Ask HN: Elizabeth Holmes has 200 patents – if tech didn't work, why not noticed? - <AUTHOR> I searched her name on a couple of patent search engines.
Turns out she has around 200 patents (with other people mostly).
So if her tech didn't work, then why didn't people figure it out sooner? Why did it take a journalist from WSJ to find the fraud?
How come some prominent physicist or biologist doing "competition research" didn't declare that the patents were based on bogus claims? <comment><USER3> Thomas Edison freely admitted most of his 1,093 US patents were for inventions that would never have worked.

Patenting a completely ridiculous and impossible idea is quite straightforward if you know the system and have the money and reputation.

Journalists are notoriously bad at technical due diligence, but the fact is even trained scientists and engineers can be duped, particularly when access is limited.

Having been in a similar situation (not the federal one), where something looked fishy in a company I was involved in (and ended up being revealed as fishier than fish), I wouldn't be at all surprised if it comes out that the patents were fine, the ideas were fine, the talent had the skills, and it would have been less work on everybody's part to actually build it than to lie, cheat, and misrepresent it.

I have never been to or interviewed anywhere more paranoid/aggressively secretive than Theranos, and that includes military bases and classified government installations. This should be the moral of the story: investors should take as a red flag companies that work that hard to show you they're hiding their technology.

<comment><USER4> Patenting inventions that don't work is a great way to waste a lot of money on patent attorneys and patent office fees. Worldwide patenting can get even more ridiculously expensive.

There are some really nutty patents out there.

<comment><USER5> I am listed as (co)inventor for several patents from my last job with a big firm. All but a couple of them my report to my team lead was along the lines of "this new method does not provide a benefit over what's existing, but also does not negatively impact." It's truly an experience sitting in a conference call with a company patent lawyer where you say one thing and then you listen to them spin it in a more positive light. The money needed to file the patents pay out patent bonuses (to the people listed as (co)inventors) is literally a rounding error. My team lead held on the order of tens of patents, all with similar findings, all filed to prevent our competition from patenting first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The patents don't really tell you whether the Theranos technology actually works. They cover small parts of the overall system - fluid handling, centrifuge configurations, software processes and so on.

It's quite common for companies to use a mix of patents and trade secrets to protect their technology. Filing for patent protection is a tradeoff - <USER2> gain the exclusive right to use that invention for 20 years, but the invention becomes public knowledge. In many cases, that tradeoff isn't worthwhile. The fact that a set of patents don't add up to a working process is quite normal.

<comment><USER7> But are they required to deliver individually? If not I can imagine patents in the spirit of "fake it before you make it" which may be applied against someone else who "made it" while the patent holder still "fakes it"

or not even trying to.

<comment><USER8> You're not required to proof anything; you can (and people often do) patent things that just seem good ideas at the time. If you work for big companies you're strongly encouraged to patent lots, and generally all you have to do is persuade some of your colleagues that it makes sense before then convincing the patent examiners it's new.

<comment><USER6> There are thousands of patents for perpetual motion machines. An invention must be novel, useful and non-obvious to be patentable, but it doesn't actually have to work.

[https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion"](https://patents.google.com/?q="perpetual+motion")

<comment><USER9> I thought perpetual motion machines claims were automatically denied. I know they were back in the 1970s when my dad worked at the patent office.

<comment><USER10> Yes but the interesting aspect of this is that they had to make a specific rule for this case. In the general case of "filing nonsense" the system fails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The numbers game is a part of the modern Patent system. It is almost certainly impossible for a patent officer to asses the scientific or technical merit of a patent application. At best, they can throw out the nutbar submissions. The submitting companies often want patents partly (or mostly completely) for marketing reasons: "Our technology is protected by N patents!". Even Steve Jobs said this when he introduced the iPhone: "We've been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this, and we filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone, and we intend to protect them." I am sure many of them are great, but one of those 200 is mine, and, frankly, the idea in it was never used in the iPhone.

<comment><USER12> Any hints as to what that particular patent is about? =)

<comment><USER11> All I am willing to say is that my colleague and I made the suggestion to the Patent committee before we knew anything about the actual design of the iPhone (or even that there really was going to be one). In essence, we imagined what would be needed to enable a click-wheel to function for text and numeric input, and proposed a solution. We were surprised that the committee accepted the proposal - and, when we finally were disclosed on the iPhone, there was no click-wheel! But the patent was granted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People were skeptical of Theranos' claims before the WSJ expose from Oct 15, 2015.

Here are some examples that predate that article:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/scientist-skeptical- thranos-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/scientist-skeptical-thranos- blood-test-elizabeth-holmes-2015-6)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth- holmes-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth-holmes- theranos-2015-4#ixzz3YO784nGj)

This discussion from 2013 talks about Theranos doing full blood draws which they wouldn't need to do if their technology worked: [https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/theranos.1043576/](https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/theranos.1043576/)

<comment><USER14> I brought this up in a comment downstream, but it was a Dec. 17, 2014, blog post by the now defunct Pathology Blawg that arguably led to the downfall of Theranos. The _Blawg_ author was contacted by someone feuding with Holmes at the time. The _Blawg_ author eventually contacted the WSJ reporter in secret:

[http://archive.is/BGtRJ](http://archive.is/BGtRJ)

One of the compelling things the _Blawg_ author did was note this passage in the New Yorker story [0]

> _Holmes also pointed me to a pilot study published by Hematology Reports, an > online-only peer-reviewed journal; she is listed as a co-author. The report, > released in April, concluded that Theranos tests "correlated highly with > values obtained" from standard lab tests._

He looked up that journal, which he had never heard of before, and found that it was an Italian company that charged $500 to publish. He found the Theranos study [1], which actually _did_ contain specific scientific detail, but not the good kind:

> _So, to summarize, the study to which Ms. Holmes referred that showed > Theranos "correlated highly" with standard lab tests looked at one biomarker > (C-reactive protein) in a grand total of six patients and was published in > an online-only Italian journal._

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood- simpler](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/blood-simpler)

[1] [http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/hr/article/view/...](http://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/hr/article/view/5466/4419)

<comment><USER15> Ouch, the quote from Elizabeth Holmes on how the machine worked:

> "A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a > signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated > into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel."

<comment><USER16> Reads like basic.wikipedia.org

<comment><USER16> Errata: simple.wikipedia.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1) Competing engineers are often advised _not_ to read patents, because it can result in treble damages in infringement claims: [https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court- ru...](https://www.essentialpatentblog.com/2016/06/supreme-court-ruling- increases-patent-owners-ability-get-enhanced-damages-halo-v-pulse/)

2) Patents are really hard to read

3) The difference between something that looks plausibly like it might work when written down and something that actually works can be hundreds of millions of dollars of bugfixing.

<comment><USER18> > Patents are really hard to read

There are a few patents that I've found informative and useful to read: Texas Instruments' calculator patents from the 1970s, the ENIAC patent, Astrolite, and Autotune. These are the rare patents where they actually explain things in detail, it reads like it was mostly written by an engineer rather than lawyers, and I know more after reading the patent than before. (Just want to give some recognition to the rare non-awful patent.)

Edit: I looked at a few of the Holmes patents. I'd put them in the awful category. Hundreds of pages of worthless discussion, followed by claims that are semi-incomprehensible, seem obvious, and have little to do with the earlier hundreds of pages. They have lots of nice graphs and diagrams though.

<comment><USER19> Eric Drexler's solar-sail patent was the only actually-educational patent I've ever seen, myself. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319) (Hm, I remember it as more detailed -- maybe I was remembering a tech report instead. But still this looks like reasonable English.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what u/Alupis is thinking today? via a HN thread in 2014:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951624)

> _Seems rather sad state of our Patent system here in the US where a 19 year > old with no prior technical background, who was a Chemical Engineering > student, a sophomore no less (meaning barely finished or finishing General > Ed. requirements and just starting Major courses), can write and file for a > highly-technical patent involving radios, sensors, embedded devices, and the > like..._

> _It 's very doubtful she understood how any of that works, or would work in > her product/patent. Underlying story seems it's absurd this was patent- > able._

</comment><comment><USER20> Once a patent is issued, it is exceedingly rare for it to go through additional review unless there is litigation that prompts it (re-exam, IPR, etc.)

Separately, it's quite common for people to patent things that don't work or can't be directly implemented as stand-alone things at all. Indeed, defendants in patent litigation often point out the many early patents on "flying machines" as proof that the issuance of a patent is not proof that it would lead to a working thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Theranos had great PR.

You have to understand that most tech news places question the substance of most press releases. Especially if they are medical.

For example, no-one questions AirBnB's core buisness model: listing holiday lets. There is literally nothing+ new about airBnB. Uber is the same, its a taxi service that is subsidising users.

Babylon health is another example, which has yet to really break mainstream news.

They have run trails for replacing NHS 111, They make a lot of noise about using AI and other such bollocks, but actually its a decision tree with a nice natural language system infront.

What they don't say in the blurb is that its less effective than the current telephone system. Parts of it are deemed unsafe by their own medical staff, and there is no rigid medical testing to prove it's safety.

None of this matters yet because its an app, and it has "AI".

<comment><USER22> The truth is that in the alternative timeline where Theranos had a male founder they would never gotten their initial founding.

Holmes and Theranos rode the perfect wave built by the media being thirsty for a young, smart (blonde) female. It's so obvious when you look at it in hindsight.

Hilariously, even after the total collapse this topic is often taboo.

I can't help but feel for sorry for the young women out there creating actually useful innovations.

<comment><USER23> Theranos's first funding was in 2004, it had already raised $90M at $1B valuation in 2010, and started filling its board with defense bigwigs in 2011.

What media wave had happened at that point? From what I've seen, serious media coverage appeared in 2013, when they left "stealth mode" with the promise of the droplet testing, almost a decade after the initial investment.

<comment><USER22> I was misinformed (or remembered incorrectly) about the founding/media blitz sequencing. Thanks for informing me.

<comment><USER24> Then if you're interested in being less wrong, I suggest you to question why you were believing what you said, keeping in mind it was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think a big part of it is that people _wanted_ it to be true.

The idea is very compelling. Who wouldn't want it to be true/possible? And it's obvious to anyone how valuable such a thing would be.

Plus... Young woman founder/CEO (& paper billionaire as a result). Dropout from Stanford. Silicon Valley. On the cover of magazines. Big names on the board. Association with Bill Clinton, etc.

<comment><USER26> She's relatively young and attractive and perhaps possesses hidden talents. Like maybe the ability to charm the pants off (so to speak) of men - especially older, rich, powerful men who were in a position to help move her ambitions along. Also men who may have been somewhat blinded to obvious warning signs of potential trouble.

<comment><USER27> Doubtful. If this was common we would have more female startups funded. Just because she is attractive and raised money doesn't mean she had to use sex to get there. She did go to a Ivy League school which brings a network and credibility in and of itself.

<comment><USER26> She didn't have to use sex, per se, but merely sex appeal. (It's kind of telling that you immediately went there.) Or maybe even the "You kind of remind me of my daughter/niece/young wife/etc" angle. Maybe even just the "youthful enthusiasm and vigor" angle, or the "female empowerment, breaking the glass ceiling" angle. I also understand that she liked to pass herself off as something of a female Steve Jobs, so there's that. Plus, female-led startups in Silicon Valley are pretty rare, so that in itself is an attention grabber.

<comment><USER27> I'd like to read the story about her. It seems like she was just a great self promoter. Being attractive does help, but that goes for both men and women. We tend to like attractive people, that's why the big 4 consulting firms are full of young attractive kids recruited because they were jocks or cheerleaders.

My point is that if sex appeal was the core factor in her success, we would have significantly more female founders because almost all investors are men. It's more likely to me that she was a amazing self promoter who didn't let reality get in her way, similar to Steve Jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Somebody has to do the legwork to dig up problems. That's what journalists are for, so it's not surprising a journalist found it. There are "obvious" problems everywhere that nobody has found because nobody has looked. Such as bugs in open source software or a recent case in New Zealand where the government misread a report and gave incorrect advice about save levels of meth in houses occupied by meth users. That mistake created a whole industry of meth testers and decontaminators for something which suddenly turned out to be harmless after-all. Government housing tenants were forced out of their houses and made to pay the cost of decontamination. Landlords lost money having to clean up "dangerous" contamination - which could cost $10,000s to replace plasterboard but still nobody checked the source of that guidance to find the mistake.

</comment><comment><USER29> I worked at a small tech company that was bought by a large company. They sent a patent attorney to talk to us. He said to send his office anything that might be patentable. He said that patents for big companies were kind of mutually assured destruction in the sense that if someone sued us over infringing on one of their patents if we had enough patents they were probably infringing one of ours.

</comment><comment><USER30> Unfortunately one major flaw of the patent system is that you don't have to produce a working prototype to get a patent.

The United States had a working requirement only between 1832 and 1836, and only for foreigners.

So for the most part, if you can think it, you can patent it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This will sound cynical but many patents are not for IP protection as much as for showing other people that you're a real tech company. Investors and customers are both groups that might be impressed by your having a patent.

<comment><USER32> This is the major reason I have seen startups apply for patents. Pure signalling value.

Lots of companies patent complete bunk, and I've never seen anyone get called on it. It seems like investors don't really read them.

I have also seen companies patent things that won't work and that they have no intention of working on - with the rationale that it will confuse competitors.

Given what we know about Theranos it's entirely plausible that some of their patents were intended as "smokescreens".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm just an ordinary Joe and it was pretty obvious to me from the beginning that this was mostly just a scam. For one, she didn't have the necessary background to really create anything new and inventive here. Second, her supposed goal was a "no needles" system, which of course she didn't really have. Third, my wife is a nurse and she told me that finger-prick samples are mostly useless for many of the tests that might need to be run, so instead relatively large amounts of blood have to be drawn from a vein. Also that one reason why they often draw multiple vials of blood is because the test results from each individual vial may vary considerably; I forget the details though.

That said, microfluidics (where you use minimal sample sizes and minimal reagents and such) is a real and growing thing, and I assume that she was just trying to ride that wave. But it turns out that this doesn't work so well for blood samples.

</comment><comment><USER14> The book, "Bad Blood" (written by the WSJ reporter) goes into great detail about how Holmes and Theranos were able to get away with their scam. "Fake it till you make it" is a thing not particularly bound by physics, especially when you have charisma and the friendship and backing of influential investors and board members.

Incidentally, the book does contain a lot of discussion about patents. Holmes offended a longtime family friend, Richard Fuisz -- who, incidentally, was a former CIA agent -- around 2005-2006. He was mad Holmes and her family never consulted with him about the Threanos idea, so he wrote his own patent (made public on Jan 3, 2008) that he described as "the Theranos killer". It turned into a big legal battle that caught the eye of a _Fortune_ writer, who ended up writing the first big magazine cover story on Holmes/Theranos:

[http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood- holmes/](http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-holmes/)

The whole subplot is quite remarkable. Fuisz's battle with Theranos led to some damaging testimony in deposition. Fuisz's son became determined to take down Theranos and from what I can tell, had a big (but mostly unknown) part in the unraveling of Theranos. He found in a Google search a blog post [0] (now taken down) that made serious accusations about Theranos after the New Yorker cover story.

Joe Fuisz, Richard's son, ended up contacting the blog author and telling him about the Fuisz vs. Holmes fight [1]. This blog author ended up contacting a WSJ reporter that he had previously worked with, John Carreyrou.

So rather than science/engineering directly leading to Threanos's downfall, it seems a personal spat played a bigger part. And ironically, this spat involved a guy who wanted to out-patent-troll Elizabeth Holmes.

An excerpt from the book about what started Richard Fuisz's feud:

 _Richard Fuisz was a vain and prideful man. The thought that the daughter of longtime friends and former neighbors would launch a company in his area of expertise and that they wouldn't ask for his help or even consult him deeply offended him. As he would put it years later in an email, "The fact that the Holmes family was so willing to partake of our hospitality (New York apartment, dinners, etc.) made it particularly bitter to me that they would not ask for advice. Essentially the message was, 'I'll drink your wine but I won't ask you for advice in the very field that paid for the wine.' "_

 _Carreyrou, John. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (p. 71). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition._

[0] edit: Here's an archive snapshot of the now taken down blog post: [http://archive.is/BGtRJ](http://archive.is/BGtRJ)

Carreyrou gives a lot of credit to the author for giving the tip that turned Carreyrou's interest toward Theranos. Strangely, there's not mention of why the blog suddenly shut down. If you google around, you'll see it closed up a few weeks after Carreyrou's first big Theranos story.

[1] edit: via a comment on the oldest HN post (Sept. 2013) about Theranos, I found a link an online summary of the patent dispute:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349870)

[https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20121203541](https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20121203541)

</comment><comment><USER33> It is likely that you are counting all the results of your search results, and not curating them. I counted 25 different patents in the USA (40 worldwide), and 13 of those are actually granted.

</comment><comment> a-dub I want a process patent...

"Small Scale Patent Acquisition and Publication for the Purposes of Misleading Investors and Customers on the Feasibility of Large Scale Research and Development Efforts"

</comment><comment><USER34> Theranos may have been outright fraud but their technical claims never seemed that outlandish. There are many legitimate companies/academic labs working on similar bloodtests and even brining more limited versions to market.

There timing was excellent too. I actually remember thinking a few years ago that all one would need to do to design something like the theranos product is run enough blood samples through a good mass spec and load the date into map reduce. But based on research since then "enough" turns out to be a whole lot.

And there _are_ also scientists who think that ideas like that are ridiculous and biomarkers for certain diseases (like early stage cancer) will never be findable in blood. And many of them are vocal about the fact. But since there are experts on both sides that isn't a clear indictment of the idea.

It is also worth noting that the "crisis of reproducibility" is bad enough in bio that I wouldn't haven been surprised if Theranos had very promising early results that didn't pan out. Thats happened to a lot of people.

Personally I fully believe we'll see a Theranos like product in the next 20 years around the time protein sequencing and mass spectrometry tech gets cheap enough to do studies with on ~millions of people instead of ~thousands.

</comment><comment><USER35> Inspectors don't really concern themselves with verifying that an invention works. That would be insanely expensive. It's on the inventor to make something work so that they can profit. Although I do think inventors should have some burden of proof that they're effectively using their patent to provide a service to the market that justifies their monopoly protection.

<comment><USER36> As a matter of fact, it is normal for patent examiners to not even read the invention specification and focus only on the claims.

I was surprised to learn that from a patent attorney, but it seems to be common knowledge, e.g. [1]. Upon reflection, that's the only way it can work. A generalist patent examiner could never understand all the inventions given the volume of applications they must handle.

[1] [http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/07/25/anatomy-bogus-alice- rej...](http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2016/07/25/anatomy-bogus-alice- rejection/id=71192/)

<comment><USER37> It's only the claims that matter, but the claims typically draw on vocabulary and context established in the disclosure. Often, part of getting a patent granted is clarifying the disclosure such that the examiner can understand the idea and how it's different from previous art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It was noticed. I can patent anything short of a perpetual motion machine regardless of functionality. But if you talked to people in the biotech community, most were very doubtful (at best) of her claims. I have several friends in the very markets she was going after, and they were never anything less than 100% certain she was a fraud and was going to blow up in the end.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have like, a dozen patents, and I'm nobody special. Some companies, like the one I worked for, have a real culture around patenting anything and everything that seems even halfway interesting. It's all about volume. None of my patents are BS, they're just rather mundane and very limited in scope. I suspect it's the same case for Holmes.

</comment><comment><USER40> Because the patent system in is broken, always has been, probably always will be. Less of it is about creating and protecting innovation, most of it is about creating litigation to slow down others who attempt to compete with you (even when they're doing something different).

</comment><comment><USER41> _> Turns out she has around 200 patents (with other people mostly)._

I have no idea about these patents, but it's certainly possible that those particular patents describe functional subcomponents/processes of an overall system that doesn't work.

 _> How come some prominent physicist or biologist doing "competition research" didn't declare that the patents were based on bogus claims?_

I'm not sure what "competition research" means. In any case, approximately 0% of prominent scientists read patents. Patents are written both for and by lawyers/courts.

</comment><comment><USER42> You've got to consider who has incentives to do the research. This basically breaks down into a few categories:

1) entrenched competitors that want to protect market share. 2) hedge funds that start OTC trading and are shorting. 3) insiders that want to vaporize the company as part of a bizarre money laundering scheme. (Most likely, although very bizarre, option imo.) 4) the rare journalist that does investigative research. 5) the rare VC that does dd.

So something changed to interest one of these groups. Prominent physicists and biologists couldn't care less what private companies are doing.

<comment><USER26> "Prominent physicists and biologists couldn't care less what private companies are doing."

Unless, of course, they are sniffing around looking for funding. Consider for example the current NIH/alcohol kerfuffle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There are lots of legitimate reasons why this could have been so, such as they were patents of some small piece of Theranos' technology that worked, even though their grand scheme did not.

However, the real reason is that patents are bogus, and more or less all they assert is that this person or company filed the paperwork first. The Patent Office has not even close to the amount of staff they would need to actually verify that the patents they grant are working.

</comment><comment><USER44> Is it legitimate to have a CEO add their name to a patent? My impression is that the "inventor(s)" have to be the people who actually came up with the idea.

<comment><USER45> > _My impression is that the "inventor(s)" have to be the people who actually > came up with the idea._

(Inactive) patent attorney here. Your impression is correct (for the U.S.; I can't speak to other places): ALL "co-inventors" MUST be listed as inventors, and ONLY they may be listed. A "co-inventor" is someone who contributes to the "conception," i.e., the complete mental picture, of the subject matter of at least one claim in the patent application. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor_(patent)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor_\(patent\))

<comment><USER46> Good to know. I've known a CEO who deliberately altered all the patents from his startup to put his name (and only his name) as inventor, rather than, say, people who actually any clue what the patent was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> People did figure it out though.

</comment><comment><USER48> Patents aren't a peer-reviewed academic journal. They're just a way to gain exclusive rights to an idea for a period of time, whether or not that idea pans out. If I am doing competition research, it's not to determine the feasibility of the patents, but rather if I will get sued if I attempt to build my idea. My incentive is not to validate their work, but rather my liability.

</comment><comment><USER49> Furthermore, if she's got patents on these processes, can she wield them against anyone who tries to implement them _successfully_?

<comment><USER50> She could try, but the patents might be found to be 'non-enabling' and thus invalid. Patents are supposed to teach a reader how to make the invention.

In particular, it seems that the microfluidics stuff needs new inventions to make it work in practice. So presumably those aren't described in the patents. Although it wouldn't be the first time that management overlooked solutions provided by their own researchers.

<comment><USER51> Are patents _required_ to teach a reader how to make the invention? That seems like an interesting requirement that I hadn't heard of before, and I've got a patent with my name on it myself.

<comment><USER50> 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) ...

> The specification [of the patent] shall contain a written description of the > invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such > full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the > art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make > and use the same

It's the raison d'etre of patents. A time-limited monopoly in exchange for full documentation of the invention for the long term public good.

<comment><USER51> Huh. Thanks for including the relevant part of the US Code. I'll be honest, I had no idea it was a requirement. I've read plenty of patents where the patent definitely would not function to let someone build the invention in question. I wonder how strictly this is enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> These days they get patent for just about anything. Elon Musk patented Tesla Model S' looks by presenting sketches to the patent office. A UX designer who works close to my office patented the graphical layout of a reporting software. She got a US design patent for that.

</comment><comment><USER53> What wonders me in this story is how many investors have been duped into this fallacy, without proper due diligence, checking the supposed contracts and so on. If I was an investor in a VC fund, I would have sued the investment managers for negligence on their part.

</comment><comment><USER54> Shows how broken the USPTO process is... You can pay a lawyer a nice chunk of change and patent whatever. Then you can hire some more lawyer/trolls to go out and sue people who infringe on your patent.

</comment><comment><USER55> I've got a patent on a fusion reactor... If my tech doesn't work I wish someone would let me know and save me the trouble of all the hard work to build it :)

<comment><USER55> Conversely, If the tech does work, I hope someone infringes me and saves me the trouble of all the hard work to build it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm not entirely convinced what they were trying to is impossible. More that they went about it in a preposterous way.

<comment><USER57> Does anyone else hear the Carmagnole drums beating through the headlines?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> You can patent pretty much anything. The USPTO runs open-loop. A patent examiner will face zero consequences for approving trivial, obvious, unoriginal, or otherwise invalid claims, but they will face real consequences for rejecting them, in the form of additional workload.

Their philosophy can best be summarized as, "Rubber-stamp 'em all and let the courts sort 'em out." We all get to pay for that.

</comment><comment><USER59> There's uBeam, the company trying to charge devices using ultrasound. Apparently it's still hard to tell from the outside if this is going to work. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBeam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBeam)

Or Magic Leap [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Leap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Leap)

> In December 2017, UK IT news site, The Register, reported that Magic Leap is > a vaporware company that "has received nearly $2bn in funding over four > years, values itself at $6bn, and has yet to produce anything but fake > technology."

> On March 7, 2018, Magic Leap raised $461 million in Series D funding led by > the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the country's sovereign wealth > fund.[25]

Half a billion dollars for vaporware?

But there are lots of fun ways to spend your money: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_3)

> Cal 3 is a state ballot initiative to split the U.S. state of California > into three states. It was launched in August 2017 by Silicon Valley venture > capitalist Tim Draper.

Reminds me of my favorite ever Richard Pryor joke: "Cocaine is Nature's way of telling you, 'You have too much money.'"

</comment><comment><USER60> Patenting doesn't automatically convert into production, customers, and sales.

</comment><comment><USER61> PATENTS GET BYPASSED WITH MIN. CHANGES

</comment><comment><USER62> Maybe not all 200 are fraud ...

</comment><comment><USER63> I wonder why there hasn't been a media outcry like with Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Richard Scrushy, et al. People wanted those scoundrels drawn and quartered, but no one's calling for her head. Is it because of her sex?

<comment><USER64> Probably because the people who have lost money on Theranos are rich investors, not the "regular folks" who invested too much of their 401ks in Enron, nor did Theranos cheat people like how Enron gouged old Californians on their electric bills by intentionally shutting down power generation.</comment></comment>


<datalist> - HTML | MDN - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/datalist <comment><USER2> Safari as always goes ahead of the whole competition</comment>


Things to consider about Technical Debt - <AUTHOR> http://xndev.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-position-on-tech-debt-i.html

<comment><USER2> The trouble with technical debt is that it can be the right business decision to take those shortcuts.

Let's say you choose to take the extra few weeks or months to build a more maintainable, properly factored, fully tested system that will be easier to change for the next release. Let's say your biggest competitor chooses to ship right away instead. Let's say your competitor gains market share and locks in customers in the time you gave them.

On the road to the next release, your maintainability advantage doesn't matter if you go bankrupt or if your customers' switching costs are high.

<comment><USER3> Very few people suggest that you should _never_ take on technical debt. But you should consciously choose to do it and there should be a reason, just like there has to be a reason for financial debt.</comment></comment>


5 Open Source Tools to Improve Your Serverless Development Experience - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/serverless-transformation/5-open-source-tools-to-improve-your-serverless-development-experience-8f2eaa89a2b5 <comment><USER2> A very nicely curated list. If you're still in search of dealing with cold starts, Thundra also provides a warm-up plugin that helps you keep your serverless functions warm. [https://github.com/thundra-io/thundra-lambda- warmup](https://github.com/thundra-io/thundra-lambda-warmup)</comment>


Developing GraphQL APIs with Java Spring Boot and Postgres or MySQL - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/connecting-graphql-with-java-spring-boot-and-postgres-or-mysql-gfan3y6o <comment><USER2> Don't bother.

[https://hasura.io/](https://hasura.io/) [https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/](https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/) [https://www.prisma.io/](https://www.prisma.io/)</comment>


Twitter discussion – Docker threatening legal action over naming - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/775657952430596096?lang=en <comment><USER2> Many trademark holders have a policy that you can't use their name as the _prefix_ of the name of something else. So e.g. JavaCache would not be allowed but Cache4Java would be. This reserves the prefix for official products which in theory reduces potential consumer confusion which in theory is the purpose of trademarks.

And a name like docker-marklogic is double doomed because both parts are trademarks so you probably can't say marklogic-docker either.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is misleading, IMO. Looking at the image of the mail conversation, it looks like the author of the repo initiated a mail with docker legal team asking if it's OK to use those names to which the docker team politely replied it isn't allowed and also explained why. The author of the repo then goes on twitter and curses them. Don't see docker doing anything wrong here.</comment>


The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of REST APIs - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/06/the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-of-rest-apis.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fnews+%28O%27Reilly+News+and+Commentary%29 <comment><USER2> _Map your API model to the way your data is consumed, not your data/object model_

I'm glad this was brought up. I feel I'm constantly battling with myself on this issue. The purist in me always wants to create REST endpoints that return just the minimum info you'd expect from that URL which represent my model perfectly. The result is requiring customers to call the service a lot. But sometimes if you take a step back and think about how it will be consumed you can really do your consumers/customers a favor. Although, if not carefully thought through you could end up doing more 'work' and returning data that is always discarded from the response.

<comment><USER3> This thinking can however also be taken to far. The Dutch Railways recently released an API for all their trip planning, live departures and pricing info. Unfortunately, it's mainly a way to get at the API their apps call: it's all presentation based.

For instance, up until recently there was no way to tie a certain train service listed in a given trip to the same service in the live departure endpoint. It's also still not possible to tie a train service to its schedule.

They've taken their API and made it all consumer-oriented and it's gone overboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I know you love {JSON,XML} and you think everyone should be using {JSON,XML} and that the people who use {XML,JSON} are simply stupid."

Does anyone love XML and hate JSON?

<comment><USER5> right, i can't think of anyone that prefers xml over json-- xml seems too bloated, dom and sax parsers require lots of code to walk trees compared to just a single json parse call and then you can just directly access things in an object. though i have had to write several json decoder/encoders for special objects.

for my internal rest apis, the only response format i provide is json, this is for mvp purposes. though i will add xml when i publicize these apis.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that REST imposes a bunch of restrictions about how an API is suppose to work.

For example the idea that you can just communicate a single base URL and document formats, and other urls are deduced from that. Which add complexity, but make the system more able to evolve.

My thinking is that these constraints are inappropriate for an internal API, where you could embed knowledge of how to construct a number of URL's in clients.

Also some tools, like .NET, have good support for mapping XML schema's to classes, and I don't know of equivalents for JSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _REST is good, SOAP is bad_

The irony is that SOAP is a lot closer to being RESTful than RPC-over-HTTP aka "REST API", because SOAP actually attempts to have a uniform interface driven by hypertext (WSDL). That doesn't mean it's easier, but REST is not supposed to be easy.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Meaningful error messages help a lot"

the beauty of rest is that you piggy back off the error codes of the http protocol, e.g. 403 forbidden, 404 page not found, 500 internal server error. of course you could always add text in the response providing more detail, but i argue that this is not very helpful in all cases, what can you as the api consumer do if the server is barfing back something cryptic (503)? the use case i can think of is for an errant parameter in the request, i'm a firm believer of the client app doing field validation, of course that doesn't absolve the server from having to also do it. but instead of providing a 500 (internal server error), i think there could be something more meaningful like a 400 (bad request) followed by some response parameter with more detailed information like "your address field contains a float".

the example given for authentication is a poor choice, there are security reasons why you would want to be vague, returning the fact that the password is mistyped only tells the consumer of the api that this user exists, please hack me.

the one thing i hate about rest is how to document the endpoints and the various http statuses that could be returned, if someone could generate a script that could help me here (for python) that would be appreciated.

<comment><USER8> Rails uses 422 for invalid input.

Which wikidepia says[1]: Unprocessable Entity (WebDAV) (RFC 4918) The request was well-formed but was unable to be followed due to semantic errors

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "And while you're at it, don't use HTTP authentication either. Use signed queries that authentication each API call individually."

What is the problem with using digest auth with proper request counter (nc) incrementing done over HTTPS?

<comment><USER10> What's the problem with HTTP Basic auth over HTTPS?

<comment><USER11> Cost?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> _And while you're at it, don't use HTTP authentication either. Use signed queries that authentication each API call individually._

Beyond server-server api calls and authentication, I'm curious to know what folks think about authentication and individual-user client apps making api calls to a server.

If you build a web service whose REST apis are only intended to be consumed by customers of your $0.99 mobile app, one option is to use no authentication at all. This means that a third-party may potentially write another $0.99 app that "steals" your web-server resources.

Has this been a problem and what (if any) schemes (e.g. digest auth, facebook login etc.) have you used to mitigate the problem. (facebook login etc. doesn't fully address the problem unless you can distinguish between facebook users who have purchased the app and facebook users who haven't purchased the app )

<comment><USER9> Why not to use client cert and HTTPS or HTTP digest authentication with same password across clients? In order for third-party to create their client, they have to go through reversing procedure, which would be unlawful.

<comment><USER13> You expect that the third-party co-opting your server resources would be in US legal jurisdiction?

<comment><USER9> I expect this will give me firmer grounds whenever I need to send DMCA takedowns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Failing to realize that a 4xx error means I messed up and a 5xx means you messed up_

More often than not, this seems to boil down to bad error handling than it does lack of understanding.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love the simplicity provided by a good REST API.

ESRI's REST platform is a good example of a nice, clean API. Very easy to diagnose and resolve issues, especially with tools like Fiddler.

A really nice feature to have in a REST API is the ability to run operations in an HTML form. With this, you can re-run requests in the browser and tweak parameters to help you diagnose issues. Very useful.

<comment><USER16> I prefer Charles: <http://www.charlesproxy.com/>

<comment><USER15> Looks good. I'll give it a try, thanks.

One problem I have is dealing with viewing my Comet connection (long-lived XHR). I stream JSON to the browser and Fiddler picks up and is able to display all this data, but prevents it from being received by the browser. Would be nice to not have this problem so I can see my JSON events in Fiddler and in my UI.

<comment><USER17> Can you let us know if you had better luck with Charles?

<comment><USER15> Sure thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Speaking as someone who's currently building a cloud API, this makes a _lot_ of sense.

</comment><comment><USER19> To me, throttling and chatty APIs seem to be orthogonal. These apply to REST or SOAP or any other API.

EDIT: I'm wrong, chatty is specific to REST.</comment>


Linux 4.6: What's new and improved - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-new-in-linux-4-6-release-improved-security/ <comment><USER3> From a few days ago, grsecurity has a different opinion on the new security work in the kernel, calling into question the implementation of both the new write-only protection and KASLR from 3.14: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11698381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11698381)

Although GKH's pithy response on G+ hits at their incentives: "it's hard watching your business model slip away, I feel bad :(" [https://plus.google.com/+gregkroahhartman/posts/2rM46nj9RsL](https://plus.google.com/+gregkroahhartman/posts/2rM46nj9RsL)

Separately, KernelNewbies is my go-to place for high(ish) level summaries of kernel work across the entire kernel (not just headline features). [http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.6](http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_4.6)

<comment><USER4> The grsecurity post is technically correct .. but that's how Linux development is always done. First lay the foundation, then fold over subsystems one at a time in piecemeal increments.

Everytime grsecurity comes up someone asks why it is not in the main kernel yet. The short answer is that the developers couldn't or didn't want to work that way. Kes Cook is actually nibbling away at that work right now, doing the thankless work of merging one part of grsecurity functionality, one piece at a time. That the first commit isn't complete or even very useful is to be expected.

<comment><USER5> That is a very very important piece of information that I didn't see (or understand). Organic integration is going. Thanks to all them, be it the grsec team or Mr Cook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kernel security is good, and more kernel security is better. I'm still hoping that Linux gets W^X (Write XOR eXecute) protection like some BSDs have - <USER2> eliminates several classes of vulnerabilities at a single stroke.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone figured out why Linux devs seem to really dig Google+?

<comment><USER8> And also Google groups sadly... I hate this website so much...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ah ah ah zdnet the pro windows that will now speak of the Linux kernel. I think I will go to Hurd!</comment>


Show HN: Karmalert.com » Mention Alerts from Reddit, Twitter, HN and PH - <AUTHOR> https://karmalert.com?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> Would be nice to be able to try it out without making an account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea actually. Would be a demo account with preloaded data have the same effect for you?

<comment><USER2> Not really, I wanted to add a notification that may come up not even once a month (once every 6 month even) but when I saw the sign up I just closed the tab. But otherwise I'd have entered it.

<comment><USER3> i havent really thought about that aspect really. would social logins (including: twitter, github, maybe reddit) help? or would you rather see some registration process so passive you dont even notice? (like you start with creating the phrase and i ask for email anyway, why not send you a random pw then).

i cant do this userless as i am pretty sure this is against several anti spam restrictions.

<comment><USER2> Social logins would be worse.

Something passive I don't even notice would be fine, although getting an email "hey we just created an account for you" would be quite jarring as well.

I guess... If you frame it like "here is a token to change your settings" it'd be alright.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for your feedback. I really forgot that aspect, but i think i really could make a huge improvement in this point.

<comment><USER2> Feel free to ping me if you implement it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone having success with offering an affiliate program? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious if anyone has implemented an affiliate program for their web app business and seen a good payoff. I remember Joel saying they spent a lot of time and money on getting an affiliate program together for FogBugz and it flopped. I've also been watching the affiliate program 37signals has/had?
https://affiliates.37signals.com/affiliate/
The affiliate area never got a new design with the rest of their sites which seems to point to it not being very lucrative to get new people to signup. And the whole not accepting new members might point to that too.
Anyone have any stories out there good or bad with fooling around with getting an affiliate program up and running?  I've been pondering trying one out (for http://tgethr.com/), but the work and admin involved seem daunting to even give it a small try.
I've thought about using something like Shareasale to try it. Or even Clickbank. Clickbank is loaded typically with get rich quick schemes but they at least make affiliate management pretty easy. However Clickbank isn't all that well slated for web app subscription tiering. <comment><USER2> Dropbox has done quite well. The beauty of the dropbox program is that they offer usage (more space). The affiliates already use/like the app and are much more effective affiliates.

Nate, shoot me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com. We are in private beta and may be able to help</comment>


Open Source Slicer for DLP 3D Printers - <AUTHOR> http://formlabs.com/stories/open-source-dlp-slicer/ <comment><USER2> This site locks up my chrome browser on iPad.</comment>


Gmail fluke: The Knights who say "nee"? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/oeNai.png

<comment><AUTHOR> Top left corner saying "nee" verified in Baltimore, Boston and in Frankfurt, Germany

<comment><USER2> Neat. Not currently seeing it in Urbana, IL, USA, though (perhaps it has already been removed).</comment></comment>


Healthy Foods for Under $1 - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/healthy-foods-for-under-1/ <comment><USER2> This whole "shop around for bananas" kind of reporting is really the sort of thing the nytimes needs to nix if they want to avoid bankruptcy.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention there were only two ads completely out of the way. One was a google ad way at the bottom. The other was a flash ad that I wouldn't have noticed unless I clicked on it via flashblock.

Who came up with that scheme?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I lived for a long time on homemade burritos. You can make good tortillas with flour, water, salt, little yeast if you want them more bready (which I do). A can of refried beans makes three burritos. A little cheese goes a long way (I like extra sharp cheddar, as the strong flavor means you need less of it for the taste). You can make 3 at a time, and keep them in the fridge. Microwave for 1 min, and you're good for lunch or dinner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on what you consider healthy.

If you know how eggs are mass produced then the cheapest eggs you can buy won't seem like such a healthy snack.

<comment><USER6> If you buy free range organic eggs at double the cost of mass produced commercial ones, you've still got a cheap protein source.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget to mention that the only thing egg producers have to do to claim they are "free range" is put a tiny chicken door on the factory building.

<comment><USER8> [citation needed]

<comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_eggs>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article might be better described as _Healthy Ingredients for Under $1_

That said the list is pretty good but the message is simple if you actually take time to think about what you eat and prepare your own food you can eat much better for less.

</comment><comment><USER10> Rice and beans is a cheap source of protein that I enjoy eating. Use brown rice and it's even healthier. BTW: brown rice cooked in a pressure cooker is as fast as white rice in a regular pot (or rice cooker).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I understand the point of this article. I would say that the healthiest foods are almost always cheaper, but will require preparation.

Yea anybody can go buy a big bag of brown rice, some meat and veggies and have extremely cheap meals (I do this for most meals). But most people do not want to exert that kind of energy for food, and don't much care about nutrition anyway.

<comment><USER12> I used to make a turkey chili for lunch--one crockpot full would last about four days. The ingredient cost totalled about $12. That's just the main dish, for the same price per day as a regular hamburger, medium fries, and a soft drink at McDonalds.

This week I made a quinoa salad. The grain boils for 15 minutes, which also hardboils eggs perfectly, so I chop in a few vegetables and get an easy, healthy, cheap, reasonably tasty meal. But it's far from trivial to find such a combination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sardines--I love good sardines. Unfortunately, good sardines are like $3 a tin. Crappy sardines are less than $1 a tin, but they're approximately inedible. This is shopping at Wal-Mart grocery.

Anybody know of a good brand of sardines you can buy cheap online, or another way to get good sardines for $1-2 per tin?

</comment><comment><USER14> Nuke (microwave) a sweet potato. The trick is to let is stand for a few minutes after nuking, so that it finishes cooking / cooks evenly.

Very nutritious, very quick and easy, and inexpensive.

Put a little brown sugar on top, maybe some cinnamon. You're good to go.

<comment><USER15> Amazingly, yams are both sweeter and lower in glycemic index than potatoes! Definitely a great food. I also eat "yam leaves" most times I go out for seafood.

[http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&...](http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=%E5%9C%B0%E7%93%9C%E8%91%89&btnG=Search+Images&aq=f&oq=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there actually people out there who are willing to cook and don't already know this information?</comment>


Why Do I Teach? - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/why-do-i-teach/

<comment><USER2> Gutting's writings are criticized by Jerry Coyne from time to time,

[http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/an- increa...](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/an-increasingly- common-argument-of-religionists-and-faitheists/)

and I think that is something to keep in mind while pondering Gutting's rationale for his college teaching.</comment>


Steve Wozniak Shares How the Name "Apple" Came About  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tvdeck.com/2010/11/steve-wozniak-shares-how-name-apple.html

<comment><USER2> Alan Turing killed himself by eating a bite of poisoned apple...

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone transcribe loosely for the video-disabled?

<comment><USER4> Steve Job's was working at a farm and someone gave him the idea of Apple Computers. Then, years later, Steve Wozniak was on Dancing With The Stars and met the brother of the person who gave him that name. Wozniak also thinks that the lawsuit from Apple Records was wrong because Apple Computers was not a musical device.

<comment><USER5> > Wozniak also thinks that the lawsuit from Apple Records was wrong because > Apple Computers was not a musical device.

Isn't that the origin of the "sosume" ("so sue me") sound? I thought I remembered that it came about because they were sort of turning around and adding musical ability to something that didn't have it before.

But now we've come full circle, with them offering Beatles songs on iTunes (Apple Records was the label for the Beatles).

<comment><USER6> [http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_sound_de.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_sound_de.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, I always thought it came from the Beatles' record company.

The more you know...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The point being, it might just fall in your lap, or be super random.

<comment><USER8> Or, you know, fall on your head.</comment></comment>


MOOC Professors To See - <AUTHOR> http://blog.accredible.com/post/53515580724/5-mooc-professors-to-see-before-you-die

<comment><USER2> It's simply criminal to omit Walter Lewin from those kinds of lists.

</comment><comment><USER3> And don't miss Al Filreis from Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Poetry (U Penn) at coursera. Humanities taught right.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, guys, for suggestions. Yeah, many great profs had to be omitted :(

</comment><comment><USER4> Dr. Thomas Kelly of Harvard is pretty awesome to watch.</comment>


Google Acquires Video Compression Company for $106.5 Million - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/08/05/google-on2/

<comment><USER2> Does this means the codec-wars are back? But this time not between Apple and Microsoft but between Apple and Google maybe?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but it's not Apple versus Google, it's royalty-bearing standard from MPEG-LA versus non-royalty bearing standard from Google.

Since Apple has argued repeatedly and publicly with the MPEG-LA to liberalize their royalty rates for viewers and smaller users it's not certain they'll stick with the H.264 Camp despite their hardware commitment, their patent involvment, it's head start and its small technical advantage.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you are thinking of VP6, not VP8 which On2 also owns. VP8 is apparently better than H.264. There is also reason to believe Google won't stop there. Spending $2 million per day:

[http://pulse2.com/2009/04/14/google-spending- about-2-million...](http://pulse2.com/2009/04/14/google-spending- about-2-million-per-day-to-run-youtube/)

Bandwidth has to be a significant chunk of that, there is a tremendous amount of money to be saved by using more efficient video codecs. They will probably use the On2 team to invent even better codecs and open them up as well.

<comment><USER3> I've not yet seen any credible source claim that VP8 is better than H.264.

Claiming your codecs is better than H.264 seems to be standard operating procedure for codecs since it's currently the gold standard. (You'll know VP8 is the best when all the other codecs compare themselves to it!) But these claims are either just blatant PR BS or like On2 you make some very specific claims. If you read what they actually say it appears they think VP8 is "better" than H.264 when you also consider licensing.

Now I personally think that's very valid, as any royalty free codec that Google releases from this purchase will have a big advantage due to it's licensing, and that will make it "better" for many purposes. But it's not what codec nerds mean by "better".

Personally I agree with your point about codec improvements and think that Google should get something out fast based on what they've bought, but they should also be looking for defectors from MPEG-LA to work on a next-gen royalty free codec by pooling a bunch of patents and expertise. It seems MPEG- LA has either been mismanaged or has fallen victim to internal politics so there's been plenty of unrest over the years.

Sun had some patents it was going to use in a royalty free codec called OMS and they're already licencing VP6 for JavaFX so that's a good place to start.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Codecademy Teach Poor Black & Brown Kids to Code? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/can_codecademy_teach_poor_black_brown_kids_to_code.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Exciting direction, although I find the title to be a bit racist by implying that poor kids are all Black or Brown. It also seems to imply that Black and Brown kids may be less capable of learning. Maybe I'm making something out of nothing, although Gengrich just caught hell for making similar implications. Thoughts?</comment>


How a Website You've Never Heard of Is Holding the Web Together - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/03/the-hidden-power-of-stack-overflow.html <comment><USER2> It's Stack Overflow.</comment>


Comparing the Performance Between Native iOS (Swift) and React-Native - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-react-native-log/comparing-the-performance-between-native-ios-swift-and-react-native-7b5490d363e2#.i51e2pmei <comment><USER2> I think the issue of "not understanding each line of code" in Swift is due to a poor learning experience, and not the language itself. If the person teaching you doesn't inspire confidence that he knows what each line does, you should look for a new teacher. JavaScript has a much wonkier syntax and structure than Swift, especially if we're talking about ES5.</comment>


Odds are we'll all soon move to Desktop-as-a-Servic - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerworld.com/article/3562731/odds-are-well-all-soon-move-to-desktop-as-a-service.html <comment><USER2> I love the idea of desktop-as-a-service but all the current implementations are way to expensive. It's hard to justify paying for a machine on a per- minute basis at the kind of rates that, MS for example, is charging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome Enterprise is $50 a device per year and gets you access to Managed Google Play via an approved Enterprise Mobility Manage for Cisco Meraki; Citrix XenMobile; IBM MaaS360; ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus; or VMware Workspace ONE. It also includes Active Directory (AD) integration.

<comment><USER2> Isn't that just Chrome? I took the OP to mean a dev desktop environment, like Windows, for example. Those are still expensive on a hosted basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You'll have to pry my Slackware desktop from my cold dead hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you, but then I bet you don't use "password" for your password either. :-)</comment></comment>


Amarino: Android meets Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://www.amarino-toolkit.net

<comment><USER2> Awesome++! I've already got the Duemilanove board so this will give me a reason to but the BT shield. The possibilities are endless. Also add Processing (<http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Interfacing/Processing>) and sky's the limit.

<comment><USER3> That and python serial love as well: <http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Interfacing/Python> \- imagine doing crazy stuff with django + arduino or web.py even.</comment></comment>


A very peculiar thing just happened on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2012/01/very-peculiar-thing-just-happened-on.html

<comment><USER2> What we don't know is how many people flagged each link. (Not that I think either link should have collected flags, personally, but you know what people are like.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Good point. I wonder why the number of flags is kept secret. Also, is there any disincentive to flagging? Does it cost you karma or something? Is there any difference between a flag and a (secret) downvote?</comment></comment>


Heuristics to Generate Startup Ideas (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://avichal.com/2019/02/24/heuristics-to-generate-startup-ideas/ <comment><USER2> Just write every idea down. You'll get better at having ideas too.

[http://github.com/samsquire/ideas](http://github.com/samsquire/ideas) [http://github.com/samsquire/ideas2](http://github.com/samsquire/ideas2)

<comment><USER3> I've done this before and just ended up with lots of junk. And being too distracted with writing ideas rather than working deeper into an existing idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _#14: "Understand how teens communicate — Figure out where teenagers are spending their time to see what the communication products of the next decade may be. Teens are unencumbered and very creative, so seek to understand the motivations instead of judge."_

This sounds like a nightmare.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty accurate and a technique I used, but I've never thought about doing this on purpose. One of the reasons I try to make friends with younger people is because they have a better view of where things are going, rather than people in their 30s. It's not just communication; things like tech trends among college students are far more accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great list. I like the framework style thinking as it fits with who I see the world.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome. I love how it provides structure for thinking up startup ideas.</comment>


Police Robot on Patrol Ignores Woman Trying to Summon the Police - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/police-robot-ignores-woman-who-tried-to-call-the-police <comment><USER2> it should be illegal to display any LEO logo in a way that insinuates police or trooper involvment, when there is none, precisely because of this potential incident.</comment>


Lisp: No easy download - <AUTHOR> http://www.lispcast.com/drupal/node/29 <comment> daniel-cussen As someone who tried to go from noob to SICP, I can attest to this.

I was really like looking forward to learning lisp after reading pg's essays, but when the time came to install the environment, I hit a brick wall.

Pg does mention a noob should get a tech-savvy friend to help him get started. Unfortunately, all the hackers I knew were in the Bay Area, but I was in South America.

Installing Lisp on a mac took me two months, working full time (between macports and other false starts, like trying to install linux). I still can't get slime on emacs; I have to run clisp in the terminal.

So, yeah, not exactly user friendly, or accessible to beginners.

<comment><USER2> See my link to Lispbox below.

<comment><USER3> Lispbox is great, but when coming from a different environment I found it extremely useful to customize emacs a little (nothing fancy, F2 for save, ctrl-C copy) and unfortunately you can't do that in lispbox.

To the GP, it takes a lot of time and effort, but what you learn stays with you. Can't remember how many times I installed everything afresh, and on how many machines, but now it's really easy and, though it could be confirmation bias, rather elegant. I'm pretty sure I could teach somebody up to my level in 3-4 weeks, including lisp itself.

That said, I'm still not done installing - today i tried <http://dirtyhack.org/vetler/docs/cl-webapp-intro/part-1/> and got a "make- pset is an undefined function" for no apparent reason. <Sigh> I guess it's another Elephant reinstall in the next break. But it does get easier :) This autumn I hope I can move to actual programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> lispbox(common lisp) and drscheme(scheme ldo) are two good packages/environments but it isnt obvious how to find them.

the value of a "click to download-click to install-write short piece of code and see result" -cycle hat can be done immediately is very high.

feedback is obv very important for learning and LISP doesnt provide much of that in the beginning.

with python you can create games and simple but useful programs right away.

when arc is finished im all for helping to create a good IDE and libraries to it and document it well and create a very easy path for beginners to gte started.

then maybe lisp can get popular.

i think it will stay a small language though.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's still not a one-click, but I have written install guides thorough enough to work on the first try for CLisp and SBCL:

[http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing- clisp-e...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing-clisp-emacs- and-slime-on-windows-xp/)

[http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing-sbcl- em...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing-sbcl-emacs-and- slime-on-windows-xp/)

It takes about 15 minutes and includes installing Emacs and SLIME, plus a super basic Emacs tutorial enough to open and save files.

</comment><comment><USER2> Actually there is, it's just not where you expect it :-)

<http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/lispbox/>

<comment><USER6> Then maybe this should be the first of 3-4 links on lisp.org. A newbie is not likely to find this (I know I didn't know anything about Lispbox when I first started, although to be fair, I'm not sure it was out at the time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, he should have added "Part-2: Downloading Libraries". They actually exist, and can rival comprehensive library of Python, but it takes quite a lot of energy to discover. I remember asking here on HN "what is CL standard library? where is it documented?" and people actually pointed to a magic place that I forgot to bookmark and now I'm lost again. :-)

Ubuntu does a decent job of packaging some popular CL libs in their apt repos.

<comment><USER5> CL Hyperspec: <http://www.lisp.org/HyperSpec/FrontMatter/index.html>

Download a copy from LispWorks: ftp://ftp.lispworks.com/pub/software_tools/reference/HyperSpec-7-0.tar.gz

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anonymous said it best: <http://www.lispcast.com/drupal/node/29#comment-69>

<comment><USER6> The comment was

      there is no canonical Lisp implementation like there is for Python and Ruby

True. But still, try to find a link anywhere on lisp.org (let alone the front page) to any implementation of lisp. The shortest path I could find to downloading any kind of implementation was to click "ALU Wiki" -> Implementations -> wherever. That's at least 4 clicks to actually get Lisp and the first link takes you away from lisp.org. That's too many clicks, and too indirect (if you are a newbie looking to download Lisp, why would you click on a link with the text "ALU Wiki"?).

The very first paragraph on lisp.org should be a terse explanation that there are many implementations of lisp, Common Lisp is the most widely used, and to get started, you probably want one of <list the 3 most popular ones here> with the text linked directly to the download page for that implementation.

There's no reason that someone trying to get started should have to read "The Rich History of Lisp" or anything else so abstruse, or anything that has so little to do with programming Lisp (like most of the ALU stuff). Someone should convince the ALU that lisp.org should be for Lisp and that the first view links should not be:

      ALU

      History

      Board / Minutes

      Sponsors

      Membership

      Contact Us

<comment><USER3> Arguing between 3 or 4 clicks doesn't change anything. There are a lot of problems with beginners and lisp, but they're far from how to get to the first implementation. As a newbee myself, googling for lisp environments was damn easy and instructive: i knew within 20 minutes that I should use linux, and if i really wanted windows (as I did at first) there was only one choice. When I finally had access to a decent linux it took me maybe another 20 to confirm that sbcl is the one I wanted. All that gave me lots of background information on the side.

Now the first brush with asdf on the other hand was a nightmare. I still don't understand why I have to become an expert in pgp (definitely not just a beginner) just to use asdf-install.

I think the main problem for beginners is the effort it takes to install a reasonable environment. I tried two versions for a web application server: ucw and weblocks. Weblocks meant installing more then 10 different packages and source code is pretty much standard documentation - but it's ok because it's understandable and officially beta anyways. UCW is the standard - after a year and a half I still couldn't produce an installation running on a port different then 8080 (I use 8080 for tomcat for all my machines).

All this effort is way disproportionate to the effects. Installing emacs and slime is may not be a breeze, but once you discover that googling "emacs configuration" brings up a bonanza it's worth it. (Also that .emacs in windows is _emacs... that's half a day I'll never have back). But so much effort just to get a server running... if you want to help beginners write a better ucw tutorial, don't just rearrange the links on the frontpage of lisp sites.

(btw, I hit ctrl-C before hitting reply, I just knew there was an "expired link" comming. And so it did.

<comment><USER6>
      Arguing between 3 or 4 clicks doesn't change anything.

You're wrong. And besides, the argument isn't between 3 or 4 clicks. It should be no more than 2, and preferably _one_.

      There are a lot of problems with beginners and lisp, but
      they're far from how to get to the first implementation.
      As a newbee myself, googling for lisp environments was
      damn easy and instructive: i knew within 20 minutes that
      I should use linux, and if i really wanted windows (as I
      did at first) there was only one choice.

You're still wrong. Not every newbie even knows what to google for, and even if they did, it shouldn't take them _20 minutes_ of web searching to figure out what they should download. And even that didn't lead you to the right place - there is more than one option for Windows (cusp, allegro, lispworks, and clisp for starters - that's not even counting scheme stuff), Linux isn't the only way, and SBCL isn't the only thing going on Linux. But a newbie either

a) has no way to figure all that out in a reasonably short amount of time b) isn't going to try

And beyond that, you're still missing the point: _he shouldn't have to_.

Once you're concerned with learning emacs and slime and customizing your environment and installing weblocks and getting asdf and asdf-install to work, you're already committed. Difficulty doesn't matter nearly as much by that point. Being able to easily download and dick around in the REPL is the number one hurdle that keeps people from trying Lisp.

The rest of the post I agree with, and I don't argue that there are hurdles beyond the first one that are bigger and harder to conquer, but that's irrelevant if newbies aren't willing to jump the first one.

<comment><USER3> Right now I have a feeling most young lispers are at the intermediate stage. Thanks to lots of recent publicity, by pg and not only, people have gotten to know lisp exists. But I'm really not sure how many will go all the way. Even myself, in about a year I'll have to ditch java and if by then I'm not confident enough in my lisp... i'll probably learn ruby in a month.

As for the number of clicks... yes, as far as website design goes of course you're right. What I'm saying is 20 minutes of googling gives you more background. Half a page of text will probably just recommend clisp on windows, sbcl on linux, allegro if you want to pay and mention all the rest. Googling gives you a larger picture. Ok, in the end of course one click would be better, I just don't think it makes much difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was pretty easy for me, on my Fedora box:

      # yum -y install clisp

</comment><comment><USER10> perl.com is not the Perl home page.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.sbcl.org> -> "Downloads" -> Linux/x86 (or your architecture/OS of choice).

Hold on a second, I need to lie down for a moment after all that hard work there.

OK. Yes, there's not one Lisp implementation that is canonical and called "Lisp" and which lives at lisp.com. Life is pain.

<comment><USER12> I actually recently had to install SBCL on my OS X 10.4 (Tiger) box. Here's how it went:

1\. Grab from the Downloads folder.

2\. Build.

3\. Bombs during building because SBCL now relies on a link symbol which doesn't exist in Tiger. Apparently all Mac Lisp users are require to be 10.5 Leopard users.

4\. Swear a bit.

5\. Search the web.

6\. Find lots of people swearing also, no answers.

7\. Try CVS.

8\. Build.

9\. Bombs during build.

10\. More swearing.

11\. Start hunting through earlier versions of SBCL.

12\. About 10 downloads later (and they take a _lot_ of time each to download and build until it fails), finally find one which doesn't rely on the symbol.

13\. Am now running SBCL.

All told, about eight hours.

<comment><USER11> Why are you building, instead of downloading the binary?</comment></comment></comment>


Cloudflare Randomness Printer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloudflare/receipt-printer/ <comment><USER2> Neat project!

You don't really need a lava lamp for this. The Raspberry Pi has a built-in hardware RNG. As long as you have the right module loaded, a Pi is a pretty good source of randomness.

<comment><USER3> I think they're just using their internal entropy generator. They use the lava lamps as part of that, and the internal generator for all sorts of stuff.

[https://twitter.com/grittygrease/status/727587915090403328](https://twitter.com/grittygrease/status/727587915090403328)

<comment><USER4> Neat, I've never heard of the lava lamp wall before. That's extremely interesting. For anyone else that is interested in how it works, I found this explanation on Reddit from /u/kaihatsusha:

"Really good encryption relies on perfectly random / unpredictable numbers.

If you ask a computer to pick a random number, it can really only apply a predictable but complicated calculation on some other number. It may appear random to us but it isn't random to someone who can perform the same calculation. It's like stacking the deck in Poker games.

In computers, "entropy" is essentially a measure of chaos; a bit of information you can get from something that is truly unpredictable. So the idea here is for a video camera to digitize a physical, chaotic phenomenon, like lava lamps or fish in an aquarium or a busy city sidewalk. Use the digitized photo as the core of the random-number generation proceas.

And then two computers could use the same secret random number to seed their encryption; only those who know the secret number will be able to set their Ovaltine Secret Decoder Ring to the correct setting (except in modern days it's hundreds of rings with quintillions of positions each).

In the Cold War, we would do the same thing by measuring moisture in the clouds or drawing numbered balls out of a lottery tumbler. Some crypto programs ask the user to wiggle their mouse for a few seconds to generate entropy. Make ONLY two copies of the data and those two people can communicate secretly."

<comment><USER5> The idea and implementation has been around a while. Lavarand was an early (or first) one.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any photos of the end result? The gif ends too quickly!

<comment><USER2> In a stunning lack of foresight, Cloudflare used the passwords on that particular receipt as the root passwords for their production database servers. They have to cut the gif short to avoid leaking them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it? What's this for?

<comment><USER8> Fun.

<comment><USER7> oh ok! I like fun, just the right amount of fun tho

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That definitely is quite... random!

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope the sudoku puzzle has a seizure trigger warning: [https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/oct...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/oct/19/sudoku- induced-epileptic-seizures)</comment>