Law Students Fend Off a Patent Troll - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/patents-technology-law/law-students-fend-off-a-patent-troll-2b8a708277fc <comment><USER2> THESE PEOPLE DESERVE CREDIT:

\- Prof. Jonathan Askin - @jaskin - runs the clinic, and trusted us to try this experiment.

\- Maegan Fuller - @mafuller21 - did the lion's share of research and writing. Brilliant and dedicated student. She just took the bar exam.

\- Jorge Torres - @jorgemtorres - Guy who actually knows patent litigation. Too bad he dropped out of law to be a VC. Pitch him :-)

<comment><USER3> The judge crossed out the 'with' and wrote in 'without' prejudice on the note.

Does that mean that if the troll tries this on with someone else, this case can't be cited? Just wondering.

<comment><USER4> I guess not: the troll dropped the case, there was no judicial decision, so there is nothing to cite ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Supreme Court issued 6 patent helpful patent decisions while our case was pending. In particular, Alice v. CLS Bank invalidated patents on taking mundane tasks and doing them on a computer. The patent in our case was basically for sending notification calls from a computer. Probably invalid under Alice. A second Supreme Court case, Octane v. Icon encouraged judges to impose "fee shifting" penalties in appropriate patent cases."

...

"After reading it, and weighing the recent Supreme Court decisions, the troll simply dropped its case against CarShield. After months of dedicated work, the clinic students deserved a gavel-banging judicial decision in their favor. All they got was a quiet withdrawal. But I think we can still chalk it up in the win column. The case is dismissed (for now), the students learned real patent litigation skills."

Does the decision encouraging "fee shifting" require that the case go to trial? Does it require that the fees actually be paid by the defendant? Or might the law school students still be able to receive payment by the troll for their pro bono defense? It seems like the "new standard" would be much more effective if it also applied in cases like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> Does the decision encouraging "fee shifting" require that the case go to trial?

Nope. It only requires that the case is "exceptional" \-- in the sense that the plaintiff filed an exceptionally crappy lawsuit.

>> Does it require that the fees actually be paid by the defendant? Or might the law school students still be able to receive payment by the troll for their pro bono defense?

I haven't looked into this myself, but my law students tell me that we can get fee shifting even for pro bono work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _This is why we started using law school clinics to do free legal defense. It's a win-win arrangement: students cut their teeth on real litigation, startups get free legal defense, and patent trolls get nothing._

Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER7> The reason why it's so expensive for startups to even consider defending themselves is because attorney fees are supra-competitive and corporations cannot represent themselves in court pro se according to Local Rules, such as Civil Local Rule 3-9(b) in the Northern District of California. Whether through (absurd) precedent or rules codifying that precedent, it's been that way for 200 years.

However, it shouldn't be that way anymore--not after Citizens United. I'm fighting a lawsuit about this issue right now, and if I win (however unlikely), corporations will be able to represent themselves against patent trolls.

Is it difficult, confusing and complex work? Yes. Is it any harder than programming, or anything else a serious startup would do? Not really. And it beats paying a law firm six or seven figures.

The case is:

[http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/29himg3wm/california- northe...](http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/29himg3wm/california-northern- district-court/think-computer-foundation-et-al-v-administrative-office-of-the- united-states-courts-et-al/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I love this story and it's a great effort by this law school. I wonder if there could be some crowdsourced efforts to pool together key documents, resources, processes, etc so that defending against a patent troll could be more efficient. This would lower costs of defense and further discourage patent trolls.

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely want to put together some guidelines for other schools to run similar projects. In fact, @jorgemtorres wrote an entire Kauffman Fellows thesis on this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The patent behind all these lawsuits is not particularly innovative. It > claims something about sending notifications after an emergency phone call. > Here's the gist from one of the figures . . . .

This is a little disingenuous. You know the patent doesn't cover the "gist" or any particular figure. It covers the claims (which you don't mention at all, even in passing). And for some reason, you don't even tell us what the patent number is so we can look at it for ourselves!

From a little googling, I suspect that we're talking about Pat. No. 6,775,356. But why hide the ball and characterize the patent as "not particularly innovative" when you could just let people see it for themselves?

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.goog...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US6775356.pdf)

<comment><USER10> > You know the patent doesn't cover the "gist" or any particular figure. It > covers the claims

It seems like whenever anyone criticizes a patent by summarizing it, someone points out that the patent is defined by the claims, but if anyone criticizes a patent by reading the claims, someone points out that the claims have to be read in the context of the rest of the patent.

<comment><USER9> You do have to read the claims in light of the specification. But I'd say that looking just at one random figure is more wrong than looking just at the claims in isolation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its about context. If this were _claim construction brief_ , just looking at one random figure would be totally wrong. But a proper and careful analysis of the claims would be a snoozefest. I wanted to tell a story celebrating the hard work of these wonderful students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love how Medium becomes my favourite "time waster". I remember about buzz in media about how pointless Medium was but since some time majority of articles I found on major suggesting websites from Medium are extremely interesting.

When reading articles from Medium I feel like I am not only not wasting time but acquiring knowledge in extremely fast pace.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love this. But, am saddened that the troll hasn't lost. The troll is free to move on to the next mark, which likely won't have a free legal team behind them.

I wonder if invalidating patents, that trolls commonly use, a good use of a law student's time?

<comment><USER13> What would be really awesome is if the BLIP clinic students decided to dedicate themselves to destroying this particular troll. Since they'd already put in the hours getting up to speed on the patent in question (and filing that likely-would-have-been-successful motion), they should reach out to the other folks who have/will be sued by 911 and offer to defend them. Troll the troll, as it were.

<comment><USER14> Another comment mentioned Maegan Fuller just passed the bar exam. Could be a great way to get a budding litigation career off the ground.

<comment><USER15> If she started a kickstarter, I'd be happy to fund...

<comment><USER16> I would as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >the troll simply dropped its case against CarShield

Yet the startup and the judicial system already lost time on this. There should be a fee for withdrawing cases like this.

<comment><USER18> Careful: It's hard to craft remedies against patent trolls that don't also penalize poor inventors whose work was really and truly ripped off by a much richer entity. Even simple rules like "loser pays" can make the potential downside of filing a valid suit so intimidating that large players get a complete pass.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe its a close question for the first 2 or 3 patent lawsuits. But when someone's filing 10+ patent lawsuits at a clip, its difficult to imagine a legitimate scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised there isn't an EFF-like non-profit that provides pro-bono patent defense to start-ups, against patent trolls. I would donate to that organization.

I've seen a lot of horseshit patents asserted against start-ups. If there was an organization that followed the troll around and offered defense services against all of their defendants, it would make trolling a lot harder, and might reduce the numbers of these parasitic lawyers involved in this shameless trade.

I just read about a Fish & Richardson patent partner who started filing his own "inventions" with the patent office, based on slight modifications of the patents he was filing for clients, and then sold those patents to trolls for huge sums. Its actually really easy to write patents focused on sabotaging your clients, if you are a lawyer and become familiar with their future roadmaps.

I know a bunch of trivial claims I could write right now and they would be worth a few million in a couple years, because Google, Facebook, and others would have to move in that direction in a few years (related to Machine Learning and image recognition).

All you have to do is follow conferences, understand the papers, and then write some trivial, and obvious evolutions of those techniques. Obviousness is something defendant's find extremely difficult to prove for highly complex technology, because the juries are made of people that have no idea what programming is, much less Machine Learning, and the judge is probably some moron, that thinks he is really smart, and assumes that he patent office is full of diligent geniuses ... and so he will give a lot of weight to the plaintiff's "USPTO certified" claims.

All it takes is for a programmer to be involved in one patent litigation and you see the patent system for what it is. A colossal system of giant, continuous, expensive injustice implemented in the hope of preventing an extremely rare form of injustice (when a true original inventor is cheated by a shameless larger company).

Imagine we institute an expensive system of highly trained commandos to follow every nerd in America around in high schools across the country, to protect them from bullying and to be their friends. It would certainly stop all physical bullying. But would it be worth the giant overhead/expense?

That is what we have to start asking ourselves. Even if the patent system prevents some rare injustices, WTF, is this continuous, and overwhelming cloud of uncertainty for every start-up and company worth it?

I feel like China and India are doing quite alright without overburdensome strong patent protection. And Europe seems fine with a hamstrung software patent system. And even in the US, Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, IBM, and Apple got their start before software became patentable ... and they all did, and are doing fine.

If you see someone arguing for patents, they are almost always some fucking lawyer, troll, or someone sitting on a giant portfolio. The people actually making software every day don't want this shit system. VCs that fund start- ups, don't want it ... even though you would expect they want it, to protect their investments.

<comment><USER20> > I'm surprised there isn't an EFF-like non-profit that provides pro-bono > patent defense to start-ups, against patent trolls. I would donate to that > organization.

I'm sympathetic to the plight of startups having to deal with the trolliest of trolls, but give me a break. There are so many worthier avenues for pro-bono legal work than helping out for-profit companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> There are so many worthier avenues for pro-bono legal work than helping out for-profit companies.

I have a handful of students who want to be patent lawyers. Should I make them work on death penalty or civil rights cases?

<comment><USER21> There are dozens of pro bono clinics in the Bay Area and around the state that provide advice and legal assistance to low-income Californians. Volunteers (law students and lawyers) are critical to their mission. Check out www.californiaprobono.org. BTW, I agree with your sentiment. The very translation of the term "pro bono publico" from its Latin precludes work for for-profit enterprises, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It was dismissed without prejudice. This means nothing. If a patent troll wanted to do the same thing & file for the same lawsuit, they could easily do so. This isn't a "win" for the sutdents as much as it's "oh, let's just drop it."

I'm glad they didn't have to the pay the troll, but I also hate when the troll doesn't get what it deserves, either: losing.

<comment><USER23> Is there a legal procedure that would have made it possible for the defense team to say to the judge "It should not be possible to dismiss this unless it is with prejudice"?

<comment><AUTHOR> In most cases, if a plaintiff withdraws, it _needs_ to be with prejudice. Thats the default rule. In this particular instance, there was a procedural twist that make it a somewhat close call.

<comment><USER24> Can you elaborate or know where I could read more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't there a potential startup in here? The judicial process follows clear and distinct steps, with clear and distinct documents for every step. It seems like much of this can be automated as much as the trolls automate their process?

Question 1: has the lawsuit been filed in an odd/irrelevant place? Followed by some subquestions to be more precise. If so, fill out this form, include the addresses of .. and ... and we'll send a form letter to them for you, asking for a dismissal.

Question 2-5: keep stalling and asking for dismissals based on various reasons.

Question 6-10: try some other ways to get the troll to drop it, for instance by presenting an example of obvious prior art

Of course all letter include repeating references to relevant higher court decisions.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if this model can work with the criminal justice system as well. Quite often, defendants feel it is better to accept a plea deal even when they have done nothing wrong because the economics of fighting a lawsuit (as well as the outcome in case of a botched up defense) makes it compelling to accept the accept the plea deal. The mechanism is analogous to the patent troll scenario. If law school students can take up these "troll equivalent" cases, they gain valuable experience and defendants get a fair shot.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article reads like one from 2600. You should consider publishing it on that magazine. I'm not sure about the process, but it might be really neat to do so.

</comment><comment><USER28> Alas, the case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the troll can just wait a little while and sue again later.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lawschool that had students supporting patent trolls. There are some schools out there that are founded on ideological grounds.

</comment><comment><USER30> This article suggests that this is a win-win situation for the startups and law students, but, it's a pretty one-sided deal here. This doesn't work out at all in the long term without unfair exploitation of the unpaid labor of the students.

While helping out gives the students experience, it's not reasonable to consider this any sort of real option beyond an occasional situation in which a startup can solicit a law-student who takes on a single case as part of their curriculum.

<comment><USER31> It's not "unfair exploitation". The students willingly sign on to get meaningful experience working on real cases. It gives them a chance to do real work and see more closely how actual law work is done.

From the sounds of the article, there is one small clinic in Brooklyn that makes this a "real option" for companies. It's not like every company that faces patent trolls can rely on it, but I don't think it would be far-fetched to think that other law clinics may begin to (or already do) offer similar services.

As I see it, it's a win-win for both parties.

<comment><USER30> In a small number of cases it can work - but, you can't expect students to take on legal cases for you for free-99 whenever you like.

This is no different than big companies hiring unpaid interns. Sure it can kinda work in a handful of cases, but it's harmful to exploit people to perform unpaid labor.

I can recall a great many HN articles complaining about companies asking coders to work unpaid in a variety of situations. Working unpaid on learning projects in school is super! Getting experience is great! But, the reality of the situation is there are massively degenerate patent laws at work here and the solution isn't for startups to expect a contingent of students to work there buts off gratis for them.

<comment><USER32> > This is no different than big companies hiring unpaid interns. Sure it can > kinda work in a handful of cases, but it's harmful to exploit people to > perform unpaid labor.

There was a set of rules that came from a court ruling regarding unpaid internships[0]. I would like to go over the points here. These rules dictate whether an intern can go unpaid or not:

> 1\. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the > facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in > an educational environment;

Your intern can't be a coffee jockey for you. They have to actually learn things from the job. In this case, I believe this is _more_ than can be gained from an educational environment. This involved many more intricate details, and probably a bunch of analysis of the patents at hand. I imagine they were trying to pick apart this patent.

> 2\. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

This experience was beneficial for both parties.

> 3\. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close > supervision of existing staff;

Unless the startup had a legal team that they didn't use, I feel this is self evident.

> 4\. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage > from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may > actually be impeded;

While the startup did obtain an advantage (having a legal team), if the clinic team had failed, there is a very good chance they would have been greatly impeded.

> 5\. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the > internship;

I highly doubt that any of the team got immediately hired, or were promised a job at the end of the internship.

> 6\. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled > to wages for the time spent in the internship.

They had come to an agreement that the students would be working for the clinic pro bono.

I feel that all of these points were met, and in this case there was no exploitation of unpaid labor. Both sides benefited greatly from this.

> But, the reality of the situation is there are massively degenerate patent > laws at work here and the solution isn't for startups to expect a contingent > of students to work there buts off gratis for them.

You're right. But I don't see any other solutions right now. There isn't any drastic reform bill being pushed through Congress. There aren't any big companies standing up to these patent trolls, in fact most have given in. There was a patent troll going around suing companies for shopping cart technologies. Amazon and several others gave in, but Newegg finally stood up and denied them a settlment. Newegg went on to win the court case. They have won several others as well. Given the recent rulings of passing court fees on to patent trolls, I imagine they are getting less complaints in the long run than others that have given in.

[0]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/the- cour...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/the-court-ruling- that-could-end-unpaid-internships-for-good/276795/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is an efficient and sustainable model for higher education in general.

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems like a brilliant solution to this problem

Stick it to them! Good work.

<comment><USER35> > Seems like a brilliant solution to this problem

The law students worked on this for months for free and the paten troll got away without any fee. I don't see what's so brilliant about it. Looks like shity system to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Url changed from [http://gigaom.com/2014/08/11/law-students-chase-patent- troll...](http://gigaom.com/2014/08/11/law-students-chase-patent-troll-away- from-connected-car-start-up/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER36> So much WIN!</comment>


Why Bitcoin Is Not Universally Adopted and How to Change It - <AUTHOR> https://forklog.media/why-crypto-is-not-universally-adopted-and-how-to-change-it/ <comment><USER2> I don't use cryptocurrency for one main reason: I don't trust the industry as a whole. A secondary reason is that I don't need or want a second thing to keep track of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why don't you trust the industry?

<comment><USER3> I know it's usually a terrible counter argument, but really, why do _you_ trust the industry?

They've offered nothing trustworthy except the argument that it's great for 100 different illicit uses

<comment><AUTHOR> At least Bitcoin is a trustworthy asset.

<comment><USER3> Wow, fantastic answer and retort. You've sold me. By golly I'm going to convert my whole savings to bitcoin now..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The enthusiasts focus on the tech and the supply side of the market. They totally forgot about end users, the experience, and IRL.

UX is why adoption sucks, both from a technical and soft perspective. The only reason it had adoption prior was because people want to get rich quick.

Bitcoin is a store of value, not a currency. Stop expecting wide adoption and daily use.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've got cash in my pockets and credit cards too.</comment>


BitTorrent's Bleep messenger is a secure, decentralized chat platform - <AUTHOR> http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/bleep/index.html

<comment><USER2> Are there comparable Open Source initiatives?

<comment><USER3> Apparently: [https://tox.im](https://tox.im)</comment></comment>


How to get your app noticed on Google Play - <AUTHOR> http://blog.onyxbits.de/how-to-get-your-app-noticed-308/ <comment><USER2> Very fun review from a guy developing some wonderful software to install needed proprietary apps outside of your phone without using the official Google Play client (so you can use adb sideload to load directly on your phone, maybe like me if you do not have it installed) for analysis or to protect your privacy, really whatever your prerogative.

[http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2772436](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2772436)

[http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon](http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon)

[https://github.com/onyxbits/Raccoon](https://github.com/onyxbits/Raccoon)

I am big fan of his work and as an aspiring Java dev I enjoy looking through his code to learn.

The only Swing app I ever needed so badly to work! The DummyDroid Android advert device ID forging, also referenced on his page, is quite a treat!

</comment><comment><USER3> This didn't exactly tell me how to get my app noticed, but how other apps of mine may help get my other apps noticed. However, they need to get noticed first first that..

<comment><USER4> We have built appbrain and launched a bunch of apps with more than 100M+ installs: [http://www.appbrain.com/dev/AppTornado](http://www.appbrain.com/dev/AppTornado) Our experience is that you need to generate at least a couple of thousand (better, tens of thousands) of installs by yourself before Google's discovery mechanisms kick in and allow your app to be discovered withing Google Play. Cross promotion is a good tool for that, but if you don't have apps yet, then you have to find other ways (paid cost-per-install promotion is a commonly used tactic).

<comment><USER5> I haven't gotten to 100 million installs, but I have a few Play apps and one got to 7 million installs. This post is most right on that I've seen here. Back in 2011-2012 you could have a hit without generating your own installs to it. With more competition nowadays, that happening would be much rarer.

You need to generate your own installs at first. Google will look at your uninstall ratio, and perhaps other factors. If those factors are good, Google will start pushing you up the keyword and then category rankings in various countries. Then people will start ranking your app, and that will factor in. Google has made some public announcements about what they take into account, and there are many outside accounts out there with guesses, some good, some not, at what helps.

Making an app people want helps. Having a clear, simple icon and clear app name helps. If the app does offline maps, call it Offline Maps. If several reviews and e-mails suggest adding a feature, consider adding the feature. And so on.

I have not found cross-promotion helpful In the mannernthe article says. If you run ads, and get one cent for every ten ads shown on average, then you're losing a cent every ten times you show your ad. It might be cheaper to advertise it in other venues. In some circumstances cross-promotion makes sense. You can set a minimum bid for your ad network, and show your ads when the ad network can't make that bid. Also, for new apps, I often put the first ad in as a cross-promotion ad. I see how the app does, and how much it refers. If all is well and the app is taking off and doing referrals, I put an ad network ad in the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you need to approach specific users (like forum moderators or reviewers of similar app) and share your app details. If they like they will respond to your app otherwise not. And also promoting in app specific places is good. For ex, xda, reddit's android subreddit where app can get noticed more quickly than posting it HN, where users have different interests.

Few days back, I posted a new app (that allows you to run mobile apps from sdcard.) which gained more comments and feedback on android specific subreddit more than HN. So narrow down to specific group or even individuals is one of the option.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I think you need to approach specific users (like forum moderators or > reviewers of similar app) and share your app details.

This will give you a short time spike in installs. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't last and you can't play that card more than once.

<comment><USER6> No, I was not suggesting that one need to ask a favor with moderators or reviewers. Genuinely try to add them to your app community and constantly seek their feedback & update the app. I was not suggesting one-time marketing effort. More like create a community around the app which includes these reviewers or moderators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disclosure: this is from my employer

We released a whitepaper not too long ago about App Store Optimization. I'm not very involved in mobile/client -side development but I heard the paper was well received.

Summary infographic: [https://venturebeat.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Native-X-...](https://venturebeat.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Native-X-app-store-optimization.png) Whitepaper: [http://nativex.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/NativeX_ASO_Wh...](http://nativex.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/NativeX_ASO_Whitepaper.pdf)

EDIT/Clarification: I'm associated with the paper referenced in my comment-- not the parent article.

</comment><comment><USER8> I put an app in your app, so you can get noticed while you get noticed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Step 1: get a post linking to your apps on the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ads!

Both the adoption of android and iphone apps are ad driven, and the pros absolutely know this. So if you're starting out, you buy cheap ads. Think of all those ad supported free apps. They are the cheap ad ecosystem. If you've made it to the big leagues, you buy expensive ads. Think high production TV ads during prime time with Arnold Schwarzenegger. There is a reason there are so many app commercials on TV all over the world. They work.

Despite all the innovation driven rags to riches mythology, and although you do need an awesome app that meets the bar first, the app game is practically a marketing budget slugfest. Google and Apple provide no other options.

</comment><comment><USER11> How is this shit post the top post right now? Uhg.

<comment><USER12> That's not all. Coming soon: "How to get your HN post noticed."

<comment><USER13> Relevant to your interests:

"Marketing hacks 4: Hacker News" \- [http://ineptech.com/index.html?blog&post=20](http://ineptech.com/index.html?blog&post=20)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Talha-Ansari Not a good thing to do with your app, You can work with something interesting or unique to get noticed by users. People are usually searching for different kinda app, So think out of the box!</comment>


Ask HN:  Could one get sued for helping people remember names? - <AUTHOR>

The idea would be to crowd source visualizations to help people attach names to faces.
See: http://www.ehow.com/how_4510363_use-visualization-remember-names.html
But the person whose name is to be remembered may not appreciate these visualizations being made public.
Could this result in lawsuits? <comment><USER2> As long as they are public figures I think you'd be in the clear, if they are private individuals who have an 'expected right to privacy' it's a different problem altogether.

Describe it as good as you can and then go to a lawyer who knows the local laws for your jurisdiction and how those might apply to stuff you do over the net.</comment>


We Chose a Distributed SQL Database to Complement MySQL - <AUTHOR> https://pingcap.com/case-studies/why-we-chose-a-distributed-sql-database-to-complement-mysql <comment><USER2> If anyone from the company's reading this: I'd take a guess that it's wanting "...to ensure that TiFlash processes the latest (not just fresh) data" is a major problem. If you can tolerate even a few minutes-old data then I really think you could use some dumb kind of replication to another machine which would be much simpler.

Also a billion rows of data isn't really so much, depending on what you're storing.

(I'm trying to get 250 million rows (of 1 character) into a db to see how fast it counts when in memory. Still inserting)

Edit: TSQL, counting 268 million rows all mem resident, 7-year old CPU, forcing it to use 1 core is 12 secs, allowing it to parallelise over 2 cores (all I have) is 8 secs.

This is for comparison to "I did a simple test with five TiKV nodes, one TiFlash node, and one table with 250 million rows of data. I tried to count the table records. When I queried by index in TiKV, it took me more than 40 seconds to get the result. But when I queried in a single TiFlash node, it took only 10 seconds."

I used single bytes per row but I know from prior testing that fat rows and thin rows count about the same speed.

<comment><USER3> The TiFlash replication is sub-second and happens automatically. We are going to be publishing a more extensive paper on TiFlash, but the point is that the operational burden is equivalent to a read replica but you get the column- based storage speed of a data warehouse.

I agree the data size doesn't seem extraordinarily big from some of the description. Later in the article it states a size of 2.4 TB.

It is also true that in-memory databases should be faster. TiDB is designed for data that is too large to keep in memory.

Note that having 5 TiKV nodes isn't going to make this single count query any faster than having 1 TiKV node. TiDB is designed for high availability, so a default TiKV setup has 3 nodes each with a copy of the data. TiKV can be scaled out horizontally to provide more compute power to handle a larger workload but it is not likely to make a single query on an idle machine any faster.

<comment><USER4> The link to the paper (on VLDB 2020) is now available: [http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol13/p3072-huang.pdf](http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol13/p3072-huang.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TiDB sounds cool except it's not 8.0 compatible. We use the hell out of CTEs and window functions.

<comment><USER3> It actually has all the window functions: [https://docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable/window- functions](https://docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable/window-functions)

For CTEs, stay tuned for the next release (TiDB 5.0) or perhaps track this github issue: [https://github.com/pingcap/tidb/issues/17472](https://github.com/pingcap/tidb/issues/17472)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vitess might have being a decent option considering they are already MySQL shop

<comment><USER7> I might be wrong here, but can someone comment on the process required to add additional nodes on Vitess?

Every time I start reading about Vitess, I fall into a hole about manual resharding, hosting multiple vitess instances per host (I think 250GB of storage each?), and that cross-shard reads may be inconsistent.

I am taking a quick look at the documentation of TiDB, and they have automatic data re-balancing, 2PC Raft-based-transactions, global snapshot isolation, and actually some nice dashboards to analyze cluster health.

Vitess just does not seem nice from an operations perspective.

<comment><USER8> Yes, if you want to add a node you have to manually reshard. It's quite the process. I'd add each node is a MySQL database and you can make each shard as large you want.

The data on different vitess shards is disjoint, so I don't know how much you need to worry about consistency for cross shard reads. And vitess doesn't really support cross shard transactions either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is PingCAP's story when it comes to data protection and privacy, particularly with its managed product?

<comment><USER3> We just had a SOC 2 (type 1) examination for Security, Availability and Confidentiality. [1] We believe independent audits for compliance are more meaningful than any words of assurance.

At an architectural level tidb cloud (managed TiDB) currently dedicates infrastructure for each tenant although we are working on developing lower cost options with less isolation.

[1] [https://pingcap.com/blog/pingcap-successfully-completes- soc-...](https://pingcap.com/blog/pingcap-successfully-completes- soc-2-type-1-examination-for-tidb-cloud)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Q&A for HN users - <AUTHOR> http://www.askolo.com

<comment><USER4> I would suggest having MUCH more information about what I'm signing up for before I actually hand over my information. All I know from the homepage and the about page is that its some form of Q&A website. You should have screenshots of what it looks like once you're logged in, better yet, let us see the questions without being logged in.

<comment><USER5> Comments like this are almost always the top comment...yet people just can't seem to get the basics right. I'm not a designer, so I know it's much easier said than done, but what's up with the blatant refusal to learn from others' mistakes?

<comment><USER6> Because the complaints are those of a vocal minority. Most people don't worry about "handing over" their information, viewing screenshots before they sign up, or if Facebook login is the only option.

Most people just aren't very picky.

<comment><USER7> I don't mind the handing over information part, but I will almost always leave a website that wants me to register without showing me what they do. It's laziness on my part, and I don't complain about it in public, I just don't sign up for those websites.

Sites like this are just throwing away users for no good reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is exceptionally well designed and thought through. It seems like it could be a lot more valuable than just Q&A for HN users, though that's a smart place to start. I'm impressed with the attention you've paid to some of the details, like the "Curious" counter.

One thing that has held me back from Quora (apart from needing no new ways to spend time online) is that absolutely everything seems public, such as who upvoted what. That makes me uncomfortable, like I'm under a harsh spotlight all the time. Most of the things I think, or say in conversation, are tentative and exploratory. I don't want to be publicly committed to them by default; I want to make that choice myself and be aware that I'm making it, like posting on HN. I'd be surprised if lots of users didn't feel this way, so maybe that's an opportunity for you to differentiate yourselves. In any case, I'd be interested to hear what you've made public and private by default and what your ideas are on the subject more generally.

It will be interesting to see what this grows into!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We wanted to a create an interesting space where people can find out about other users on Hacker News. Let us know your thoughts!

<comment><USER9> I like it and I hope more 'interesting' people will register soon; I think I should say that before I start whining.

Why didn't you put this (or some sort of similar) information on the landing page? If I was randomly sent link to your site (ie. without context such as HN comments or relatively high score) I would have no idea what it is, and leave forever.

Also I don't like the bar saying ASKOLO on the top - there is no content on it, and it just takes precious vertical space from my small laptop screen. I already know where am I, no need to repeat that. The second bar, nagging me to signup or login is kind of distraction too.

Also, I hope for some filtering features for questions (hide unanswered, hide comments, hide answers - so I can quickly skim only through the questions - <USER2> think this could be handy when there is more content on the site).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey rednum, thanks for the feedback. You can do some basic filtering on both the newsfeed and the individual page if you look right above the questions section. It's set to show all by default, but I think we can probably do a better job of making that more prominent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Weird that nobody mentioned AnyAsq, which is pretty much the same thing: <http://anyasq.com/>

Although Askolo looks better and nicer to use, so hopefully it'll stick around. I just created my profile, ask me some questions about design!

<http://askolo.com/sachag>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sgdesign - thanks for the comments! We wanted to take a different focus and offer a more conversational format for users vs. an iAmA style site.

We talked to the guys behind AnyAsq a while back and they're working on some other cool things not in Q&A - we're big fans of the team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite feature of this site, by far, is "wish". I wanted a service where you could do exactly what it does -- write a note or ask a question to someone, without figuring out his address. i.e. I can ask a question to Dan Loeb, savior of humanity _, without trying to find his email address or get an introduction; ideally the people at Askolo will go through that effort on my behalf.

(_ He's the Third Point Ventures investor who has been trying to fix Yahoo's board for a while, and is about to go to war with Scott Thompson, ideally resulting in the end of their stupid patent troll misadventure.)

Bringing in top quality experts from outside the Silicon Valley bubble is the main thing Quora has failed to do (Larry Summers is on there since he's friends with Marc Bodnick, but not a whole lot of other people like that). Askolo is probably a better format for that kind of person than Quora is.

<comment><USER12> Thanks rdl! Credit to gschmidt who suggested this feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This solves a big pain point that I have with Quora. In the early days when Quora was in private beta, it was great because "celebrities" like Zuckerberg, Evan Williams and people like that would answer questions. But as it grew, particularly after becoming public it just didn't scale and all the elite- members left for the most part.

By focusing on people it seems like askolo will be able to avoid that fate as the celebrities won't get drowned out. One danger is to make sure the celebrities don't get annoyed/hounded too much. Need to strike a balance between feeding their ego (hey lots of people want to ask me things, sweet!) and annoying (ugh.. ANOTHER friggin question email). I'm sure you guys will be able to figure it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Omar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> had a similar idea a long time ago (ie. ~2 years) and it was called askcue.com (still online). question sites like these face a huge chicken and egg problem, because you need people asking and answering... sorry to break it to you, but you've ventured into a very competitive and difficult (answers.com, answers.yahoo.com, quora.com, askreddit, formspring.me) section on the internet. still, best of luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback - we're interested in not just Q&A, but really the idea of people search. We see Q&A as just the medium through which users can find out more about other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Suggestion / Question: the "suggested users" list disappeared after my first follow, so discovery has become a little tricky.

Does it exist elsewhere? If not, might be a good idea to put it back in.

<comment><USER12> Hi duggan, it is somewhat buggy indeed. People/Content discovery is a major feature we are working on right now, it will be out next week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _See other profiles_ at the bottom of someone's profile frequently includes the person him/herself. In general though - it's an excellent idea, but it appears to be difficult to browse people and/or to search for someone specific.

(edit) Also I am not clear if everyone's treated equally on the site or if there are people how are willing to answer questions and the rest - who asks. I'd say that latter would be a more natural arrangement, and it'd be also sensible not to require an account to ask a question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks eps. We wanted to limit who could ask questions primarily to keep quality high and to alert users when their question is answered, but this is something that we might open up if people prefer it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How did you get so many people to sign up pre-launch? Well done!

</comment><comment><USER18> For some reason, this is more friendly / easier than Quora. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's Quora's red, I've never liked that.

On a more specific note, have you considered making the answer textarea not highlighted upon focus? It seems to clash with the surrounding divs.

I also love how I can follow who is in YC right now considering they somehow gained word before everyone else :)

<comment><USER19> The missing vertical line separating the main content and the sidebar in Quora always makes me uncomfortable - it makes the right end of the each section very jagged. Huge turn off. Then again Quora UX design guys must have seen a good reason to leave it that way ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's hard to find people to follow, even though I'm well-connected to the initial group of users (lots of friends in YC, started using Quora in 2009, etc.).

It's made worse because the Facebook Connect prompt on the homepage shows ~12 friends using the site, but once I log in I can't find them. There should be a word for that. Soup Nazi UX or something. "Here's some soup. NO SOUP FOR YOU."

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey jfarmer, thanks for checking out the site. That looks like a bug - <USER3> should automatically be following them if you used Facebook. We'll look into it right away.

<comment><USER20> I didn't connect with Facebook because I know all the dirty tricks people play. ;)

I can't connect now, after the fact. There are also some simple design oversights. For example, any time I see a list of people, there should be a "follow" button next to their name.

It's actually quite hard to find people to follow starting from nothing, unless I want to follow some of the 8-10 people you suggest automatically.

I'd give the first-time experience a C+.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. We have a feature to connect with FB after the fact, but it's a bit hidden so we'll make that more prominent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Quick nit: your facebook connect icon is a big letter "C" instead of "A" like your favicon... caused some cognitive dissonance, for a minute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks we'll fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Like the clean interface. Much better than formspring.me

However, each question requires its own permalink. So that people can share a particular Q&A.

Another idea suggestion would be, create a popular answers tab on all users page. So that if someone has answered 101 questions, his best answers don't get lost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestions. You can actually share an individual Q&A using the "share" link right below the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another quick nit: please update your From address for your notification emails to include a friendly name (like Askolo or something). Right now, since no name is specified, GMail only displays the part before the @ symbol as the sender, so I get "notification" as the sender... and that looks like spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - we'll get that fixed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting idea (I especially like the wish feature)! Great implementation! How do you plan on getting users to come back after they've read(or asked) what they needed to read? Perhaps you can have a daily/weekly interesting thought-provoking question that will get users to come back...

</comment><comment><USER24> Please, please include the timestamps for questions, answers, and comments. I'd love to know when some of the questions were asked and answered. If the time is already there (and I'm just not looking hard enough) please tell me where it's at.

</comment><comment><USER25> A few things:

\- How can I see the questions I've asked? \- Why aren't the questions I've asked not appearing on the askee's profile? \- Is there a person discovery after the initial one on sign up? \- What features are coming up next?

<comment><USER12> hi instakill, person/content discovery is a major feature we are working on - it'll probably be out next week. Regarding why you can't see you questions on askee's profile - the askee may have made all unanswered questions invisible (you can do that too in your settings page) or deleted your question. Right now there's a short text under the "ask" box that explains it - we should have made it more obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So Quora for Hacker News?

<comment><USER27> I'd interpret more as Quora for people - I think there's huge potential in this space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One small thing: when I signed up using Facebook it showed the e-mail field as 'undefined' and didn't allow me to create an account. When I tried again every did work as expected.

</comment><comment><USER19> Two questions (1) How did you get active profiles of so many awesome people on your network?(2) Is there a way to map the HN handles to profiles in this site?

<comment><AUTHOR> (1) We reached out directly to a handful of people that we admired and a number of them were nice enough to take the time to sign up. (2) Not as yet, although a number of people use the same handle for their Askolo reserved name. This is something we'll definitely look into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be nice if you added the date and time that questions are asked and answered. That would help users gauge recency and temporal relevance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey zeantsoi - thanks for the feedback. Right now questions are automatically sorted by recency. We left out timestamps to try to create a more permanent space for answers, but this might be a useful thing to display since we've gotten a few requests for it today.

<comment><USER29> Right. IMO, here's an answer by pg where a timestamp would have provided a lot of context:

A: Not yet. I haven't spent much time reading the next batch of applications yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice site! I think the questions and answers need some kind of visible timestamp though. Q&A, by its very nature, can go stale quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey bhousel - thanks for the feedback! Right now questions are sorted by most recent so you can see new questions at the top of a page, but we're looking at rolling out timestamps as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's really impressive how you guys got so many YC people on board before launching. I really hope you're not a YC company because that would make this post dishonest. (I know many YC alums help out each other but have never seen them do it in stealth yet) I'd like to assume that you're not. Could you clarify this? I'm asking because I noticed far too many YC alums and faculty on the profile.

<comment><USER32> They are YC-funded. PG answered a question as such:

<http://askolo.com/pg>

<comment><USER31> That's disappointing. I had guessed they might be, but was hoping they were not, because they commented below "(1) We reached out directly to a handful of people that we admired and a number of them were nice enough to take the time to sign up." I think this is dishonest, and even makes me question the credibility of some of the other occasional posts that come up on the front page. Although I can understand why they are not mentioning YC, something about this makes me uncomfortable, unlike other YC launch announcements on Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is askolo technology stack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey flavio - we're using node.js, mongodb, and redis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just emailed these guys a bug report and got a response in <2 minutes. Props.

</comment><comment><USER35> This site feels like a classier version of Formspring. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER36> Well, I signed up. Let's see what happens...</comment>


Twitter warns Bitcoin scam security breach could lead to $250M FTC fine - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/03/twitter-bitcoin-scam-security-breach-could-mean-250-million-ftc-fine.html <comment><USER2> Title is wrong. See correction from article:

>Correction: The possible fine mentioned in Twitter's 10-Q was not related to the recent bitcoin scam security breach.</comment>


Google 'kerning' easter egg - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=kerning

<comment><USER2> There seems to be the opposite effect for "keming".

<comment><USER3> Confirmed. letter-spacing: 1px, vs -1px :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's also [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion)

<comment><USER5> "search?hl=en" is also needed for the original link, if you are living in e.g. germany. The easter eggs seem to only display on "www.google.com".

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kerning](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kerning)

<comment><USER6> It's actually working without hl=en if you're from germany, even on google.de

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google easter egg _troll_. That's awesome.

<comment><USER8> I don't see anything out of place.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=troll](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=troll)

<comment><USER9> I think it's: "Searches related to troll ... 4chan"

<comment><USER10> Or... he's trolled us :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Help me - don't get it.... whats so special about this google query?

<comment><USER12> The highlighted instances of "kerning" have extra letter-spacing.

<comment><USER13> ie. no kerning

<comment><USER14> Not no kerning, just bad kerning.

<comment><USER15> Not bad kerning either, necessarily. (It's automatically kerned by the type engine regardless of the letter-spacing property.) Just loose tracking. It's fairly common for typographers to track bold text slightly looser than book text so as to lighten its typographic color.

<comment><USER16> Since I was about to say the same thing you already did, I'll add that the difference is that kerning refers to adjusting the spacing between specific character pairs instead of the whole text (which is what letter- spacing/tracking does). For example the AV pair usually needs to be kerned to make the glyphs partially overlap so that they don't look too far apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is now both my favorite and my most hated google easter egg.

</comment><comment><USER18> More search easter eggs: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_hoaxes_and_easte...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_hoaxes_and_easter_eggs#Search)

</comment><comment><USER19> The interesting thing is that "view selection source" on instances of the 'kerning' word don't show any shenanigans. Gotta dig deeper... Edit: ok, it's "em{letter-spacing:1px}" in the CSS.

</comment><comment><USER20> Subtle...

</comment><comment><USER21> xkcd.com/1015

<comment><USER22> Incidentally, if you want to see a bit of text most viewers of that comic probably haven't, look for <div id="transcript" in the source.

<comment><USER23> I had no idea… thanks for pointing that out. Doesn't seem too useful for those of us that can see the comic for ourselves, but a nice easter egg nonetheless.

<comment><USER24> It's pretty fantastic for finding the xkcd strip you're thinking of via Google, since the comic transcripts are read by Googlebot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> <http://shirtoid.com/7401/keming/></comment>


Designers Don't Solve Problems - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/296d15a272f2

<comment><USER2> Hi Colm! I'm following you because of your FANTASTIC UI/UX post on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-resources-for- learnin...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-resources-for-learning- bleeding-edge-web-UI-and-UX-design/answer/Colm-Tuite)

I feel like you're actually understating your case here, burying your point about generativity in something that sounds a little trite, like "The Journey Is More Important Than The Destination".

\- Amateur designers solve problems as-is.

\- Good designers solve the meta-problem of how to solve problems. They assemble generative assets, insights and aesthetics that have utility beyond the immediate situations.

Designers don't JUST solve problems, they build systems that keep on giving. Teach a man to fish, etc.

The journey is more important than the destination yes, BECAUSE... the destination is a moving target, and the hero needs to know how to deal with unexpected setbacks, trials, etc.

Sorry, rambled on a bit. Didn't want your great point to get misunderstood. Hope I didn't just make things more convoluted, heh.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with most of that. I was actually planning to write a much longer post but ran out of time. Perhaps I'll elaborate with another post next week.

Thanks for embellishing some of my points :)</comment></comment>


Five productivity pitfalls of going 100% digital - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90389979/5-times-when-using-paper-and-a-pen-is-better-than-using-an-app <comment><USER2> I've heard for years that going "all-digital" can be bad for productivity, I saw it myself when I first started out as a freelance developer. For the first year or so after I went full time, only working from a desk in the garage I had problems keeping up on my to-do list.

But this is where I'll disagree with the premise of the topic. After about the year I had come up with a pretty good system of a to-do list and high-level notes in a Word doc. Maybe it's because I'm an engineer at heart and have a (sometimes) curse of always looking at a system and seeing the ways it can be improved. I will concede that I am not normal in that way, I have spoken to many freelancers that had to keep a paper to-do list to keep from losing tasks and notes. My real problem with using paper for to-dos and notes is that I've always been on the move, and I have severe CRS.

Returning to the tips from the article, these tips are new to me and I wish I had heard these back then. 10 years ago when I started out as a freelancer I didn't have any issues focusing when it was time to work. Now though is a different story! Lol. I'll be putting a couple of these into my workflow and habits. Thanks for posting this, @jonbaer!</comment>


AI Needs More Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexanderlavin/2019/05/06/ai-needs-more-why/ <comment><AUTHOR> Quick notes on Léon Bottou's work with causality in deep learning (re the MIT Tech Review article "Deep learning could reveal why the world works the way it does"): [https://twitter.com/theAlexLavin/status/1126520379927740416](https://twitter.com/theAlexLavin/status/1126520379927740416)</comment>


FUNcube Dongle: a software defined radio that runs from a USB port - <AUTHOR> http://www.funcubedongle.com/

<comment><USER2> > There are two versions. The entry level FUNcube Dongle gives access to the > satellite frequency band that FUNcube and some other satellites use. The Pro > version gives unlimited access to the frequency range 64 to 1,700MHz[1].

> It's also all-mode: this means that it's not just limited to narrow band FM > reception. As well as data, the FUNcube Dongle will also recieve many other > narrow band signals including AM, FM and SSB. It will even receive TV sound > channels!

[1] 96Khz bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER3> So they haven't figured out the price for the firmware-crippled version? I wonder how well the versions will be enforced.

</comment><comment><USER4> think i spent too much loot on my usrp

<comment><USER5> This is no way comparable to a USRP. Receive only, 80Khz bandwidth, and who knows how long lock time for frequencies. It's a barely software defined radio- more of a wide band scanner.

It's a cute receiver. You can't build a GSM base station with it.</comment></comment>


Reddit to Go Dark to Protest SOPA. Right on - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&doc_id=237622&

<comment><USER2> This is great. I hope other major players (Google, Facebook, ...) participate in this blackout in some way. Not everyone reads tech blogs and major TV outlets would not cover it since they are in support of SOPA. A little video stream on the main Google or Facebook landing pages would go a long way to help raise awareness.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good start, but if it's just Reddit going dark for a day, I don't think it'll amount to anything. It's not like Reddit hasn't heard of SOPA/Protect IP.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that Reddit will get a huge number of hits by people going to see it go dark. Too bad there's no way to monetize a dark site.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would wikipedia to join the blackout if me and half a million others donate $10?

discussion for wikipedia blackout:

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative>

<comment><USER6> I'd donate to support it (I already donate periodically to wikipedia and I'd happily donate more).</comment></comment>


Addressing Questions about the Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.developerforce.com/developer-relations/2013/11/addressing-questions-about-the-salesforce-1-million-hackathon.html <comment><USER2> "We expected and encouraged teams to take advantage of existing APIs and services they've written to create a great mobile app. "

That line upsets me. They absolutely did not encourage teams to take advantage of existing services that they have previously written and pointing to one random post on the developer forum as evidence of this is terrible. My team and I read the official rules together several times before deciding that we could not in good faith incorporate our existing product (including using our own API to integrate features) into the mobile app we built for the hackathon. The line "built from scratch" in the rules seemed clear to us but apparently we were mistaken.

<comment><USER3> I would like to see people banding together to get refunds. It appears that the competition was a sham.

The prize was a lot of money as well. That should set some alarms off when you enter a 3 day competition.

<comment><USER4> I had a simpler idea. What if Microsoft or oracle just took over to finish this thug. Most developers just want to show off what they did. Sales force never even created a gallery for that

<comment><USER5> There's no incentive for them to do that. Why would another corp want to go sticking their hands in this massive mess, possibly getting blowback from either Salesforce or the hacking masses?

<comment><USER4> are you kidding? There could be no better roi. I don't even think a prize would be necessary. People are angry for many reasons, not the least of which is that no one got to see what they created. That just reduces everyone to a seat filler for the promo videos

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the blandest non-statement filled with lies:

\- "...any Salesforce customer or developer is likely to have a whole set of existing customizations and logic that can be exposed to their mobile app via REST API." \- Customization and Logic... can mean almost anything. How does that reconcile with "from Scratch" as stated else where?

\- "Every eligible app entry was reviewed at least twice." Many Apps videos have zero views & zero installs so this twice thing is a provable lie

\- "Once we complete our review of the final entries, we will post our findings here"

Will you revoke the 1 Million prize given to an Ex-Salesforce architect who had Demoed this app at a Meet-up 2 weeks before the Open of the Hackathon?

<comment><USER7> The real horror is that they are trying to run another sham next year....

<comment><USER8> the whole event was sh- none of the employees knew solid information to tell the hackers, sign-in deadlines were extended, etc etc. good lord, even the food at the hackathon was appalling; i'm not a picky eater but i wouldn't even give that food to a homeless person outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes it sound like they're just straight up lying. It's been pointed out several times that upshot was developed before the announcement of the competition and multiple developers have analytics to prove their video/app wasn't viewed once, let alone twice. They ignored all the questions/concerns people had. I'm incredibly disappointed with this announcement and I did not even participate in the hackathon.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't the final call; it sounds like they are still investigating the top 5.

<comment><USER9> I didn't get that impression, "all of the final 5 teams met the eligibility requirements specified in the Official Rules". They did mention that they are doing a more "in-depth" review, but they should have been immediately disqualified by the fact that it's clearly stated you must start after October 25th.

<comment><USER4> They're stuck in a hard place and an internal investigation is probably happening. This story will get worse before it gets better. I have a feeling that the story that they gave their partners a pass on the rules has credibility. Which means if they retract the 1st place, they get sued by them. and they get sued for essentially fixing the competition. The easiest out they didn't take. And it begs the question as to why

<comment><USER4> It got worse. healthcare.love was in the salesforce pocket too. Patrick Hoge reported. He's doing a great job and is going to run down finding all entrants. also, it's worth looking into 3rd 4th and 5th now.

<comment><USER10> Who were the developers that have proof their app was never reviewed? I'd like to talk to them and see the proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As I watched Upshot's demo at Dreamforce it seemed hard to imagine that it was something built in 3 days. The judges pointed out that the guys who presented 3rd and 5th (Upshot was 4th) had been there night and day, not sleeping. Turian talked about how they had spent time walking around talking to people. It seems that they likely had a complete or near-complete application before they got to Dreamforce. Considering the news coming out now, it is a shame that the guys who built great apps from start to finish this week didn't win.

<comment><USER12> You were allowed to start working oct 25

<comment><USER13> They Demoed on October 5th. That is before the 25th. #notadoctorwhoepisode

<comment><USER12> I was replying to the parent comment's: "hard to imagine that it was something built in 3 days"

==> You weeks to work on the entry.

The fact that Upshot's Team did theirs outside of the competition period longer is a different issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which questions did they address? Doesn't seem like they said anything.

The comment that teams could use existing code, but not use products that were already released or in development seems in conflict with the allegation that the winning team demoed the product weeks before the contest started.

"Once we complete our review of the final entries, we will post our findings here. " Is in conflict with the title... More like "Sometime when everyone has forgotten we WILL BE addressing questions"

-Not a Dreamforce Participant.

<comment><USER14> What is the difference between existing code and an existing product made of code, for the purpose of reusing code? The distinction (which I understand is not your own creation) seems forced, if not ambiguous.

<comment><USER13> Code doesn't come with a business model. A product does. Code doesn't come with User Feedback and refinements based on real world testing. A Product does.

<comment> yo-mf Plenty of "products" also do not have a business model. So code posted on Github that gets comments would be a product? Really sounds like you are quibbling.

The statement about "existing code" was ambiguous for a reason...

<comment><USER4> unfortunately, they are also in a bind by stating that only the new work would be judged. @aliciatweet cites that it looks like they webview'd their existing site (would have to be verified). so, that means they judged using a webview as a million dollar contribution? my guess is that the call happened in which partners were allowed in with existing tech. and that information was never passed to the judging team with specific reference as to work accomplished within the hack period. possibly an innocent mistake or specifically designed to pass people through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My only surprise is that the winning team didn't keep their product quiet beforehand and do a good acting job on how hard they had to work to get it done within the deadline. A million dollar prize is very likely to create controversy when there are loop holes and ambiguity in the rules and even if I did get a head start, I would have wanted to avoid the chance of this type of blowback.

</comment><comment><USER16> The winners cheated and the business didn't follow their own rules. Sounds like enterprise to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm establishing a fact timeline in a google doc. There is a first hand account of a call between salesforce and partners that allowed them to bring premade apps with the instructions that only contributions during the hack would be considered. That info was not made public. It altered the rules materially. Moreover that info was probably not disclosed to judges or the initial team as it would have reduced the upshot app to a text field with Siri to translate. Can someone else confirm?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does not sound convincing, given the gravity of the allegations made.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is ridiculous -- many of my friends booked flights out just to compete in this competition. Super disappointed in how it was run.

<comment><USER4> do you think you can ask your friends to add their videos to this list. we're assembling all entries. this story isn't finished yet. [http://list.ly/list/BOb-salesforce-1m-hackathon-the-real- win...](http://list.ly/list/BOb-salesforce-1m-hackathon-the-real- winner#item_330601)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not sure where the controversy is coming from, given that admin clarification from 11-14-2013 said, "You could modify an existing product to integrate with Salesforce and submit that, however you'd be judged on just that component, not the pre-existing product."

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of things wrong with that, not the least of which being that you can't modify rules in obscure places. That changed participation. Why not modify and notify the official rules. If they stuck in an obscure forum post an hour before deadline that the winner had to sell their code to salesforce for a dollar, would that still be a legal modification? That aside, they knowingly or unknowingly did not pass the modification rule to the judges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> can anyone who entered the contest put their video here? besides just being an awesome way for us to finally see the outcome of people's efforts, it's a real practical way to keep track (since salesforce won't open the curtain).

[http://list.ly/list/BOb-salesforce-1m-hackathon-the-real- win...](http://list.ly/list/BOb-salesforce-1m-hackathon-the-real- winner#item_330601)

<comment><USER10> All of the submissions are posted publicly here [http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions](http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Random fact: you may know Turian, part of the winning team, by being the man who used to have this impressive moustache: [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1206193071/turian- profi...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1206193071/turian-profile- think_about_it-800x1067.jpg)

I remember his writings or events that he was involved in have popped up on HN several times in the past.</comment>


7 Must Reads for Developers Turned Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://brianhaveri.com/?id=50 <comment><USER3> I fail to see "How to Win Friends and Influence People" listed there - a blody shame, as it IS the book on how humans work. And remember every dollar you ever make comes from humans.

<comment><USER4> That is a good and important book. It is really important for Engineers - <USER2> if you WIN an argument, you have LOST a friend.</comment></comment>


How to Write by George Orwell - <AUTHOR> http://mla.stanford.edu/Politics_&_English_language.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is a tremendous essay, and well worth the read. But please for the love of god use correct titles! This piece already has a name, and given that it was named by the man who wrote it - let's use his title.

For a brief, and cruel second you led me to believe that George Orwell had written a piece called "How to Write".

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies if the title got you unduly excited! I was echoing this submission (admittedly titled more accurately): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4470133></comment></comment>


Show HN: WiseRadar: news for product builders - <AUTHOR> https://www.wiseradar.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Built this because as founders we hated missing big news about competitors. Would love to hear whether you think this could be useful, and/or what other solutions you use today. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Very cool. We built an internal "competitive intelligence" tool a while back for keeping track of this sort of stuff. I've actually been toying with the idea of releasing it as Open Source and/or making a SaaS product out of it, but it hasn't really been a priority.

I definitely see this kind of thing as being useful in the general sense. Keeping tabs on the competition _is_ important and if tools can make it easier, so much the better.</comment></comment>


New Social Network That Pays You for Interacting, Taking Early Signups Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.favorsome.com/

<comment><USER2> i wish we didn't live in a world where we had to be rewarded just for being nice to people. interested to see where this goes!

<comment><USER3> Seems new generation of people comes around. People that wants to be rewarded, awarded or recognized for being good.

Thats the moment when Being Good = Being Greedy for attention I am afraid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you have a point. On the other hand, we're making every effort in our design to maximize the value people are getting out of helping one another, sharing resources and time, etc rather than squeezing the system as much as possible</comment></comment></comment>


Only steal from the best (as opposed to Great Artists Steal) - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/09/09/onlyStealFromTheBest.html <comment><USER2> uh. Stealing in wrong. Why would you advocate stealing? Are you using the word "steal" when you mean something else? Why not just use the right words? I mean there is inspiration, copying, using, implementing, following, quoting, learning from, etc.

If a physicist uses E=mc^2 in some research, is he stealing? Isn't everything in human culture based on something that came before? I am stealing these words by using them?

<comment><USER3> It's riffing off a quote from Picasso:

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

The point is that if you copy something, it's still someone else's work. You've just made a lifeless derivative. If you steal it, however, that implies more than making a copy - it implies making it your own. Things stolen no longer belong to the original owner.

An example: House of the rising sun is a traditional song, passing round loads of musicians - but the Animals "stole" it in such a way no-one can hear it anymore and not think of their work.

<comment><USER2> okay, first I have to say I appreciate the point you make, about taking something and making it your own. I think you actually makes a better and more subtle point than the original quote itself does and it is not something in the linked post!

Having said that, the OP is not talking about that "quote"-- frequently attributed to Picasso, but probably from T.S. Eliot (Thanks Nancy Prager: [http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets- borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great- poets-steal/)) Maybe Picasso stole that too. I think people know the quote from Steve Jobs' interview (mis)attribution? to Picasso.

Anyway, I think your point is essentially then of copying something without attribution or credit to the point of destroying the original authorship, and I would have to say that that from of "stealing" is also wrong.

Your blues music is a good example of stealing, literally the use of copyrighted songs written by impoverished black artists by artists like Led Zeppelin without paying royalties.

So a clarified version of my point is: Using an idea and making your own expression or extension of it is not stealing, it is the basis of all knowledge and culture. Copying someone's expression of an idea, whether legal or not, without attribution when you know who you are copying and you are able to give attribution, is wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Lisp CPU - <AUTHOR> http://www.frank-buss.de/lispcpu/ <comment> TD-Linux This would be interesting, but it looks like it has been barely started - <USER2> CPU is barely what I would call a CPU, let alone a Lisp interpreter.

Verilog isn't a programming language (it tries to be, unfortunately). For synthesis, it is a hardware description language. Someday I'll write up some decent Verilog tutorials because there aren't any good ones on the Internet.

<comment><USER3> My thoughts exactly. When I saw "Perhaps the Verilog language is not so good, because some nice standard language featuers (forever-loop etc.) are missing in the Xilinx-Tools.", I had flashbacks to VHDL class, students writing loops and then wondering why they couldn't synthesize the code. You have to get yourself into a hardware mindset, thinking about clocks and state machines and enable lines rather than infinite loops.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it looks like this guy needs to learn more Verilog before he can make progress on the CPU implementation.

It reminds of teaching some VHDL in a hackerspace a few years ago (I had learned it in college some years previously), and this software guy was constantly trying to write functions and loops, and was having trouble with the concept that all signals were propagated concurrently rather than sequentially!

Sure, it _looks_ like code (in fact, VHDL's syntax is purposefully similar to ADA), but it sure _isn 't_ code.

<comment><USER5> Would it be fair to describe it as concurrently executed code?

<comment><USER4> hah, that's only the tip of the iceberg...

From memory:

\- HDL code doesn't have variables the way programming code does. Sure, you can store state in latches (and other more roundabout ways), but a good design tries to avoid this.

\- You can have "functions" that take parameters, but what you're really doing is instantiating blocks of hardware according to said parameters.

\- Instead of variables to functions, what you really care about is signals as input and output to hardware blocks. (and ultimately at the final hardware implementation, propagation time and power of said signals. Especially the clock. OMG the clock...)

Honestly, I found VHDL made complete sense from approaching it after drawing digital circuit diagrams, as the description code mapped pretty clearly to that. Approaching it from an "imperative programming" background makes little sense, and saying it's "concurrent programming" just ends up confusing the issue more, IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely agree with learning digital circuit design first. Before writing a single line of HDL, you should know exactly what you want to be synthesized.

Unfortunately all to many courses approach like learning a new programming language. To me this is like teaching CAD before teaching how to draw a rectangle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You need to look at The Architecture of Symbolic Machines by Peter Kogge. It contains a machine you can implement. I have implemented it in the Jatha LISP interpreter ( [http://sourceforge.net/projects/jatha/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/jatha/) ).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to point out that the code he has on there isn't a Lisp CPU and I don't think will even work in a real FPGA. I don't know Verilog, just VHDL, but that business in the INIT state looks sketchy to say the least. Even if it does work, it just loads a few instructions into memory & executes them; these instructions blink an LED on the board. The Lisp architecture is barely described beyond a few sparse notes about a tagged memory arch (not implemented).

I'm not attacking the original author; these look like personal notes as he explores an FPGA and realizes that hardware design is complicated. But don't get your hopes up on this being... well, anything.

<comment><USER8> yeah it's definitely not synthesizable in its current state, not to mention that he's going to have a bad time if he messes with the clock the way he does in this code (the way he generates his slowClock, unless his tools are clever enough to recognize this pattern and do the right thing).

It's a cool project though, but if I were him I'd learn the language with some simpler and smaller designs, maybe some stuff he'll be able to re-use in his final CPU.

As it is it reads a bit like someone who wants to write a kernel in C while not understanding how pointers work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was started back in 2004 and the last update was in 2007 apparently [1], not a lot of the content changed. Building CPUs in FPGAs is fun, a lot of the demo boards available these days already have memory and often either an SD card type interface or some sort of NAND flash attached. A good place to start if your interested is fpgacpu.org ( not exactly a 'live' site but there is good info in there ) or opencores.org.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.frank- buss.de/lispcp...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.frank- buss.de/lispcpu/)

</comment><comment><USER10> These more recent projects also made Lisp machines in FPGAs. It looks like they got further than the original post here:

LispmFPGA (2008) [http://www.aviduratas.de/lisp/lispmfpga/](http://www.aviduratas.de/lisp/lispmfpga/)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.lan...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/36_qKNErHAg)

IGOR (2008) [http://opencores.org/project,igor](http://opencores.org/project,igor)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaitorge/sets/7215760944571932...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaitorge/sets/72157609445719327/)

</comment><comment> wes-exp I'd like to see a modern CPU that handles dynamic typing in hardware. Registers can store values as well as the type, e.g. 32 value bits and a few type bits. Basic arithmetic like addition can automatically compare the type bits and just do the right thing with a single instruction (fixnum add, float add, bignum add, etc.).

Would this be cool or am I dreaming?

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure it was already done in the Symbolics Lisp Machine.

<comment><USER12> Also in the LMI K-machine [1].

I got part way through building type checking hardware to use with Franz Lisp on 68k CPUs. Franz Lisp allocated objects of a single type in each page and the 68k had function code pins that meant you could tell whether a bus read was for data or instruction fetch, the idea was that I would modify the compiler to read a latched type value just after a Lisp object had been read into a register.

[1] [http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm](http://fare.tunes.org/tmp/emergent/kmachine.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't a "Lisp CPU" be like the one in the classic Lisp Machines, which didn't execute Lisp directly, but were optimised for executing it?

<comment><USER12> The ideas on the web page are closer to the Scheme-79 chip [1] than a Lisp Machine.

[1] [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6334](http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6334)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Jeff's LispMicrocontroller is another example of this sort of thing (but a bit further along, it seems): [https://github.com/jbush001/LispMicrocontroller](https://github.com/jbush001/LispMicrocontroller)

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks like a really fun project. I'd be interested in any good Verilog resources anyone can recommend. Also, does anyone know if there is there an affordable way to get components you design manufactured on a small scale? (Not in the thousands of units, I mean.)

<comment><USER16> FPGAs are definitely the way to go. They are cheap and reprogrammable. One awesome devboard is the Zedboard. It includes 2 (?) ARM cores and a 28nm FPGA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not familiar with Verilog. I wonder if something like this[1] would be a useful tool in this developer's belt.

1: [http://www.cs.colby.edu/djskrien/CPUSim/](http://www.cs.colby.edu/djskrien/CPUSim/)

</comment><comment><USER18> What are the good convenient and modern FPGA's good for a modern computer?

I'm not sure what I'm asking here, really. I would ask for a PCE-Express board, but I've switched to a laptop as my main machine, with external monitor, keyboard and mouse when in home/office. I guess a PCE-Express board that could in principle be used in a rack-mount server would be useful.

<comment><USER19> Probably a Zedboard.

<comment><USER18> I don't see a PCI-Express one. Alternatively, which one do you find convenient? I think the external board should have some kind of case so that I won't have to worry about short-circuiting it.

<comment><USER20> When you say you want a PCIe one, do you really want to start by writing your own PCI slave? It's a bit of a pain. And having the FPGA on the PCI bus lets it crash your development PC when you get it wrong.

<comment><USER18> You're right, I wouldn't want to write my own PCI slave and have it crash my PC. Unless the board developer already took care of that, it's probably better to go with standalone board for now. I hope we'll see more convenient FPGA development boards that will be no more hassle to use than an extra videocard in your PC now, as Moore's law hits the wall and FPGA's become more ubiquitous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As written, that INIT section is really going to limit clock speed. I also don't understand why currentState is double clocked.

<comment><USER22> It's not going to limit clock speed, its just not going to work. To write multiple values to different ram locations (considering a ram has at most two ports) would require you to stay in the INIT state for 9 cycles and do something like:

      INIT:
        begin
        if (count == 9) begin
          next_count == 0;
          nextState = `EVALUATE;
        end
        else
          next_count == count + 1;
        case (count)
          0: begin ram_wr_addr = count; ram_wr_data = `CMD_LED_ON; ram_wr_en = 1; end
          1: begin ram_wr_addr = count; ram_wr_data = `CMD_LOAD_NEXT_TO_ACCU; ram_wr_en = 1; end
          etc....
        end

usually you have a ram module that takes an address and some write_data, wr_en, etc rather than accessing the array directly.

<comment><USER3> I think we've come back to "original author doesn't actually know how to write logic, thinks he's writing sequential code" as the core problem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It always surprises me to see these sorts of projects NOT based on Racket. I guess that is the danger of Scheme, it's so easy to reimplement the base language that everyone is doomed to spending lifetimes reimplementing the standard libraries.

<comment><USER24> Perhaps the next "next Java" or "next C++" had better focus on also being a more or less universal platform, such that the reimplementation of standard libraries becomes a thing of the past? The CLR strove to be this, but this didn't take off because of its association with Microsoft.

The "designed to be hosted" structure of Clojure points the way to how this could be approached. Stallman's designs for Scheme and GUILE are along these lines as well.

<comment><USER25> Since UNCOL people keep on trying, but in the end it always ends up not quite there.</comment></comment></comment>


Fortune interviews Steve Jobs for its Most Admired Companies issue - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is."

<comment><USER2> I wanted to paste this one as well. By far, one of the best recent quotes I've come across. It summarizes my drive perfectly as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would love so much to watch him prepare and run one of those Monday meetings. We've all probably noticed the way a workweek tends to starts slow on Monday and ramp up over the following days. I bet his massive energy injection on Monday gets the big Apple machine fired up much faster than most other companies.</comment>


An Open Letter to Tim Cook, CEO, Apple, Inc - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtworks.com/news/open-letter <comment><USER2> Good to see Apple is getting support from tech industry.</comment>


Hacker says that Microsoft's security process is better than Apple's - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002317-245.html

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't doubt it. Microsoft has fought the hackers in a seriously lengthy and costly campaign.

Apple on the other hand hasn't been nearly as big a target.

It stands to reason that Microsoft would have developed better processes to deal with the problem, even if it was by mistake. It's been 30 years and they've taken many casualties.

But you wait- hackers go where the users go.

BTW, I'm using _hacker_ in its popular usage. As TFA is.</comment>


Audible-visuals: Audio visualizer experiments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soniaboller/audible-visuals <comment><USER2> I was just reflecting the other day how I've missed music visualizers. Thanks for sharing! My research that night didn't bring me to these.

<comment><USER3> I remember once making a VHS tape of the output of a PlayStation when you put an Audio CD in it. It makes some visualizations like this. I brought it to school because I thought it would look cool in our morning announcements, which were put on by students.

I didn't realize it, but I miss music visualizers too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I though this audio spectrum visualization was well done. the "mic" mode is fun to sing/whistle into. I'm not sure it works on mobile though..

[https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/](https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Spectrogram/)</comment>