Adventure Games and Eigenvalues (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/adventure-games-and-eigenvalues.html <comment><USER2> Application of formal methods is always an interesting read, and this article is a gentle introduction to some of the ideas exploited in probabilistic model checking. However to me, the way the article is written, gives software verification, and CBMC in particular, an unnecessary bad reputation.

> There is no need to define "game progress" or implement a naive game AI, as > formal verification methods appear to require.

> The mathematical verification code is about one-third the size of the formal > verification code presented by the TTTM author

Most of the author's argumentation stems from the different levels of modelling. He pursues verification at _model-level_. That is, he does the interpretation that a "game progress"/"native game AI" would provide, and lifts the problem from the _source-level_ to a formal representation as Markov process.

With that in mind, it should be clear that reasoning on that higher level can be done more efficiently. In fact, if the author of TTTM would have chosen to verify just the transition relation, an even simpler modelling would have sufficed, e.g. via Prism, ITSTools/GAL, SMV.

I just want to stress that the author of TTTM did not just formally verify that the concrete _transition relation_ can not reach a "bad state", but proved that _the actual implementation_ indeed cannot reach said states. For example, this also includes proving that the game's pseudo-random generation of initial states is safe to use.

> The TTTM formal verification code requires a value called MAX_FINISH_DEPTH, > which represents the maximum number of steps required to finish the game > from any valid state. It is unclear how the TTTM author arrived at the > number 18, but the value can easily be calculated using the matrix > representation of the game.

Again, when reasoning at the level of an actual implementation, i.e. software/binaries, such high-level reasoning is not applicable. Therefore, when employing bounded verification techniques, an educated guess about a sufficiently high number of steps must be provided.

<comment><USER3> I didn't read this so much as a critique of formal program analysis so much as a good excuse to talk about an interesting CS use case for linear algebra.

<comment><USER2> I didn't read it as a critique of formal program analysis either. In fact, several aspects of his approach can be found in formal verification of probabilistic systems. However to me, it seems that the author thinks to have accomplished the same thing as the author of TTTM.

> The mathematical method described here has a number of advantages over > formal verification, including reduced code size and complexity.

My comment was intended to stress that the authors achieved different things. This article proved that the game _design_ is sound, i.e. verification at model-level, while the original one proved that the _implementation_ cannot reach certain undesired states. Both are perfectly reasonable, justifiable and necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an engineer, have a degree in Gamedesign and turned UX/UI designer. Many lessons from adventure games/level design are very useful to apply when designing SaaS products (not talking about "gamification". Dead ends is particularly an interesting point in the experience.

One way you could apply lessons from game design into crafting better software products is by breaking down what a game is. Think of it as 3 layers.

\- 1. Set of rules (ex. Finish before opponent)

\- 2. A story/shell around those rules (ex. Race car/horse riding/athletics/etc)

\- 3. Rewarding Experience (ex. Real-world Monetary reward/nice video/animation with your character holding a trophy etc)

——

3\. Is the reason people use your product. What real-world benefit are they seeking?

2\. This is the UI of your product. A race game has a different vibe and audience than a horse racing game. Even though they have the same underlying ruleset. So make sure you tailor your UI to your audience.

1\. This is the UX of your product. Here you'll get core lessons from gamedesign (like dead ends discussed in the article)

You Can always contact me with Ui/UX questions, find my contact details in my bio.

<comment><USER5> Just saying, on your website, the trasparent buttons on the top right really do not mesh well with the background, once you scroll down.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I know, been focussing only on client projects but luckily we finally got someone to rebuild the frontend.

<comment><USER6> Ye olde adage the shoemakers own shoes comes to mind

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this overkill to verify that you don't have any invalid states? Consider the state machine as a directed graph, reverse each edge and run DFS from the end state. if you have any vertices in the graph you didn't visit, they're dead ends. That should be more efficient than the O(n^3) way of finding eigenvectors.

<comment><USER8> More precisely, construct a graph with vertices (u, v) where u is a prior state and v a possible successor state, then there must not be a node of out- degree zero unless it is an end state.

As far as complexity goes, this should be linear in number of vertices. In fact, you don't even really have to construct the graph, just count out degree.

<comment><USER9> That is not enough, since you may still get stuck in a loop.

<comment><USER8> Fair point, but that is inevitable unless it's a game where the user cannot go back, very few games would fit that bill then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bay Area subway and rail costs: Why are they among the highest in the world? - <AUTHOR> https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/18/17464616/bay-area-subway-train-rail-costs-price-bart-muni <comment><USER2> "In Paris, a single planning organization, the RATP, dictates routes and spending for new infrastructure. Individual transit agencies operate trains and buses, they do not plan or construct their own expansions." If only... The new metro lines (around Paris) have been a turf war between many agencies and levels of government.

In everyday life, some suburban trains have to change drivers when they enter and exit Paris because the railways belong to a different organization...

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe the real genius of the Bay Area is to put a lot of wealthy engineers face to face with huge examples of inefficiency and see what comes out: Elon Musk inventions!</comment>


So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a long article, but worth reading. It's analytical and basically non- political. The take away is that taxpayer incomes dropped 5.7% (inflation adjusted) during the Bush years. The number of people earning over $200K, but paying no income tax, went from 2300 in 2000 to 22,300 in 2008.</comment>


Texas Rocks Job Creation (Maybe That's Why Californians Are Moving There) - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2014/03/07/texas-rocks-job-creation-maybe-thats-why

<comment><USER2> Texas also rocks unemployment, the % and absolute # of population in poverty or illiterate, the number of people with untreated medical conditions, property crime, violent crime, and racial crimes.

Let's not even get started on the corruption of its judicial system. _We know without a doubt they executed an innocent man. They lead the nation in executions, and its suspected that more than half of Texas ' death row inmates are innocent of the underlying crimes._ They have more drug seizure corridors than any other state in the nation. If you're not white, the police _will_ harass you.

Texas is great if you are white, wealthy, and in the oil business, or if you live in Austin. And it's horrible otherwise.

<comment><USER3> >Texas is great if you are white, wealthy, and in the oil business...

WHAT!?

>or if you live in Austin

Oh, ok, carry on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or does it?

[http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/04/a-deeper-look-at-the- phony-...](http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/04/a-deeper-look-at-the-phony-texas- miracle/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas- unmiracl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas- unmiracle.html?_r=0)</comment>


Lip Sync Coming to Second Life… And Why This Could Be the Most Important News All Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.trending.us/2008/05/28/lip-sync-coming-to-second-life-and-why-this-could-be-the-most-important-news-all-year/ This is the best news I've heard in a while in regards to Second Life. Lip sync is going to be available to anyone using the official Second Life client. Its also possibly one of the most important innovations to come to SL in years.<p>Mike Monkowski, IBM speech group programmer, has been has been diligently incorporating lip sync code he developed at IBM into the Second Life client for over 6 months. According to an announcement from Mike a couple of days ago, his lip sync code has been added into the official Second Life client. <comment><USER2> If only there were a mechanism to sense our emotions... and sync them.</comment>


How Credit Cards Tax America - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/how-credit-cards-tax-america/ <comment><USER2> Eh, the bitching over credit cards is tiresome. Cash is expensive for businesses too - they have to pay to transport it securely, keep it safe, deal with cashiers' errors, etc. And at the end of the day, cash consumers spend less than payments by electronic means.

Now, what _should_ a very efficient electronic system _cost_? Very little, a few tenths of a percent. But it doesn't, merchants charge the fees that businesses will pay for that convenience, even begrudgingly, because access to the millions of consumers with credit cards is worth it.

If Silicon Valley wants to disrupt the business, do it. It is possible to come in and take on an established industry. But so far I'm less than impressed with the payment start-ups that are out there, and imho all they're doing is introducing yet more fragmentation. Sorry, I have no interest in paying with my phone - especially not with Snapchat. My Chase Sapphire card doesn't run out of batteries, and I get lots of cool perks with it.

<comment><USER3> It's a natural monopoly market, making a better product is not enough.

<comment><USER4> 3% is not price gouging. First, they spent decades building up their networks.

You are paying for indemnity. People forget about the power of purchase protection. I can pay with a card and feel safe I will not get screwed by a merchant. Merchants are scared of chargebacks, so they rarely screw the customer.

Card payment is vastly superior to cash payment the fees are not out of line.

<comment><USER5> > 3% is not price gouging. First, they spent decades building up their > networks.

Except the fee goes to the issuer and not the network.

> You are paying for indemnity. People forget about the power of purchase > protection. I can pay with a card and feel safe I will not get screwed by a > merchant. Merchants are scared of chargebacks, so they rarely screw the > customer.

Then the cardholder should pay for this, certainly not the merchant.

> Card payment is vastly superior to cash payment the fees are not out of > line.

3% is out of line for incrementing an integer in one mainframe and decrementing it in an other mainframe with virtually not risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand. Isn't there something in the US like `Bancontact' ? In Belgium (and, I believe, Germany, The Netherlands, France, etc.) your bank issues you a `debit' card that could act as a credit card but it's not its first use or purpose. When you pay with it you slide it into a terminal, enter your pin and validates the transaction. The money is then transferred from your bank account to the merchant's one. There's only one intermediate between banks and it's the service provider (whose name escapes me at the moment) and there are 0 fees applied. It's on the merchant and it's not percentage based but transaction based (much less than 5ç I believe but the merchant has to rent the terminal).

There are basic insurance for card stealing that covers `some' things and you can buy larger ones if needed.

Why is the credit card the default in the US ?

<comment><USER7> Pretty much every European country has their own incompatible, cheap debit card system. The problem is that they are incompatible, and often difficult to access for outsiders (non-permanent residents). As a contractor, I've be in large company cafeterias where the only payment option was such a card (getting by by handing cash to one of the employees I'm working with, high friction and not very professional).

In the US, when I was an exchange student in the late 90s, I could pay with my local banks ATM card (so, a debit card) in the local supermarket. I can't remember how far that network extended, but it certainly existed.

The reason credit cards are a thing is because processing payments between a global set of debitors and a global set of creditors, instantly and securely (and yes, despite various problems and shortcomings, on the margin, it's very safe), is a pretty hard problem, much more so 20-30 years ago when the current systems came of age. The credit part is necessary because until recently, the technology simply didn't allow for online processing of payments, all the way from the debitors bank account. The payment would clear against your credit, the expectation that you're good for it, not actual cash in your account.

Running such a network is complicated, thus the fees.

In the past 5 or so years, both Visa and MasterCard have introduced proper debit cards, that is, card where payments are instantly processed against your bank account balance. This is still complicated, but essentially a new, much simpler and more modern network, and thus fees are much lower. Despite the security of the legacy network, this is safer yet, which is good for both merchants and bank (and, indirectly, consumers, though arguments can be made over whether the lower fees outweigh the cost of taking on a higher liability).

I expect expensive credit cards to largely go away, if not by regulation, then competition, and be replaced by debit cards and decoupled credit products and travel-benefits/insurance products. On the margin, the vast majority of users will (and economically should) prefer to save ~2% on their spending to earning airline miles.

<comment><USER5> > The credit part is necessary because until recently, the technology simply > didn't allow for online processing of payments, all the way from the > debitors bank account. The payment would clear against your credit, the > expectation that you're good for it, not actual cash in your account.

Nope, that's not at all how MasterCard/VISA debit cards work. They are not processed online, you just have an online authorisation.

> Running such a network is complicated, thus the fees.

Except the fees go to the issuers and not the network.

> In the past 5 or so years, both Visa and MasterCard have introduced proper > debit cards, that is, card where payments are instantly processed against > your bank account balance. This is still complicated, but essentially a new, > much simpler and more modern network, and thus fees are much lower.

Nope, MasterCard/VISA debit cards work just the same way and are processed the same way as credit cards. The only difference is that the issuers charges the card holder later and allows him to overdraw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recent jurisdiction that came into effect in Europe limits transaction fees in Europe to 0.3% of the transaction.

The flip side of this for the customers is that the card rewards/kickbacks are decreased as well.

<comment><USER2> That's not the only downside, this basically kills the possibility of innovation. They're basically solidifying the position of MC and Visa in the market forever, and make it hard for someone else to come in.

So far the U.S. hasn't been so successful in taking the power away from these payment networks, but at least there's a chance. I could see someone like Square coming in and dominating the market with a consumer product in 5-10 years.

<comment><USER9> Square is using Visa/Mastercard too. They mentioned this in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The founder of Coinbase actually left his job at Airbnb to start a Bitcoin company once he realized that credit card fees ate up nearly half of Airbnb's profit margins."

This is so true, and a weakness in cc wth the rise of marketplaces.

I started a side project, a marketplace due to very low margins of suppliers the max we could get in transaction fee including cc processing was 10%.

We did not want to add markups on in store price so had to absorb the costs.

Take a transaction of $100 , e.g you pay 3% fee/$3. For the merchant it is 3% but for you its actually 30%

</comment><comment><USER11> The author mixes in interest, interchange, and fees. What he calls "fees" are actually interchange, and it's a relatively small line item in bank's P&L.

The main source of business income is interest. And interest is so high because it has to offset losses from card members that stopped paying. Remember that credit cards are unsecured products. Banks typically recover only about 20% of the default amount, the rest is gone.

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing I hate most about this whole thing is it's reached a critical mass such that if you don't play the game you're just paying the cost.

I wish stores would simply charge the credit card fee outright as a line item to dis incentivize usage of the credit card (many gas stations do something similar in charging a cash vs credit price).

<comment><USER13> Charging a different price for credit cards is generally against the terms of the contract a merchant has with their card processor.

<comment><USER14> In Europe usually it is allowed (as long as the surcharge reflects the real costs) but it doesn't happen. Notable exceptions are only online travel agents and shops in Denmark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few years ago the regulations in Australia were changed so that the CC companies can't force merchants to cross-subsidise the fees - merchants are allowed to directly pass on the transaction fees as a surcharge if they want.

I've certainly chosen to use alternate payment methods to avoid the surcharge when convenient, so this must be putting some competitive pressure on the CC transaction fees.

<comment><USER16> The next wave of that regulation should come into effect soon - the banks tried some loopholes and merchants like Jetstar claimed they needed to levy huge surcharges so another reform is required:

"the Board is proposing to change the Bank's surcharging standard with the aim of ensuring that customers cannot be surcharged any more than the cost of accepting cards."

"It is proposed that no credit card interchange fee will be able to exceed 0.80 per cent and no debit interchange fee will be able to exceed 15 cents if levied as a fixed amount or 0.20 per cent if levied as a percentage amount."

[http://www.rba.gov.au/media- releases/2015/mr-15-24.html](http://www.rba.gov.au/media- releases/2015/mr-15-24.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All these fees yet the merchant gets almost no protection from the Credit Card companies when their product is forged and used.

Charge backs can happen up to 6 months later and the last time I had a merchant account the permitted response time for a merchant was just 1 day or the full amount plus penalty was taken.

<comment><USER18> IIRC that's not true for in-person transactions in locations where EMV chips have been rolled out and merchants actually use the chip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm genuinely curious why the likes of Walmart and/or Amazon, given their sheer size haven't started their own credit card networks, or even charge accounts for their own stores over using the CC networks...</comment>


Back in the day, US capitalists didn't coup monger in public - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/arindube/status/1287174291918913537 <comment><USER2> No, but they, and US government insiders, often profited from it:

[https://slate.com/business/2008/10/forensic-economists- exami...](https://slate.com/business/2008/10/forensic-economists-examine-the- effects-of-cia-led-coups-on-the-stock-market.html)

[http://econweb.umd.edu/~kaplan/coups.pdf](http://econweb.umd.edu/~kaplan/coups.pdf)</comment>


Bulletin Board Systems: social media before the internet - <AUTHOR> http://thenewstack.io/bulletin-board-systems-social-media-internet/ <comment><USER2> Such beautiful memories those people must have had. I wasn't alive then but it sounded like jolly good fun.</comment>


Gluglug X60 Laptop now certified to Respect Your Freedom  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect-your-freedom <comment><USER2> The RYF guidelines are interesting: [http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria](http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/criteria) .

They require the BIOS / core boot firmware to be open but allow closed peripheral firmware and CPU microcode.

This is a natural allowance as otherwise no modern computer would ever be certifiable, but it's interesting in that it doesn't require the firmware for wired-in peripherals like webcams or wireless chipsets to be open.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure it should be allowable.

WiFi firmware can in theory allow passive monitoring and forwarding of data. This is because the WiFi card is a small self-contained embedded system.

The CPU microcode (and arguably architecture) is more difficult to modify but it's possible that the microcode for an AES round opcode could be intentionally flawed. Enough press is around not to have to explain this.

USB is the one I find interesting. Anything (webcam/keyboard/mouse) could arbitrarily register itself as an HID device and inject data into your OS.

The whole systems architecture is a mess.

I'm not suggesting we go back to discrete wire-wrapped PDP11's but something needs to be done by putting security and privacy first. That means starting again as where we are isn't good.

<comment><USER2> I do agree that it probably _shouldn 't_ be allowable; even minor pieces like webcam firmware have proven very important (see the Apple webcam firmware with no light story from a few days ago).

Plus without the requirement to release firmware for co-processors, some full machines with the potential for DMA and all sorts of nefarious concepts can exist that nobody even notices (SMC, WiFi, Bluetooth, "fan managers" and so on).

With that being said no modern CPU vendor would even think about open-sourcing their CPU microcode especially, so the FSF are stuck between a rock and a hard place. With a true "every single thing open" requirement in place, the only general purpose PC made in the last ten years or so that could hope to come close to passing would be a Chinese MIPS laptop.

<comment><USER4> Can I get a link to that webcam firmware story? I read a little bit about it, but I was looking for a more technical look into why it would be possible to enable a camera with no LED.

I always thought the sensor power was connected also to the LED, to prevent exactly that type of hackery.

<comment><USER5> bluekitten, who appears to be hellbanned for no reason at all, gave this link:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/18...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their- users-without-warning/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They're selling an ancient laptop at a premium because they installed Coreboot. They haven't addressed any of the problems with proprietary firmwares or backdoored chips.

RMS has been recommending the Loongson Lemote for a long time, which would seem to be a much better choice. The Lemote's firmware and hardware is essentially all open source, including its MIPS CPU.

<comment><USER7> 200 quid really isn't so bad, and the X60 was one of the best laptops of the age.

 _And_ it includes a brand new battery and the docking station.

Hmm... I still have fond memories of my X61. This is actually kind of tempting.

<comment><USER3> Do it. I still use a T400 every day and have a T61 as a fallback. There's nothing like them out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not related to the laptop: I like the retailer's site [1]. It's simple and clean. But most importantly there are no 3rd party trackers, and they have chosen not to use Google's surveillance code (Analytics) and instead they use Piwik analytics - which is probably hosted on a server that they control.

[1] [http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/](http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Do these laptops have hardware on/off switches for the webcam and the microphone? If they don't, are there any such laptops? I couldn't find a modern and powerful full HD laptop which has no integrated mic and webcam (which I don't need).

<comment><USER10> That would be an excellent feature and years ago I had a laptop that had a simple plastic sliding piece that would cover the camera lens. Later versions eliminated this piece (it probably broke off too frequently).

I have taped a piece of aluminum foil over every webcam on my laptops/iMac with a large piece of packing tape (making it possible to pull it aside when I do rather frequent video conferences).

I get dismissed as _paranoid_ (or the next question that's asked is "what do _you_ do in front of your computer!"). What they don't understand is that years ago I wrote software for a building access kiosk that involved a one-way video chat, followed with a photograph taken of the visitor. I used an open source library for interacting with the camera. When video was running, the light was on. I had the worst time getting the camera to take a picture, but after a bit of tinkering (read: shooting bullets randomly), I had it working. It was my coworker that noticed the light didn't come on when the picture was being taken. I had done something wrong (so wrong that every few pictures, the camera would stop working and wouldn't recover until the entire machine was rebooted). Though I've been writing software professionally for twenty years or so, I had never wrote code to interact with a web cam and yet had somehow managed to stumble upon this entirely by accident. It gave me the willies, so from that point forward, I covered my cameras with a bit of ugly aluminum foil.

I've never really worried about the microphone, but it would be nice to have some kind of hardware control to disable devices that can be used to record in that manner.

<comment><USER11> I've recently run into one where it's possible to make Android devices recognize the faces of people in front of the device via the front facing camera with no sign of this to the user. Someone has to actually start an app (which needs camera access) and it is possible for it to be killed, but I too did this entirely by accident and would now be super wary about it.

<comment><USER12> A few months ago I added a little tiny square of electrical tape over the front-facing camera in my phone. I never have a reason to take pictures of myself, so I'd rather that camera not exist at all.

<comment><USER13> do that with all my laptops. specially work issued ones ridden with remote access for IT.

a post it cut with just the glue part works fine, easy to replace and leaves no marks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a nice gesture, but I fear they've missed their target market. Most of the people who care about free software are programmers, and programmers need things this laptop doesn't have, namely modern specs and a great screen. Cheap is nice for toys, but not for the computer you use every day to do your job and entertain yourself. This simply isn't a good enough laptop to do everything you'll want to do with it, which means you won't use it all the time, which means your freedom and privacy are compromised.

Give me a laptop that can actually _replace_ my MBP, instead of merely sit on the shelf while I watch movies and surf the web, and we'll talk.

<comment><USER15> I'm one of the programmers to whom this laptop is just perfect. Common hardware that's well supported on almost any platform, good reliability, excellent keyboard and, IIRC, a clit mouse, which I would prefer over the fanciest of touchpads. And not just because it superficially looks like a clit.

Most of my work revolves around programming devices with no more than a couple of megabytes of RAM, most often with no more than a couple of kilobytes. A MBP is far, far more powerful than what I need.

<comment><USER16> Fully agree, not to forget the screen ratio of 3:4 which cannot be found any- more! This together with the excellent keyboard and the trackpoint are me is THE criteria for a developper laptop.

Just ordered one ;)

<comment><USER15> Aye, I don't get all this widescreen crap either.

<comment><USER14> I far prefer to have half the screen devoted to my editor and the other to my browser/docs/terminal/etc. Makes things way more convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> About coreboot, they brought support for ThinkPad x201 too : [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0NDY](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0NDY)

see comments for some acer chromebook work too ([http://johnlewis.ie/](http://johnlewis.ie/))

</comment><comment><USER18> Fine print: The X60 has a Core2 CPU with a variety of errata which require proprietary microcode to fix (typically applied by the Lenovo BIOS).

<comment><USER19> I had a T60 with Core Duo CPU.

AFAIK they were only sold for a couple of months.

<comment><USER20> I have an X60 that can't run a 64 bit Linux, as I found out when I tried to boot the RHEL 7 beta installer. I'm assuming that is a Core Duo rather than a Core Duo 2.

My sample is a Type 1706-CT0 with product ID 1706WB5 and it was manufactured December 2006 (06/12 on the end of the serial number). Did I get 'lucky'?

<comment><USER19> I don't think your issues regarding 64bit Linux have anything to do with CPU.

Mine ran x64 just fine on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER20> My particular X60 has an Intel T2400 Core Duo Mobile processor [1] and this processor has a 32 bit width[2]. I picked an early model, and I decided to pick one up of UK ebay days before finding the site mentioned in the OA!

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo- thinkpad-x60-1706/4507-31...](http://www.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo- thinkpad-x60-1706/4507-3121_7-31661428.html)

[2] [http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_Duo/Intel- Core%20Duo%20T2...](http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_Duo/Intel- Core%20Duo%20T2400%20LF80539GF0342M%20%28BX80539T2400%29.html)

<comment><USER19> Oh, wow. I went and checked, my machine had T2600 CPU and indeed the whole series is a 32bit architecture.

I know that these CPU's are supposedly dual Pentium M processors in single package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Might be worth reading [http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60](http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x60) \- seems like there's still some rough edges on the BIOS replacement.

<comment><USER3> The shipped BIOS is a little rough as well.

The T61 which is where my main experience lies has hardware whitelists for WiFi cards and restricts the internal SATA port to basic SATA speeds rather than SATA2 speeds which the chipset supports.

There are many hacked BIOSes (I use Middleton's BIOS) out there which fix this though.

<comment><USER21> Argh. Lenovo are still doing this.

On my X1, it's impossible to boot from the SD card reader and only the official ($$$) USB Ethernet adapter will allow PXE-boot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is great news! Hopefully this will get the ball rolling so that more modern hardware can be supported with fully free software.

</comment><comment><USER23> I purchased one of these machines running Trisquel. With an SSD it is quite snappy and the IBM keyboard is fantastic. It was a pleasure to purchase from Gluglug, although at the time I was restricted to paying via Paypal.

<comment><USER16> I just ordered one. Payment is still via Paypal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> legendary build quality but ancient hardware.

<comment><USER17> I can testify for the sturdiness of these. And X60's aren't the most robust of the pack. But I bang them once a week and yet no glitch. The platform is ancient, a Haswell ULV will be twice as fast for less than 25% of the TDP, with many added niceties (64bits, vt-*, a decent gpu, ...)

<comment><USER24> I own a T400 and it saved my back twice when sliding on ice. After 5 years of taking it everywhere, it looks like it was barely used. I love it, but damn... a P8600 Core 2 Duo in 2013 is noticeably slow even in browsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Dvorak (UK) layout is also available.

Is this simply a rearrangement of the standard QWERTY keys? Or a "real" Dvorak keyboard? Specifically, the nubs on [F] and [J] are always an impediment to swapping keys.

<comment><USER12> I don't believe Lenovo has made Dvorak laptop keyboards themselves (last time I looked for my T60p, I found nothing), so I _suspect_ they are talking about a rearranged QWERTY that they can do during refurb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's all very cyberpunk, building hardware designed to enable freedom for a small resistance force, salvaged from megacorporation scraps.

I imagine RMS using one while wearing a leather trenchcoat and mirror shades.

</comment><comment><USER27> Article is not good. They keep using the word 'free' as if it means 'open'. Also why is there a picture of an IBM thinkpad? I can imagine the writer just google image searching 'laptop' for this article.

<comment><USER28> >They keep using the word 'free' as if it means 'open'

You're joking, right? Is this your first encounter with the FSF?</comment></comment>


SketchRNN model released in Magenta - <AUTHOR> https://magenta.tensorflow.org/sketch_rnn <comment><AUTHOR> Link to Dataset: [https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/data](https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/data)

Link to Blog Post announcement of Sketch-RNN code: [https://magenta.tensorflow.org/sketch_rnn](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/sketch_rnn)

Link to Paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03477](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.03477)

Link to GitHub Repo of Sketch-RNN code: [https://github.com/tensorflow/magenta/blob/master/magenta/mo...](https://github.com/tensorflow/magenta/blob/master/magenta/models/sketch_rnn/README.md)

Link to previous Hacker News discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14114706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14114706)

</comment><comment><USER2> I was wondering why almost all the drawing by people were "terrible"... and then I saw how they acquired them: [https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com](https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com)

Really hard to do with a mouse in the time allowed... but kind of fun.

<comment><USER3> The page works on our phone too, which is better.

I think this allows noise elimination by averaging though, it distills the key elements of a doodle of a bird, cat, car, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can I use this to work out if something is a hot dog? I've got a killer app idea...

<comment><USER4> It's not that precise, it will only determine whether or not a drawing contains a sandwich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Better if they release the trained model.

<comment><USER6> the jupyter notebook will download a bunch of pre-trained tensorflow lstm models into /tmp/sketch_rnn

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Magenta = Music and Art Generation with Machine Intelligence</comment>


New Common Lisp website - <AUTHOR> http://lisp-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> Discussion on /r/lisp, yesterday: [https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/4j6v8y/lisplangorg_a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/4j6v8y/lisplangorg_a_promotional_common_lisp_website/)

<comment><USER3> (Lack of) discussion here yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11691086)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain to me the main differences between a language like Common Lisp and Haskell?

I'm planning on learning on a purely functional language this year and I've narrowed it down to Haskell and CL but I don't know which to pick. Haskell has sort of been winning due to my friends knowing it and using it.

If you have any resources as well, please let me know. I don't know if this is the right place to post this.

<comment><USER2> Common Lisp is not a purely functional language.

The most caracteristic feature of Lisp in general is that, its whole syntax is the literal representation of one of it's core datatypes, the linked list. This allows for creating idioms of arbitrary complexity and reusable abstractions with ease, one a tiny kernel.

Another wording of this is that the Lisp family of languages represent their programs as data that those programs _directly_ manipulate, and thus, programs can manipulate themselves. This is _homoiconicity_.

For who likes laconicisms, Lisp is a pleasant way to write and execute a parse tree.

The advantage to this is that you can create syntactic abstractions that fit in nicely, that work on structured data instead of strings not parsed and verified yet (hey CPP!) and are reusable by other abstractions.

The disadvantage is that your set of abstractions can become very easily dialects, and the language ecosystem is prone to (and damned by) fragmentation (i.e. every Scheme has it's own module system, and then there's a late standard that nobody uses).

Another advantage of Lisp, though not unique to it neither theoretically nor practically, is the _image_ , that is, the state of the interpreter. Your average Lisp process is code running on a Lisp VM, and the VM allows you to modify the running code. This allows you to pause the thread when an exception happens, modify the code, and _play_ it again, and the program uses the new, modified version of the code. These are called _restarts_ and supported at least in Steel Bank Common Lisp, and are well integrated into SLIME, the canonical Emacs mode for Common Lisp and other uncommon (!) lisps. This is so powerfull, I read that in one space mission, when they spotted a bug in the code of a research apparatus already in space, they connected to its image and hotpatched the code fixing the bug, saving NASA millions of dollars.

<comment><USER5> "its whole syntax is the literal representation of one of it's core datatypes, the linked list"

"Your average Lisp process is code running on a Lisp VM, and the VM allows you to modify the running code"

Thank you. As a non-Lisper, this is probably the clearest explanation of Lisp's qualities I've ever read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love common lisp. That being said, i feel like this effort might be better spent contributing to modernizing and cleaning up / updating the existing community sites like cliki.net.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what would you like to see updated on cliki.net? I wrote cliki2 with Andrey Moskvitin so a lot of the changes from the first cliki ended up being our opinions.

<comment><USER6> I guess the point I was trying to make wasn't that cliki in particular has any shortcomings, but that more hands on any particular open source effort tend to yield more fruit that those hands spread across as many independent efforts.

The CL community in general has some amazingly prolific contributors, though perhaps fewer in number than other languages enjoy. One thing I've always noticed, though, is that the resources out there lack the "glue" to tie everything together. Cliki is definitely one resource that does that, Quicklisp and its doc page ([https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/UNOFFICIAL/docs/](https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/UNOFFICIAL/docs/)) is another. Here's something of a motivating example... I wanted to mess around with building a multi-threaded server the other day. I went to Cliki, found usocket and bordeaux-threads, from their descriptions it sounded like they would be a reasonable starting point to build on. The API documentation and tests in their repository for both projects left me scratching my head... Then I started searching for applications that used them and between Cliki and Googling didn't find many great examples. Then I said, well, let's step back and see how Hunchentoot handles its networking layer. Turns out it uses -- wait for it -- usocket and bordeaux-threads.

Maybe it would be helpful to link from the "recommended libraries" (and other topic pages) to projects that use each library? I don't really have any concrete advice, I just feel like one of the things the CL resources out there lack is some layer that ties everything together. Cliki is a great starting point, but it might benefit from more hands.

That's certainly not (not by a long shot) the only place where the scattered CL resources out there could benefit from volunteers. There are untold numbers of things like ([https://common-lisp.net/project/common-lisp- beginner/](https://common-lisp.net/project/common-lisp-beginner/)) this floating around that more hands would help.

Sometimes the answer isn't, hey, let me make my own site -- maybe step back and consider whether your efforts could benefit the community more if you lent your time to something that already exists. Just a thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it amusing that their picture for stability is a mountain right next to a supervolcano.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is PG's note on ITA software from 2001 [http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html)

It's all good stuff but I would wonder about any language community that hadn't gotten any other big hitters onboard in the last 15 years.

<comment><USER10> I used to work at ITA. I seem to recall Carl admitting at one point that the choice of language had mostly to do with the fact that he and Jeremy were most familiar with Common Lisp, having used it while pursuing their doctoral degrees, and that he probably would have chosen Java in retrospect (this was in 2007). The actual code was not the clean functional code you might expect (and as the email above notes, much of it was also written in C++, half by line count IIRC). In fact, there was interest in parallelizing parts of QPX (the low airfare search engine in question) to speed up search, but it was not amenable to such changes without first having to untangle a bunch of single threaded side effecting code and without incurring penalties in performance or resource consumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure if bug, but the right curly double quotes in the CL snippets bother me way more than they probably should. In the source, it's simply a " character, so the CSS is likely conflicting somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love (sarcastically) how the Start here -> First Steps does not include any instructions on how to get a Common Lisp installed and running on your computer.

<comment><USER13> [http://lisp-lang.org/learn/getting-started/](http://lisp- lang.org/learn/getting-started/)

The link is above the 'Tutorials' heading. Maybe it needs some custom style to make it stand out.

<comment><USER14> I did a double-take on that as well, so it might.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use (typed) Racket and it's wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER16> Learning Scheme with SICP right now, and there's a question I'm now pondering: how does one choose between Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket, Clojure and others? Is there a good comparison of Lisp-derived languages somewhere?

<comment><USER17> Stick with Scheme for SICP.

As for the other Lisps, I think you should give them all a lengthy and serious try. It's worth it.

For Common Lisp, when you have learnt it a bit, get the book Let over Lambda. It's a great bus-ride read and, IMHO, is one of the best Lisp books I've read.

When you get to Clojure, don't be put off by the JVM and the harsh stack traces and unhelpful error messages. Look at the Rich Hickey video presentations and realize Clojure is its own thing. There are lots of smart and practical choices made in Clojure.

I've not had time to give Racket a try yet. But it seems a very nice language with good implementation, docs and community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Click specification: "We're currently working on parsing the TeX sources of the specification to generate a more modern version of the CLHS.

This might take a while."

Yeah, that's probably not the message you want to send after all the virtues (e.g. speed) listed on the first page.

<comment><USER19> Why? They're just being honest about it. It's a large spec and it surely isn't that easy to convert it to a more modern format.

<comment><USER18> Put up a pdf (if you have TeX you can get a pdf), but don't make some technical argument that makes you sound slow. This is marketing not a technical talk.

<comment><USER20> The CLHS[1] they mentioned has been available online for ages. What they're talking about is making a more modern site. Generating a PDF from the spec wouldn't get them any closer to that goal.

[1]: [http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index...](http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index.htm)

<comment><USER18> Then don't put a specification link on the home page and wait until it is done. The text is non-helpful to marketing the language particularly when books are actually available and linkable that can be read now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate the current trend for websites to have about a page's worth of information spread over about eight pages' worth of space. I'm used to seeing it on startup websites, where it doesn't bother me so much because I expect those to be trendy. But I'm recently seeing it infect websites of old school geek projects that I feel should know better. This is one example and the new emacs website a few days ago was another.

<comment><USER22> I'll allow it. Lisp in general (and Common Lisp in particular) desperately needs better marketing, which unfortunately is susceptible to the vagaries of fashion. If dressing it up a little makes it more attractive to the next generation, then mission accomplished.

<comment><USER23> Sorry, but a "website" which is basically a set of powerpoint slides in Javascript is certainly not going to help "market" anything.

And to add insult to the injury, when you actually suffer through those empty marketing slogans, you get down to a big link "Start here" \- which unveils a link to few very basic tutorials.

What exactly is the point of such "website"? The information value of this is zero. What a waste of time.

A much better (but not the latest web framework buzzword compliant) resource is this: [http://www.lisperati.com/](http://www.lisperati.com/)

<comment><USER24> You may have found it to be a waste of time, but I thought it was a pretty good introduction. Probably the furthest I've gotten into Common Lisp over the past ten years or so.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Future of Indian Technology - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/the-future-of-indian-technology/

<comment><USER2> The article states that

      "The Indian technology industry got its start running
       call centers and doing low-level IT work for western
       firms".

The Indian technology industry existed much before call centers became a vogue in India (which was around mid 90's).

A few facts:

a. ISRO has been launching satellites since 70's

b. HCL Infosystems launched the first microcomputer in India in 1977 (<http://www.hclinfosystems.com/op_history.htm>)

c. Texas Instruments had their development office setup in India in 1985

Various facts like above show that though IT industry got a boom in India in 90s, its origins can be traed to much earlier years.

<comment><USER3> Many people fail to see the formation of the launching pad and glorify the launch

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the Indian economy has improved, employability of engineers has improved. As a result, many of the fresh grads and seasoned engineers find it okay to not do a job for some time and try to start on their own. (feeling safe that they can get employed whenever they want) Thus, barring some geopolitical upheaval, future of Indian technology is definitely going to be better than its present.

However, the statement "when all of the action is in Bangalore, who needs Silicon Valley?", is very much an overstatement. While India does provide opportunities for some unique business models (based on large population, unorganized markets), the "action" there is significantly less than the "action" in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER5> I am one of those, passed out recently and doing a startup. I don't know about others but I am just doing it. I don't know why one would need to wait for some social change to happen to do things. Bangalore is nice actually. I moved from Rajasthan to here. It's just good. I don't know much but it's better than most of the place in India to do a tech startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of those useless article which talks about something seeing it in just one event. NASSCOM? what is it?

<comment><USER6> NASSCOM may not be important. But, I feel that the times are changing in India. In the last few months, I have seen people dropping out of their so- called safe jobs and choosing to work on what they like (that includes me too). My feeling is that only people in the developed countries do it.

But, the majority is still happy with the virtual safety of the job in service industry. With hundreds of thousands of people still talking about the dowries they can get if they hold on to the 'IT job', what else can you expect?</comment></comment>


Rackspace Investigating Current Issue - <AUTHOR> http://status.mosso.com/2009/12/cloud-sites-dfw-investigating-current-issue.html

<comment><USER2> A bit off topic, but: I like the way you get redundancy with Amazon: Elastic Load Balancing can proxy traffic to multiple availability zones. That said, Amazon AWS have had outages this year - goes with the business.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was wondering what happened. This wasn't just the cloud, it affected our dedicated box in DFW too.

</comment><comment><USER4> We just had a discussion about this here, about redundancy and how to achieve it. I think a big problem is that web browsers don't try multiple IP addresses - am I correct in this?

What I'm thinking is that if a DNS server goes down, no big deal, DNS clients just try another server. But if a web-browser can't connect on the first address it resolves, it won't try other addresses?

If so, could this be fixed on the client side? Would this even need a RFC?

<comment><USER5> Almost all modern web browsers will try multiple A records on a connection failure. You do though need to make sure the connection to the first fails quickly and doesn't time out for some reason.

<comment><USER6> Seems like this could be addressed by a browser UI enhancement. That is, let the user decide when to cut off a slow connection and try another IP. After n seconds show a "try elsewhere" bar.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like a bad solution for such a problem.

Imagine your typical internet user going to yahoo.com and being asked "Try elsewhere?". They'd have no idea what that means. They don't know what IP addresses, servers or anything like that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is divine punishment for the term "the cloud."</comment>


Alfred Knows – Vetted Email Verification Vendor Recommendations - <AUTHOR> http://alfredknows.com/

<comment><USER2> Services like this are fucking scum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean email verification service providers or our vendor recommendation service?

If it's the former, there are good guys not-so-good guys in the email verification space and that's the primary problem we're trying to solve with Alfred Knows. We secret shop a short list of whitehat vendors we recommend plus users provide additional feedback on their experience which validates or contradicts our opinions.

If it's the latter, you must be under the impression that Alfred Knows is some sort of lead generation service; it's not. The companies we recommend would never receive the contact or project details of any user however the user may receive a small discount, and we may receive small a referral commission, if a user transacts with a vendor we recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Need to clean an email list? Alfred Knows recommends vetted email verification companies based on the makeup and size of your list.</comment>


Ask HN: What emerging technology do you think is the most interesting and why? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Theres a really interesting list of some on wikipedia - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies)

</comment><comment><USER3> Head mounted displays (Oculus Rift, SteamVR, Hololens). I think a new market (at least for games) is finally emerging here.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm really enjoying developing software for wireless sensor networks. It's amazing how much you can do with 10KB of RAM (that's including RAM for the operating system too).

<comment><USER5> Just out of curiosity what types of projects are you working on?

<comment><USER4> My projects thus far has been purely academic. I built a middleware for data gathering applications that need best-effort anycasting to the nearest base station. The middleware runs on ContikiOS. At present it is still a prototype. I need to improve the resilience of sensor to base station communication for multi hop paths, make improvements to the route announcement protocol and respective timeout equations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ngx/mod_pagespeed, because it implements best practices without interfering with developer workflow.

Also the QUIC protocol, gotta save round trips... Hope to see it more widely- implemented.

<comment><USER7> These are very neat. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To put it simply: containers. Mostly because they are gaining a lot of traction and their use cases seem to be molding a whole new concept of our technology stacks.

</comment><comment><USER9> pretty excited about digital manufacturing - I think instead of 3d printers in every home we'll be able to eg. Scan your foot, upload, and get a shoe that fits you exactly.</comment>


Apple gets even deeper into healthcare - <AUTHOR> http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Apple-Buys-Healthcare-Magic-Machine-83831.html <comment><USER2> An Apple a day keeps the doctor away.</comment>


Python Without GIL. The Gilectomy Branch of CPython - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/larryhastings/gilectomy <comment><USER2> 17:05 -> Would someone please explain to me how is that not breaking C extensions? Isn't it possible to create a system that implies an "auto-lock arround c extensions" (29:53) on the current C extensions but would allow future non-GIL safe extensions to run freely?</comment>


Hong Kong leader to announce formal withdrawal of extradition bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3025641/hong-kong-leader-carrie-lam-announce-formal-withdrawal <comment><USER2> I don't think Beijing anticipated or endorsed this. In context of Lams leaked resignation remarks yesterday, it looks like Lam is going rogue. She's setting herself up to be replaced via disobedience, because all signs pointed to Emergency Regulations Ordinance being invoked if protest continues. Her legacy is already ruined, but I think she doesn't have the stomach to double down that far.

Beijing specifically instructed Lam not to give in to any demands a week ago. Lam capitulating is Beijing capitulating, and Beijing is not going to capitulate with 70th anniversary coming up and activated mainland nationalism. Beijing is all in. For mainlanders, after how events have been portrayed by state media, Lam is basically acquiescing to terrorists. The situation is developing and I think there's a very narrow set of outcomes where this would not backfire spectacularly.

<comment><USER3> I would argue that Beijing didn't anticipate the resolve of the protestors, but they would certainly know about and endorse Lam's backdown.

China is happy to play the long game - they apply pressure to HK to bring them inline with China, people protest, they back of a little, but not all the way. They wait ... then apply pressure again. The idea is that by 2047 when the 'one country, two systems' arrangement expires, HK will fully accept the China way of life. Lam backing down is an easy way to defuse the situation for now and they can try again later.

I expect to see this cycle of peace, then protest, then peace again continue for years - each time, HK will lose a few more rights they used to have.

<comment><USER4> _each time, HK will lose a few more rights they used to have._

Very likely. Sucks for HK people though :(

Same story everywhere - nothing much changed after the Arab spring protests, for example.

As impressive as they are, how long can Hong Kong people keep up this level of protests? Beijing can keep the pressure forever and play the long game

<comment><USER5> > Same story everywhere - nothing much changed after the Arab spring protests, > for example.

Except in Tunisia, which is the one success story from that time period. It's now a functioning democracy. Of course the real test is how it does over the long term, but at least so far it's an example of real change in the region.

<comment><USER6> Revolutions don't produce democracies.

<comment><USER7> One counterexample is the American Revolution.

<comment><USER8> I doubt if the early United States was very much democratic in the modern sense.

<comment><USER9> It was probably more so then now rather than less.

<comment><USER10> When only white land owning men could vote?

<comment><USER11> The status quo. You're condemning men for maintaining the status quo in order to agree on something going forward on a handful of issues when every other word was essentially revolutionary.

This is prior to the Article I branch of government, Congress, abdicating much of its power and creating this myth of coequal branches of government, and when House districts were a lot smaller, and you and your neighbors has to decide between yourselves who was in charge of certain functions of keeping society going. You know, who was going to be the local Sheriff, who was going to run the local court, who was going to deliver the mail and so on. Many of these jobs were boring and without glory, but someone had to do them.

Had Madison's Virginia Plan been implemented in full and the Connecticut Compromise wasn't implemented, it would likely have been more democratic still.

Structurally, the United States constitution is overwhelmingly democratic, and especially for the time it was written and ratified. If it has grown less democratic at all, it is due to factors the signers and ratifiers of the Constitution could never have predicted that occurred in the 230 years since. No one could have foreseen Congress would abdicate much of it's power and responsibilities in the 20th Century, or that the Industrial Revolution would lead to the single greatest explosion of the human population in history, or that we would choose to let in so many foreigners. Nobody thought each House member would be representing a district in the hundreds of thousands at a time when they thought one House member per 50K might be too few.

Is it democratic? Oh yes. It is the most democratic document of its time, and few legal documents written since then could plausibly claim to be more so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The whole world is in for a seismic shift, not just HK.

Xi used the word "struggle (斗争)" 58 times in his speech yesterday at the Central Party School.

[http://xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-09/03/c_1124956081.htm](http://xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-09/03/c_1124956081.htm)

-

Another important thing is the collapse of Chinese pork industry due to African swine fever, unlike other monoculture diseases such as mad cow and banana Panama disease, it has no cure and prevention, it's doomed in the foreseeable future.

It hit China particularly hard because pork is their cheapest(by a large margin) and main red meat, compounding it is that China can't deign to import cheap NA feed crops and pork coz America is the enemy now, price is now around 3 dollars per 500g, pricier than imported Australian beef (Chinese beef is usually twice the price of pork), and is expected to hike even more during holiday season and Chinese new year, maintain a high level after that.

Chinese people don't care about politics, but pork prices will push basically everything more expensive and force them to care, and that's dangerous for the party.

<comment><USER13> A few months ago China banned Canadian pork on the grounds of forged export certificates (without specifying which exporter). It was seen in Canada as more retaliation over the arrest of the Huawei exec.

Now they are looking pretty silly with vastly less pork being produced domestically.

<comment><USER12> Well, the party has stated loud and clear that China will fight America (and the evil West) no matter what, at all costs and to the very end.

<comment><USER14> Soviet communists also used to say this.

<comment><USER15> Americans say this all the time, too. Remember McCain, and his promise of one hundred years of war in Iraq?

<comment><USER16> Seems like that ones coming through on schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't believe in her word yet. Her word is "move a motion" when the Legislative Council resume in October, and the Security Minister, John Lee Ka- Chiu, submit the withdrawal to LegCo.

At that point, the pro-Beijing LegCo member can reject such motion and continue the third reading of the bill and Beijing win.

The other possibility is where we, the Hongkonger, continue demanding the rest of the four major demands, and CCP and Lam got so annoyed and trying to order a curfew. Again, this is not something any of us want.

<comment><USER18> This is another fake move by Carrie Lam. A withdraw only requires a simple declaration and not a motion that require a vote.

[https://thestandnews.com/politics/林鄭連扮讓步都要違反程序- 仲有面講法治/](https://thestandnews.com/politics/林鄭連扮讓步都要違反程序-仲有面講法治/)

<comment><USER19> Link is Chinese. Just FYI to other non-Chinese readers.

What are the LegCo rules of procedure around this? Is there something we can read in English translation?

Whether or not a motion is required seems a major point.

<comment><USER18> __* Updated: Office of the Chief Executive just responded to media inquiry [4] and clarified that the withdraw will be an announcement not involving vote or debate per rule 64. (I haven 't found an English copy yet.)

Before update:

Today's press release [1]: "The Secretary for Security will move a motion according to the Rules of Procedure when the Legislative Council resumes."

The relevant official text of the above chinese link: Rule of Procedure of the Legislative Council (LegCo) 64(2) and (3)[2]: "(2) The Member or public officer in charge of a bill may, by an announcement made in Council at the beginning of proceedings for the resumption of the second reading debate on the bill, withdraw the bill if -

(a) the purpose of the resumption is for making such an announcement; and

(b) such purpose has been so stated in the notice of the resumption of debate given under Rule 54(5) (Second Reading). (L.N. 74 of 2005)

(3) The Member or public officer in charge of a bill may, in making an announcement for the withdrawal of the bill under subrule (2), address the Council on matters relevant to the withdrawal but no debate may arise on such an address. (L.N. 74 of 2005)"

So no motion/debate/vote is needed. People are saying the Article 23/national security bill in 2003 was withdrawn by simple gazetting, without any motion or debate. This is the equivalent press back then [3].

[1] [https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201909/04/P2019090400666...](https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201909/04/P2019090400666p.htm)

[2] [https://www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/procedur/content/pa...](https://www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/procedur/content/partk.htm#64)

[3] [https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200309/05/0905155.htm](https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200309/05/0905155.htm)

[4] [https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1478843-20190905.h...](https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1478843-20190905.htm)

<comment><USER19> Thanks. Informative. I agree, it seems that simply gazetting a withdrawal without debate is consistent with the rules.

<comment><USER18> This shows how little trust is left with the government (if any). Carrie Lam went from, "all works has stopped" to "the bill is dead" while refusing to follow proper process until today. Finally doing what she previously claimed to be unnecessary, after so many pain and damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Five demands, not one less.

五大訴求,缺一不可。

<comment><USER21> Can someone translate / explain this ?

<comment><USER22> > _Can someone translate / explain [five demands, not one less]?_

From the article:

"Apart from the formal withdrawal of the legislation, the protesters have asked for the government to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate police conduct in tackling the protests, grant amnesty to those who have been arrested, stop characterising the protests as riots, and restart the city's stalled political reform process."

All that said, this is just a slogan. Different protesters put weight on different elements of this menu. Each concession takes people off the street. Given how reasonable many of the demands are, it makes sense for someone to be an adult in the room to Xi's pettiness.

<comment><USER23> Third and Fourth are ridiculous. I'm sorry but you don't set things on fire on the streets, bite people's finger off, throw petrol bombs, tie up people at the airport and say hey guys please grant amnesty, this wasn't a riot. Please grow up and take responsibility. If you choose to make those actions you take the consequences for them.

Fifth, I can understand and dialogue can start and bickering in legislation, whatever, depending on definition this is achievable, but if you expect a democracy overnight then I have a strong urge to post a link to a music video.

Hense, as per my comments below, demanding all five demands to be satisfied is not constructive and to some degree immature.

<comment><USER24> It is not an amnesty. It is a necessary condition for a return to peace. There is zero incentive to stop for the protesters if they are going to be jailed for protesting. The alternative is an ever escalating oppression-protest cycle.

<comment><USER25> The incentive is to avoid the PRC Army.

<comment><USER26> I believe this was covered by

> The alternative is an ever escalating oppression-protest cycle.

Anyway, I don't believe recreating June 4 is a wise move for PRC at this time. The whole world is watching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Carrie Lam has not withdrawn the law proposal. She has begun a motion that will look into IF the proposal is going to be withdrawn. This is a world of difference.

Additionally, from what can be read in various updates from the protesters, the person who will be tasked with the "looking-into" will be a Hong Kong government official, and the public will not be invited for enquiry.

</comment><comment><USER2> Transcript of Lam's speech:

Fellow citizens,

For more than two months, protests arising from the Fugitive Offenders Bill have continued. Our citizens, police and reporters have been injured during violent incidents. There have been chaotic scenes at the airport and MTR stations; roads and tunnels have been suddenly blocked, causing delay and inconvenience to daily life. Visitors wonder whether our city is still a safe place for travel or business. Families and friends have been under stress, and arguments have flared. We have also seen abuse and bullying in some schools and on the Internet. For many people, Hong Kong has become an unfamiliar place.

Incidents over these past two months have shocked and saddened Hong Kong people. We are all very anxious about Hong Kong, our home. We all hope to find a way out of the current impasse and unsettling times.

Of the "five demands" raised by the public, we have in fact responded on various occasions:

(i) First, on withdrawing the Bill. On June 15 I announced that the Bill was suspended and later reiterated that "the Bill is dead" and that all the legislative work had come to a complete halt;

(ii) Second, on setting up a Commission of Inquiry. The Government believes that matters relating to police enforcement actions are best handled by the existing and well-established Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC), which was set up for exactly this purpose. In addition to handling complaints against individual police officers, the IPCC has undertaken a fact-finding study, under its powers, on the handling of large-scale public order events that took place after June 9. One focus will be the Yuen Long incident on July 21 which attracted serious public concern. The study aims to ascertain the facts, to assess the police handling of protests, and to make recommendations to the Government. The IPCC has established a panel of international experts to assist in its work and will make its findings and recommendations public;

(iii) Third, on the matter of the protest being a riot. We have explained that in fact there is no legal effect on how such incidents are described or categorised. The Department of Justice has assured the public that each and every prosecution decision is based on the evidence collected, and is in strict accordance with the relevant law and the Prosecution Code;

(iv) Fourth, on dropping charges against protesters and rioters and shelving prosecutions. I have explained that this is contrary to the rule of law, and is not acceptable. It also goes against the Basic Law, which states that criminal prosecutions must be handled by the Department of Justice, free from any interference;

(v) Fifth, on implementing universal suffrage. Indeed, this is the ultimate aim laid down in the Basic Law. As we said before, if we are to achieve this, discussions must be undertaken within the legal framework, and in an atmosphere that is conducive to mutual trust and understanding, and without further polarising society.

Our responses to the five demands have been made with full consideration of different constraints and circumstances. I recognise that these may not be able to address all the grievances of people in society. However, should we all think deeply whether escalating violence and disturbances is the answer? Or whether it is better to sit down to find a way out through dialogue.

Many would say that we need a common basis to start such a dialogue, and that this has to start with the Chief Executive. I now present four actions to initiate this dialogue. First, the Government will formally withdraw the Bill in order to fully allay public concerns. The Secretary for Security will move a motion according to the Rules of Procedure when the Legislative Council resumes.

Second, we will fully support the work of the IPCC. In addition to the overseas experts, I have appointed two new members to the IPCC, namely Mrs Helen Yu Lai Ching-ping and Mr Paul Lam Ting-kwok, SC. I pledge that the Government will seriously follow up the recommendations made in the IPCC's report.

Third, from this month, I and my Principal Officials will reach out to the community to start a direct dialogue. People from all walks of life, with different stances and backgrounds are invited to share their views and air their grievances. We must find ways to address the discontent in society and to look for solutions.

Fourth, I will invite community leaders, professionals and academics to independently examine and review society's deep-seated problems and to advise the Government on finding solutions. After more than two months of social unrest, it is obvious to many that discontentment extends far beyond the Bill. It covers political, economic and social issues, including the oft-mentioned problems relating to housing and land supply, income distribution, social justice and mobility, and opportunities for our young people, as well as how the public could be fully engaged in the Government's decision-making. We can discuss all these issues in our new dialogue platform.

Fellow citizens, lingering violence is damaging the very foundations of our society, especially the rule of law. Some people, though not many, attacked the Central Government's office in Hong Kong and vandalised the national flag and national emblem. This is a direct challenge to "One Country, Two Systems". Both have put Hong Kong in a highly vulnerable and dangerous situation. Irrespective of our grievances, or the depth of discontentment towards the Government, we cannot agree or accept that violence is a solution to our problems. Our foremost priority now is to end violence, to safeguard the rule of law and to restore order and safety in society. As such, the Government has to strictly enforce the law against all violent and illegal acts.

My team and I hope that the four actions just announced can help our society to move forward. Let's replace conflicts with conversations, and let's look for solutions.

</comment><comment><USER28> Random: Did you know Guangzhou (Canton) was briefly capital of China back in the day? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_(1912%E2%80%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_\(1912%E2%80%931949\))

There's an important political figure in the history of modern China: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat- sen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen)

He studied medicine in HK. He lived in Hawaii for a time [1]. He had a political philosophy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People)

To my surprise I found Sun Yat-sen is still revered in China. He was Cantonese, like many of HK people. He has a University in GZ named after him!

If you would like to learn more about history of China this professor is fantastic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Baum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Baum), in particular, _The Fall and Rise of China The Teaching Company, 2010_ is really good. It's on audible.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20131016060255/http://media.nara...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131016060255/http://media.nara.gov/pacific/san- francisco/gallery/9995-Cabin-Sun-Yat-Sen.pdf)

<comment><USER29> > He was Cantonese

What does that even mean? He's a dialect? Sun Yat-sen is widely regarded as the founding father of modern China(as apposed to Qing dynasty). This is beyond political differences. That's why he's highly regarded on both sides. And believe or not, Kuomintang started out as a left wing party as well. They received tons of aids from Soviet Union when they were initially founded.

<comment><USER30> People who have roots in the province of Guangdong (previously Canton) refer to themselves as Cantonese. A fair amount of people in HK identify both as Hongkongers and Cantonese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If push comes to shove Beijing will kill the "not-so-golden-now goose". Especially now that Xi has effectively consolidated control over the coercive forces of the Chinese state. As long as the security and the army is with him it will work. Worse case the SAR region is dissolved and a party official is sent to govern directly. A lot of people said if Beijing cracked down in '89 that would be the end of the regime but that never happened. Obviously there are parallels and differences but overall I see Hong Kong as being at least one order of magnitude less severe than Beijing, then even some party official's kids were protesting and they got rolled over with tanks all the same.

I can see where the protestors are coming from, for them, its like living in a world you increasingly don't understand and is alien. But at the same time, I think internally they have to know this protest is just an outward manifestation of fatalism, "shattering like a jewel". If I were a youth in Hong Kong, I either find a way to immigrate or find a way to integrate.

<comment><USER7> _Worse case the SAR region is dissolved and a party official is sent to govern directly._

Nah, the worst case is that some of the protesters acquire nuclear weapons, threaten mainland China with them, Xi calls their bluff and moves in, it wasn't a bluff, Xi blames America, nuclear World War 3 starts.

Or perhaps this peaceful protest gets quashed, and a violent insurrection that lasts decades begins. Beijing has a lot of places to hide IEDs.

But it is possible that this dies down and Hong Kong peacefully submits to communism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Off-topic: how is this website readable without ad blocking? They seem to attempt to make finding the bit belonging to the article a game of whack a mole

<comment><USER33> The AMP link helps, in the browser "links".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> 5 demands only one been solved, hong kong gov must meet all the demands .otherwise bomb will notsafely dismantled and things keep complexed..

</comment><comment><USER35> Hong Kong case should be something kids learn at school.

People have the power to make a change no matter how impossible the situation seems to be.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone able to share how this is being framed in the Chinese media?

</comment><comment><USER37> Direct action, as they say, gets the goods.

</comment><comment><USER38> Direct action works.

</comment><comment><USER39> Tip for protesters: paint cocktails. Bottles with hard to remove paint. I bet police will run out of uniforms quickly. They wont be seen on streets in painted suits and face shields.

<comment><USER40> What paint is hard to wash off? You can remove most with acetone or paint thinner (mineral spirits).

<comment><USER39> > Tip for protesters: paint cocktails. Bottles with hard to remove paint. I > bet police will run out of uniforms quickly. They wont be seen on streets in > painted suits and face shields.

Dunno, but graffiti is a pain to wash off the walls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hong kong Gov should meet all 5 demands from hker, otherwise the bomb will keep on fire..Thausands people still been captured illegal.. Hong kong is great city and place for Chinese people to discuss the democracy and freedom .. freedom land for billion people Hope..

</comment><comment><USER41> Now HKG have gave them an inch. I hope they have plenty of miles to spare.

The "five demands, no less" itself is impossible for HKG. EB itself is already dead months ago. This will only embolden they rioters.

10 dollars on 0907 will be even worse.</comment>


Don Knuth proposes new word: 'to ture' = 'to use the internet' - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news.html

<comment><USER2> Knuth's suggested pronunciation is kind of awkward. I'd suggest using it like it's a homophone for "tour".

</comment><comment><USER3> What happened to "web surfing"?

<comment><USER2> What if you're on IRC or Usenet instead?</comment></comment>


The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting. Rationality is only weakly correlated with intelligence. And rational thinking can be taught.</comment>


Blogspot Down? - <AUTHOR>

Well, seems so: http://www.isup.me/blogspot.com<p>No blogspot blogs loading for me (in Goa, India)...
downforeveryoneorjustme? <comment><USER2> You know it just redirects to <http://blogger.com/home> anyway right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but the whole domain was down for a few minutes for me.... No blogspot blogs loaded either. And isup.me also showed it down, so just wanted an opinion. Guess it was just a DNS issue for me!</comment></comment>


Appeals Court: Judge Can't Ignore the Supreme Court to Keep Patent Cases in TX - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170921/17090738264/appeals-court-tells-patent-trolls-favorite-judge-he-cant-just-ignore-supreme-court-to-keep-patent-cases-texas.shtml <comment><USER2> Not a lawyer and haven't read that many rulings, but this one looked pretty normal and not that "sarcasm-oozing" to me. These decisions often come with elaborate reasoning behind them, with references backing them up. Sometimes they need to use a "common meaning" of a term rather than a legal one, and so they might cite a dictionary. At least that is what this one looks like.

The inverse of Poe's law, or just a typical article trying to churn up some rageviews?

<comment><USER3> > Not a lawyer and haven't read that many rulings, but this one looked pretty > normal and not that "sarcasm-oozing" to me.

Yeah, so, it's hard to detect variation from the norm if you have no basis for understanding where the baseline and range of normal variation is.

While not a lawyer, I've studied law and read _lots_ of court rulings, and the excerpt provided is pretty high on the list of the most condescending rejections of a lower court decision I've seen.

> Sometimes they need to use a "common meaning" of a term rather than a legal > one, and so they might cite a dictionary.

Citing, for the same common term, both a 1911 general-use dictionary and the 1891 first edition of Black's Law (other than for a time-specific meaning of a term in a turn-of-the-century law), on top on the "this is a noun, this is an adjective that modifies the noun" bit, is pretty much saying "English...it's a thing you might want to look into."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the amount of damage this judge has done, I'd say he should be in jail for abuse of process. But I'm sure he's sufficiently covered his back.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain to me Judge Gilstrap's motive for these rulings and funneling cases to his district? Does he take kickbacks from the patent holders? Does it force business into his area? Or maybe he is just an asshole?

<comment><USER6> I believe I read his son is the lawyer representing the patent-holders (it could have been another judge there, though).

<comment><USER7> In addition to the reason that you stated there is also an amount of power that is conveyed to him by being so involved in the way that he is. It's an entirely bureaucratic way of thinking and what people of even nominal power (say the janitor who controls the supply closet) thrive on. While you can't argue the importance of a judge in a case like this (not a janitor) his importance and good feeling by getting positive feedback from attorneys filing cases which he handles must be quite the drug. To him it must be like being able to decide who gets an academy award or into a good school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A cash fine would teach a more effective lesson.

I doubt he cares about the words as much as money.

<comment><USER9> I think this ruling will severely curtail his future income.

He had managed to attract 25% of all patent cases because those bringing the suites were choosing his troll-friendly court.

However, going forward, those trolls will have to go to the court where the defendant has a physical place?

<comment><USER10> > _I think this ruling will severely curtail his future income._

Um, no. Under Article III section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, federal judges are appointed for life, and their salary cannot be reduced [0]. In general, judges are prohibited from accepting compensation from parties before them, and indeed are quite restricted in what outside compensation they can accept for anything [1].

[0] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii)

[1] [http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vol02c-ch10.pdf](http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vol02c-ch10.pdf)

<comment><USER11> It's interesting then what makes Gilstrap so energetic in his efforts to keep those patent-cases coming. Assuming there are no direct monetary payments from patent trolls coming his way, what is is incentive? Does he get "favors" from patent trolls, or does he have a relatives or friends who benefit from his practices? Always follow the money, is what I heard :).

<comment><USER12> The tradition in the Texas was to have son create and run patent law practices while the judges serve in the court to get around the direct benefit technicality. Then when the judge retires he joins a patent law practice.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/east-texas- judge...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/east-texas-judge-who- oversaw-1700-patent-cases-joins-biggest-ip-law-firm/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The quotes from the ruling remind me of having a "please follow your own damn policies" argument with someone one step up from the receptionist.

</comment><comment><USER14> My guess is that companies will start closing any offices there, just so they can't be tried by that court.

<comment><USER15> For those that are curious, here's the jurisdiction: [http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/?q=court- info](http://www.txed.uscourts.gov/?q=court-info)

A large portion of it is rural, but it does include suburban areas of Dallas like Plano, which is the HDQ for companies like JC Penney, Frito Lay, and Perot Systems. And, of course, your HDQ doesn't need to be there, just any "place of business".

<comment><USER16> The major issue for trolls is they prefer to target tech companies that recently received funding. By incorporating and having offices only in patent- antagonistic jurisdictions, they all but chop the head off patent trolls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What does a federal judge have to do to be removed?

<comment><USER18> Die? (Not meant as a threat!)

<comment><USER19> A Federal Judge can be a) arrested by FBI; b) impeached by their state legislatures; c) in some states dismissed by a public vote.

<comment><USER20> Are you sure about this one? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Te...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Tenure_and_salary) The article above states, a Senate trial is required, or finding of a mental / physical disability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is lack of morals a mental disability?

<comment><USER21> The Senate can impeach federal judges for high crimes and misdemeanors. That power has been exercised extraordinarily rarely. I can think of only one case in my lifetime, where a judge from Mississippi was removed in the 90s IIRC.

I think Congressional oversight of the judiciary has been the very weakest part of the separation of powers doctrine laid out by the founders.

<comment><USER22> US greatly lacks that separation in between the executive branch and the judiciary for simple reasons:

1\. Top tiers judges are nominated by the executive branch, there are no other way up there.

2\. For a high tier judge in US, a promotion is effectively a political promotion

3\. US law, as I know, has no provisions for disbarring a judge for bad judgement even if it is plainly going against the what is written in the code. Only gross miscarriage of justice (graft, proven act of conspiracy, and 3 or 4 violations of court procedures) allows for impeachment by congress

All of that makes appointing politically aligned judges too attractive for executive branch officials who want to extend their powers through them

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Offtopic, but have you tried selecting any text in the article on BoingBoing with your mouse? What on earth is that javascript monstrosity from Rune that pops up?

When I see horrible stuff like that I tend to think the website is in a death spiral and desperate for revenue.

<comment><USER24> I tried that out of curiosity and did not have the same experience. I selected some text and when right clicked, got the typical copy/search/etc... dialog. I'm using Chrome on Linux with Ghostery and uBlock among other plugins. Perhaps one of those interferes with what you experienced.

<comment><USER23> I would imagine so. The website of the plugin maker is at:

[https://www.secretrune.com/](https://www.secretrune.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That is far from being a scorching lesson, a prompt disbarment would be one.

</comment><comment><USER25> Blogspam from [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170921/17090738264/appea...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170921/17090738264/appeals- court-tells-patent-trolls-favorite-judge-he-cant-just-ignore-supreme-court-to- keep-patent-cases-texas.shtml)

<comment><USER26> you're going to call boingboing blogspam, really?

<comment><USER27> I agree, because after looking at both, I don't see how boingboing added any value here.

<comment><USER26> I agree nothing of value was added, but it's a big stretch to call Doctorow's website "blogspam." That connotation has a whole 'nother set of attributes that go along with it.

<comment><USER28> Likewise, it's a big stretch to call boingboing "Doctorow's website".

<comment><USER29> I noted at the end of 2014 that Boing-Boing had stopped having much value. Brief summary: unsigned advertorials in the voice of the BB staff; page view splitting to max ad revenue -- often with no more than 1-2 sentences on the last page; pushing podcasts without text equivalents; repeat entries (at the time they didn't have any decent queue management, don't know if that's changed) and finally: I've got a perfectly good RSS reader, and that entirely replaces BB with a bunch of much higher quality sources of signal.

I think I've looked at BB articles three times in the intervening years.

<comment><USER30> As of the big Wells Fargo scam, I filed BB under "actively destroying value". The brief summary they gave for the arbitration issue abandoned the real story (WF tries to force arbitration based on existing contracts) for a completely false clickbait story (WF tries to force arbitration using the forged contracts).

At this point it's really no better than HuffPo's "repackage and publish" pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Texas will want to get rid him (yes, difficult) now that the Eastern District Court of Texas racket is up. It's a competitive disadvantage now.

<comment><USER32> He isn't affiliated with Texas or connected with its government in any way. He's part of the federal court system; he just happens to be physically located in Texas.

<comment><USER31> I am well aware of the construction of our Federal system with its separation of powers, its system of states and their boundaries. I'm also aware of the jurisdictional boundary of the Eastern District which you can view here:

[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cjdbkic2WPI/WDSjakCZpNI/AAAAAAAAd...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cjdbkic2WPI/WDSjakCZpNI/AAAAAAAAdMg/VmkFB2u60L8KhKVUC3jA- thX-CB2Qbw2QCLcB/s1600/00935144.PNG)

Yeah, this is a Texas thing and in particular it's an East Texas thing. Texans enabled, participated and benefited from this and if you need that spelled out, I'll call it corruption.

Of course Federal judges are Federal and moreover they get life tenure. So this guy isn't going away. But his patent mud farm is.</comment></comment></comment>


Do Women Really Want Equality? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NikitaCcoulombe/do-women-really-want-equality-4374910f2236#.405kcxqvn <comment><USER2> apparently I'm in the minority (women who want to be indépendant from her partner and do not mind and want to make more money than their partners )

and I'm soooo happy the society allows me to be so.

I guess this is what feminism is about

<comment><USER3> Same here. I supported a partner for some 20 years until he passed. He took care of the household and the cooking, I worked, and neither of us was uncomfortable with the arrangement.

I don't like how the article starts out with the qualification "most women X" but that gets dropped early on, leaving the default implication "all women X." And the title presumes to speak for all of us. Trust me, it does not.

<comment><USER4> Great that you could do that! It's not very common that women want this kind of arrangement, though.

<comment><USER3> It was made much easier by the fact that neither of us strongly wanted children. There's an assumption (social and perhaps hormonal as well) that women will be the primary caregiver, which is a huge wrench in the works of having a career. I think more women would give it a try if the roles were fully discussed and agreed upon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did a censor filter break today? First article offering a positive view of men in ages.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty reasonable article, but you know it's catnip for "men's rights" folks

</comment><comment><USER6> Very click-baity title, no thanks.

<comment><USER7> It may correspond with that description but it's really just a _good_ title for the piece. I've not read the whole piece yet but it seems thorough and thoughtful.

As the article asks and investigates exactly that question what would you title it instead?

Example segment:

>" _Yet women largely still want to be with a man that makes more money than them, reinforcing the cycle where she must then take more time out of the workforce than him to care for their children._ " //

Not all titles that are immediately interesting are clickbait.

<comment><USER8> This is a very dangerous sentiment to share without the constant reminder that feminism means that each woman should be able to live how they desire. It's great that women who want to be with a man who makes more money than them can do that. However wow is it dangerous to point out that what "most women want", without making this caveat.

Let's assume most men want to play sports, this while interesting is totally irrelevant with respect to my individual rights as a man to do what I want with my life. Similarly, what most women want is totally irrelevant to feminism and the rights of women. They should be able to live as they please, independent of what "most women" would like.

<comment><USER7> The problem comes when the majority's desires conflict with the minority's though.

Supposed feminists tell me feminism is about sexual equality rather than the pie-in-the-sky notion that people can in general live as they please.

If the majority actual desire things that are mutually exclusive with direct equality then it's most dangerous not to point that out, surely?

Personally I'm for equality of opportunity for all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>