose on the guy/woman seems like a good way to fail the responsible conduct part of their "Responsible Conduct of Research" class.

</comment><comment><USER51> If the lawsuit ended in settlement before they were found, there is nothing unusual here. There is no reason to look after that point. They settled.

</comment><comment><USER52> Why would someone assume that the programmer was to blame? The programmer just does what the managers tell him to do. Why should safety or security be about blaming the low man on the totem pole? It's totally ridiculous when you read accounts like that of the NASA engineer. [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2012/02/06/146490064...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle- challenger-launch)

<comment><USER53> Where did someone assume that the programmer was to blame? How do you find out if the High On Totem Pole Man is to blame if you can't depose the Low On Totem Pole Man? You can't. You are forced to take the High On Totem Pole Man's word for it.

<comment><USER52> The man over others is the responsible person. If you don't have this, you have no reasonable reason to be incorporated.

<comment><USER54> If your doctor harms you, you don't sue his boss for malpractice, do you?

<comment><USER55> But a doctor is not tolled how to perform an operation. Whereas a developer in most all cases is. Just like in the emissions scandal of VW.

<comment><USER54> If a doctor is told to do something they know will harm a patient, they have to refuse or they are guilty of malpractice.

Engineers at VW were found guilty:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-engineer- sentenced-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-engineer-sentenced- for-role-in-emissions-fraud-1503676373)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is how most factories operate.

Hire someone to design a plastic mold, pay for the work, never hear from that person again.

It is insane to expect anything more than a tax code, that is only retained for some few years in some dusty finance department file cabinet.

There is no source control, design history files, CD/CI, etc in a factory, i.e. 99% of small to medium business. Silicon valley and fintech are the exceptions, even today, let alone when that happened.

Also, it is a bunch of old timers recommending one another for work. The people on the floor and owners definitely know the person, but will not tell unless they have to.</comment>


Kurt Gödel's Letter to John von Neumann (1956) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251s15/www/notes/godel-letter.pdf <comment><USER2> The story of Von Neumann's death is actually quite interesting. The government kept a guard by his death bed to be sure he didn't divulge any state secrets while on mind numbing pain medications. It is well documented that, after Von Neumann learned of his terminal pancreatic cancer, he became horrified of death and would cry out at night, even resorting to last-minute conversations with a priest on his deathbed (though he was an atheist throughout his life). His mother died during his illness and his family tried to hide it from him. But he eventually figured it out and took a turn for the worst. It's all very sad in the same way it would be for anyone, but in Von Neumann's case it makes one wonder what else he would've accomplished in the next two or three decades of life.

<comment><USER3> >It is well documented that, after Von Neumann learned of his terminal pancreatic cancer, he became horrified of death and would cry out at night, even resorting to last-minute conversations with a priest on his deathbed (though he was an atheist throughout his life).

Oh man this is utterly terrifying for me as I always hoped that the fear of death would diminish with age. It's horribly terrifying to me that he was horribly terrified of death at an advanced age.

<comment><USER4> oh, this is a classic!

A lot of people (especially atheists, like me) have an oversimplified concept of dying. One can be perfectly atheist and realize that apart from the waking horrors of a decaying body, the experience of death itself can still be enormously horrible in certain ways of dying.

I highly recommend the movie "A Pure Formality", if you like to trivialize death! It's the worst horror movie I have seen, and there is absolutely zero blood, slashing, nor sudden scare moments... and yet I assure you it is the biggest horror, it is pure psychological horror.

I am very happy that I have seen this movie, somehow knowing how horrible something can be sort of mentally prepares you for it...

<comment><USER5> It's not death that I fear, but discomfort and pain.

<comment><USER2> That's like saying "it's not psychopathic axe murderers I fear, but the pain they cause." No one fears words, they fear some aspect of experiential suffering. When people say they "fear death" they mean pain, discomfort, leaving loved ones behind, et. al. I think you hit upon something useful though, which is the idea that our mental wellness can change even when our physical wellness can't.

<comment><USER5> My working hypothesis is that I'm a "meat machine". When I die, it's extremely likely that I (that is, my conscious awareness) will no longer exist. That might also happen, of course, even if much of the meat lives.

Given that, I do have some existential dread about death. And that's distinct from the process of dying, the hassle and pain involved, and so on.

So I do fear murderers, because they'll kill me. But I fear torturers more, because they cause pain. And more. They do irrevocable stuff, injuries that can never heal. So it's like they can kill you, over and over, little bits at a time. And in a way, those realizations of irrevocable loss are _worse_ than the actual pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> John von Neumann seems like the man you would certainly want to meet. Apparently, he was good at talking to children and treating them with respect, same thing with people who weren't up to his abilities (which, let's be fair, is basically everyone) so he would probably not be condescending towards you. He had a great sense of humor and loved telling jokes, and he probably had a story or two about when he drove into someone else. He came from a wealthy, cultural family in Hungary, was fluent in Greek and Latin and was always well dressed so he could probably offer very deep discussions outside science too. And, he was one of the first contributors to computer science and thus could probably offer a great discussion to us techies. His war stories are _actual_ war stories.

If I could meet some historical person for an interview, von Neumann is at the top of the list.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently the young man didn't go into medicine after all: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Friedberg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Friedberg)

<comment><USER8> Here's a 1958 article that suggests he made it to at least his second year in medical school.

[https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1958/1/7/friedberg- finds-...](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1958/1/7/friedberg-finds- computer-shows-ability-to/)

Interesting tidbit:

> "If we are ever to make a machine that will speak, understand or translate > human language, solve mathematical problems with imagination, practice a > profession or direct an organization, either we must reduce these activities > to a science so exact that we can tell a machine precisely how to go about > doing them or we must develop a machine that can do things without being > told precisely how,"

<comment><USER9> It always amazes me how far-seeing some people were in the early (and pre-) history of computers. The quote above shows such insight/intuition into the future potential of machines, the need for program correctness, the role and nature of machine learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gödel must have understood von Neumann to have been very very interested in his work? I mean of course he was, but to the degree that even if he were ill he'd be thinking about math.

Otherwise it reads like "hey, hope you get better, now do you think P == NP?"

<comment><USER11> > "hey, hope you get better, now do you think P == NP?"

That was my read of it and I found it heartening.

Having had a near-fatal illness myself I was bummed at the time by all the moaning about it. People were really talking about _their_ issues, not mine (OK, kid freaking out about becoming an orphan was something for me to address).

My own head was still full of stuff I wanted to do in the future (and what to do about my own therapeutic plan) and I would have been delighted to talk to someone who would think that way too. The great thing about the net is I could (textually) talk to friends far away who had no idea I was sick.

<comment><USER12> Isn't your death more about the people left behind? I mean you're not going to have any problems once you're dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a nice article that discusses the historical importance of the letter and the problem Goedel raises:

[https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/6910/89-9...](https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/6910/89-994.pdf?sequence=1)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have always wanted to get my hands on the "definitive" book about von Neumann, whom I find a fascinating character. Is there such a thing? Any recommendations?

<comment><USER15> I would recommend these videos. A German documentary with subtitles and this: [https://youtu.be/97hfRcrYBtE](https://youtu.be/97hfRcrYBtE) [https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE](https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, being the guy to who Kurt Gödel ask mathematical advice has to be a curious position to be.

<comment><USER17> Well, Von Neumann was likely the smartest man who ever lived.

<comment><USER18> this is kind of an ironic statement on this forum when von neumann thought programming (outside of directly writing binary) to be a complete waste of time and effort.

in terms of basically being a human computer though, i think he's pretty far up there. although, i do think there's a lot more to being smart than just being a technical person. for example, i would rate noam chomsky to be pretty far up there in terms of smart people. when you hear him speak, he seems to have a photographic memory for damn near everything he has read, which is a ton.

<comment><USER19> Turing thought the same same way about programming. For example, he didn't see any point in programming languages.

Basically nobody saw at the beginning that actual computer programming could be very difficult task. You just design algorithms in abstract and some clerk inputs them into the computer in machine language.

"As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs." – Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949

ps. & edit:

Similar thing happened with AI. Dartmouth Workshop in 1956 was the beginning of systematic AI research. Tt was thought that there could be significant progress in in few months and at least during the next year in things like natural language understanding. McCarthy, Minsky, Shannon, etc. had to first discover how hard problems really were.

<comment><USER20> We're still doing that with AI today. Each step forward is seen as signs of imminent acceleration towards AGI, when we really have no idea yet how hard the problems are that lie ahead. It's encouraging to know that it isn't a new phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A few comments imply that this introduces the question of P ?= NP, and while it indeed is defining a complexity problem, this is about satisfiability of _first order predicates logic_ , that is formulas with sets and quantifiers, while SAT is about _propositional logic_.

First order logic was famously proved incomputable by Godel himself, so here he's asking whether we can bound the number of steps given the size of the _proof_ , not the size of the _input_ (formula length), which is the way complexity is usually defined.

In practice, he's saying that tractable theorems must have reasonably sized proofs (to be understood by a human), and there might be an algorithm that is efficient enough in finding short proofs.

<comment><USER13> According to [1], the question Goedel raises is equivalent to P vs NP, although clearly not phrased in the same language. The author claimes Goedel's phi(n) is polynomially bounded if and only if P=NP. Do you disagree with that statement?

[1] [https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/6910/89-9...](https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/6910/89-994.pdf?sequence=1)

<comment><USER21> > The author claimes Goedel's phi(n) is polynomially bounded if and only if > P=NP. Do you disagree with that statement?

It would be trivially true if Godel was talking about propositional logic (proof size is polinomially bounded by definition of NP).

I don't know if that's true for first order logic (it's not as obvious to me as the author seems to imply) but even in that case it would be a non-trivial connection, so I believe it's a stretch to say that this was about P and NP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could someone adds the historical background of Godel's question?

<comment><USER13> These letters contain some of the first discussions of computational complexity theory, and von Neumann immediately identifies P vs NP as a central problem in the field. The work was unpublished and undeveloped, as von Neumann became ill and died around this time.

Edit: I double-checked my biography of von Neumann and in fact, as the poster below indicated, his responses (if he was able to make any) aren't available. This letter of Goedel has identified an NP problem, and he's asking if it can be solved in polynomial time, so we can't credit von Neumann for identifiying the problem with certainty.

<comment><USER23> A common phrase you often hear when people try to explain the impressive technological leaps made in the 20th century is "war is the father of all things", meaning of course that WWII was a major catalyst for technological advancement.

I always wondered if it shouldn't be phrased as "John von Neumann is the father of all things."

<comment><USER24> I'dd add Poincaré.

John von Neumann and Henri Poincaré certainly deserve credit for a shocking amount of modern advancement in math and science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Mobile version here [https://docushow.com/viewdocchris?url=http%3A//www.cs.cmu.ed...](https://docushow.com/viewdocchris?url=http%3A//www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Eaada/courses/15251s15/www/notes/godel- letter.pdf&dev=2)

</comment><comment><USER26> If you look at the Isabelle ([https://isabelle.in.tum.de/overview.html](https://isabelle.in.tum.de/overview.html)) and Coq ([https://coq.inria.fr](https://coq.inria.fr)) proof assistants, you can see that enumerating all possible expressions F and automatically verify if there is a proof of length less than n, has not turned out to be a fruitful approach. These tools do not even particularly try to do that ... ;-)</comment>


The New York Times Algorithm & Why It Needs Government Regulation - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/regulating-the-new-york-times-46521 <comment><USER2> <facepalm>I have a great idea guys, lets have the government run the press! Then we can be like China! While we're at it, why not take over all other forms of free speech - I mean why go half-way when you can go all out? </facepalm> \- this is what I get for getting so worked up I post a response before I finish reading the article. Mad props for employing satire.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, downvoted by mistake, without reading your entire comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A well reasoned and informative piece. Any other good responses to the NYT OpEd piece out there?

<comment><USER5> Conversely, to me, the reasoning in the piece is extremely flaky. A few examples below:

1) The biggest and most obvious one is that the Times has a large amount of oversight already in terms of other papers as well as law. Google has nothing like that, search engines just don't work the same way. You don't get search results compared all the time. That does happen to reporting.

2) People tend to consume a variety of reporting mediums, but only one search engine. For example I read the Independent newspaper, the BBC or Guardian websites, on TV watch Question Time, This week (both BBC again admittedly) and Channel 4 news. And on the radio in the morning, news reports. I'm probably a bit more of an outlier, but I would guess many people are exposed to multiple suppliers of news without even realizing it.

And for search I use... um, Google.

3) The numbers are totally incomparable. How many people in the world rely on the Times' as their exclusive news provider in the world? 1% would be a gross over estimation. And Google for search? 66%.

4) Transparency. There is nothing transparent about Google's algorithm, while everything is supposed to be transparent at a paper. A journalist not declaring a vested interest is abnormal, they will even duck out of stories in which the have such an interest. Again, it's about oversight. Remember that hoo-haa a year ago about the massive argument those tech bloggers had on screen about free gear influencing their reports? That would never happen to a search engine.

There are many comparable intellectual bloopers in the satire just like this.

I've been of the opinion that Google needs some oversight for quite a while, they are getting scarily powerful. While I dislike government interference, the web is too important to leave to a company.

At the moment Google is fairly good, but there's no denying it's been favouring its own services at the expense of others.

We have nothing to gain in trusting it to regulate itself and everything to lose.

<comment><USER6> Good post but #2 is probably far from the average. A lot of people don't read/watch the news anymore and if they do, they usually watch it on one channel at night. I find it rare for people to do something as simple as use google news or other aggregators. And even if you were to read multiple papers, the Times does get reprinted a lot, so does Reuters and AP, Knight Rider stories etc. The newspaper industry is about as consolidated as the search business. There not that many conglomerates in news and independent newspapers are rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I despise MSM's talk about how 'gatekeepers' should get preferential treatment or should be regulated, no matter who those gatekeepers are. It's all a shallow power play: he who directs traffic, shapes minds. The NYT is losing its power to direct traffic & complaints about Google are just misguided survival strategies. There _is_ a problem with power centralization through network effects (Facebook, Google) but regulation is not going to solve that.

<comment><USER8> What is going to solve it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > If Google was seriously abusing its "gatekeepter" status, you'd expect to > hear billions of complaints about anti-competitive behavior in those > billions of searches.

Ah, because people are never duped. Google's done an incredible job creating a do-gooder image for itself, which shuts off people's warning systems. (For contrast, consider Microsoft's long-standing reputation for being ruthless, especially in the 90s.) To be sure, I don't think it's all image, but you'd be a fool to think do-gooder sentiments are the driving force behind that company.

Since Sullivan is so interested in pointing out cute similarities, here's a serious difference for you: Google is insanely profitable and has an extremely effective positive feedback system for acquiring power. The Gray Lady, meanwhile, is on the verge of collapse.

The problem is power, and there isn't nearly enough concern over how much of it Google has. Good on The New York Times for trying to raise it, I say. I don't know if I agree with their proposal, but this is a conversation that we need to be having.

And by the way, it's not really about Google as such. If it were Yahoo or Lycos or whoever else in Google's position, the same arguments would apply.

<comment><USER7> Lycos? How cute! I agree that the problem is power, but I'm not convinced regulation is going to do anything. On the one hand we have network effects at play creating major power hubs (The Kingdom of Facebook) but on the one hand we also have blogs run by local city-state tyrants like Techcrunch. Yes, stupid blogs are about power too. Should government regulate major blogs like Huffpost of Techcrunch because they have the power of shaping opinion in respectively the field of technology and liberal thought?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've never been convinced by the argument that opening Google's algorithms would make it really vulnerable to spam. In the short term, I don't doubt it would, but I suspect a million eyes on the code would find and fix the bugs (where bugs are the easily spammable weak points), much as they do with crypto algorithms.

<comment><USER11> But the thing is, weak points in Google's algorithm at this point in the game are probably not bugs. The algorithm is probably doing what it was written to do, but the problem is that Google is essentially trying to create an AI that can pass a worldwide Turing test with highly trained professional testers working to outsmart it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't having the government step in defeat half the point of a newspaper?

<comment><USER13> How's that diff from th government deciding how we find stuff online?

<comment><USER14> Harder for the government power grabbers to make the "child porn" argument against newspapers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> google is doing well and forcing other companies to innovate and compete. the folks who run or are involved in these other shitty companies are pissed and just want to rant. so far, most everything google is doing and has done has benefited the end consumer in one way or another. so far.

as an average user who doesn't own a company or hold a financial stake in google or their competitors, i feel like all of this rant is bullshit.

<comment><USER16> I agree with you on this. I remember that shortly after Google announced the Android operating system, Apple announced that it would be releasing an SDK for developing native applications in the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When geeks attack.</comment>


5 business lessons from Costco  - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/505-5-business-lessons-from-costco <comment><USER2> > 1\. Take care of your employees.

That is certainly a given. Luckily, lots of hackers I know just want to be given hard problems. The cave offices with aerons and dual 30-inch screens are just good tools :) Lots of the tasks done by employees at Costco and other such stores will become automated. Say, within 10 to 20 years -- which is actually light speed. But no need to elaborate on that SciFi.

> 2\. Keep prices low.

For the web, this seems to translate to: "make it free". That makes lots of sense, I think. Too bad ads are too often the business model for content creators.

> 3\. Pay attention to the customer, not the competition.

Too true. And for the latter, it shouldn't change your behavior, right? Young companies with lots of competition need to work as hard as possible to make what people want. Young companies with no competition should work as hard as possible to make what people want and fill the void.

> 4\. Focus on a few core options.

Feature creep in software can make users cry. I recall that interesting survey the other day, where given a grab-bag of capabilities, a survey group were allowed to configure a cell phone in any way they wanted. Then, given cell phones that matched their wish list- they complained that it had more than they needed.

But on second thought that could have easily been caused. poor design.

> 5\. Use surprise to create excitement.

This is just a way for Costco to make customers happy, which is the main point, right?

It would be interesting though if a web company tried this. For example, it would be cheap for Reddit to give a $100 lottery for that days highest karma gains. That rubs me as dangerous though.

On a side note, Costco is doing a bit of emotional leverage here. People hate WalMart. It is very much in Costco's best interest to start saying, "wow, people love us". Not that there is anything wrong with that...

</comment><comment><USER3> Cosco's real secret is selling common household items less per unit but packaged in bulk thereby forcing the customer to actually buy more. A similar pricing structure in the online world is web hosting for only $7/month __"WOW!! That's cheap!!!" ( __your signup choices are $7/month for 36 months + $120 setup charge, $15/month for 24 months + no setup fee, or $20/month for 12 months + $40 setup fee) It's a strategy of getting the typical customer to spend more per sale.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's really awesome. Although I think Costco can do a few things to bring their image up to speed (the logo is pretty hideous, the marketing materials are pretty ugly and cliche), this article really makes me respect the company and the CEO.

Why can't all companies work like this?

<comment><USER5> > Why can't all companies work like this?

Because most people believe that in order for them to win someone else must lose.</comment></comment>


A musician plays the violin during brain surgery - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-musician-play-violin-during-brain-surgery-180974246/ <comment><USER2> The article doesnt mention it, but the surgeon also had a brain tumour. Concerned about his fine motor skills, he had his tumor operated on WHILe he was performing brain surgery on the violinist. Amazingly, HIS surgeon was operating on the violinst's docctor while himself having a tumour removed.

I don't know why they leave out details like this in these dumbed-down articles. It was really an extraordinary operation.

</comment><comment><USER3> My partner used to watch Grey's Anatomy and this procedure was the main plot in one chapter. I could not believe this could be real so I googled it and confirmed to my surprise it was a real thing.

Recently I watched a local show about a bank robbery. The secure chamber was constructed beneath a river. If alarms triggered the chamber would flood. Again, I could not believe somebody could engineer that. I was wrong.

This pattern repeats. Certainly fiction is bounded by reality.

<comment><USER4> As Mark Twain once said: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a musician this would be _incredibly_ difficult, because (at least for me, but I've noticed it to be common among (and not to toot my own horn) high- skill players) music is intractably linked with the movement produced from the rest of my body. Not being able to express that while playing would be frustrating to say the least!

<comment><USER6> I don't think the quality of playing was as important as just the fact that the person was able to continue playing.

<comment><USER5> It's not about the quality of the playing, the point is it's completely automatic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Roger Frisch, one of our former associate CMs with the Minnesota Orchestra also did something similar a while back:

[https://www.classicfm.com/discover- music/instruments/violin/...](https://www.classicfm.com/discover- music/instruments/violin/roger-frisch-plays-deep-brain-stimulation-surgery/)

Same idea, different medical reason.

(And oddly, not mentioned in this article).

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this standard practice for all brain surgery? Patient kept awake and active for feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist here.

No, this is not standard practice for all brain surgery. Feedback from a conscious patient is not useful in most cases of tumor resection, nor is it employed in neurovascular procedures such as cerebral aneurysm clipping.

Awake craniotomy is used in brain tumor resection when the mass encroaches on or borders crucial motor areas of the cerebral cortex, as was the case in the OP.

A more frequent use case for this technique is in patients with intractable seizure disorders in whom partial temporal lobe resection is planned. Mapping the hyperactive areas with electrical stimulation applied by the neurosurgeon directly to brain tissue delineates pathological loci while minimizing resection of unaffected contiguous areas.

A personal note: I very much enjoyed providing anesthesia for awake craniotomies. Everything about them required me to be at the very top of my game every second. For my preoperative visit on the evening before the procedure, to take a history and perform a physical examination, I made certain to make it clear to the patient and their family that I had all the time in the world, so that by the time I was finished, they were clear as to exactly what would happen, down to the questions I would be asking them when I woke them up from anesthesia with the top of their skull in a sterile tray and their brain exposed.

There is an art to making someone about to undergo such a formidable procedure comfortable and able to get some sleep the night before surgery.

I gave anesthesia for awake craniotomies perhaps 50-100 times over my 38 years of practice, the youngest patients being in their early teens.

<comment><USER9> This is why I love HN. Also his blog is endlessly fascinating: [https://www.bookofjoe.com/](https://www.bookofjoe.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


White House: What's Blocking Innovation in America?  My Answer: IP Laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011021108493059 <comment><USER2> IP laws are flawed today in their implementation but it is a serious mistake to say that they are what is blocking innovation in America.

It is easy to pick some extremes of flawed implementation of IP laws and to ridicule their effects. Software patents have been seriously abused to block innovation, with the prototypical troll being, in effect, the equivalent of some lawyer sitting in a back room endlessly "conceiving" ideas from which extortion-style demands can be exacted. So too with things like the RIAA-led lawsuits demanding millions in damages for the downloading of 20 songs or the Disney-inspired extensions of copyright terms to ridiculous lengths having nothing to do with protection of any conceivable right of an author. Such items can readily and rightly be mocked and cast as the absurd anti-innovative creatures that they are. Nor does it help that the beneficiaries of such legal aberrations are often large and powerful companies, lawyers and lobbyists, and others who might be characterized as the antithesis of innovation in any productive society.

That said, IP laws do not in any sense categorically block innovation and, indeed, remain essential to it.

To understand the true importance of IP laws, we need to look at fundamentals. Property is both tangible and intangible. You can touch the former and physically transfer it to someone else. It is a thing that is possessed by someone and such possession excludes or limits possession by others because it is a finite resource that can only be shared so much. In the modern age, in contrast, intangible property is capable of almost infinite replication with few, if any, incremental costs. The temptation exists, then, to say that all such property should be commonly shared because it can be so shared and because people will use it to make advancements for the betterment of themselves and society. In other words, there presumably is no cost to making all information free, legally unprotected, and infinitely shareable. Or so the thinking goes.

But this assumption is not sound.

IP laws are designed to protect all forms of intangible property having commercial value. This means patents (which protect inventions), copyrights (which protect any tangible embodiment of an original work of authorship), trademarks (which protect the distinctiveness of the origin of goods or services), and trade secrets (which protect any form of valuable confidential and proprietary information).

These laws are so built into the fabric of the startup world that we normally just take them for granted.

For example, no startup could hope to survive without laws protecting trade secrets. Without such laws, whatever information or knowledge base you have in your startup that is unique and valuable could be lifted at will by any passing person: an employee who passes through and copies such information wholesale to give it to a competitor; the janitor who comes in at night who decides to publish it on the internet; someone who breaks into your network, copies it all, and then shares it with the world or, worse, if it is a competitor, who uses it to compete against you. If you once take the legal position that all information is free and freely shareable, then all protections for your confidential business plans, for your technical innovations, for your execution strategy, for your database of key customers, personnel, marketing data, etc. evaporate and you can no longer derive any competitive advantage from any of this as long as anyone gets his hands on it and makes it public.

Founder groups would have the same problem in pre-formation situations. Say, four founders build something that they have worked on for a full year and are prepared to launch. One of them defects and says to the group, "I am going to take everything that we have worked on and take it for myself." Of course, that is outrageous. Buy why? Because laws exist that declare it illegal for someone to misappropriate what the founders have been working on. Those are IP laws. They protect the interests in intangible property. Without them, every founder would be vulnerable to such defections, without any form of legal recourse.

Copyright serves a similar function. Whenever a startup relies on proprietary code, it is copyright (along with trade secret laws) that ensures that the work product of the company can't simply be lifted at will and used in any way that the person taking the code desires.

Open source is no exception. It relies heavily on rules of copyright law and on licensing to make its system work. If everything were freely shareable without any form of restriction, one does not have open source - one has freeware.

I could go on with this but, having already noted the potential for serious abuse when such laws are ill-formed, I think I have said enough to show that IP laws lie at the foundation of the startup world and are not in themselves the enemy. There are philosophical arguments to be made that all information should be freely shareable but any society based on that premise would be radically different from the one in which startups thrive today.

Startups depend heavily on IP laws. Such laws have great value in today's startup culture and ought to be recognized for that contribution. Reform them, absolutely; abolish them, don't even think about it (unless you are ready to embrace a philosophically extreme position about all forms of intangible property ownership). I don't believe most people are prepared to embrace the extreme position and, hence, one ought to be careful about castigating that which is good while condemning that which we can agree is bad.

Bottom line: IP laws do not kill innovation and, on the contrary, are vital to it. _Flawed_ IP laws stink and need to be reformed.

<comment><USER3> > _For example, no startup could hope to survive without laws protecting trade > secrets._

Existing theft and trespassing laws already outlaw unauthorized physical access to your property. As for disgruntled or opportunistic employees, you can utilize existing contract law to ensure their doing so is illegal. What exactly do trade secret laws cover that aren't covered by more reasonable and fundamental laws?

> _Open source is no exception. It relies heavily on rules of copyright law > and on licensing to make its system work. If everything were freely > shareable without any form of restriction, one does not have open source - > one has freeware._

That's why I have strong feelings that the free software movement, or at least the GPL, is insanely contradictory. Their claim is that there shouldn't be liberty restrictions placed on software, but what they really mean is there should be _different_ liberty restrictions placed on software, specifically the ones they happen to like more. In my opinion, software isn't really free unless it's in the public domain (or, nearly equivalently, if there were no longer any intellectual property protection for software).

Most of your points are simply that removing the various forms of intellectual property protection would harm _some_ people. The validity of your specific examples are variously debatable, but even if you're right, I don't think that's a good enough argument for keeping the laws around. I can't conceive of any legal modification that wouldn't harm _someone_. In my opinion, even if something might harm startups (and I'm certainly not convinced that IP laws are vital to startups), that's not a sufficient argument.

<comment><USER4> If I break into your office, steal your secret source code, and give a copy to my brother, what part of "existing theft and trespassing laws" prevent him from selling that copy to the highest bidder?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's crippling innovation before people even begin. I was chatting about encryption with some young chap, and I suggested a good way for him to learn about the practicalities of it would be to just sit down and code. He was astonished; he genuinely thought that the principles behind common encryption tools were in some way exclusive property of various companies and that he was legally forbidden from coding up his own implementation.

This is a true story and it's a belief that is on the streets right now; some people believe even mathematics is legally owned by someone and they can't use it. If people won't experiment, they can't innovate.

Note that the countries that don't give a damn about so-called IP happily copy everything they can get their hands on. It will not take them long to start innovating on top of what already exists.

<comment><USER6> I'd be willing to bet that this attitude in young people is greatly influenced by the constant hammering of media produced for young people on the point that IP violation is a crime that will get you put in prison.

Disney makes a _lot_ of the entertainment for young people in America. They harp a _lot_ on piracy being a crime that gets you arrested immediately, regardless of the truth - I don't watch a lot of Disney, but I can think of two instances right off the top of my head, one being an episode of iCarly, and the other being Minute Men, a made-for-TV movie my kids and I watched last night on Netflix.

<comment><USER7> Yeah it's pretty sick, isn't it?

Still they're not convincing anyone and are just making themselves look sleazy in the process. They ought to remember that in just a few years these kids are going to be: A. downloading stuff, B. very cynical about authority, and C. spending lots of money.

Nick and Disney are increasingly uncool in our house. Youtube and anime are taking up all the screen time these days.

<comment><USER6> _they're not convincing anyone and are just making themselves look sleazy_

I beg to differ. It's astoundingly effective propaganda, because it's unexpected.

Down in Puerto Rico, there's an incredibly ham-handed, telenovela-like RIAA anti-piracy ad played before every movie in the theater (or was, for a couple of years). People laugh out loud at it, it's so bad, and since it's clear that the RIAA isn't Puerto Rican anyway, everybody feels free to ignore it.

But when you have police coming to pick somebody up for filesharing (!) on iCarly as part of a plot point, you slip that propaganda right past people's internal censors. I had to explain to the kids that this part of the plot was a blatant lie, and my wife still doesn't buy it.

It doesn't matter how sleazy Disney looks to you and me - the question is how pervasive that belief becomes in the populace at large. It's money well spent by Disney for their own bottom line, but I hadn't thought of the larger consequences for society, and that's pretty frightening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Let's take Android. It's something new and the world is loving it. So what happened once it became a hit? Patent and copyright infringement lawsuits up the kazoo. Is that going to encourage innovation? And it's not just Android. It's any successful technical product. They all have to spend millions in litigation. And it's a drain on the economy too, because when the plaintiffs win, that money isn't a win for innovation, not when the law allows patents to be owned and litigated by entities that make nothing at all but litigation.

See what I mean? When the law overprotects, it kills innovation. That's what protection means. It means protection from innovation. Let's call a spade a spade."

Amen.

<comment><USER9> First, you'd have to show that innovation is being blocked in America, considering that most software innovations come from there.

While in need of some tuning, IP laws seem to be working as advertised: you can't release a product that copies 90% of another product, you actually have to innovate.

Look at Android: they had to navigate around dozens of Apple patents and they still did fine and they have come up with an impressive set of innovations.

When plagiarizing is outlawed, you have no choice but innovate.

<comment><USER10> "First, you'd have to show that innovation is being blocked in America, considering that most software innovations come from there."

I disagree. The relevant question is whether the benefit to society is greater or lesser than it could be from other laws. If someone is sued for a few million dollars from a patent troll who does nothing else for society with that patent, net loss. When something is brought to market that wouldn't have been without protection, net gain.

Patent laws at least in the software arena are very plausibly a net loss. The best thing about this metric is that you don't have to sit there and argue about whether "software innovation" is being blocked, which is something that will just involve people defining "blocked" in whatever way it takes to win their point. (Boring!) It's about net loss or gain.

<comment><USER9> > I disagree. The relevant question is whether the benefit to society is > greater or lesser than it could be from other laws. If someone is sued for a > few million dollars from a patent troll who does nothing else for society > with that patent, net loss. When something is brought to market that > wouldn't have been without protection, net gain. Patent laws at least in the > software arena are very plausibly a net loss

How do you come to this conclusion?

As I showed, there is plenty of software innovation happening in the US every day. Occasionally, the process goes awry and we see futile lawsuits, but the "net positive", as you put it, is undoubtedly positive if America's leadership in software innovation is any indication.

Speaking of frivolous patent lawsuits, we do hear about some now and then, but when was last time that something truly outrageous was awarded to a patent troll? Outrageous patents get filed on a daily basis but they hardly ever survive in court, or they are resolved outside the courts in a settlement, usually indicating that both parties have "dirt" on each other and chose to settle instead of engaging in something that will end up as mutually assured destruction.

By all criteria, the system is working pretty well.

Having said that, I think the duration of software patents should be reduced.

<comment><USER10> "How do you come to this conclusion?"

How do you come to the opposite? It's not like there's an enormous repository of objective data we can just go run to and crunch numbers on with pre-agreed algorithms.

However, I would say that you're committing a logical error; we have a certain set of patent laws, we have software leadership, and you seem to conclude therefore there is a causative relationship. That's not logically sound.

What I see out there in the world is that very few people are creating software because they are incentivized by a patent system to do so. It's almost absurd to think that someone would be incentivized by a system guaranteed to get back to them a year after their application or so. Nor is the patent system successfully putting knowledge into the public domain; in order to fulfill the contract a patent is supposed to be offering one should be able to reconstruct the patent from the description, generally either trivial or impossible. They create software for other reasons. On the other hand, there's a lot of litigation out there for no real gain.

It's not hard to conclude the value of patents are negative in the software domain when almost all the entries on the ledger are negative, and the negative ones are also larger than the positive ones.

I'd also observe that I did _not_ say the metric is benefit to the patenter, which I think you may have missed. I said benefit to _society_. This idea is written into the very Constitutional authorization for Congress to create laws regarding patents and copyright in the first place. So the idea that the relevant metric is benefit to society isn't obscure or something I made up, it's directly from the authorization granted to the government in the first place, I couldn't be any more mainstream.

<comment><USER9> "However, I would say that you're committing a logical error; we have a certain set of patent laws, we have software leadership, and you seem to conclude therefore there is a causative relationship. That's not logically sound."

No, I didn't go that far, but I certainly used this fact to place the burden of proof on people who claim that the "current software patent laws are broken".

"What I see out there in the world is that very few people are creating software because they are incentivized by a patent system to do so"

I see the exact opposite: what is the point in coming up with an innovative concept if anyone can steal it the day after you make it public and reuse it without any consequences?

I have a strong suspicion that we would be seeing a lot less start ups if such laws were not in effect.

"It's not hard to conclude the value of patents are negative"

It's obviously not hard, but it's also incorrect :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the foundations of America's success in the earlier years (up to the beginning of the 20th C) was its general disregard for IP laws. British manufactures were constantly complaining about American's using their designs, manuscripts, etc without payment, as well as state to state infringement (Hollywood started in CA to get away for legal oversight).

The article is spot on: legal protection is protection from innovation.

<comment><USER9> > One of the foundations of America's success in the earlier years (up to the > beginning of the 20th C) was its general disregard for IP laws.

Uh, you should really read up on America's early economic development. Its success has very little to do with IP laws.

And to counter your claim: look at China, which has no IP laws. How much software innovation do you see coming from there?

Yup, zero.

<comment><USER12> > How much software innovation do you see coming from there? > > Yup, zero.

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

"China's software industry grew at a compound annual growth rate of more than 39% over the period from 2001 to 2007 to reach RMB 506 billion and is further anticipated to grow at a CAGR of nearly 22% through 2012."

<comment><USER9> I was talking about innovation, you are talking about growth.

Where are the Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Foursquare, LinkedIn? Look at all the startups and new ideas described in Techcrunch every day, how many of them came from China?

<comment><USER13> Why would a startup in China focus on the American market? A Chinese startup has a vastly larger local market to address, one that doesn't require localisation support or careful negotiation of cultural differences. Until they've saturated the local market, marketing in America would be a waste of time and effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The answer is not quite correct. Corporate protectionism is what destroys innovation. Abuse of the patent and copyright systems is part of corporate protectionism.

Patent and copyright are great things to protect the little innovator guy that starts a new business from being sodomized by the big corporations that lobby congress for laws that benefit only themselves.

Reform is necessary. Right now, companies are patenting things that were invented by other people. Right now, little people with patents are getting their IP stolen from big corporations with lawyers who file legal action solely for the purpose of bankrupting the little guy and taking his property.

These things are not a problem with the concept of protecting innovations through IP law. They are a problem with corporate abuse of the system and a corrupt government.

<comment><USER7> _Patent and copyright are great things to protect the little innovator guy that starts a new business_

I think you read that in a book somewhere. I bet you don't personally know a single "little innovator guy" who has successfully been protected by a patent.

<comment><USER15> "I bet you don't personally know a single "little innovator guy" who has successfully been protected by a patent."

I know plenty. My last boss being one of them. His product was copied by a competitor (the entire design) and sold under a different name.

It got so bad that people were calling up think we were this company and it hurt sales overall. He sued them in court, won, and actually got the entire company as a settlement (in addition to around $500,000.

His product was simple enough to copy and without legal protections, a much larger company would could easily steal his entire market share.

<comment><USER7> You appear to be someone else. It does happen from time to time.

Out of curiosity, what industry/market was this? How big was the company? Have any idea how much the lawsuit cost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somebody invented the knife you use to eat, the pants you're wearing, the mattress you sleep on, and you are not paying a dime in royalties. You are standing on the shoulders of giants and you pretend those who come after you to pay you for your invention, even if many unlucky people invented the same thing but were just seconds late to the patent office? I have a word for you, damn parasite, fuck you.

<comment><USER7> _seconds late to the patent office_

More often than not, the other independent inventors didn't feel the idea was worth patenting, didn't have the money to spend building a meaningful patent portfolio, or didn't want to feel like human scum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lawyers and Bureaucrats. Pretty much every single branch of gov't save for the DOD and DOJ stifle innovation (DOJ in the grand scheme of things stifles innovation by enforcing the laws for other branches). Start by letting parents send their children to a school of their choice. Continue by making it easy for those children (when they reach adulthood) to start businesses, and continue by making the burdens of running that business as few as possible. It might be a little burdensome to file a tax return for the company you buy a computer from. (Medicare tax code changes)

Continue by allowing the free flow of information and creating transparent gov't so that the private sector may also innovate gov't.

If Obama went back to his election night speech and started governing like that I'm sure he'd find the answers quite quickly. However, a rhetorician as skilled as President Obama knows that the point is not to find the answers but to be seen asking the question.

<comment><USER18> The DOD also stifles innovation through the taxes and inflation required to keep it going, and by encouraging crony capitalism and corruption through awarding contracts to politically connected companies. Also by propping up dictators and bombing/kidnapping/torturing people and generally interfering with the democratic rule of law. Definitely wouldn't leave them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, this is true, if you want the President of the United States to advocate for a Total War in the legislature --- one, by the way, which he will lose --- solely for the sake of clearing the way for entertainment content startups.

<comment><USER7> I think current IP laws are killing innovation and it has nothing to do with "entertainment content".

It used to be that I could sit down at a computer and innovate-up a useful program and no one could say I couldn't. Maybe even try to make a business out of it. Now it's all-but impossible to do that without incurring this large and unknown risk of litigation from holders of patents of wildly varying degrees of novelty.

The system is broken. It needs to be thrown out.

I doubt Obama is the one to do it, he seems to have his head in the status quo as much as any lawyer.

<comment><USER19> _It used to be that I could sit down at a computer and innovate-up a useful program and no one could say I couldn't. Maybe even try to make a business out of it._

Well hold on now. Don't be too quick to lump things in together. You can still sit down at a computer, innovate a program and make money from it. I do agree that serious help is needed in reforming software patents (as evidenced by Amazon's famous 1-click checkout patent), but IP law is what ensures someone can't hack into your files, steal your proprietary "innovative" programming and re-sell copies of it as their own to the customers you were planning to.

Incidentally, that's why I side with the Sony and the law as referenced in this article. You get to say how your own code is or isn't used. If Sony wants the PS3 opensourced they can go that route, but it's not up to anyone else to take it upon themselves to make that decision for them. If programmers don't like Sony's verdict they can build their own player games. That's how a capitalist free market works.

<comment><USER20> That is what copyright is for, not patenting. If someone doesn't have a license to distribute your code, you can collect damages for copyright infringement.

But patenting covers independent inventions of the same algorithms. And it's frequently used for ideas that are profoundly obvious, like a straightforward application of machine learning techniques to a particular data set (Bilski). So if you think of an idea by yourself, you can be sued for implementing it.

As a developer, it is recommended that I not read patents, as if it is determined that I read a patent that I then violated, it will be triple damages in a lawsuit. So I have no way to avoid implementing somebody else's patent.

Now Sony's lawsuit isn't about software, or patents. It is about certain special secret integers. It so happens that used with readily available software they blow a wide hole in Sony's horrible security system for the PS3.

But Sony doesn't own those integers. It doesn't own the hardware it sold to people under pretenses that it would always run Linux, and it doesn't have the right to control how people would choose to use their hardware and GPU. Hotz never used PSN software or any of Sony's other products.

<comment><USER19> _Now Sony's lawsuit isn't about software, or patents. It is about certain special secret integers. It so happens that used with readily available software they blow a wide hole in Sony's horrible security system for the PS3._

I'm not familiar with the particulars of that case, so it's hard for me to make an informed opinion. However, I don't entirely buy a "secret integers" defense, because that could apply to any software, or any media for that matter. For example, any Microsoft operating system can be viewed as one long string of binary code. So, yes, Microsoft would have legally protected rights to that specific combination of numbers. To suggest "secret integers" can't be owned would be to say everyone owns anything anyone creates, even before it's created.

Now, if this person simply devised some code which could crack another system which did NOT involve that system's original code I would agree there should be no prosecution.

<comment><USER7> These are not secret integers. In particular they are 46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97 E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2 as tweeted by the spokesperson of Sony himself: <http://twitpic.com/3xwe6h>

<comment><USER19> How was that code derived? Does it get its form from copyrighted code Sony owns the rights to? If so I believe it should enjoy copyright protection.

We're seeing a nearly chaotic upheaval in how business is done in modern times, largely because technology is progressing so fast. This can confuse many of the issues at hand. However, I think it can help to view things using older more well understood models. For example, let's look at books. Harry Potter is a copyright protected work which appears to have given much value to both readers and author/rights holders alike. Each page of that book enjoys copyright protection; tearing out a page and adding words, making other adjustments etc., then posting the revised product online would violate copyright. If we can see the logic to that then I think it can help us to gain perspective when reflecting on the Sony incident.

<comment><USER20> Sony's private key is, essentially, a random number.

As for copyright protection, you should reflect on this page:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html>

And then this one:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/>

To the point with Harry Potter: you can think of a continuum of infringement. If you tear a page out and copy it, you will violate the copyright. If you reuse characters or scenes and use them to create your own work, you are making derived works (JK put her stamp of approval on non-commercial fan fiction by the way). But the farther you get away from the original characters the less you can call it infringement. As the link between the two works becomes more and more abstract and less concrete, the new work is more protected. At some nebulous point it is no longer infringing.

For instance, Harry's story and appearance is superficially similar to an earlier work called The Books of Magic, a comic series by Neil Gaiman. You can read his take on it here:

[http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/fair-use-and-other- thi...](http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/fair-use-and-other-things.html)

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

Essentially he throws up his hands and says "borrowing is a fact of life in genre fiction. Deal with it, I did."

How does this apply to computer code? Well, the farther away you get from the original copyrighted code, the less infringing it is. There are extremely limited protections for derived works that amount to Person B having a copy of Person A's code in front of them and editing it.

What those Touretzky pages from CMU show is that there is no such thing as a continuum from computer code to an uncopyrightable abstraction. It is abstraction, mathematics, numbers all the way down. In fact, it is speech that is protected by the First Amendment and suppressing it is a constitutional issue with narrow exceptions.

So no, you can't use a book model for code. It is not the same thing at all. Executable ideas, math, algorithms, just don't exist in the fiction publishing industry.

<comment><USER7> _Sony's private key is, essentially, a random number._

Apparently not random enough!

They essentially used this algorithm for their key material: <http://xkcd.com/221/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I kind of groaned when I saw this title on HN.

Problem? The title told me it was going to be a highly-emotional appeal to an audience already primed to agree with it. And the vote score only confirmed that assumption. Time to put on the old critical thinking hat.

What a great article! It was a wonderfully-put-together rant about what is wrong with IP law. I agree with every point -- including the outrage the author felt.

The only thing I didn't agree with? The premise -- that IP laws are blocking innovation.

Yes, as the examples show, there is a great amount of innovation that is being stifled by IP laws, and something is desperately needed to fix it. But let's not get caught up in all that emotional outrage at how screwed up things are. Instead, ask a simple question: to what degree is _all_ innovation stifled by IP laws? Because that's the claim: that every kind of innovation is being stifled by the current crappy state of IP laws.

Clearly that's not the case at all. The newspaper boy who invents a new newspaper folder isn't being stifled. The restaurant owner who comes up with a way to wait more tables with less staff isn't being stifled. The media creator who packages his product in a way to increase stickiness isn't being stifled. It's just a bunch of examples that members of this audience already know and are sympathetic with.

I could go on. And on and on. So yes, in this one area in which we are all pretty damn angry to begin with, IP laws are totally destroying innovation. But in the other thousand or so areas from which most of us have little experience, they are not.

I loved the rant. And I love a great title and this article had one. A little hyperbole is good for the soul. So while I have no faults with the article, I'd just recommend a little bit of common sense when dealing with a premise so over the top. People have a tendency to take whatever they're really angry about -- and then apply it to whatever problems the world is facing. IP law is not stifling _all_ innovation. It isn't even coming close. But it's definitely horribly broken and needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know which places with relatively developed economies have the weakest IP laws? I would guess Hong Kong, Singapore, or China but I don't really know.

I've been working on a rather ambitious piece of software and I'm definitely worried that I'll get sued into oblivion over some minor user interface feature before I ever really make any money off it. I've lived all my life in the U.S. but would entertain the idea of leaving.

In fact if I'm going to leave my home town I feel like I might as well go someplace more exotic than Silicon Valley or New York. IP laws and other business concerns would definitely be an important criteria if I got serious about it.

<comment><USER7> Oh don't leave. For one thing, you won't be able to sell in to the US regardless of where you live. Patents allow them to block imports as well as sue your customers directly. Secondly, you're not likely to find a particularly level playing field if you, as a Westerner, are trying to compete in Asia.

<comment><USER23> Great points, but I'd like to hear a second opinion. Anyone tried this? Some of the most innovative stuff is happening in some of the most lawless places almost by definition. I've had the inclination to try some of my personal projects outside the country on several occasions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Potentially interesting read:

[http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstne...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm)

<comment><USER25> +1. This book is written by dudes at Cambridge, has tons of historical examples, and is generally just really interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So I have been known to make the claim that the next great re-flowering of tech will begin in 2015 and grow solidly through 2020. I base that claim on the observation that patent silliness really ramped up in 1995 and grew exponentially to 2000, those patents expire between 2015 and 2020. And while technology overwhelmed the ability of patent examiners to credibly evaluate its novelty or newness, that doesn't matter once the patent is now public domain.

<comment><USER7> You're saying that American tech innovation will blossom when we finally become free to use our ideas from 20 years ago? That infringement lawsuits (and the expense of defending against them) will begin to decrease in 2015?

Keep in mind that China can turn out a new model of cell phone in a few weeks at this point.

<comment><USER26> I'm saying that tech got ahead of the patent office in the 90's, and that combined with a zeal to 'own the road' as a business model had companies patenting anything and everything. That of course then spawned a huge patent trolling industry which has had a significant chilling effect on companies.

A very real consequence of this was "datasheets." Prior to the great patent rush semiconductor companies published datasheets which described their chips in great detail. This allowed engineers to write software to use the chip and build systems with them. By the late 90's the "datasheet" for the interesting chips in a system (sound chips, video processor, GPU, etc) had devolved into a description of electrical signals, pinouts, thermal data, and just enough information to verify the chip was functioning. Detailed information about programming was only available under NDA and sometimes only with a binding purchase agreement in place.

Being particularly frustrated by this when writing a driver for a video chip, I used every ounce of influence I had to talk to the guy at the company where the chip was made who "owned" that decision (which is to say he could have said, 'let anyone have the data sheet' and it would have happened). His response was that they didn't release the data sheet because while they didn't believe they violated anyone's patent in their designs, it was impossible to prove that they didn't (you can't prove a negative and all that) and so they took the expedient route of restricting the number of people who "knew" how their chip did what it did to reduce the attack surface for patent trolls. This has been, apparently, the standard operating procedure for over a decade now.

The combination of the 20 year window (which means even if someone patented something its expired by now) and an improvement in the ability of patent examiners to deal with "tech" (we've now got examiners who were in high school in 1995 so they understand at a much better level novelty when it comes to tech). Means tech companies can engage with individuals with less risk, and that using techniques "everyone knows" or uses is much less likely to come bite you back.

No idea how big a damper it will turn out to have been, but I'm watching for the signs ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a great article full of examples about why IP law has hampered innovation. But it fails to answer a very important question: what should be done by the government to remedy it?

The first and simplest part of lobbying is identifying the problem. The much more challenging part is following up with useful recommendations on what should be done to fix it.

In terms of software patents, should the executive branch propose a bill to forbid them? What would the outcome of that be? How should copyright law be reined in? These are the questions that the next generation of policymakers need to solve and the recommendations we need to be sending to our respective governments.

<comment><USER7> _what should be done by the government to remedy it?_

A. Eliminate patents for everything except FDA-regulated drugs.

B. Eliminate the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and strengthen protections for reverse engineering and development of compatible products.

<comment><USER28> > _Eliminate patents for everything except FDA-regulated drugs._

I agree the patent system has its problems, but I'm curious: Why that one exception, but no others? What about, say, medical devices? And then where do you draw the line -- and why there and not somewhere else? (These are issues that legislators, lawyers, and judges have to deal with all the time.)

<comment><USER7> I know it's odd and inconsistent, but a concession to reality: it takes years of investment to develop a new drug and then years of government-imposed studies to be allowed to actually market it. The second part is necessarily a public process so competitors would have nearly as much time as the developer to ramp up their production process. A term like 'ten years after FDA approval or 15 after FDA submission' sounds about right.

Maybe something more like a short-term copyright on the molecule would make more sense than patents on general concepts that are usually just imitating nature.

Medical devices - well maybe, but I wouldn't want to stretch it. I've know companies that had stuff that comes in a syringe and goes in the human body to be regulated as a "device" and companies that made products to dispense drugs not regulated at all. They patented basic stuff like the idea of sorting work items into plastic baskets in alphabetical order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Patents are one way people can make deals with innovators that can make some innovation more likely, but its not the only way this could be done.

I think the coercive element, the idea that someone can be sued for doing something they have an inherent right to do is the problem.

It is one thing when people agree that they need something and offer to buy it exclusively from whoever creates the first viable product. It is quite another to coerce everyone to do so.

That said, we should not hand out monopolies that are not in the interest of most citizens. And what is in our interest is determined rather badly with winner-take-all elections and the power they give to lobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's relatively easy to downsize IP laws with a single change: If they are property, tax them as property.

e.g.

Every year, a patent/copyright/trademark owner has to state the value of their "property", and pay 1% tax on its value. That entitles them to sue each defendant for said value (maybe _3 for wilful infringement, but that's it). You can make it easier by declaring the value of the "property" at any point in time during the year until 15-apr the_ following* year, so you can evaluate in retrospect.

Now, all of a sudden, it doesn't make sense to hoard patents or copyrights as much - If you value each song at $100K, then it costs $1K/year to maintain that copyright.

I'm sure Intel/Microsoft/Apple would actually evaluate what does and doesn't need patent protection when they have to pay millions of dollars per year to maintain it.

Furthermore, it's only reasonable - paying tax for having the state enforce your "property" rights.

</comment><comment><USER31> The answer is probably not to get rid of all protection of IP though. I think a change to the law to prevent obvious patent trolls would be beneficial on the other hand.

<comment><USER32> Or maybe a sort of AI enhanced service that automated the 'legal hacking' involved in navigating the world of patents. Like as well as writing unit tests for your code, you write 'patent tests' which allow the search tool to determine if you're code/product is infringing any patents and if so how to avoid infringement.</comment></comment>


OpenBSD adds -n option to crontab to suppress mail when the run was successful - <AUTHOR> https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=152874866117948&w=2 <comment><AUTHOR> This was just now merged in -current and will be part of OpenBSD 6.4 release in fall 2018.</comment>