Tim Berners-Lee Takes the Stand to Keep the Web Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/tim-berners-lee-patent/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

<comment><USER2> What we really need is to find a way to stop patents from being granted for the implications of a technology. Connecting computers together into a network is hard, figuring out that once they are connected together, they might interact with each other is not. It is novel in that they couldn't interact that way before, and now they can, but that novel behavior isn't an _invention_ its merely an _implication_ enabled by the real work of doing the connecting. Its like patenting the idea of driving your car to Grandma's.

Letting trolls steal the implications from the inventors (and from society at large) with noting more inventive than little bits of paper with use cases on them is almost a crime against future humanity.

Of course the web is interactive, that's why the _real_ inventors made the damn thing in the first place.

<comment><USER3> > It is novel in that they couldn't interact that way before, and now they > can, but that novel behavior isn't an invention its merely an implication > enabled by the real work of doing the connecting. Its like patenting the > idea of driving your car to Grandma's.

I'd say the proper term for it is 'discovery'.

Connecting computers together in a network and creating the infrastructure (ethernet, routers, DNS servers, stuff like that) is all actual invention. If someone creates an ethernet that is 200x better than what we currently have, or a much better way of routing packets etc, they should get credit for that invention and be able to patent it.

Once you have the physical infrastructure, anything else that you do with it is just discovering a neat property of a system which has already been created.

It is like patenting gravity, the Pythagorean theorem, or a certain chord progression. (Imagine if someone had patented IV-V-I, we wouldn't have had nearly 60 years worth of music!)

In this way, I would say that Berners-Lee didn't invent the web, he discovered an extremely interesting and useful property of combining computer networks and hypertext.

<comment><USER4> Inventing hard things is worth patenting. Discovering emergent phenomena is not.

<comment><USER5> If it's so hard, do you really need a monopoly enforced by statute? The harder it is, the more natural temporary monopoly you get until others start copying you.

I say, nothing is worth infringing upon a creator's right to create. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Even if there are some cases where a patent might have been beneficial overall, you still have to weigh the benefits against the costs of having a patent system at all. How much GDP is spent on patents in general?

<comment><USER4> Inventing hard things is hard, but copying other people's inventions is significantly easier. Don't forget, part of the point of the patent system is to encourage inventors to publicly document how their invention works so other people can use it (with licensing), instead of keeping it secret and possibly having the knowledge lost over time.

It seems to me that if someone can describe superficially what an invention does and you can build it on the spot, then it probably doesn't deserve a patent. For example, if you were to describe the appearance of an engine block to me, I wouldn't be able to replicate the combustion engine, and it's probably worth patenting. But if you tell me that the user clicks on one button to purchase an item without going through a checkout phase, I can easily replicate that without any knowledge of how it works. Although come to think of it, that basically negates all business method patents.

<comment><USER6> _Inventing hard things is hard, but copying other people's inventions is significantly easier_

Copying is only easier if you can reverse-engineer what they did. Sometimes, just seeing the invention brought to fruition provides enough clues for any skilled tradesman to reproduce the parts that are unrevealed. Well if that's true, then the patent should not have been granted in the first place, like you said! Remember, ideas by themselves aren't supposed to be patentable, only implementations of ideas. You see, the patent doesn't become violated just by writing or communicating about it. The violation occurs when you build something that _really starts doing_ what the patents describes. The problem with software patents are precisely how fuzzy this distinction can become.

Software is special precisely because it is so general and flexible. Take the 'one-click' patent that you cited above. Suppose web browsers were built with macros so that you could script them to automatically verify shipping address and payment info upon clicking "buy" and confirm the order. To the end-user, this would be functionally equivalent to the "one-click". Should this macro behavior be blocked? What if an e-commerce site distributes a script for implementing one-click functionality that can be installed by customers? Would this violate the patent? I'm not sure.

<comment><USER4> _Copying is only easier if you can reverse-engineer what they did._

Sure, you can't always copy something just by inspecting it. For example, if I invent a way to laminate baseball cards _extremely well_ , you're not going to be able to inspect the laminated card and figure out how I did it, all you're going to see is that it's a really great lamination. And this is where the other aspect of patenting comes into play. If I never tell anyone how I did it, and I die, then my invention is lost. But if I patent it, then I've publicly documented for the world what my invention is, and anyone that wants to use it can license it from me (and, eventually, it will pass into public domain). So basically, the patent system works quite well for physical products or processes.

But, as you say, when you're talking about software patents (or really, business method patents in general), everything becomes really fuzzy. What's the difference between a business method and an idea? Why is one patentable and the other isn't? The more I think about this sort of thing, the more I'm convinced that all software patents should be invalid, period. If I write an instruction manual, I can't patent that. Copyright is what covers me there. So if I write instructions for the computer (i.e. software), why is that suddenly patentable? The fact that all software patents need to describe a computer executing the operations (which is what turns it from an idea into a patentable process) just shows how absurd the whole idea is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tim Berners-Lee's view of patents doesn't really seem to matter here (and it's surprising to me that the court/lawyers would entertain that as being important). What does matter is prior art, first-to-invent, novelty, uniqueness, and non-obviousness; all of which the Eolas patents seem to be lacking.

Long live the open web; it belongs to all of us.

<comment><USER8> It's a question of whether the jury should trust his testimony. The lawyer wanted to show that Tim Berners-Lee was biased against patents, in general, and therefore his testimony on this matter is suspect.

<comment><USER6> But what difference would his personal beliefs on software patents make toward his credibility in this matter? Whether the patents are valid or not is a matter of fact, as it would have to be in order for the patent and trade office to issue the patents in the first place. What are you supposed to conclude by knowing that TBL is against software patents? That he's lying about what happened at CERN and Pei Wei's browser? This looked like a smear campaign and I'm surprised the defendant's lawyers didn't object to it (maybe they did but I didn't read it in the article).

On an unrelated note, scientists often don't do well in debate type situations like a courtroom because scientists are often more concerned about truth then winning an argument. Thus, they'll often concede a small point from the opposing argument that is trumped up as a major victory by the opposition. The point may have little impact toward the truth of the matter but is perceived as important by an ignorant audience because the opposition is touting it as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its nice to see successful tech companies actually fighting some patents. It makes me sad to see Apple Microsoft IBM etc just pay patent trolls because it is cheaper to do so than defeating the patents.

<comment><USER10> It's not only that it might be cheaper, it's because it takes out the uncertainty that would be involved in trying to defeat a patent. You have no idea how long the fight will take to wind it's way through the courts or even if you'll ultimately get a ruling in your favor.

<comment><USER11> Which is why the legal system is an utter failure.

Patent trolls play the probability game which usually results in a net gain because the legal system is failing.

I would say that there should be laws against this but that will result in another loophole or way of making money.

Perhaps I'm a socialist wierdo, but I'd favour scrapping the entire patent process for something which rewards positive contributions to society as a whole rather than who can screw who first. People should be creating things that improve the human condition, not enslave it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually, I wonder about a more extreme scenario.

Suppose Eolas' patents are upheld. And Eolas sues all the large websites for an INJUNCTION to PREVENT them from using "interactive elements". Suppose they don't want to license it. Or if they do, they demand $10 BILLION DOLLARS from each company.

What can anyone do about it at that point? Patent law in the US does not have a compulsory licensing provision.

If the eolas patent gets upheld, this could very well have extreme effects for several years on the whole world.

<comment><USER13> Do you not remember the absurd scenario about 5 years about with click-to- activate Active X controls. MS found a way round it, but eventually caved to licensing because it was such a mess.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but suppose it was worse, suppose it was the idea of plugins in browsers. Or something like that.

What if someone right now goes ahead and patents the idea of apps for ... self driving cars? Or the idea of them using traffic maps?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Expects Google Voice App Developers To Pay Refunds Out Of Pocket  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2009/08/apple-expects-google-voice-app-developers-to-pay-refunds-out-of-pocket/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding like an asshole, it's nice to see one's views validated. Some of us have been getting downmodded for bad-mouthing Apple's App Store and warning against this kind of stuff since its launch.

It's important to note that none of Apple's written or implicit policies have changed - it is only people's perceptions that are now changing.

The good part is of this debacle is that, either they will change their horrible attitude and policies, or people will abandon them for greener pastures.

<comment><USER3> What I would like to see is a widespread developer boycott of the iPhone platform. This would bring Apple back to the days where they used to cajole developers into writing software for the Mac.

<comment><USER4> The analogy with the Mac doesn't really work, because the Mac has never been anything but a computing platform. But the iPhone is a phone first and a platform second. Remember that the iPhone was a huge success when it was introduced in 2007, despite a higher price point and no third-party apps at all.

As long as the iPhone is subsidized by phone carriers, Apple's cash cow will be hardware sales. It won't be until the smartphone market reaches a certain level of saturation that Apple will have an incentive to focus on the App Store as a revenue generator. And when that happens, I bet they will be a lot less mercurial with their developers.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't agree that the iPhone is a phone first. How many people bought an iPhone so that they could call or text others? The value proposition of the iPhone is not in its phone features, it's in the smartphone features. The only reason that it doesn't seem to matter is because there is no real rival to the iPhone platform. I do agree that the smartphone market needs more real rivals to the iPhone (I'm kinda wondering how Nokia is fumbling so badly here). If the HTC Hero is as good as it is claimed to be, then maybe the iPhone will see a hit in the hardware division, and Apple will be forced to behave more like a democracy.

<comment><USER5> Actually I bought mine because it's an iPod and a phone with a nice browser. Apps/Games are a frosted topping I use when bored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course they have to pay the customer refunds.

The developers accepted a contract agreeing to refund money in certain circumstances, the circumstance have occurred, it is time for them to uphold their end of the contract.

The sales have been rolled back, the customers' money is in the developers account (as sympathetic as "pocket" sounds, if they can carry the money in their pocket then this is about very little money at all), the customers get their money back.

I think perhaps everyone that learns this lesson does it the hard way. _Understand the contracts you enter into._

(I learned mine at the hands of Digital Equipment Corporation. For "good will" reasons I agreed to supply a specific key person for a specific nearly completed project until it was finished for a specific sum. All good, until it became in Digital's best interests to not complete the project on time and get more money from the customer for another year's work. I'm sure the Digital managers had many a good laugh that year.)

<comment><USER7> It's not just about the refunds. The real issue is that they deny developers apps and give them no more than an up or down vote. And when you try and talk to somebody, they don't even give you the courtesy of a real conversation. Apple is nothing without its legions of fans. Those fans start with a kernel of developers and tech enthusiasts. You think my mom would have bought an iPhone if her geeky son didn't harass her for months that it's the only phone worth having? You think my sister-in-law wouldn't have bought a Mac if I hadn't convinced her that it isn't this scary OS that's so different from Windows?

I understand Apple has business contracts. I understand they are out to make money. All we're asking is that they stop being such profound douchebags in the process. All we're asking is that they stop shitting on the very people who helped build their success. All we're asking is they stop FREAKING people out with their man-behind-the-curtain/NDA-siging/cyborg-talking dev program.

<comment><USER8> I agree 100% with this. Apple's geek core is at least part of the reason they're growing. It's not easy to convince a barely computer-literate person to leave behind the environment they 'know', but I've converted my wife, my mom, my brother.

This s#@t is leaving a bad taste in my mouth though, and I'm not even a developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I realize that this is a contrarian view, but (in its aim at being sensational), the headline is incorrect.

Apple has not said that it expects developers to pay any refunds out of pocket. On the contrary, the app-store/itunes agreement tells consumers/users that they are not entitled to any refunds for the apps they purchase.

Again, I realize that this is a contrarian view and every comment on this item (more than 50 comments?) seems to assume that the headline is correct. However, can any of you point to any evidence that Apple wants developers to refund users for any GV related app.

<comment><USER10> Yes, the headline is sensationalist and incorrect. What's worse is that I've had to trawl through several hundred comments (I had the misfortune to venture into Reddit territory) before I found someone who noticed.

The actual story is that if any customer who has _already_ purchased one of these apps decided to claim a refund, _and_ that claim is accepted by Apple, then the developer loses the money they made from that sale (70% of the purchase price). That's it.

The only difference between this and any other app, is that these developers are unable to update their apps to fix any existing bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, when it rains it certainly pours. Here's a poll asking whether or not our development plans have actually changed due to recent events:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=737511>

</comment><comment><USER12> Why is this only newsworthy when Google has to pay the price. Developers have had to pay this price since the inception of the app store. This is one part of the agreement that I think is very unfair, and I am glad it is getting press.

Sure we signed a legal agreement, but still it is a bad deal for us, and we have no alternative.

<comment><USER13> It should have been newsworthy a _long_ time ago. It's only really hitting the fan now because:

1\. They rejected Google who seemed to be on good standing with Apple. (i.e. If they'll reject Google over something obtuse, they'll reject anyone)

2\. The FCC has even decided to get involved. If this had not happened, there would have been a large uproar in the 'geek community,' but it might have actually died down. A government body conducting an investigation into this gives the story more legs.

3\. It was a number of Apps rejected all at once and all related to the same technology (Google Voice). This gives it more attention due to scale (vs. single apps here and there).

4\. The number of stories of stupid AppStore approval decisions has been steadily growing. There is a sort of cumulative affect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have no intention of asking for a refund. I have no intention of deleting my GV Mobile app.

</comment><comment><USER15> And they dig deeper on their stupidity hole...

</comment><comment><USER16> If Apple gets any more evil, they will become kind of parody found in a Mike Myers movie. Makes me regret buying my Cinema Display from them

<comment><USER17> I went to a free iPhone Developer Tech Talk where they specifically addressed this policy. Not too many developers in the audience seemed thrilled about it, but it was laid out in front of them. If a customer comes to you for whatever reason asking for a refund, Apple's official policy is that it is your problem to deal with. I specifically made a note about it because I caught the Apple representative's very lawyer-esque response which was to minimize what he said at all about the issue, except to really say "it's your problem".

I might add that I don't think this policy is due to maliciousness on Apple's part. The reality is that trying to handle refunds has a number of logistical nightmares associated with it, namely:

1\. Refund standards and laws within contiguous regions that the store serves are inconsistent. For instance, just because you have Apple Store USA, doesn't mean that there can be one consistent refund policy. Now multiply this problem by the number of countries that the store is present in.

2\. A great number of customers would use refunds as a way to "try before you buy". The numbers would be significantly high enough to cause a problem.

Now, there's that old saying that you should never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance. I strongly suspect Apple's approach to this specific case is a simple case of bureaucratic ignorance. I bet that you have a middle-management type implementing a policy that was designed for him/her based upon very specific legal advice. The situation has probably been flagged for attention by the legal department and upper management, but until a policy is designed, they have to address the current situation using known protocols.

If you were at the Tech Talk that I was, Apple apologized for a lot of the iTunes Store stupidity that developers were complaining about online. They also explained why things were the way they were and it wasn't due to Apple being malicious.

<comment><USER13> You're missing the two main points:

1\. The developer is on the hook for refunding 100% of the sale price... but Apple takes a 30% cut of the sale price. So the developer is actually _losing_ money to make a refund to the customer.

2\. Apple is the cause of the refunds.

Apple is in a win-win situation here (for them) because they are making their own decisions and shrugging off any responsibility or consequences for their actions on to the developers. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone else take the fall and/or answer for the consequences of any actions that you take?

<comment><USER10> NO! this is wrong and I'm sick of seeing it repeated over and over again.

The developer IS NOT on the hook for 100%. They ARE NOT losing money.

<comment><USER13> In any case, even if the developer is only on the hook for the 70% of the sale price, Apple is the cause of people asking for refunds. As such, _Apple_ should refund them their money. Afterall, it was _Apple's_ approval process that failed if it allowed some of these products into the AppStore where they were sold for months before Apple 'realized' that they were in violation. (At least according to Apple's official word on the subject)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What the Vaio Z says about Sony's little design problem - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/14/what-the-vaio-z-says-about-son.html#more-129126 <comment><USER2> Wow, what an ignorant article. I own the previous version of this (Sony _does_ iterate...this is the 4th iteration of the Z series), and I absolutely love it. I can't speak about the new version, but the version I have has a fantastic keyboard with much more key travel than an Air. I wouldn't be shocked if Sony messed up the keyboard and trackpad though. They have a certain talent for screwing up ergonomics in the name of looks.

But really, my main issue is that this article appears to be written by someone with an agenda and little actual knowledge. The laptop's name, for example is the Z14, not that long string which is the model number. Practically all laptops, even the Air, have those model numbers associated with the specific configuration. The box for my Air has it listed on the back, in fact.

<comment><USER3> If you go to the sony store, and search for "Z14" you get a bunch of camera accessories, and no Z series laptops in the results. No laptop results on page 1 of a google search either. I have an old sony Vaio that I really liked, and I only know how to describe by its model number: VGN-S360. I think they could benefit from more coherent model names.

<comment><USER2> My apologies. The model is the Z21, not Z14.

A letter (or two) followed by digits denoting the series iteration is Sony's standard naming convention. If you google "VAIO S360" or "VAIO Z12" you'll find exactly what you want. But, if you're not looking for your model year, you can google "VAIO S Series" or "VAIO Z Series" and get what you want.

I don't find it very hard, especially since the series names stay pretty consistent over a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When getting my new laptop, I spent some time looking at various "ultraportable" including the MacBook Air, some Toshiba (I forget what it was called) and the Z. I ultimately chose the Sony because it was, by a nice margin, the nicest computer of the lot.

The screen is really awesome, it's incredibly fast and I actually really like the touchpad. The keyboard is not great, but none of the options I physically touched--I never saw a physical Lenovo X1; that could be good--had particularly good keyboards. The Air's keyboard was not bad, but it had an annoying layout with small arrow keys and an odd ordering of meta keys along the bottom.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with this computer and would probably buy it again, although I would also consider looking at the X1. However, an X1 configured to similar specs as the Z costs about the same and I've heard both the screen--which is _really_ awesome on the Z--and the batter life are worse on the Lenovo.

<comment><USER5> _"The Air's keyboard was not bad, but it had an annoying layout with small arrow keys and an odd ordering of meta keys along the bottom."_

It's interesting that people cross shop MacBooks when looking at Windows PCs, especially given the Mac's unique keyboard layout.

<comment><USER4> I was not looking for a "Windows PC"; I was looking for a light, fast laptop. I wouldn't use either Windows or Mac OS unless I _really_ had to, so the operating system doesn't really matter to me.

The only unfixable annoyance I noticed on the Mac keyboard was the arrow keys; the rest could have been ameliorated by changing the keyboard layout a bit, I think (unless it's somehow codified in hardware).

<comment><USER6> Interesting. What was problematic with the arrows compared to a PC? The inverted T is pretty standard. Do you mean the lack of home/end/pgup/pgdn ?

I could point you to solutions I use like controller mate - pretty handy to remap.

Guylhem

<comment><USER4> I like it when the arrow keys are about as big as all of the other buttons. I find it very uncomfortable to use the extra-thin keys, particularly when playing games (which, thanks to Emacs, is where I use arrow keys most of all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > It's loaded with junkware, because paying two grand for a laptop doesn't get > you a system that hasn't been sold to someone else.

On this topic, does anyone know of any major manufacturers who dont do this with their consumer machines? I have had really bad experiences of late with Dell, Toshiba and HP, to the point where they come with what is essentially malware built in. As one example, our latest dell purchase redirects search queries, puts a link to ebay on the desktop which comes back once deleted, and prevents you from adding an alternative search provider to IE.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I know of one. I'm sure you do too.

<comment><USER7> Yea I've heard that the Microsoft stores sell everything crapware-free, but this doesnt help me as Microsoft stores are a US only thing

<comment><USER8> Oops, I missed my chance for the proper witty response. I should have said:

       Think different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am an owner of this new Vaio Z. The laptop itself is amazing: the battery life is excellent, good performance, high quality screen (1080p), extremely fast (raid 0 SSDs will do that).

The specs are amazing for this 2.5 lb laptop, but it still doesn't do justice to how disappointed I am with the keyboard. The travel distance is so minuscule, its uncomfortable to type on. You find yourself slapping keys but feeling like you didn't really press the key. The space bar sucks, you have to hit it pretty hard to make it register.

The trackpad is pretty small and awful, 2-finger gestures only works 50% of the time. I had to disable the fingerprint reader because it would activate everytime using the touchpad (you would always hit it by mistake).

Those are literally the only 2 things I dislike about this laptop, the keyboard and touchpad. I use a portable bluetooth mouse a lot (Razer Orochi) which does alleviate a lot of the touch pad issues, but the keyboard is god awful.

That said, the power media dock is a novel feature, external graphics, blu ray and all...I haven't used it once haha. I think that's because I have a nice custom built desktop, no reason to use the PMD.

EDIT: The keyboard is worse in my opinion in comparison to a macbook air which I owned for a year before I sold it.

I just wanted to add on top that, I tested out a Lenovo T420 edge...quite possibly one of the nicest keyboards I've ever typed on.

<comment><USER10> The touchpad and keyboard on my 2009 Macbook Pro are perhaps my favorite parts. I would have never believed that a touchpad could be as good, let alone better than a mouse! Resizing and scrolling with gestures is amazing.

<comment><USER11> I have been hearing this (the apple touchpad being better than a mouse) for a few years now. I just got my first macbook pro today and I'm hating the touchpad (I prefer edge-scrolling and the tap-click on PC touchpads, although I've never loved any touchpad). Am I doing something wrong or does this just boil down to personal taste? I really don't understand how a touchpad could ever be preferable to a mouse (the mouse-wheel is a wonderful invention).

<comment><USER10> I think you just need time. Why edge scroll when you could use the entire mousing surface for scrolling? I don't know why tap-click is not on by default, but you can enable it. Also don't go changing the tracking speed or acceleration on your trackpad either. Give it some time if it feels odd. Its pretty much perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        > but companies like Sony make good designs then abandon
        > them intentionally because they're blind to their own
        > good design choices.

I see this pattern a lot. Situations where people trade away their strengths by trying to mimic what's glamourous.

Here's one - look at the way that OS desktops compromise strengths in order to be more like OSX. Microsoft was so focussed on making Windows feel more like aqua that they compromised things where they were strong - like the way you could get around with hotkeys, or set up items in the old start menu to be launched by two keypresses. The gnome team had what was to me the best desktop environment out there and have traded it away in their quest to be the poor- man's Aqua. (Give me window switching - I hate application swiching. In what situation would I want all of my terminals to come to the foreground in front of the web browser I'm copying commands from??)

</comment><comment><USER13> Power supplies. I've got a copier paper box full of Sony power supplies. Every product they make has to have a different battery, plug, voltage, wattage, whatever so you MUST buy a new one if break/lose it, at a princely sum comparable to the price of the device.

Sony has 90% great, like awesome, design - then screws up the remaining 10% with either "meh, screw the user" or "hey, dig into his wallet" wrecking the rest. I've had two of their ultraportables, and try as I might to love them there's just one neurotic breakdown after another; my next is a MacBook Air.

<comment><USER14> Vaio X has a standard DC barrel pot, ive powered it on anything from junk-heap printer wall-warts to 20-cent car-adaptors to lab bench-supplies without hassles.

other things it has over the air are half the weight owing to carbon fiber vs aluminum and a smaller battery owing to an Atom CPU (a feature - can tell which code is slow), and a full array of hardware ports and slots, a matte- screen with almost 0 reflected light readable in direct sun, a fan that is off most of the time, and GPS/3G. gma500 is main problem, but Alan Cox's driver is getting OK enough to use

<comment><USER13> The Vaio X has been discontinued. The nearest equivalent to the MBA 13" I'm contemplating is the Vaio Z, at a cost of nearly $1000 more.

Apple products have always been derided as "under-speced and over-priced", yet customers keep voting with their wallets to the contrary. Knowing first-hand how those Vaios tend to blow their superior specs in the oddest ways, I'll take the Air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For my money, the best "ultraportable" around is a ThinkPad X: <http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series>

<comment><USER16> I loved the x-series, and recently got a new x201. The screen is _phenomonally_ bad. The viewing angle is so poor that if I'm watching a movie on it, there is _nowhere_ I can position it so that I don't get funny colouration on the blacks. Until then, I'd had a dream run with this series. Check your screen quality before getting an x-series...

<comment><USER17> The X220 with the IPS option is a nice screen:

[http://www.the- hikaku.com/pc/lenovo/ThinkPad-X220.html#displ...](http://www.the- hikaku.com/pc/lenovo/ThinkPad-X220.html#display)

<comment><USER18> Seconded. It comes within epsilon of having a 180 degree viewing angle both vertically and horizontally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > But Sony rarely iterates, even when it's onto something good.

This is very interesting, considering that one of the core philosophies of Japanese business is _kaizen_ , or continuous improvement.

<comment><USER2> Sony does iterate...the article is just ignorant. It used three different laptop lines to prove that Sony doesn't iterate. Walkman, Discman, PS controller and even the Z series laptop this talks about all were extensively iterated products. Now whether all iterations were good is another matter entirely...

<comment><USER20> From the article I get the impression that there were large jumps between each version of the Z series - is that incorrect? Because, to me, iteration means small amounts of refinement to a product. The examples you give, especially the PlayStation controller, are excellent examples of small refinements to an existing product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a owner of a Z21 I can tell much of what is said in the article is just, simply wrong and misinformed. The author most likely didn't even touch a Z21.

 _DISCLAIMER: I am using Linux full time on this laptop. Some people have issues with the fingerprint or trackpad on Windows - theses are software issues which aren't present on Linux._

Fan: they're not loud. It's quieter than my MacBook. In fact, I can't hear it in a quiet room. It's only loud when running full speed; which is rare enough. And that's not louder than the Mac.

Trackpad: it's in.. the regular spot.

Software: it's loaded with Sony stuff mostly. You can remove or reinstall if you dislike it.

Key travel: yes, it's shorter. No I don't see the issue with it, after having used it for quite a long while now. I switch to longer key travel keyboards and back to the Z21 without noticing.

The rest is just "look, my iMac design didn't change in 4 years it's awesome, changing design sucks!".

Now... let's see what the Z21 has and the others.. just plain don't.

SSD: Hello raid0 SATA3 SSDs. Have you ever reached more than 500mbyte/s read/write? Heck, sometimes its going near the 1000mbyte/s sequential. Copying stuff, reading has never been faster. Non-raid0 desktop computer with the fastest SSDs are just way slower. Won't even mention Macs with their subpar SSDs.

Screen: Hello 1920x1080 anti-glare screen. How the hell are others not all anti-glare by default ?

CPU: Hello regular voltage i7 2620M. The air CPU suddenly look.. you know.. just not in the same range.

Heat: what heat? It's extremely well extracted on the side and the rest of the system is at room temperature. Even under extreme load. A problem Apple didn't really solve by the way.

Connectivity: USB? check. USB3? check. VGA out for those conferences? Check. HDMI out /w audio? Check. Audio jack, ethernet, sdcard, lightpeak? check check check check. Tell me when the mac book air doesn't need a bunch of adapters to do more than USB. higher power USB for charging? Heck, check again.

Weight? Lighter than the Macbook air says enough.

Battery life? Extensible well above 10H via a laptop-wide sheet. Smart. Paris- New York, no need to charge. Of course, the standard battery isn't a let down either at ~5H real time use. (they're both rated 7h and 14h max as far as I can remember, but don't quote me on that)

Now with all that, what more could there be? Oh wait.. I mentioned a lightpeak port didn't I.. so yeah, a 600gr+ device can be added to the desk while you're not on the move.. bundling a very decent ATI graphic card, a bluray drive, and more ports. You can drive 4 screens at the same time, although its convenient only up to 3. (oh noes.)

Oh and, does it run linux properly? yep.

So it's an expensive device, but considered all the above, it's pretty decent I guess.

Finally, the actual bad, and yes, there is some bad:

\- speaker: they work, but god they're bad. they're terrible. Not a big deal, but still, at this price... the jack is very good tho.

\- lightpeak will probably not take off, that said, its mostly used for the side device only and serves as USB port, so who cares.

\- way the laptop sits on the desk you may sometimes find positions where its not sitting properly, if your "desk" is not flat

<comment><USER22> You can see from the photos in the linked review that the touchpad is NOT in "the regular spot" but offset to the right. I imagine this is fine for right- handers. (The review also complains it is small. Can't comment, haven't used one. The author is probably addicted to the giant touchpads Apple is putting out these days.)

What Macbook are you finding louder than the Vaio? I have a 2010 MBP and I can't ever recall hearing its fan, even under heavy load.

The central point of the article -- that Sony occasionally stumbles on great design and then randomly iterates away from it for no good reason is telling. Just consider the fact that Apple stuck with one standard connector -- however flawed -- for the iPod since day one, while Sony hardly even manages to release a single generation of MP3 players with common connectors.

<comment><USER21> well, don't trust pictures. the touchpad if _of course_ centered. on all models.

i have a MBP1, MBP 13 mid2011 and a MBA mid2011, the MBP is louder than the vaio on average (that is I can hear the fans). The vaio is dead silent til I compile stuff on all CPUs, then fans are loud, although not as loud as the MBP 15.

The article took the Z21 as target to make an example of "what not to do", not a MP3 player. If it did, maybe i'd agree with it. But, it did not. And unfortunately for him, the Z21 is actually awesome.

<comment><USER23> Compare with the Toshiba: [http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/ultrabooks- for-everyone...](http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/ultrabooks-for-everyone- toshiba-joins-the-fray/?intcid=postnav)

The touchpad is noticeably NOT centered, but placed so to be under both your thumbs with your fingers on the home row. The Macbook has a way bigger touchpad, but it's aligned to the left of the spacebar, not to the right. I'm quite sure that for a smaller touchpad, Toshiba got it right and Sony got it wrong (particularly for left handed people).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has the grammar/writing at boingboing deteriorated or am I comparing everyone to Cory?

        "The trackpad's in an odd spot."

        "This hardly trenchant criticism, especially if you're used to island-style keys."

        "so successful that you can walk a store and not see a machine that doesn't have one."

Is this really the level of writing that comes out of bb now?

</comment><comment><USER25> The author lost me when I saw the image of the color mac. That device sucked. They should have chosen a new design for improved (and quieter) ventilation instead of sticking to the old design. That they reused the old design may have been right from a marketing perspective but it was a PITA from a user's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER26> The only real problem i had with Z-series is that the keyboard is scratching the screen, if you carry the notebook in the backpack long enough. I just can't understand why Sony couldn't solve this simple problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Vaio Z is a sweet series. If I didn't use a Mac I would almost certainly buy the Vaio Z. Last I scoped out notebooks that was the case anyway.</comment>


Open Transclude for Networked Writing - <AUTHOR> http://subpixel.space/entries/open-transclude/ <comment><USER2> The idea to create a visual prompt to remind us of the fact that an original context may differ from the way in which an excerpt is being used is a compelling solution to Nicholas Carr's 'context collapse' [1]. Another interesting approach is through the Webmention [2]. These are ways to promote the augmentative - and relational - thinking Engelbart promoted. To this conversation I would also add the question of how to make interrelational writing sustainable. [1] [http://www.roughtype.com/?p=8724](http://www.roughtype.com/?p=8724) [2] [https://indieweb.org/webmention](https://indieweb.org/webmention)</comment>


Adioso (YC W09) launch mini-site for Valentine's Day travel deals - <AUTHOR> http://howmuchdoyouheartme.com

<comment><USER2> That's one gorgeous mini-site.

<comment><USER3> Many thanks :) Credit for the design to James Noble at Carter Digital. <http://www.cartercreative.com.au/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently Niagra Falls is the only option at any price point for me.

<comment><USER5> I also thought it was only showing Niagara falls. Turns out it begins with the cheapest destination. There is a next button on the right to view other destinations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am probably not their target customer -- I will just never use this sort of thing. I'm curious to know who this is targeted to.

I don't need ideas on where to travel. Recommendations on destination come from family and friends ... the game is then to fit it into budget / vacation days / schedule, etc.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you're not the target user for this specific product: the idea is to show people what their destination & accommodation options are at a given budget. It's particularly useful for people who like the idea of taking a trip for Valentine's day but find the process of manually searching flight & accommodation options too slow/hard.

Though it hasn't got there yet, the plan with the main Adioso site is to do what you described; if you have a destination, budget and vague timeframe in mind, Adioso will monitor options and prices, and alert you when a deal becomes available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks really awesome but it apparently only has US airports.

<comment><USER8> It's international but it still only allows me to select an airport about 20 hours drive away. I'm not sure what their logic is in self-selecting an airport in a country that is outside of my usual area while I'm traveling?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this page will convert terribly

<comment><USER10> What makes you say that?

<comment><USER11> It look me a while to find the submit button - it's camouflaged against the background and in front of a bookmark shape...

Also I suspect the minimum price point ($500/£250) is too high. The text of the site is challenging the user to spend more ("How much do you <3 me?") so it will be more difficult than usual for users to select the minimum (or in their words: "A little").

They'd do better to make the submit button actually look like a button, and to set the minimum to $0 (even though no flights will ever be found for that price).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Adioso strikes me as a company with little social sense. Asking how much I 'value' my girlfriend is just... off. And similarly, the fact their normal site actually _admits_ that it has a confusing interface and asks if you want help understanding it is just the oddest UX design I've ever heard of.

<comment><USER13> Had to go look at the main site again as this isn't my recollection of it. So yes, there is a small "show search help" link under the main search entry, but I don't see this as an admission of a confusing interface. Feels more like helps there if you need it, but unobtrusive if you don't.

I think in the problem domain the Adioso guys are in, this is a fair trade off. Not all first time users would understand the concept of natural language search and would instead be looking for "from and to" dates.

What's you suggestion to improve the main site? I think it's pretty good.

<comment><USER12> Go to <http://adioso.com/search?q=A+hard+search+query> in an incognito window or similar - you have to have not visited before. A bar comes up at the top of the page saying that the interface "can be a little confusing".

I have no thoughts on the interface per se, I just think that if you have to admit that your interface is confusing, you've already lost.

<comment><USER7> That only happens if you end up with no results (eg, you didn't really grasp what to search for). Eg: <http://adioso.com/search?q=france> \-- does not show that bar.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who Owns Your Photos on Foursquare? - <AUTHOR> Foursquare Terms state they may use the photos uploaded without permission in advertising material and may alter the images without consent. Does that mean the images uploaded are still mine? <comment><AUTHOR> > Does that mean the images uploaded are still mine?

In this case I'm referring to images I took with my own personal camera, without formal training, and uploaded to my own personal 4sq account.

</comment><comment><USER2> RTFT&C?</comment>


World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf <comment><USER2> If you make more than $25k USD you are in that top 10%. This shows just how unsustainable our lifestyles have become and how in need of de-growth we are. But how do you make people step back from owning cars, taking flights, or eating imported food? People are not going to do so willingly, and our infrastructure in many countries was built in such a wasteful spread-out way that we will have to burn even more fuel to reinvent it.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't stopping our production of carbon dioxide essentially mean ending our industrial civilization? We would have to go back to an agricultural civilization like during the Middle Ages? Frankly, that seems impossible to bring about unless there is worldwide systemic collapse brought on by global warming or some other global catastrophe.

<comment><USER2> We don't have to stop emitting all carbon dioxide, we need to develop the technology to capture and sequester what we do emit, however.

<comment><USER4> That technology has existed for billions of years: [https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees- cou...](https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel- out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find)

I personally calculated that planting trees would be thousands of times more cost-effective than driving Tesla vehicles: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034)

Cutting down a fraction of industrial activity- which represents a fraction of human-made CO2 output, which is only about 5% of mother nature's CO2 output- seems a lot less efficient than improving upon mother nature's own carbon sequestration schemes. It's better to sequester potentially _all_ of the CO2 in the atmosphere instead of targeting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2

<comment><USER5> Yes, I'm not sure why so many people attempt to shame people into using less energy. That strategy has a long history of not working.

The answer has to be to apply technology. Cleaner energy generation and new (or old) methods to sequester CO2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The headline is not quite accurate, the report refers to the richest 10% consuming 49% of the _lifestyle_ global carbon emissions (i.e. household emissions), which themselves are around 64% of the total global emissions.

<comment><USER7> So they are producing about 1/4 then?

<comment><USER8> >So they are producing about 1/4 then?

We. Unless you are a extreme outlier here. The top 1% globally make 32k USD a year and up. I'd assume the vast majority if not all of the people reading this are in the top 10%.

<comment><USER9> I'm not readily finding a nice blurb that says "$xk annual income puts you in the top 10% globally." I've supported three adults with serious health issues on under $20k annually for years and was homeless for nearly six years while participating regularly here.

I'm American. I have also seen comments on HN from people in very poor parts of the world. I don't think I'm the poorest person on HN.

Yes, the population on HN skews towards the well heeled, apparently pretty strongly. But I have zero reason to believe that all participants here are globally in the top ten percent for wealth/income. And, in fact, I have reason to believe otherwise.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need- to-b...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-in-the- richest-10-percent-worldwide.html)

 _A net worth of $93,170 U.S. is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world_

That absolutely does not include me.

[https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you- in-t...](https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-the- top-10-top-5-and-the-top-1)

Meh, tired of looking for a definitive figure.

<comment><USER8> My source: [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/05061...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

<comment><USER9> That source mostly delineates what defines global top one percent. I'm addressing your claim that most _if not all_ people reading and participating in discussion on HN are in the top ten percent globally, for which you gave no figure and for which I cannot readily find a cut off figure for annual income per se. I did find a figure for net worth, which I cited. My net worth absolutely doesn't put me in the top ten percent globally and I'm American.

Could you either kindly provide an exact figure on annual income for the top ten percent, or walk that claim back and admit you were in error on your assumptions about the readership here or both?

Because I've been a regular participant for nearly a decade and I've been dirt poor for most of that time.

Thanks.

<comment><USER8> Your 20k figure puts you at the top 3.65% globally in terms of annual income. You live in the richest nation ever to exist so that is unsurprising. Calculating wealth is harder due to the nature of debt and asset values. (Debt isn't consistently reported/asset values require estimation)

Source: [http://www.globalrichlist.com](http://www.globalrichlist.com)

<comment><USER10> I selected US as the location, and entered 1000 $/year as the income. With that money, you end up homeless and starve to death in the US, yet that website shows you as being in the top 58% globally. That one gets to die homeless in the 'richest nation to exist' seems like poor comfort.

So I don't think wealth measured in dollars is a good metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems that only a appropriate tax or other regulation on carbon across industries will drive rapid change.

Unfortunately, politicians all think the personal and/or economic costs aren't worth it.

<comment><USER12> Some politicians in one US party do agree it's worth the costs. A few are even running for president.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that this is "lifestyle consumption emissions" not total emissions.

> Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and > international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total > consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals > varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total.

> Oxfam's estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of > magnitude, but also as conservative...

The report then goes on to say that women are hit harder by climate change than men and rails against "carbon baron billionaires" (the increase of which seems to be due to economic growth, not petroleum companies growing faster than the rest of the economy).

The effect this report had on me was to erode my trust in Oxfam.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good thing we've added billions of people to the world, or the percentage would be less diluted.

</comment><comment><USER15> Then probably the whole US population is at fault

<comment><USER16> Except all those 40% who don't have $400 to spare.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't mean their carbon footprint is low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson This is pretty unsurprising, right? If you want to associate carbon produced to people then you just say that when a company produces carbon it is the owners who are proportionally responsible for it (rather than eg the worker who shovels the coal into the fire). So this is basically just saying that the richest 10% of the world population own companies which are collectively responsible for producing half of the worlds carbon. But I think it would be true that the richest 10% of the world population (700 million people or so, twice the population of the US) own the companies responsible for doing at least half of just about everything.

For example they produce more than 50% of the research about climate change, or the efforts to frustrate climate change.

<comment><USER17> Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. It's the customers who create the demand that the companies only form to satisfy.

By your standard, a few members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are personally responsible for a sizable portion of global emissions and completely lets off the hook every single consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.

<comment><USER18> _Ultimately it 's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies._

I feel as though this only holds if you assume that all demands are just and deserve or should be allowed to be satisfied.

For instance, if I identify that there is an under-served demand for anonymous contract killing then why can't I start a company which produces the corresponding supply? Assuming it was legal, would you place the blame on me for offering such a service or my customers for consuming it?

I believe that careful regulation is a necessary evil to mitigate the self- serving nature of human beings at scale. That regulation seems to me to be better leveraged against the companies profiting on the back of unreasonable demands than those demanding what is in their nature to demand. Asking for something impacts no one other than the involved parties. Fulfilling the ask could potentially impact the world.

If it costs companies too much to produce a good (due to caps placed on their consumption and emission) then that good will cease to exist because it becomes inviable in the current environment. Although the demand remains to be addressed in the future when the environment is capable of supporting it - should the demand still exist at that time.

If you take the other approach and instead charge the consumer more in order to consume the good; then while sales will decline in general it may simply result in the good being repositioned in another demographic at the new price point. Or unrelated corners could be cut in production in order to offset the mandated increase in price without ever addressing the causes for the increase.

It seems slower and more error prone to attempt to change the behavior of a company through the behavior of their customers. Why not just set sane limits which force companies to adapt in order to continue servicing the demands of their customers? Customers expectations will change too based on what's available; just as I don't expect to be able to cheaply and easily put out a hit on someone via an app on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't think of a less interesting statistic.

> World's richest 10% produce half of global food.

> World's richest 10% produce half of global medicine.

> World's richest 10% produce half of global scientific papers.

> World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading > about.

<comment><USER20> >> World's richest 10% produce half of global food.

It's more proper to think of the production of carbon emissions as an act of _consumption_ , making the parallel statement " World's richest 10% consume half of global food."

By caloric content, that is almost surely false. By retail price-paid value, that is more likely true (but irrelevant).</comment></comment>


Does YC penalize startups with pre-YC funding? - <AUTHOR>

Are YC applicants who have some funding prior to YC application disadvantaged?<p>Would you accept offers of angel fundings (about $100,000 in exchange for 10% equity) if you are applying for YC? <comment><USER2> We don't discriminate against startups who've taken funding, unless the deal is so overreaching that no later stage investor would touch them. For example, we once rejected a startup whose investors had something like 90% of the stock, because a company starting out with that much stock already belonging to investors is doomed.

If you think you have a good chance of being accepted by YC and you want to take some investment now, I'd try to take it in the form of a convertible note. If the round has a fixed valuation, YC would be a "down round."</comment>


Hacker News Word Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.mywordpuzzles.com/hnws/

<comment><USER2> I used to teach English to young kids in Korea about ten years ago. The curriculum was set by the school, and a common task was doing word search puzzles. Some students were adept at finding words, and many other students would try to get through the task as quickly as possible by cheating off of them. Aside from the obvious strategy of rule enforcement, one way to discourage cheating is to simply give each student a different puzzle. The words to find are the same, but the arrangement of letters is different for each student.

It is trivial to write a program to generate word search puzzles, so I decided to make the problem more interesting by adding a difficulty parameter. I could generate puzzles with a range of difficulty by varying the following factors:

* direction -- more difficult puzzles have answers in diagonal and/or reverse directions

* density -- more difficult puzzles do not necessarily have the answers uniformly distributed in the grid but can have dense groupings

* dummy words -- since some students search for any words in the grid, you can fill it with words that are not actually target words to make the task more difficult

* decoys -- you can fill the grid with slight deviations of target words in order to make finding the actual target more difficult

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the raphael.js highlighting interface. Would be nice to get a randomized puzzle/wordbank.

Small bug: if you highlight the same word over and over again, it will eventually say "Good Work!" as if you finished the puzzle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops Thank you!!!!</comment></comment>


EUPL – a GPL-compatible licence with multilingual juridical support - <AUTHOR> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/page/eupl

<comment><USER2> By which you mean not compatible.</comment>


Deadlines deserve to be called Lifelines - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vremigrant/deadlines-deserve-to-be-called-lifelines-fea60a09bd65#.b80fiz7ez <comment><USER2> Another good source on procrastination and deadlines: [http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mast...](http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator)</comment>


Building sequences with Ruby's Enumerator - <AUTHOR> http://www.dev.gd/20130114-building-sequences-with-enumerator.html

<comment><USER2> Nice post.</comment>


Nevada's $1.3B gamble on Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/8/10937076/tesla-gigafactory-battery-factory-nevada-tax-deal-elon-musk <comment><USER2> I don't like seeing any company get such special treatment. A facility free from sales taxes for a generation is definitively unfair competition. If Tesla does manage to lower costs as expected and floods the market with cheaper batteries, how will this not be dumping based on a private deal?

1.3 billion. There are only three million people in Nevada. That's 433$ for each and every person in the state.

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't states be able to compete among themselves, in a free market fashion, in order to attract business development that is likely to pay huge dividends over the long term?

It's a little disingenuous to divide the incentive package--which is effective over 20 years and only if Tesla meets all its targets--by the population of Nevada, without similarly considering the taxable revenue the company will generate over the same period if those targets are reached.

<comment><USER4> > Shouldn't states be able to compete among themselves, in a free market > fashion, in order to attract business development that is likely to pay huge > dividends over the long term?

That sounds perfect except we are talking about governments that are supposed to represent all of the people and not just selected interests. This is a judgement by government picking a winner.

I dearly wish it was illegal for local or state governments to give any tax deals for specific companies or organizations.

<comment><USER5> The Federal government does the same and much of it is for similar reasons, should it be prevented from doing so? We have many examples at all levels of companies donating to political campaigns to get returns.

I don't mind states competing with each other to bring in jobs. Such competition can cause some states to not make bad budgetary decisions that drive business out as well as trap their population in undesirable areas. Business and personal mobility is what makes the country stronger economically. They are betting on a return of investment which is better use of money that making financial promises to agencies which produce no money but instead incur long terms costs. Those deals are usually purely to prop up the political fortune of local politicians. They lead to upside down budgets and long term debts that force higher taxes putting them at a competitive disadvantage for new jobs and drive professionals out.

<comment><USER4> > The Federal government does the same and much of it is for similar reasons, > should it be prevented from doing so?

Yes, a hundred times yes. This is one of the biggest problems with our tax law and allows politicians, under the guise of promoting businesses and jobs, of bribing people and companies. One law for all.

Competing can be done without alterations in tax law to bribe companies. Its a straight up cash bribe and nothing more honorable. All of these deals are made with other people's money. Its bad enough we have status seeking politicians trying to attract sports teams. I look at the absolute bull that FX companies deal with and see all the problems of allowing government bribes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are property and sales tax abatements on property and sales that only exist because Tesla set up shop in Nevada. You can quibble about the length of the tax abatements (10 and 20 years), but the perceived "$1.3B gamble" is tax revenues that never existed.

<comment><USER7> Property taxes are used to build infrastructure used by the taxpayers, such as roads, water & sewer connections, et cetera. Presumably they will be building such for Tesla, so they will be out some 'real money'.

<comment><USER8> When VW moved into Chattanooga they got their own firestation, EMS dispatch and hospital for instance, that's of course in addition to the roads, water etc...

<comment><USER9> Which is more than funded by the workers' property taxes, income taxes, and sales tax revenue.

<comment><USER10> Why should the 'workers' pay higher taxes, and the 'company' pay lower taxes? What makes that a morally just argument?

<comment><USER11> 1) As Nevada has no personal income tax, workers' liability on that portion would be the same as company's - close to zero.

2) Property and local sales taxes are more likely to stay in the community, whereas the corporate taxes would be sent to Carson City and redistributed to who knows what.

3) Municipalities with strong and diverse property tax sources tend to be community-driven and citizen-oriented. Municipalities with single source of income coming from some corporate giant are incentivized to be pushovers for corporate agenda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a gamble at all. Aside from the land swap, all the incentives are performance based.

If Tesla reaches its target 50 GWh / yr production capacity in 2020, we're talking at least $5 Billion / year in economic output through the 20-year life of the incentive package (assuming a very conservative $100 / kWh). Not to mention all the employment, development and additional economic activity the factory will generate. How exactly does Nevada lose here?

<comment><USER12> If I was working at Tesla, towards the end of the 20 years, I would start shopping around other states and try to get a similar package to move there, and then let Nevada counteroffer.

<comment><USER13> That's what pretty much all companies do with these deals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think company-negotiated deals with states should be outlawed. It distorts competition (small companies can't get them) and is a 'race to the bottom' of sorts (with states as a collective losing).

That said, I wouldn't call it a gamble. Almost all of it is tied to performance/output, so there is little risk for the state.

<comment><USER11> If the bulk of the tax deal is "20 years free from sales tax, and 10 years free from property tax", you can emulate the first half of the deal with a variety of states whose sales tax is 0% to begin with.

Property tax would be trickier to avoid, but depending on the scope of the project deals can be found in bad parts of town where the property value is low. My guess is that the footprint they require is so enormous, they had to negotiate property tax rates. Otherwise property taxes are usually not a huge concern for manufacturing businesses (and are deductible against other liabilities).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wouldn't call tax credits a "gamble". Gamble implies downside risk.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any ad blockers that successfully block Forbes interstitials? - <AUTHOR> i.e. something that not only blocks the ad, but also prevents the 3 second delay. <comment><USER2> Their interstitials are the worst. They also don't even appear to contain any ads, just a quote of the day? WTF?</comment>


Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/personaltech/19basics.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> If you're wondering about the credit card-bag trick, here's a basic explanation: After extended use, the oxide (written information) will "smear"and produce lower-level mag fields. These will give a false value and effectively not be approved by the checksum. By increasing the distance (via bag, tape, etc) between the read head and the strip, the sensitivity falls and only the original data (higher-level mag fields) will be read.

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225752.500-money- bag...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225752.500-money-bags.html)</comment>


Why Smart Contracts Fail: Undiscovered bugs and what we can do about them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hrishiolickel/why-smart-contracts-fail-undiscovered-bugs-and-what-we-can-do-about-them-119aa2843007 <comment><USER2> The basic problem is that executable programs are a crappy representation for contracts. Analyzing executable programs is too hard. A declarative representation with guarantees is needed.

Here's a suggestion: an classic form called a decision table. See the Wikipedia entry.[1] For smart contracts, the underlying system should treat the actions as an atomic transaction - either they all happen, or none of them do. The input conditions in the table are expressions, but they are read-only and have no side effects.

Decision tables can be displayed in a simple, understandable tabular form. Ordinary people can understand them. This is essential for contracts.

For an action in a decision table to be another decision table might be permitted; this allows subroutines. But the whole operation must be treated as a single transaction, to prevent exploits and sync problems.

Decision tables can be turned into IF statements by a straightforward algorithm; the implementation is not hard.

This approach might make smart contracts usable. Etherium is too complicated, too l33t, and too buggy.

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

<comment><USER2> As a design goal, a programmable contract should be able to express:

\- A time deposit, like a CD

\- A credit card

\- A recurring service charge cancelable by either party.

\- A mortgage loan

\- A rental agreement (which is what Slock.it was supposed to do)

\- Most financial derivatives

If you can do those things, you've probably covered enough use cases for practical purposes. Complexity beyond that increases the attack surface.

Standard functions in rules can do most of the computational work. Good date functions, and financial functions such as present value, are needed. An HP-12C, the standard pocket calculator for finance, is a good basis for the functions needed. (The financial industry would like it if smart contracts got exactly the same answers as an HP-12C.)

<comment><USER2> A security researcher from the access control industry agrees that Solidity has far too much complexity for the job.[1] He also suggests simple, declarative systems, and lists a few from the access control industry.

[1] [https://tonyarcieri.com/a-tale-of-two- cryptocurrencies](https://tonyarcieri.com/a-tale-of-two-cryptocurrencies)

<comment><USER3> I remember the Interledger paper since it was one of best I've seen in these kinds of discussions. It was relatively simple, built on existing concepts, had much better odds of adoption, formally specified/verified, and leveraged prior schemes for robustness. That's how this kind of work should proceed whenever possible. Probably any protocol with significant use as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From what I understand of DAO and the Turing Complete capability of Ethereum, the fundamental "flaw" in smart contracts is _not_ "more testing for bugs", nor "more static analysis", nor "case insensitive syntax". Instead, the gap that will be always there is related to Rice's Theorem and/or Godel Incompleteness Theorem. E.g. you can't take the rules of a system and use it to prove its own consistency. The other concept that is relevant is the "limits of correctness."[1]

Based on Godel Incompleteness & Limits of Correctness, you will _always_ require an outer "context" to verify that the smart contract did what was intended. That outer "context" can't be the Ethereum code -- it has to be humans. Whether it's humans in "an open source council", or arbitrators, or courts.

In a similar example with the NASDAQ crash in 2010, they cancelled some "bogus" trades.[2] NASDAQ is mostly automated by computers -- in fact, the "electronic trading" was its selling point over the NYSE. Even with NASDAQ's computer automation (this includes both the computer code inside NASDAQ and computer code of traders' computers) being a _weaker_ form of "smart contracts", NASDAQ still has to have humans be the final judge of which trades were "correct". Is it possible to write a NASDAQ decision tree embedded in source code that will handle _all_ errors thereby eliminating the need for _any_ human intervention? I don't believe it's possible.

The idea of "smart contract" source code being the _final_ authority is an unattainable goal. The DAO/Ethereum had the "NASDAQ 2010 cancel trades" moment by forking the code. That decision to fork is the outer context of the "smart contract".

In a sibling post, Animats writes,

 _> "A declarative representation with guarantees is needed."_

A declarative syntax can _reduce_ the bug count but it can't eliminate them and thereby remove humans from being ultimate judge of what is a "incorrect smart contract".

For a similar example, consider the following super simple function:

      double convert_Celsius_to_Fahrenheit(double temperature)
      {
        return temperature * 9.0 / 5.0 + 32.0;
      }

According the ideals of Functional Programming, that function is referentially transparent -- it does not reference global variables and just uses what's explicitly passed as a parameter. Also, the operations of multiplication, division, and addition are "well understood." There is no overflow flaw because a "double" datatype can handle all temperatures from Kelvin absolute zero -273 to Plank Temperature of 10^38. It doesn't have any gotos or jumps. It certainly looks like a "zero defect bug free" function.

So... what could go wrong with that function that could make it not work the way humans intended? I leave that as an exercise for the reader. (Hint: read "Limits of Correctness".)

[1][https://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/11public_html/p18...](https://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs492/11public_html/p18-smith.pdf)

[2][http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_stre...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the paper. Didn't have it. Just skimming it for now.

"legal contracts, and other humanly interpretable specifications, are always stated within a background of common sense, to cover the myriad unstated and unstatable assumptions assumed to hold in force. (Current computer programs, alas, have no common sense, as the cartoonists know so well." (Smith)

Most appropriate quote of the paper for purposes of this discussion. Human negotiators have common sense plus legal precedents (and lawyers) that guide the process to create sensible terms. They might argue over them later but the process works well enough. You'll rarely see something enormously simple and stupid happen. Whereas, computer programs, when asked, will happily divide by zero, overwrite their own system files, or make some prick investing in blockchains richer than deserved. They're idiotic. The part of INFOSEC dedicated to reducing impact of inherently risky and idiotic computers running arbitrary programs has been a miserable failure. The ones using constrained, predictable programs on less risky or idiotic HW/SW combos have a steady stream of good results. Especially in safety-critical industry. One trick is they, like legal contracts, are extra clear on the Why, What, and Where of their operation. The typically implicit assumptions are explicit enough to check with regular brains and smart tooling. Smart contracts will need this property as well.

"consider the following super simple function:"

That function isn't simple because it has floats. I've forgotten too much C to be sure of what the error is. I'm suspecting one or both of two: no sanity check on lower bounds of input value in Celcius, which might affect correctness; errata related to floating point math (esp rounding) which is _not_ decimal math that we teach students to use for conversion functions & likely was in the mental spec developer had in their head. I avoided floating point wherever possible due to its weird issues. Was I close or what was the actual error?

<comment><USER5> > You'll rarely see something enormously simple and stupid happen.

Because our society trains all people in this area very deeply. If the society would mainly train people really deeply into mathematics and computer science instead, I believe the situation would be exactly opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Url changed from [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4p52qd/new_paper_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4p52qd/new_paper_making_smart_contracts_smarter/), which points to this.

The paper is at [http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~loiluu/papers/oyente.pdf](http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~loiluu/papers/oyente.pdf).</comment>


Onyx Boox Max2 is a secondary EINk monitor, sheet music reader and e-reader - <AUTHOR> https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox-max2-pro-is-going-to-be-released-on-november-20th <comment><USER2> The niche of eInk and HDMI interface == side monitor on a more relevant computer certainly interests me. I've seen a few people talk about hacking their own, sourcing product, this Onyx stuff gets talked about in that space too.

I wish the Qualcomm 'mirasol' idea had moved beyond small devices. (it works in tiny screen. I think they failed to make it work at volume production, for large devices)</comment>


Adblock Plus Re-Launches After Being Pulled from Google - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5991467/adblock-plus-re+launches-after-being-pulled-from-google-play-now-offers-automatic-updates <comment><USER2> Way to go!</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension to send announcements in your coworkers' 'new tab' - <AUTHOR> https://sametab.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> HN, this was a fun weekend project that we built inspired by Stripe Home [0].

This is how this thing works:

1\. Install the chrome extension on Chrome 2\. Invite people on your time (only work emails are accepted) 3\. Set up timezones and write goals/announcement

Those who will install the chrome extenion, will see what you write every time they open a new tab.

[0] [https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home](https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home)</comment>


Making Music with Supercollider - <AUTHOR> http://subnaught.org/supercollider <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Starting a blog to help me learn supercollider. Each post contains a finished track with the associated code, along with some musings on what I learned making it.</comment>


F1 Indian GP in real time with Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://labs.lusob.com/f1mapp/ <comment><USER3> Ok, a while back, pg said he wanted to kill Hollywood - and I never got the meaning. You would still need actors, cameramen, producers even, etc etc. And netflix is hardly disruptive

Now I can glimpse it.

This is fantastic. Watching F1 is boring on the TV - mostly because you either cannot get a feel for the real speed or you lose track of the race.

With gps in the cars, ability to stream from the cockpit mounted cameras - <USER2> could become the first mass audience sport to use different feeds really well.

<comment><USER4> It depends which TV station you're watching. The BBC and Sky in the UK already have circuit trackers from the car's GPS, ability to choose from 10 or so different camera feeds (onboards, pits, etc.) and full feeds of all pit radio released by the FIA.

I wouldn't count on the established players leaving this to new disrupters, especially where there is adequate competition, i.e. in the UK.

<comment><USER3> I've never noticed. I guess I should press the red button?

<comment><USER5> You may also need the Sky dedicated F1 channel (Which you get with the sports package).

<comment><USER6> You don't actually need then sports package to watch Sky Sports F1, just the HD pack.

<comment><USER4> I _think_ you might be able to just download the Sky Sports companion iPad app to get the other camera feeds. Or you may need a Sky Go login, I can't remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is basically what the official F1 iPad app is like, which I happened to have with me at the Australian Grand Prix last year. It made a pretty big difference to actually know when various drivers were about to come past, and what was happening in the other parts of the track.

As things got more tense toward the end of the race other spectators were crowding around for an overview which our eyes couldn't possibly provide, considering our vantage point. It was definitely one of those "holy shit I'm living in the future" kind of moments.

<comment><USER8> Yep. I routinely watch a torrented/PVR'd race with the iPad App running the 'live' timing and scoring. It really does make a huge difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a curated list of such live real-time data sources? A directory if you will; cutting across different sources like train/flight info, shopping, finance, sports, politics/elections etc.

Guess most of them wont be free, but some of them could be.

<comment><USER10> I'd also be interested in that sort of list

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how they made this. My guess would be that they aren't using GPS data but checkpoint times.

<comment><USER12> That would explain all of the crazy rubber banding that always seems to start and stop at exactly the same spots.

<comment><USER13> Are you sure the "rubber banding" isn't just normal race behavior? In circuit racing, the cars tend to follow each other at pretty stable intervals. In other words, the time between two race cars stays constant. As the speed of the cars ranges from 50mph to 200mph+, the distance between two cars changes a lot as the time between the cars is relatively constant.

So in slow corners, the cars pack close to each other (feet or sometimes even inches) and as they accelerate out of the corners at 2g+ the distance can increase to tens or hundreds of feet.

<comment><USER14> "Are you sure the "rubber banding" isn't just normal race behavior?"

Yes (I'm sure it isn't), zoom in on the bottom right hand corner of the track (turn 4), in reality the cars go from 320kph to 100kph in the breaking zone of this corner, on the page they're doing that almost instantly as they hit that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now why can't they do this for UPS and FedEx trucks for consumers.

(they already do it for buses in some cities)

<comment><USER16> I guess the company owners would argue against it based on security concerns, especially if the courier is delivery packages that have high net worth

<comment><USER15> If it's security concerns you can see UPS and FedEx trucks every day on the road, just follow one - or even just watch them leave the hub!

So that logic seems incorrect.

<comment><USER17> But you don't know what is in the trucks.

djhworld is talking about a scenario where someone at a company knows a certain high-price shipment is coming in. He could talk to accomplices and direct them to the exact truck and intercept/steal the item before it's delivered. Who would know there was a connection between the theives and the insiders?

On a more practical note, I can understand why UPS/FedEx wouldn't want consumers to see this. They would be bugging the hell out of the customer support reps asking why their truck wasn't stopping at their place first, etc. Sure, if the driver is lost, that's another story, but I think the larger companies already track their equipment in realtime. The signature pads are always live now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Neat. It's not perfect (i.e., the rubber banding effect that others have mentioned here), but there's a lot of potential in this idea.

My main sport is cycling, and the UCI (the governing body) has banned the live transmission of GPS data from bikes.

<comment><USER19> Have you heard why the transmission was banned? I've only come across some speculation by someone who had implemented telemetry at a race ([http://blog.urremote.com/2012/05/uci-bans-race-tracking- unti...](http://blog.urremote.com/2012/05/uci-bans-race-tracking-until- further.html)), and someone who had thought the UCI banned it to allow only one organization to provide it (bottom of the thread: [http://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&#...</a>)

<comment><USER18> I don't think the UCI has ever fully explained their reasoning.

On page 10 of this PDF [1], they explain that they are responsible for regulating technical innovation, and they talk about some of the advantages of having live GPS data. On-rider cameras are also banned, and the issue of who has rights to the footage is mentioned. Interesting, they say that other live data — speed and heart rate and power etc. — isn't banned, but this only seems to be because it hasn't been submitted to the UCI for approval, which means it's banned anyway.

The first lot of comments on this post from The Inner Ring [2] discuss the issue, and it seems most likely that the UCI doesn't want third parties transmitting anything from races, although this doesn't explain why they're not allowed to transmit data back to the team car. (Perhaps it's got something to do with the ban on race radios?)

1\. [http://www.uci.ch/Modules/BUILTIN/getObject.asp?MenuId=&...](http://www.uci.ch/Modules/BUILTIN/getObject.asp?MenuId=&ObjTypeCode=FILE&type=FILE&id=ODEyOTU&LangId=1)

2\. <http://inrng.com/2012/09/vuelta-power-analysis/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On a similar note, I was hoping that the end of F1 coverage by SPEED in the US will lead to more openly-available coverage. I was less hopeful when I learned that NBC would be picking it up. Any ideas from the HN community about where to find coverage online (I'm willing to pay, of course). Some of the comments here have me hopeful that a VPN in the UK and a connection to BBC will do the trick!

<comment><USER21> If you know any good way to get UK sports coverage in the US please let me know. I was in London for two weeks this summer and I loved that their coverage didn't pause for commercials every few minutes. I'd be willing to pay. Considering this is the only remaining reason why I have cable, I'd be willing to pay more than most for a high quality picture.

(Plus it would be awesome to have good cricket coverage in gone US)

<comment><USER22> unblock-us.com will get you access to iPlayer, both recorded and streaming. Not sure about other channels though, never watch them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> can't wait for fia to block this..

on the other hand, although cool, this isn't a new thing.. slapping google maps is a nice touch, i prefer just the circuit.. its much more clear.. i don't have the link right now.. its a bookmarked in another computer.. but as far as i know, it was blocked recently as he's getting the telemetry data without the fia's permission..

<comment><USER24> FIA do not own the rights.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We just need this combined with a game, our own car/tag, micro-machine-esque controls and we're sorted :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Very cool idea. I've been discussing different ways race data could be visualized with a friend as we watch the race, checked HN during a commercial break and found this. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's the project on Github: <https://github.com/lusob/f1mapp>

</comment><comment><USER28> it looks cool, but I would have to see it side by side of an actual formula race (on tv) to see whether it's of any use. f1 is a sport where tenths of seconds determine your position on the track and I'm not sure whether you can accurately enough depict that on the map using only online timings.

</comment><comment><USER22> No matter what I try I only get the demo race. Guess something's playing silly buggers on my network :/</comment>


Photonic crystals used to make optical RAM (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/photonic-crystals-used-to-make-optical-ram/ <comment><USER2> This should probably have the date of publication in the title as it's fairly old.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll keep that in mind, my bad!</comment></comment>


Ulefone Power 5 – Android Phone with week long battery - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aADeK-bSMU <comment><USER2> i had one of the earlier models of these but like most devices with MTK chips from Chinese OEMs it couldnt live up to its claims, it wasnt a terrible battery life but by no means did it manage what they said it could (or what would be achievable with a decent chipset and quality battery)

its kind of sad that the smartphone with the best battery life is 2 years old, even the advent of 7nm chips hasnt seen anything even close to the lenovo P2s running time</comment>


India – New credit & debit cards to be disabled for online transactions. - <AUTHOR> https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11788&Mode=0 <comment><AUTHOR> I personally feel just having an option to disable the cards on issuance would have been more productive. This kind of a feature is not obvious. How would banks educate customers on this? Quite a lot of rural/semi-urban people do not use netbanking or app based banking. They will need to submit a physical form to enable this. More paperwork. Quite inefficient overall & more hassle for end users.</comment>


TOR interview with Patrick Rothfuss (on The Kingkiller Chronicles) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2012/05/a-different-sort-of-interview/

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 of the interview: [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/05/rothfuss-reread- pat-answers...](http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/05/rothfuss-reread-pat-answers- the-admissions-questions)</comment>


Record your every thought and idea, and reference it later at your own leisure - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-09/pl_print

<comment><USER2> It's not _quite_ the same, sure, but this is almost what my Twitter/Evernote/Delicious trifecta have become ;-)

The resolution is "good enough" for now. I can usually figure out where I was and when, what ideas I was working on, and recall Web sites I was looking at by mere keyword/tag alone.. it comes in very handy sometimes!

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of The rememberance agent, a emacs plug-in that recorded/indexed all actions/text. It was mainly used for those in the mid-90s doing wearable computing projects at MIT. Though it was only used for text.

See: <http://www.remem.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Ignoring for a moment how impractical this currently is, just because you have a ton of data doesn't mean you can search it effectively. In fact, the more data, the harder it will be to find the relevant bits.

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I think the data is not a problem anymore; what is the problem that we lack ways to understand the data and make any sense of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> He's like a modern day Proust, without the prose.

</comment><comment><USER7> The question is, when will you ever have the _leisure_ to reference it?</comment>


What if there isn't another 10x? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/what-if-there-isnt-another-10x.html <comment><USER2> Very nice read. I particularly love this sentence:

> In the tech industry we're constantly repudiated that growth is the prime > value of business.

ESL here, so bear with me. Is this the right use of "repudiated"? The definition for "repudiate" is:

"refuse to accept or be associated with: _she has repudiated policies associated with previous party leaders_."

I can't find a logical link between this definition and the sentence in this post.</comment>


Sharked: "we have globally blocked Wireshark" - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/articles/sharked <comment><USER2> Overheard while visiting an office:

employee: My computer keeps shutting down randomly. I'll be working on stuff, and it will just fritz and I have to push the power button to get it to turn back on.

IT: Oh, it looks like you've got Google Chrome installed. It's malware, so I'll remove it and that should fix the problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> This level of cluelessness is par for the course in corporate IT.</comment>


IBM doesn't care about node.js people - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejitsu.com/ibm-doesnt-care-about-nodejs-people

<comment><USER2> Title is misleading.

Article he is referring to is in Developer Works, and is written by:

"Michael Abernethy, Freelance Programmer, Freelancer"

The only thing IBM related is the fact that IBM supports the DeveloperWorks community and pretty much lets anyone post anything there that sounds even remotely decent. It's up to the commenters and others to determine how useful the article is.

The OP clearly is new to DeveloperWorks. Does he also think Blogspot is responsible for all content published under Blogspot.com or tumblr responsible for all under tumblr.com?

<comment><USER3> Marak Squires, being slimy and misleading as usual. Nothing to see here, move along.

<comment><USER4> If you read Marak's article and contrasted it to the original IBM article it would be pretty obvious that its all facts. The original author (no matter how closely relates to IBM he is) clearly didn't put enough time into researching his article. Thing he says are straight up wrong and claiming otherwise is foolish. The title is clearly HNO, but the content is all correct.

<comment><USER3> <https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-http-proxy/commits/v0.3.1>

You're a partisan in this matter, I don't think I can take you seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a joke. These same people (nodejitsu) said I/O has been done wrong for 30 years without, themselves, having done the research.

[http://www.betabeat.com/2011/04/20/nodejitsu- raises-750k-fro...](http://www.betabeat.com/2011/04/20/nodejitsu- raises-750k-from-east-and-west-coast-vcs/)

I have also heard Charlie Robbins say you can't build a web framework without threads, in spite of Python having multiple single threaded systems. When challenged, he said, "that's still a thread." Riiiiight...

So, back at you nodejitsu.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to hear where you came up with this one..

'you can't build a web framework without threads, in spite of Python having multiple single threaded systems. When challenged, he said, "that's still a thread."'

<comment><USER5> What do you mean? This was a conversation I had with him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Developer Works is basically just an electronic magazine. Anyone can submit an articles.

There are plenty of positive node.js articles such as [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl- nodejsclo...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-nodejscloud/)

</comment><comment><USER8> What this article clearly puts on display is "Ignorance". The incidental Ignorance shown by original 'freelance' programmer as far as node.js and the Ignorance shown by marak of what IBM developer works is. It's like calling out PG to remove an article from HN. So as bad as the article was, the title and the blog post is blatant link baiting and an effective hatchet job on IBM. IBM probably doesn't care about node, why should it? Node.js is in no way impacting their bottom line, Node.js isn't even on their radar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm fully aware of how Developer Works operates and that IBM isn't directly responsible for any of the content posted.

With that being said, the clout gained from being posted on IBM.com means a lot to many people who have no idea how Developer Works is run and randomly come across the article from a google search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My understanding is that developerWorks will buy any article that's not horrible. Thus you see a lot of mediocre stuff written by mediocre freelancers and consultants looking to make names for themselves and pick up a little money between contracts.

<comment><USER10> They clearly need a peer review process as any decent Node dev could have told them that article is crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IBM cares about driving technology towards its own products, to thereby improve its own bottom line and shareholder value. It will promote and/or trash even its own product lines based on sales, not technical quality. It is a corporation. Why would you expect anything different?

<comment><USER12> True. When I used to work at IBM, they gave financial incentives to employees who wrote articles on how to use their products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actually, if it wasn't for his rebuttal article, I would've had no idea that node could do any of that. As I've asserted many times before, nodejs.org tells me almost nothing about what node.js can do and the community does an equally poor job of educating total newbs about how to use node.js in the real world. 50 different websites all showcasing the same "hello world" tutorial is not education.

<comment><USER6> take a peek at <http://howtonode.org/> \- some stuff is out of date as node is a rapidly evolving platform, but most of it holds true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Actually this IBM article is a good introduction for mainstream enterprise developers, and the majority of those have no idea what node.js is and never heard of it.

People who have a need in such a solution already know about it, and for the rest it's a niche product that solves a very specific problem for very specific products. Next.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well.. Igor Sysoev (nginx) has pointed out some thoughts about why V8 and node.js isn't good for servers. The most important part is GC. You just can't afford it with enterprise or B2B services. This is very cool framework, V8 is great engine, but this stack can't be used in B2B projects.

</comment><comment><USER16> The article was removed. Google has a copy, and I have a copy of its copy: <http://kwpolska.github.com/nodejs-ibm.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope to be as awesome as Marak when I grow up ....

.................................

</comment><comment><USER6> non-enterprise is scary to the enterprise

<comment><USER18> exactly what i thought. the chap actually wants Node to mature & become Tomcat! Maybe when he reads about NowJS he'll want them to mature & become RMI. Heh

<comment><AUTHOR> Somewhat unrelated, but anyone interested in NowJS should definitely check out <https://github.com/substack/dnode> first...</comment></comment></comment>