Nike CEO gives $750M to pay full tuition+expenses for 100 Stanford students/year - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/02/24/nike-billionaire-phil-knight-and-stanford-unveil-750-million-scholarship-program/#2466ff182bfc <comment><USER2> it costs 7.5M to put 1 student through college? And I thought Australian Uni's were expensive.

<comment><USER3> It does include a monthly VTA bus pass and WiFi.

<comment><USER2> ah that explains it lol</comment></comment></comment>


Full Guide to Developing REST API's with AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sourcerer.io/full-guide-to-developing-rest-apis-with-aws-api-gateway-and-aws-lambda-d254729d6992 <comment><USER3> IME the AWS GUI is not useful for all that much in a meaningful context. Thus this post is pretty misleading to a new person getting involved in cloud; it doesn't qualify as "full" in my mind.

As a number of other comments have pointed out, there are packages that help with managing your infrastructure in code; which is critical outside of anything other than a play environment. Terraform, serverless, cloudformation, SAM, zappa, etc - are all essentially requirements for cloud usage.

At Amazon they've tooling which makes it relatively easy to set up an AWS account to develop against; the tool primarily configures the billing to the correct team within amazon. Additionally your manager gets "rights" to the account, IAM accounts can be linked to AD, etc, etc. This is all part of a push to get Amazon employees building infra on AWS proper. When you create the environment you have to denote whether it's dev, or whether it's production; in the former case it's widely accepted that you use the GUI to set up your trial. However in the latter case you're _strongly_ encouraged to use something like cloudformation. It was always a shock to me that for prod accounts they don't disable the GUI for anything other than viewing.

<comment><USER4> My experience... while Lambda is capable of hosting micro-services, any coding pipeline that emphasizes continuous integration (CI) will be better served with one, generic, monolithic Lambda function that dispatches to sub-modules behind the scenes.

However, this only scales up to a 50MB binary distributable.

<comment><USER3> Oh, interesting - can you share some information as to why you think the monolithic approach is best?

<comment><USER4> Our use of Lambda runs in a VPC, so each new function requires a lot of manual network I/O and IAM configuration to trust the function.

A single monolithic JAR was the fastest way to close the feedback loop between idea, prototype, deploy, and validate.

Wouldn't say this is _best_. Just faster. Every retrospective is an opportunity to explore use of cloud formation, or some templated deployment model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not sure if 'Full Guide' in title of the article made me smiling or maybe it was recall of my experiences related to configuration of AWS Lambda and AWS API Gateway in CloudFormation. There is a lot of things which has not been mentioned in this article and it is what I am looking forward to - <USER2> trivial things which looks easy at the first glance, i.e.:

* How to configure caching and caching rules - please note there are few ways (query strings, headers, parameters, cache enabled only on single method etc.) to specify how to cache responses.

* Attach your REST API on custom domain as a regional endpoint (instead of edge-optimized, since regional endpoints are more configurable)- create ACM certificate (per each region, and one for CloudFront), create own CloudFront distribution (think: multi region deployment), add DNS record in Route53 and configure WAF (some magic DDoS protection).

I took me a lot of time with CloudFormation to get through where I am today and yet I think I would be grateful if someone will share his knowledge gained on more sophisticated use-cases than just 'Hello World'.

<comment><USER6> I'm using AWS SAM, which simplifies much, but couldn't setup CORS with it.

<comment><USER5> I were using SAM for month or two and then switched back to CloudFormation, because I felt limited (not all features of API Gateway were implemented, duplicated stages, problems with instrict functions). However, I watch their GitHub repository for changes and I noticed many missing features are implemented on AWS re:invent basis (duration between next conference). The worth-noting feature of SAM is definetely aws-sam-cli (former: aws-sam-local) [1], which is a tool for developers to parse SAM template and invoke Lambda function in the docker on local machine. It was great to test simple APIs (start-api mode), but when some API started using custom authorizers or response was a compressed payload of png image it was not very helpful. Personally, I am working on a fork of aws-sam-cli to implement it to work with CloudFormation.

[1]: [https://github.com/awslabs/aws-sam-cli](https://github.com/awslabs/aws- sam-cli)

<comment><USER6> Isn't SAM just an extension of CloudFormation?

It allows you the SAM simplifications, but also all the CF stuff.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it adds a new custom types AWS::Serverless::* [1] and new Globals section [2] and it is really pleasant to work with for basic, not complicated API. It is transformed into CF template via samtranslator [3] (recently open-sourced) so it inherits a lot from CloudFormation but also that's why I encountered differences between SAM and CF types.

[1]: [https://awslabs.github.io/serverless-application- model/inter...](https://awslabs.github.io/serverless-application- model/internals/generated_resources.html)

[2]: [https://awslabs.github.io/serverless-application- model/globa...](https://awslabs.github.io/serverless-application- model/globals.html)

[3]: [https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application- model/tree...](https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application- model/tree/develop/samtranslator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AWS provides their own "Python Serverless Microframework for AWS" called Chalice: [https://github.com/aws/chalice](https://github.com/aws/chalice)

I have yet to deploy a production service with it, but the development experience has been positive.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice guide.

Going through the motions of setting up my first API Gateway and Lambda was eye opening to me.

There are a ton of options in these two services — rate limiting, authorizers, concurrency, monitoring, etc. — that point to how much power you gain building an app like this.

If you'd like to see an automated, infrastructure-as-code approach to setting up an API, check out my boilerplate app:

[https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas](https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if I'm missing something. Given 10 minutes of load for pre warming, I was getting 95th percentile times of 1.6 seconds with a bare minimum node lambda hello world function. I threw 1,000 concurrent requests at it across 4 threads, with a 1,000 concurrent execution limit configuration on aws.

I was really excited about lambda, but that is flat out terrible performance for a lot of users. Is this not an issue for others? Why not?

<comment><USER10> My results have been similar.

<comment><USER9> Given that, I wonder why people keep writing about it? I get the appeal for an internal app or a background job, but for a public facing rest/graphql api? Seems like the performance isn't there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alternately:

``` from flask import Flask app=Flask() @app.route('/') def hi(): return "Hi!" ```

$ pip install zappa

$ zappa init

$ zappa deploy

$ zappa certify

IAM, SSL, API Gateway, Lambda, all taken care of. We did the work so you don't have to.

<comment><USER12> If using NodeJS there is a very similar package to zappa called Serverless [https://serverless.com/](https://serverless.com/)

One thing I would improve with the authors article is he crammed a giant conditional statement on the http-method inside his one function. Serverless makes it easy to bundle a single function per HTTP method and even share common code between them. You can build out a whole application as a single npm package.

Bonuses include plugins for serverless that let you unit test your handlers, run a simulated APIG/Lambda/Dynamo environment locally for development, plugins that let you interact more deeply with AWS like assigning a custom domain to your APIG.

Example apps: [https://github.com/serverless/examples](https://github.com/serverless/examples)

<comment><USER13> Serverless Framework is also great for Python if you're not porting a WSGI application. Plug/Disclaimer: I'm the creator/maintainer of the defacto python dependency packaging plugin for serverless[0]

[0] [https://github.com/UnitedIncome/serverless-python- requiremen...](https://github.com/UnitedIncome/serverless-python-requirements)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For folks who just want a FaaS platform that comes with all the batteries included:

[https://StdLib.com](https://StdLib.com)

For folks who already have AWS infra and want the benefits of Lambda without the pain of API Gateway or Cloud Formation:

[https://arc.codes](https://arc.codes)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is no remark that an admin IAM user should not be used. This is highly critical and should not be done ever.

Also using something like serverless framework is better suited for the average developer to get this setup up and running. Clicking through the aws cli is not something professional aws users do often. (exceptions would be Cloudwatch metrics and logs). The article should at least mention that infrastructure better is managed in code.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a use case for AWS API Gateway if one is not using Lambda ? Can it protect a web application against DDOS ?

I am not convinced API gateway+ Lambda can substitute for a Web Application , atleast for J2EE apps. The Lambda "boot" time is way too high unless we resort to tricks to keep the lambda instance active. I find the extra $30 or similar is well spent on a a AWS Elastic Beanstalk with auto scaling. The packaging and deployment is cleaner and simpler.

<comment><USER17> Yes, you can use API Gateway without lambda. "API Gateway" is an industry term and not specific to Amazon. The point is exactly your line of reasoning, a funnel/gateway to your APIs. You can handle Auth, Throttling, etc at that point. AWS does provide other products for use against DDOS, WAF, Shield. ELB, Cloudfront, VPCs/SG. Their idea is to be able to scale, deflect if possible and absorb the attack. They also mention that with AWS API Gateway you can get Layer & & 3 DDOS protection and throttling for your backend. I've no practical experience nor have read any reports on how it holds up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great introduction! It should probably also include integration with Route53 and Amazon's SSL cert manager.

<comment><USER19> can you recommend a beginner friendly resource for those?

<comment><USER18> I personally consider the introductory blog post to be pretty straightforward: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-certificate- manager...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-certificate-manager- deploy-ssltls-based-apps-on-aws/)

If you're using AWS based services it does a good job of doing what letsencrypt would otherwise do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's a handy calculator to compare AWS Lambda with EC2: [https://servers.lol](https://servers.lol)</comment>


Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806

<comment><USER2> As xkcd points out, this kinda makes a mockery of the pole vault. Certainly at the olympic level anyway.

<http://xkcd.com/852/>

<comment><USER3> Of the world record, at least. The actual olympic competitions are still valid.

<comment><USER4> This also proves that it's not McDonalds fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like there is a patch of substantially reduced gravity near Sri Lanka. I wonder if India has already taken this into account for the launch pads at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, does that mean i live "longer" if I stay in a city that has less gravity? With the right kind of advertising, it looks like India's real estate could go through the roof.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also see GRACE (launched in 2002), which measures the time variation in Earth's gravity field, albeit with a much lower spatial resolution than GOCE:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Climate_Ex...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Recovery_and_Climate_Experiment)

<comment><USER8> And GRAIL, to be launched September of this year, which will do the same thing for the interior of the Moon:

<http://moon.mit.edu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious as to why stronger gravity areas are portrayed by outward growth (aka growth in the opposite direction of gravity) and not inward to portray compression. Is this a common representation or might it be to improve the potato-effect?

<comment><USER10> I believe the elevation of each point relative to the center represents the distance that one would have to be from earth's centroid to experience the same gravitational acceleration (relative to some baseline, presumably an average).

So, if you're in a stronger-than-average gravity spot, you move away from the centre until you are experiencing the same gravitational force.

<comment><USER11> Personally, I like the explanation they gave in the article: "It is the shape the oceans would adopt if there were no winds, no currents and no tides ... magnified nearly 10,000 times".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice if the article gave analogies to the varying effects of gravity depending on your location in the world (e.g. jumping up and down on the north pole would be like jumping up and down in North America with a 5 pound brick attached to your shoes.)

At least for humans, it would be fascinating to learn if evolutionary discrepancies among different people across the world can be attributed to differing gravitational effects.

<comment><USER13> They emphased the data with a factor of 10.000 to get the differences through, so I'd guesstimate the weight in the ballpark of a gram (0,0022 pound nugget).

As for what it's good for, the article has a good example: "Now, with Goce, we can unify this so that we don't get the sort of surprises we had when they built the Channel Tunnel and discovered a half-metre offset between the UK and France."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow so I could lose some weight just by traveling to... hmm, any desirable locations to visit?

<comment><USER15> but you'll live less (faster) as less gravity speeds the time up

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Come on, BBC.

 _It looks like a giant potato in space._

Really? A giant potato?

 _Scientists say the data gathered by the super-sleek space probe_

Ooh, super-sleek! But is it shiny?

(other than that, very interesting article.)</comment>


Ask HN: ARM-based Linux laptop business? - <AUTHOR> This is at the "is this even possible" stage. So the end goal would be to build a completely FOSS laptop using Risc V with zero proprietary blobs but after briefly exploring Risc V, the ecosystem is still way too early to build anything for consumers/enterprises as someone new to the space. So that's why I want to start with ARM.
Note that I have zero experience doing any of this. My questions:
- How well does linux run on ARM based processors? Will the existing x86-64 software/packages run by recompiling from source or are there any additional complications in porting software over. Will KDE/Gnome run out of the box? How is GPU support? Looking at Raspian, the situation seems encouraging.
- How do I go about learning about the hardware and software areas of building an ARM based laptop? Recommended resources?
- How is ARM based processors' security track record compared to intel and amd's lineup? My brief googling suggests it's better and ARM does not force the usage of a ME/PSP.
- Imagine I could buy a thinkpad x1 carbon like system with an ARM based cpu, install ubuntu and start using it like how one would use the x86 version. Would this even be possible? What are the potential speedbumps?
- How do I actually design a laptop? Maybe start with an off the shelf solution like clevo?
Any and all advice is welcome. I know I am grossly unqualified to do any of this, so please be kind. <comment><USER2> Something close to what you have in mind is the Novena built by Bunnie Huang (if you haven't heard of him, he's a reputed guy in the DIY electronics and reverse engg space). There are extensive hardware and engineering details about it in his blogs[1] and wiki[2].

Ben Heck did a 3-part video series actually building one[3]. You might find all three links useful for the hardware and build aspects.

Pinebook is another laptop-friendly board [4].

One difference I can think of is that x86 architectures tend to be modular and standardized. You can look at any x86 laptop PCB and guess the buses and standards being used between components like CPU, chipset, RAM, GPU, and peripherals. In contrast, every ARM vendor seems to have its own proprietary architecture and everything - even the GPU - is hidden inside a single system- on-chip. This is one reason for those blobs - only the vendor knows how to interface to those internal details.

Another difference I've noticed is that popular peripheral interfaces like SATA and PCIe are rare in the ARM world. Some Odroid boards support SATA hard disks, but I have not come across any popular board that supports PCIe. ARM boards tend to use flash or eMMC - performance is always better with eMMC. If you want an x86 like experience, go with a board that supports atleast eMMC if not SATA.

An entirely different approach may be looking into ARM server architectures. I don't know anything about them, but I'd expect them to be a lot more standardized than embedded boards.

If I were doing this for myself and didn't want a Novena, I'd buy an existing pre-built board like Odroid or i.MX6 board and build a laptop body around it. I can't think of any good approach for blob-free, except tedious reverse engineering.

[1]: [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=novena](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=novena)

[2]: [https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page](https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page)

[3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaOP1orfeqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaOP1orfeqI)

[4]: [http://wiki.pine64.org](http://wiki.pine64.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been thinking about making such a laptop as well. Some random notes:

1\. IMHO, most software is crap that is only tested on i7's with 16GB of RAM. It will likely be slow on everything that has lower specs.

2\. ARM =/= RISC V. ARM is a company (which has its own family of ISA's), RISC V is an open ISA. I _think_ ARM is more mature. Anyway, you'd probably want a relatively high-end ARM processor (see point 1).

3\. Perhaps a good point to start is the raspberry pi. There are plenty of tutorials on building an OS on it. This also helps you to understand the GPU.

4\. One problem is that repositories for package managers focus on x86 (or x86_64) binaries. The ARM repos contain less binaries, so your favorite software may not be in there.

5\. It seems that there are not many 64-bit OSes for ARM. I have tried installing Arch Linux on a chromebook and it works pretty well. Potential problem: it's hard to find the right drivers, if they even exist.

6\. You probably need a degree in electrical engineering to design a laptop motherboard. I don't know about manufacturing it (or rather: getting someone to manufacture it for you), but it's probably nontrivial.

7\. Bringing up Linux on a new motherboard is hard (from what I heard - I have never attempted something similar).

</comment><comment><USER4> RISC-V cores available today are at the same performance level as low to mid- end Android phones. That's also enough for a decent laptop, assuming you're not trying to set any performance records.

Access to a GPU is far more important for consumer devices than anything to do with RISC-V vs ARM in the CPU core(s).

As are things such as DDR RAM controller, ethernet, WIFI, and USB.

That's assuming you want to develop an SoC for your laptop.

If you want to use an existing SoC then possibly one of the best bets at the moment would be to use the Amlogic S905 quad core 1.536 GHz ARM A53 used in the Odroid C2. It was designed for set top boxes rather than phones or PCs, but as a result it has very good graphics and video support.

I don't know where you can buy the raw chips, but there a lot of pretty cheap boards and devices using them on aliexpress e.g. [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/MECOOL-M8S-Plus-DVB-T2-TV- Bo...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/MECOOL-M8S-Plus-DVB-T2-TV-Box- Android-7-1-Amlogic-S905D-1GB-RAM-8GB-ROM/32908690446.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> For what it is worth ARM is proprietary and has binary blobs. The Raspberry Pi depends on them. RISC V is a different and open source architecture with the potential to build systems without dependencies on closed source. From a practical standpoint, RISC-V is probably still a bit away from forming the basis of a practical laptop.

Making a Linux laptop is orthogonal to RISC-V (or ARM or Intel). It's going to cross shopped against Microsoft and Google and Apple. Even with open microcode, the big feature difference is at the operating system...people buy software first and hardware second (at best). If you have a solution to the problem of selling Linux, pivoting to different hardware like RISC-V becomes a purely logistical matter. If you don't have a solution to selling Linux laptops, then it doesn't matter what hardware it runs on. If the goal is to get beyond one and done Kickstarter scale, then sustainable sales of Linux is the hard problem. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Look up the Novena laptop project. It was an ARM-based, completely open source laptop created around 2015 by Andrew "bunnie" Huang and others. He wrote about his experience in designing and manufacturing it in his book "The Hardware Hacker".

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is a successful project that had similar goals to what you're trying to do:

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio- kosagi/novena](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena)

Be aware that hardware development is really hard (just look at the problems that the Open Pandora guys had).

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you can play with this first

[https://pi-top.com/products/pi-top](https://pi-top.com/products/pi-top)

my 2 reasons of not using arm based linux laptop:

1\. no sublime text aarch64 build (this is my major text editor)

2\. trackpad driver is too bad on linux.

</comment><comment><USER2> This video on SiFive's RISC-V offering just came out today. I thought you may find the video and books mentioned in it useful.

[https://youtu.be/L8jqGOgCy5M](https://youtu.be/L8jqGOgCy5M)

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you looked at PiTop? [https://pi-top.com/products/pi-top](https://pi- top.com/products/pi-top)

Although it doesn't fully meet all your goals, it could be a good starting point to bootstrap from.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are plenty of design services in China. I would probably try getting in touch with the people building the Purism laptops and phones.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi I don't know much about computers or prrograms. My laptop was hacked. I been trying to look for clues and Mibbit is in alot of the logs ,info could it be used to hack.

</comment><comment><USER12> What will be the advantage of an ARM based laptop?

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) You need to decide whether you're building a laptop to play with or to sell. Consumers in the main don't care about FOSS, RISC, ARM, blobs, etc. Most of the netbooks were returns.

2) I get the impression from your lack of focus that you're either ADD or bipolar. Work on that before starting a business, which will consume 100% of your available energy.

<comment><USER14> You might mean well, but I find your second point to be inappropriate. I don't think a qualified medical professional would arrive at those mental health outcomes solely based on a short post about Linux + ARM laptops. The lack of focus you perceived seems pretty standard for the "hey, I want to do this, but I'm not sure how!" state.</comment></comment>


OUYA and Razer Forge TV Services Shutdown - <AUTHOR> https://support.razer.com/console/razer-forge-tv/ <comment><USER2> > Please note that your account or wallet funds are not permitted to be > redeemed for use outside of the Forge TV / OUYA / MadCatz MOJO services, > have no cash value and are not exchangeable for cash. Funds that are deemed > unclaimed property may be turned over to the applicable authority. So, we > encourage you to utilize your account funds prior to the shutdown.

That's really bad. Virtual currency should really be regulated at this point. It is not acceptable for service to force you to use their currency to use it and then have the possibility to withhold it if they ever shut down.

Their is a lot of dodgy stuff when it comes to virtual currency but the minimum should be a guarantee refund if the service close.</comment>


The Maker vs. Manager Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.janmeppe.com/blog/makers-vs-manager/ <comment> java-man well explained.

the problem is, the managers [who inflict the most damage] do not read HN.</comment>


IOS Safari page reloads driving me to drink - <AUTHOR>

I just submitted the following feedback to Apple for the iPad.  To me this is the number one Achilles heel of this product, and I'd pay real money to anyone that can make a web browser to solve this:
I love most things about my iPad, but the was Safari constantly reloads pages is driving me to drink.
The following has happened to me more times than I care to admit:
1. Go to a forum, click to reply to a thread.
2. Type a five paragraph post clearly demonstrating your wit and wisdom.
3. Realize that your reference to Pericles doesn't mention his birth and death date.
4. Open a new tab in Safari, and google Pericles. The google results will probably list his dates, so you don't have to click past the results.
5.  Switch back to your witty and incisive post to add the dates---whoops, Safari has to reload the page, and as a result, your lovingly crafted response that took an hour to get right is now gone.
(I probably spelled Pericles wrong, but I'm afraid to look it up)
--
My suggestion would have been much longer but that is as many characters as their feedback form allows. <comment><USER2> You can at least mitigate this by copying long but unsent messages to the clipboard. I somehow picked up that habit years ago on desktop computers, probably because crashing and connection issues were common at the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find this very annoying too. Also, if you have a bunch of tabs loaded ready to read and you go out of signal range, you lose the pages!

I understand mobile browsers have a limited memory, but I don't see why they can't cache the resources required for currently open tabs in the local file system.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the biggest reasons I don't use iOS and also, why I downgraded from Kitkat to 4.3 (what ever that's called) on Android because it started happening on that in Chrome.</comment>


Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Physicists - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25807/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> "If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely."

That's just plain mathematically wrong. There are many kinds of infinity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number>), and the set of all possible events has a much, much higher cardinality than an infinite axis of time. This is similar to saying that, since the set of integers is infinite, it must contain Pi.

<comment><USER3> _the set of all possible events has a much, much higher cardinality than an infinite axis of time._

Are you sure of that? How would you prove it?

It seems intuitively right, but intuition has a habit of being wrong, when it comes to infinities.

<comment><USER4> I have a machine that flashes a light on or off once a second, at random. You can view streams of output from the machine as possible events. Now, suppose an infinite amount of time has passed (aleph-null, by definition). Have I seen every possible sequence?

Well, take the set of aleph-null length sequences (all aleph-null of them [1]) and put them in an order. Now construct the following sequence: invert bit 1 from sequence 1, invert bit 2 from sequence 2, ... etc.

Note that this sequence was never produced by the machine, since we enumerated all the sequences it produced, but they are all different to this one. So, by a standard diagonalisation, the set of events is higher cardinality.

[1] How many aleph-null length sequences come out of the machine? Well, they have to be continuous, so the only obvious aleph-null length sequence is the _total_ sequence the machine produces. However, you can drop an entry from the beginning of the sequence to get another aleph-null length sequence. And so on, making a total of aleph-null.

<comment><USER3> Interesting attempt, but I'm not convinced by the part of the argument where you divide the complete output of the flashy light box into aleph-null sequences, each of length aleph-null.

Mostly, I'm unconvinced that an "event" which takes an infinitely long time to complete actually counts as an event. Usually when we talk about events they're localised in space and time.

<comment><USER5> Well, it's kind of a Catch-22.

This proof is dependent upon the lemma that time is infinite. On the other hand, the set of events we're looking for is the one where time ends. Therefore by assuming the lemma we have no need for the proof.

OTOH, if we're looking at another event that's not so confusing (one that's not the end of time), the proof holds water. It's a pretty sweet proof that I think is similarly used to prove that the set of real numbers is uncountable.

<comment><USER3> No, what I'm saying is that an event which takes an infinitely long time to happen (ie an infinite series of one-second flashes) isn't a proper "event", which as used at least in relativity, is something that happens in finite space and time.

But there's no need to argue about the definition of event. I'll say instead that I'm interested in knowing whether infinite time implies that all _finite- length_ events must eventually happen (and indeed, happen an infinite number of times as the paper claims).

<comment><USER4> Yes, sorry, there is definitely a theorem that if you have an infinite sequence, uniformly distributed over an alphabet, then the probability of seeing any finite sequence is 1. I think that, given some assumptions, you can model the universe as an infinite numerical sequence, so you should see all finite events.

However, the assumptions here seem tricky. Uniform distribution of probability seems unlikely, and if the universe is anything like the game of life, there are garden of Eden states with no predecessor state, which an evolving system cannot reach, even in infinite time.

Cardinality is indeed tricky. I had thought that all finite sequences would be greater than aleph-null, but apparently it isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the sounds of it, this is a far from accepted idea that's just now coming out in like it's first paper or something, so don't start planning your End of Time Party. There's still a lot of verification and research and math between this being published and it becoming the consensus among physicists.

<comment><USER3> It's not even a paper, it's just a manuscript on the arXiv, yet to pass peer review, if indeed it ever will.

I had a quick skim of the manuscript, and remain skeptical... a bunch of it doesn't even seem to make sense:

 _If it does occur in Nature, eternal inflation has profound implications. Any type of event that has nonzero probability will happen infinitely many times, usually in widely separated regions that remain forever outside of causal contact. This undermines the basis for probabilistic predictions of local experiments. If infinitely many observers throughout the universe win the lottery, on what grounds can one still claim that winning the lottery is unlikely? To be sure, there are also infinitely many observers who do not win, but in what sense are there more of them? In local experiments such as playing the lottery, we have clear rules for making predictions and testing theories. But if the universe is eternally inflating, we no longer know why these rules work._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Woit's take on the Not Even Wrong blog:

<http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3185>

<comment><USER3> And linked from that, Lubos Motl's even less charitable take:

[http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/bousso-et-al- catastrophe-i...](http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/bousso-et-al-catastrophe- imminent-time.html)

 _Much like most other doomsday prophets and other kinds of crackpots, the authors are completely unable to understand the point and the arguments that they're assuming something fundamentally wrong in their very first axioms - and that's why everything they write down has to end up being a complete nonsense.

Instead, they obviously expect a long sequence of follow-up papers that will discuss whether the Universe will cease to exist in 5.31 or 5.32 billion years and worship the amazing prophets, Bousso et al., who have predicted this amazing doomsday. This is also clear from a staged dialogue included in the paper where a semi-dumb person asks various questions about the doomsday that the authors would clearly like to be discussed in other people's papers._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've skimmed the paper and it's quite readable. The problem arises because probability doesn't make sense in an infinite universe. To make sense of it the authors consider a small patch of finite size and then let that finite size go arbitrarily large. In this picture probability is well defined but our space and time will always have an edge. However this is just a model, not an expected version of reality. The same thing happens in quantum field theory where the theory doesn't make sense at arbitrarily high energy so we just impose a cut off and ignore energies above a certain scale. This doesn't mean we think physics just stops there. Instead, it's just a way to parameterise our ignorance about what comes beyond.

</comment><comment><USER9> This theory is well across the line from science and into religion.

How is this: "we'll run headlong into this catastrophe before we can observe its effects on anything else."

any different than this:

"But of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." <http://bible.cc/matthew/24-36.htm>

<comment><USER10> The difference is "Father knows".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Earth's lifespan" is slightly misleading if we're talking about inevitable future catastrophes of physics. What's more important is the lifespan of earth as a hospitable planet and that's significantly less time (since the sun is heating up). From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle> "...the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising. ... The increase in solar temperatures is such that already in about a billion years, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life". So (using the numbers from this article) we have about 1 billion years to get off this rock, leaving another 2.7 billion on other planets before time ends. Not a bad run if we can make it. :)

<comment><USER3> _We have about 1 billion years to get off this rock_

Or we could just _move_ this rock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Any type of event that has nonzero probability will happen infnitely many times(...). This undermines the basis for probabilistic predictions of local experiments. If infnitely many observers throughout the universe win the lottery, on what grounds can one still claim that winning the lottery is unlikely? To be sure, there are also infnitely many observers who do not win, but in what sense are there more of them?"

The first sentence is wrong, as pointed out by zeteo, but the rest does not make any sense either.

Take continuous random walk starting at zero at t=0. There are an infinite number of paths that reach each value at time t=1. Yet we can say the the probability that the random walk is positive at t=1 is one half. And by "say" I mean give a solid mathematical definition of this fact, not some hand waving argument.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is based upon a false assumption. Not every possible thing need happen given infinite time. There's an infinite number of things that can happen, and each thing that happens takes a finite amount of time to happen. Infinite time is not enough for infinite things to happen.

</comment><comment><USER14> > If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, > no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number > of times.

Umm... this does not follow. Their argument surely must be more convincing than this nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a physicist and I'm baffled. Doesn't entropy imply that all events cannot happen? Wouldn't an event happening infinite times clearly and unambiguously violate the effects of entropy?

</comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't really affect anything here at all. It may be neat that they're predicting time to end over 3 billion years from now, but I can guarantee we'll all be long dead by then.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, that makes sense. <i>Time</i>'s circulation has been dropping for years anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> Less arXiv on HN, please.

<comment><USER3> Less of the whole arXiv, or just the subset of the arXiv which is crazy?

<comment><USER18> The problem is that you need to be a domain expert to tell which parts are crazy. It's not a general consumption resource.

<comment><USER3> True. Though the best heuristic that a non-physicist can apply is that if something on the arXiv sounds interesting, it's probably crazy.

Non-crazy papers have titles like _Universal quantum control of two-electron spin quantum bits using dynamic nuclear polarization_ and _Towards finite density QCD with Taylor expansions_ and tend to be of interest to around four people in the world, of whom three may or may not be the authors.

<comment><USER18> Right, and "Eternal Inflation Predicts That Time Will End" totally fails that test. (I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you -- I agree with you. This is re: the OP)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This can be easily averted. Destroy the Earth.

</comment><comment><USER20> I will leave the validation arguments to the people who know something more than the highschool physics I know. But "End of Time" wtf can that mean?

Take a shot sci-fi fans.

</comment><comment><USER21> Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Astrologers

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new astrological model of the zodiac.

Look out into space and the signs are plain to see. According to a certain reading of our tarot cards; Cronos created Heaven and Earth when he sneezed for the first time 13 billion years ago; therefore; Heaven and Earth have been expanding ever since. And the best evidence of the expansion of the Cronos' sneeze comes from observation of the Cronos' germs in distance reaches of the cosmos; therefore; cosmos' expansion is accelerating.

That has an important but unavoidable consequence: it means that the cosmos will expand forever. And a cosmos that expands forever is infinite and eternal. This is obviously because the creator of the cosmos the eternal and infinite god Cronos is infinite and eternal.

Today, a group of astronologist rebel against this idea. They say an infinitely expanding cosmos cannot be so because the laws of astrology do not work in an infinite cosmos. For these laws to make any sense, the cosmos must end, say the Trimagistus Nuovo Raphaello Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley and few pals. And they have divined when that is most likely to happen.

Their divination is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. Here's how it goes. If the cosmos lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible divination, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these divined events to occur. And when that happens, the laws of astrology simply don't apply; the absurd laws of physics take over. "This is known as the "measure problem" of eternal inflation," say Bousso and buddies.

In effect, these guys are saying that the laws of astrology abhor an eternal universe.

The only way out of this conundrum is to divine some kind of divine intervention that brings an end to the cosmos. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of astrology regain their power to divine.

When might this be? Bousso and co have consulted Cronos' assistant in charge of human affairs, a Mr. Prometheus, and this is the reply they got: "Time is unlikely to end in our lifetime, but there is a 50% chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years," said Mr. Prometheus who started it all when he stole the light from Gods to give it to humans and that was about 3.7 billion years ago. So if no symmetry breaking occurs; Bousso and Co's 3.7 billion year prediction for the end of time is as good as proved by Einstein's General Relativity.

But Mr. Prometheus had one cautionary statement: "The time will end for humans; not for gods. I am sorry" said Mr. Prometheus, a good friend of humanity since the beginning.

3.7 billion years is not so long! It means that the end of the time is likely to happen within the lifetime of the Gaea and the Hyperion.

But Buosso and co have some comforting news too. They don't know what kind of divine intervention will cause the end of time for humanity but they do say that we won't see it coming. They point out that if we were to observe the end of time in any other part of the cosmos where the authority of Cronos has been usurped; we would have to be causally ahead of it, which is unlikely because the God Mnemosyne hates to remember what she had not forgotten.

In other words we'll run headlong into this divine intervention before we can observe its effects on anything else.

The imminent end of time is a little unsettling but the argument is by no means astronologically sound. Among other things it depends crucially on an important assumption about the laws of astrology: that we ought to be able to understand why they work, not just observe that they do work. And that's a physical point of view rather than an astrological argument. And you cannot trust physicists to explain anything; because for them if it is Wednesday it must be a wave; if it is thursday it must be a particle.

So Buosso and buddies raise some interesting questions but nothing to lose any sleep over. At least, not for another 3.7 billion years Cronos will not bother to end time for human beings.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1009.4698: Eternal Inflation Predicts That Time Will End</comment>


Ask HN: Why did you choose RDS while it is much more expensive than self host? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Maintenance is automatically handled. If you are paying an engineer to maintain a server, it could pay for itself in time saved. Also, the configuration is automated/standardized so I can have some confidence that backups happen and things are setup the same way each time.

For personal projects, I self host on a local machine to save money. Basically free except time, but most personal projects are things just getting started and need little in the way of scaling or maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's much cheaper than self-hosting for us because it requires nearly zero human intervention.</comment>


PyBrain: Machine Learning Toolkit for Python - <AUTHOR> http://pybrain.org/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that looks good. Just what I need in fact, I can stop writing my own backprop FFN using NumPy now and use this, which means I can get on to the more interesting stuff quicker! Thanks durin42 for posting this!

Now I just need to find a decent RBF implementation and I'm set :p

<comment><USER3> If you're writing back propogation algorithms you need to check out "automatic differentiation" which gives it to you effectively for free.

<http://searchyc.com/%2522automatic+differentiation%2522>

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I saw the article on that a few days ago here and it looks really interesting.

Is it really right that I could just use that to automatically recreate the entire backprop algorithm? Is it likely to be reasonable in its performance?

<comment><USER3> Pass. I've read the papers, I've seen the demo, but I haven't implemented it myself. I also read it here, but I've seen it before. It looks like it should work, but YMMV.

As always, you might need to spend some time understanding what it does and how it works before relying on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Discovered: The Most-Distant Solar System Object Ever Observed - <AUTHOR> https://carnegiescience.edu/node/2428 <comment><USER2> People lament the light speed barrier, because it seems to preclude vast space empires of Sci-fi. But there are countless bodies at vast distances just within a few light years. If we develop fusion power, just the neighborhood of the Sun and the Centauri systems would constitute tens of thousands of colonization suitable dwarf planet sized bodies or larger. If we build artificial habitats, the population of all of those systems could easily number in the trillions. That's a pretty vast setting.

<comment><USER3> But it is worth asking why people want to believe that a narrative can be extended to space? Humans structure their experience using narratives, and this works okay on Earth. Though even on Earth, there are many known problems with the way humans use narratives:

1.) police will tell you that eye witnesses are highly inaccurate

2.) psychologists can tell you all about the way people hurt themselves with inaccurate narratives about themselves

3.) human rights activists work constantly against narratives that take a racial category as a first class character, with real and knowable attributes

And those problems arise on Earth. At least since Einstein's Theory Of Relativity we've known that normal human narrative will not extend to space. And yet people want to this to be true. There is a kind of nostalgia that infects most writing about space, a belief that our exploration of space can be like the discovery of the frontier in centuries past. Even intelligent people sometimes talk this way, even though they know it is an inaccurate way to think about the universe.

I suppose this is sort of in the category of "Why do 99% of sci-fi movies act as if there is a gravity on spaceships, or assume a technology that can easily assume that a 1 G warp of the space time continuum does not itself warp the ship into a ball?"

Basically, people don't want their sci-fi stories to be too accurate. And I guess that's fine. Maybe it's all just entertainment. But then we shouldn't take that entertainment and act like any of it can ever be real.

<comment><USER2> _At least since Einstein 's Theory Of Relativity we've known that normal human narrative will not extend to space._

Meh. Human narratives have encompassed characters who live for hundreds of billions of years and who experience time warped in any number of ways. There are even successful mainstream movies that deal with such issues. Multiple ones going back decades.

 _Basically, people don 't want their sci-fi stories to be too accurate. And I guess that's fine. Maybe it's all just entertainment._

You could totally re-tell the entire Star Wars and Star Trek canon in such a setting. It's not that people don't want it. Most people don't know enough to know they would want it. Heck, half of everyone seems to think "there's no gravity in space."

(EDIT: By "such a setting," I mean in just several cubic light years around Sol and Alpha Centauri.)

<comment><USER3> " _People lament the light speed barrier, because it seems to preclude vast space empires of Sci-fi._ "

Assume you are the Emperor of a vast interstellar empire. You order your best general to go and attack a star system 10 light years away. Your opponent possibly does the same. 20 years after you give the order, you are told that your general lost the battle (or won the battle). How would you verify that? It's not just that you have to wait another 20 years to verify it, it's that events will pile up in excess of what you can verify. The best way to understand the outcome of this battle is to read what Kyle Kingsbury has written about distributed databases:

[https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen](https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen)

Because, for all practical purposes, the Universe is a distributed database with a serious network partition. It is not Eventually Consistent, but rather, it is Infinitely Inconsistent. The writes exceed the reads, and will continue to do so infinitely into the future.

How do you build an interstellar empire around that reality?

As an experiment, it might be fun to create a game that is deliberately inconsistent. That would appeal to a very small niche, because most people crave a consistent narrative experience. But a game designed around a database that is deliberately inconsistent would help people think correctly about the difficulty of building empires in space, or engaging in any other common sci- fi tropes.

<comment><USER4> > It is not Eventually Consistent...

If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent. Nobody has ever found a case where it isn't. Relativity was predicted to exist because "eventual consistency" was assumed axiomatic in our universe. Essentially, eventual consistency is exactly why the universal speed limit exists.

> but rather, it is Infinitely Inconsistent

We will fall behind in knowledge of events, but causal knowledge of an event in our universe, if it exists, is always consistent.

Knowledge of events in our universe is like an immutable, append-only database (think git), not data that gets updated (like a key/value database).

<comment><USER2> > If there's anything the universe is, it's Eventually Consistent.

Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually Consistent. It's simply consistent. What's really going on, is that some programmers don't understand relativity. Relativity doesn't actually say that everyone gets their own reality. There is a consistent consensual reality. Spacetime intervals are consistent between all observers. The time ordering of events changes depending on the observer's POV and relative motion, but there is an underlying consistent reality that's the same for everybody.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAEHKAR5hU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFrISfN7jo)

The "Spacetime Globe" by Minute Physics is the most helpful thing I've seen, flat out, for understanding relativity.

> Knowledge of events in our universe is like an immutable, append-only > database

This is correct. Relativity just says that different users get different results, depending on how they query. The underlying database is the same for everybody. (Some parts of it are forbidden access, of course.)

Programmers have been causing physicists to facepalm since at least the USENET days. I should know. I was one of them!

<comment><USER4> > Please disregard this inconsistency guff! The Universe isn't Eventually > Consistent. It's simply consistent.

We agree except for what we mean by "eventually" which is just semantics. What I mean by "eventually" is that eventually all the information arrives for my (or anyone's) model of the universe to match reality, analogous to eventually consistent distributed databases. Like an eventually consistent database however we can never catch up completely, since new events are happening in the universe all the time. It takes time for this information to "replicate", but there is no inconsistency. I was following lkrubner's analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't been keeping up on this topic. It's very exciting. If I'm understanding what I've read, this is the furthest of the "dwarf planets" which lie well beyond Pluto. There is a hypothesis that another planet (Planet 9) larger than the earth is out there as well. Planet 9 is what they believe explains some orbital peculiarities shared by these dwarf planets? Is the Planet 9 thought to be even further out than "Farout?"

<comment><USER6> This object is currently the most distant detected but Sedna's highly eccentric orbit takes it much further from the Sun.

Planet Nine's orbit, if it exists, takes it somewhat further away from the Sun than Sedna.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It makes me wonder if there's a distance so great in the observable universe that light from an object would spread out so much that it couldn't be recognized as an object.

I'd imagine there are distant stars ejected from galaxies that would render only as single pixel. It seems possible given enough distance that an entire galaxy could render as a single pixel as well, but I wonder if that distance is greater than the observable universe.

<comment><USER8> What exactly do you mean by "render only as a single pixel"? With a low enough resolution sensor, the sun would render as a single pixel when observed from earth.

<comment><USER2> A guy who worked at the undergraduate computer lab when I was in college in the 90's was bemused by all of the print samples and signs by the laser printers, so he made his own:

The caption read, "This is Chris rendered in one color at 1 DPI on the Dinotronic," underneath a 7x7 monochrome portrait of himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Technical info from the IAU: [https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K18/K18Y14.html](https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K18/K18Y14.html) . The orbit is highly uncertain but appears to be highly elliptical, with a perihelion inside the orbit of Neptune and an apogee of roughly 1.5 times the current distance. See also [https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?utf8...](https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?utf8=%E2%9C%93&object_id=2018+VG18) .

</comment><comment><USER10> Proxima Centauri is about 4.24ly away and has a mass of about 0.12x the mass of the sun.

I think that means our sun is the object with the deepest gravity well, out to about (1/1.12)*4.24 = 3.79ly away.

I think that means that there could plausibly be objects out to about 3.79ly away that are in orbit around our sun.

The object from the article is about 0.0019ly away, so there could be quite a lot of new most-distant solar system objects still to be discovered!

<comment><USER11> Some estimates for the outer boundary of the Oort Cloud put it at 200,000AU = 3.16ly (more conservative estimates seem to be 1ly or less). Even the inner boundary is thought to be at least double the distance of the object just discovered, so current astonomical hypotheses align with your idea that there's a lot more out there.

<comment><USER10> Given Thorondor's sibling comment to yours:

Alpha Centauri A has a mass of 1.1x the sun, and is about 4.37ly away, which would mean our sun's gravity well runs out at

(1/2.1)*4.37 = 2.08ly - i.e. any object in orbit 2.08 ly away would (even if affected by nothing else), fall into Alpha Centauri A's gravity well before completing a full orbit and therefore couldn't possibly remain in orbit around our sun.

If that's true (and I have no idea whether any of it is true), then I think 2.08ly must be an upper bound on the outer boundary of the Oort cloud.

EDIT: Ah, I'm thinking 2-dimensionally. Of course, something could be in a much larger orbit in a plane that doesn't go near Alpha Centauri.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So this object is a bit more than 11 billion miles from the sun?

And Alpha Centauri is 4.2 light years away, which is 24,635,923,200,000 miles?

So this object is roughly 0.046% of the way to the next star?

Assuming that the Alpha Centauri system reaches out to us as much as our system reaches out to Alpha Centauri, I am surprised that the two systems reach out to each other as much as they do.

Almost 10% of the distance between the stars consists of the systems that surround the stars?</comment>


What Movies Get Wrong About Time Travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2225223/pagenum/all/#p2

<comment><USER3> For a real mindfuck, check out Primer: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_%28film%29>

<comment><USER4> I highly recommend you stop recommending Primer when time travel is brought up. The movie is better viewed not knowing anything about it. It could be a character drama before the weird shit starts going on. By the way, this is an awesome timeline <http://neuwanstein.fw.hu/primer_timeline.html>

<comment><USER5> awesome, on another note i have a 30" computer monitor and i still had to scroll left

<comment><USER6> 37" and still needed to scroll. Who's next?

<comment><USER4> pixels matter, bro. 30" mac display is 2560x1600

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh for goodness sake. Time Travel _does not exist_. Therefore you can't get anything wrong about it, except including it in the first place.

If you're allowing them to have time travel then you can only quibble about internal inconsistencies, not inconsistencies with the real world.

<comment><USER8> You sound awfully sure of yourself.

<comment><USER9> There is a class of things it's possible to be very sure of.

For example, I feel very sure there's no such thing as blue weight. The expression "blue weight" is syntactically legal, but that doesn't mean it refers to anything. "Time travel" appears to be in the same category. Syntactically legal, but you find that if you try to express precisely what you mean by it, you can't. It's effectively a type error, like asking for the square root of a stream.

Incoherence as a concept is a different sort of impossible from mere technological "impossibility," like e.g. a pill you could take that would let you survive in outer space without a suit. You can say what that means, even if you can't do it. I have never heard a coherent explanation of what "time travel" could even refer to.

<comment><USER4> We're travelling through time right now, and not even at a fixed velocity given relativity. That makes the question whether you can control your velocity, not whether you can travel.

<comment><USER10> So we can change the velocity at which we travel through time? To what, 2 seconds per second?

<comment><USER4> Yes, you can travel two seconds forward in time for what appears to be one second to you. It depends on reference frames and velocities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can somebody clear this up for me?

Relativity states that time slows down as you approach the speed of light. Given that fact, lets say I hop in a spaceship and zip around the earth at near light speed for several years (Yes, I know there are problems with this in terms of increased mass, energy needed, etc.) Ok, so after several years I slow down and land. For me, it seems as if I've traveled into the future becasue the people on earth have experienced more time than I have.

How is that not time travel, at least in a functional sense? I get that by strict definition it may not be, but the result would be the same. It seems like in this sense time travel is not only possible but proven.

<comment><USER12> I fail to understand how time can slow. So way beyond me as an HS grad.

If two people program 60 lines of code per hour, one does so in a spaceship traveling nearly the speed of light and one does so on earth... after 1 year/365 days/8760 hrs they make a report on their progress and they don't have the same results? If a watch ticks every second, the faster you go the slower it ticks? Why? How?

Will people be buying a 2100 model Bugatti, hiring a driver, and working in the passenger seat to be more productive?

<comment><USER13> So you got person A on earth writing code and person B going around REALLY fast (very close to the speed of light lets say) writing the same code.

When person A finishes (say a week later) and comes back, he'll find that person B finished "a long time ago." That is, person B finished, and then waited till person A came back (say for a year, depending on how fast person B was going).

What happened? Time went at different speeds for each person. They each took a week from their own point of view!

Which one is right? Both of them. Thats what relativity says. There is not one thing called "time" but that its "relative" (hence the name).

So, if your going to choose to hire one of them... you'd hire person B (assuming your business is on Earth).

<comment><USER14> You got it backwards... person A's week is much faster than the dude in the spaceship. (Hence person B "travels into the future")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the time travel I like to think about: Suppose we actually are simulated ancestors of an advanced civilization. Then time travel can take all sorts of interesting forms.

For example, suppose our simulation is run sequentially. Then someone traveling back in time would travel back to an earlier state in the simulation that is already out of "RAM" and stored. This agent is "dead", the simulator does not bother to re-simulate the past just for them, they just disappear.

Suppose instead the simulator is more flexible; then there's no reason they couldn't "fork" the timeline and let the gal do whatever she felt like and change the past going forward on their own. Since this would take vast computational resources, it would only be worth doing if you changed something _big_ so maybe time travel wouldn't work unless your plans were grand enough.

This also resolves the grandfather paradox; your grandpa is dead, you are never born in this timeline, but your simulated agent is just fine since it was copied from a different code base. You live out your life, reproduce, share technology, do whatever you want to do and life goes forward normally. In fact, it'd be likely they wouldn't bother simulating the whole world but just pull a Truman Show kind of thing and only propagate the changes, and copy from old data elsewhere.

I'm sure there are even more interesting kinds of time-travel you could come up with given a simulated universe. It actually could be fun to write some sci fi short stories with this in the background, unexplained.

<comment><USER16> > I'm sure there are even more interesting kinds of time-travel you could come > up with given a simulated universe. It actually could be fun to write some > sci fi short stories with this in the background, unexplained.

I'm actually working with this exact idea, more or less, for a [roughly proposed] series of books, the first of which I'm procrastinating upon as I type this. :) Time travel, though, is a rather small part of what is possible with my metaverse model. I assume that the simulations are infinitely stacked, and each one has a 0:1 time-passage correspondence, so that for a "parent" simulation, the "child" simulation runs instantaneously, no matter the in-sim execution time, thus making Hypercomputation and such possible. All sorts of fun-with-philosophy falls out of that:

The protagonists are Star Trek-style "everything is science" types, who discover that magic exists (for "magic," read "simulation runtime bugs.") They go on "Hard Science-based Fantasy" adventures using said magic for ten or twelve books, before figuring out that it was (very complicated) science all along. They then care for their own sim for a while, hacking it to fix some kinks (such as the inevitable existence, given probability, of a malevolent entity who has the root password.) Bored of that, they proceed to "break out" of their simulation, repeatedly, visiting "higher planes" that each have radically different physics and sometimes even logic, but that all share the property that Turing machines can be constructed within them. Eventually, they get to the "root" universe (really just a chroot jail) and meet God—that is to say, an AI who was left to run for an infinite time on an analogue computer and thus became omniscient merely by evaluating all possible states of all possible universes (that it could detect from within the chroot.)

And that's only the first half of the sequence. 's called "Infinity's Tale", by the way. :)

<comment><USER15> Now _that's_ singularity fiction; I think speculative fiction really does well when there's a case for a truth or a worldview underneath, and like you said there are lots of "fun-with-philosophy" implications here. Good luck shipping!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The point of this article isn't so much to prove some theories incorrect or impossible. As time travel doesn't really exist we cannot say anything about it and say its a fact. Its about logic. If you are making a movie about time travel, than do it the way it makes sense.

There are to many movies this days that employ some kind of time traveling mechanics which make no sense at all. Instead of using time travel as a good plot device, it is more and more used as a deus ex. Writers aren't able to think of better ways to resolve the plot. Don't you just hate it when that happens. Oh, no, the main character died, its all over, the ship is destroyed and the world has ended. But no, wait! What's that? Oh, its OK. We managed to go back in time and prevent the tragedy, and now we can all go on with our lives forgeting that we just found a way to travel through time.

Now that i think about it, there is not a single movie including time traveling that hasn't got some kind of a plot hole. But that's ok, as you said, its a movie and it doesn't have to be all real. But it has to have some sense and meaning. Using time travel as a main plot device where it is not necessary or even sane, is a serious crime.

The actual act of time traveling isn't that important, or the science behind it. There are many theories and no one can say one is the best. A far far more important aspect is how you handle the story and the world after the actual act. Its easy to think of a functional super cool futuristic time machine, but it is hard to think of what to do with it once it is actually there.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1) movies are works of fiction.

<comment><USER19> I would put a spoiler alert on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I prefer the theory of the parallel universes over the self-correction of the time.

Most movies go that way too, since otherwise, the plot would be fatalistic (eg: '12 monkeys'). So they aren't really wrong.

<comment><USER21> I'm too tired to explain it here, but I like the explanation of time travel in the book Cowl: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowl_(novel)>

<comment><USER14> Sounds like a good book... thoughts on the story?

<comment><USER21> I personally really liked the story. It had some interesting ideas and the author seems (IMHO) quite good. I'd reccomend it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> IMO the simplest resolution of things like the grandfather paradox are obtained by including quantum mechanics in the equation.

Usually in quantum mechanics we find that waves are quantized because they must be periodic over very tiny reaches of space, and the quantization comes about because only certain frequencies of wave can meet themselves over these distances.

But if we have time loops, it's pretty much the same thing, except the consistency conditions can be experienced on arbitrarily large scales - <USER2> quantum state where I kill my own grandfather is not a self-consistent loop, and won't exist as a solution to the wave equations. In essence, the "wave" that describes me killing my grandfather will interfere with itself over the time loop, and will eventually (hopefully? I don't have a proof...) converge on a wave that _does_ reinforce itself, and ends up consistent. This may require a pretty serious divergence from what we'd usually assume about classical physics, even at the macroscopic scale.

So quantization is the _real_ reason we shouldn't worry about the grandfather paradox; any solution to the equations of QM will _have to be_ self consistent over a closed timelike loop, even if the results are ridiculous as far as classical mechanics is concerned.

</comment><comment><USER23> Dismissing Everitt branches by saying "there is no evidence," is totally off base. There's a mountain of math that practically demands that it's true.

<comment><USER24> Theory != Evidence

"Evidence" is by definition empirical; it's generally described as 'the result of empirical observation' or something substantially similar.

<comment><USER25> It's more of a gradient, not a strict inequality; cf. argument from parsimony, inference vs. deduction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> He's arguing for a non-forking timeline, which is nice, but I like soft science fiction with stories rather than people spending much of the story monkeying around with technology so that it's consistent with what we currently know about science.

I'll quote something I wrote elsewhere: The two major time travel literary views are forking & non-forking timelines:

* The game Achron has forking with merges via non-instantaneous time waves, sorta like Back to the Future.

* Lost is not forking. I think.

* The original Terminator's non-forking, but the sequels & series have forking timelines.

* Forking: Primer, The Butterfly Effect.

* Non-forking: 12 Monkeys, Slaughterhouse Five, Bill & Ted, All You Zombies.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm really surprised that guy hasn't seen Primer.

</comment><comment><USER28> The book on time travel describing model which made most sense to me for years: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Technicolor_Time_Machine>

_This novel presents a clear use of the restricted action resolution of the Grandfather paradox. The actions of the characters can not have changed the past because the past is what their actions brought about._

<comment><USER29> It makes sense on a social level, but not on a physical one. No matter what you do, you change things - you ate, you breathed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it just me, or does the concept of "near speed of light" not make any sense? I was under the impression that light travels at a constant speed no matter how you are moving. And also, since there are no absolute coordinates, the concept of moving only make sense in relation to other things. Isn't it impossible to move "near speed of light"? Isn't light always going to move C faster then you?

<comment><USER31> "Near the speed of light" carries with it the implicit disclaimer of "relative to a stationary observer" (that is why the theory has the word "relativity" in its name :)

Light travels at C (through a vacuum) regardless of your frame of reference, so it used as the comparator for speed/velocity among different frames of reference.

<comment><USER32> The speed of light in a vacuum being [constantly and universally] constant is an axiom (ie assumption, belief) of special relativity so it applies to inertial frames of reference.

So, strictly it is not "regardless of your frame of reference". Accelerating frames, eg rotating or accelerating (eg under gravity where General relativity applies) require special treatments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I always thought the moniker "time travel" was not specific enough. I'm traveling through time right now. I can't help but travel through time. Maybe a more appropriate term would be "time navigator."</comment>


37signals' follow up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..." - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1661-follow-up-on-get-satisfaction-or-else <comment><USER2> The frustrating thing about this for me is that I liked Get Satisfaction. It's a really well-done site, for the most part, and it was easy and convenient. I had never used it deeply, and only for services that were actually using it as their primary support channel, so I didn't even realize that they had pages for companies that hadn't signed up with them.

All the GS pages look pretty much identical, save for a few logos. After a while, you blow past the repeated boilerplate on each page, and you just use the functionality. I was one of the people who would never have noticed the small distinctions between official and unofficial; I would have thought any GS page was sanctioned by the company, because frankly, it never would have even entered my mind that GS would so brazenly try to unilaterally pose as a company's support channel.

This is exactly the kind of thing that trademarks are intended to protect against. I hate to say it, but all the hand-wringing over whether 37s was being rude by dropping a bomb of a blog post, is kind of silly. It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit.

<comment><USER3> "It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit."

I agree, there's a very strong case for a trademark lawsuit. What's more, I think I can almost guarantee that some other company _will_ file a lawsuit if Get Satisfaction doesn't clean up their act. And I'd bet on whoever files the lawsuit, too. This is quite clearly trademark infringement, from my non- lawyer-but-spent-time-studying-this point of view.

<comment><USER4> Some people actually need to lose, big, in order to gain introspection.

I remember Steven King on NPR talking about the guy who badly injured him in a car accident. He was frustrated that the courts were lenient, because he said the guy continued to seem in denial about the connection between his actions and the damage he had caused. Apparently, this guy had a history of reckless driving (Steven King had been walking on the side of the road when he was hit), but he continued to view these accidents as bad luck, circumstance, things happen, and so forth. When asked what he wanted to see from the courts, Steven King said he wasn't looking for vengeance, but he wanted to see the guy placed into a situation where he'd be forced to finally confront his actions and fully acknowledge his role in the damage he had caused.

Now, obviously GetSatisfaction is not guilty of something as serious as physical harm. But I still hear the same lack of introspection, the same denial, that I think Steve King was referring to. They are still calling this a "learning experience", an "error", something to "discuss and improve on." Their tone alternates between defensive, accusatory, and chirpy.

This shows a complete lack of introspection and self-awareness. It's alien to most, but some people require a true legal defeat to develop introspection, something that strips away every final defense and puts them in a position where they have no recourse but to truly and deeply acknowledge their behavior.

As long as 37Signals engages with these folks in a blog vs blog thing, they're going to see this as a he said, she said, where there are good points to be made on each side. Personally, I don't get any indication they recognize how manipulative, deceptive, and wrong their actions really are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm impressed with how Jason handled it. GS made some changes that sounded good enough to me, but after reading this post, I'm firmly on 37signals side. GetSatisfaction is a good idea but it's presented very deceptively and has the potential to hurt customers as much as it helps.

<comment><USER6> I wondered why Jason didn't just contact GS directly with his concerns. Even if his customers might be confused by GS, Jason knows who/what they are and could of raised his grievances with them directly. Instead he published some serious accusations on his widely-read blog knowing it'd get a lot of buzz. I imagine this whole story could've played out a little better if instead of jumping the gun and shouting 'malice' he'd've taken some extra time to work things out directly with GS.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree with anyone who has replied here. The public rant equivalent to shouting through a megaphone, while 80,000 people who might have their own, smaller megaphones intently listen.

There was no need for this, unless the private e-mail did not resolve the problem. Refer back to what Sarah said. The user who had a problem with 37Signals created the initial page. How is this GetSatisfaction's issue and more importantly, how is it a justification for publicly slamming another business?

<comment><USER8> But there absolutely was a need for this public flogging for all the hundreds of companies who care about their customer relationship who may not be aware of GS' dubious tactics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We have an "official" page on GS. But I am astounded at how good their SEO is:

[dawdle support]: [http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&#...](http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

[dawdle help]: [http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&...](http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

But this is pretty old hat for online retailers:

[dawdle reviews]: [http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&#...](http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

I totally, totally get why 37signals is upset - but, sadly, what GS is doing isn't new. I'm envious that Jason has a big enough soapbox to get things changed; we certainly don't. _That's_ why I'm thrilled he's being as public as he is.

<comment><USER10> Is it just me or was getsatisfaction nowhere to be seen on those links?

If so, go google!

<comment><USER11> Yep, google seems to have done its deed.

<comment><USER9> Wow, you're not kidding. (Now, the Google dance has hurt us negatively, but wow.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This follow-up by Rundle gives a good dissection of the GS page design. He doesn't even mention the "Popular products & services from 37signals", where GS uses 37S's product logos as category links. Nor does he mention the fact that one of the two bits of GS branding on the page is a "Powered by" icon that an unfamiliar person would mistake for server software - or a service. Go to that page, and the word "Unofficial" and a small-print disclaimer are your only tip-offs that this is a "community".

The bad part of it all is that there's _no_ need or justification at all for designing a customer support page that looks that official and target-company- branded _if it isn't_. There's no call for using another company's product logos as category links. As much as GS supporters laud that company as being a great bunch of people, I have trouble coming up for an _honest_ purpose for these details.

I do note that they appear to have pulled down 37S's logo from the heading, though they've conspicuously left it up for other companies that don't use their support ( <http://getsatisfaction.com/ups> ).

</comment><comment><USER13> Check the comments out. This started because a "very, very angry customer" yelled at them about their questions not getting answered. Still on the fence about GS?

</comment><comment><USER14> Another problem not mentioned is this business model doesn't scale well for the companies it targets. It isn't just Get Satisfaction's pages you have to check... it's UserVoice's as well, and I'm sure there are others.

If people have a problem or a feature request and I don't choose to use those businesses, shouldn't it be the burden of _those_ business (and not me) to make that clear to my customers if they inadvertantly end up there? Otherwise I have to sign up with them, or at least check their sites regularly...

<comment><USER12> That's the blackmail aspect for this niche, if not properly and ethically handled. "Hey, we've set up a page to catch unhappy customers. Better pay us time and/or money or we'll get them _good_ and pissed-off at you."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the question of "honesty" in business is always more complex than we'd like it to be. It's amazing how powerful is the pull to make a business model "work". And very hard to balance that with being conscious of the fairness of it. I very much like how Jason broke down the various aspects of what "customer service" can be.

I think this incident is a great reminder, that we have to be incredibly diligent in balancing the pursuit of our business goals, with creating truly healthy communication and commercial ecosystems.

<comment><USER12> Yes. I think this whole thing has been _valuable_ in terms of discussion, which is why I'm glad Fried actually took things out into the realm of open, transparent communication in his first post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was considering using Get Satisfaction until I found out they would create pages for companies that hadn't asked for them.

Even if the service is good, I don't support companies that don't match my values.

</comment><comment><USER17> Some things here still don't jive...

37Signals customer support person (Sarah Hatter) just wrote a comment stating that they've known about this for a year and that she's been friends with the founder of GetSatisfaction for a long time. I don't see how that leads to angry blog post to 80k people... What it really sounds like is Jason was in a bad mood and now they're doing damage control

</comment><comment><USER12> One nice thing from Thor Muller in the comments:

"Very clear feedback, which we're grateful for and will take to the drawing board. And yes, we are as serious as can be about removing all confusion. As we're in the midst of significant design effort, we will see changes continue to hit the site regularly. It should be no surprise that we welcome public feedback about it as it happens.

My apologies again."

Yes, that's what they should have been saying all along instead of playing the poor-misunderstood-and-bullied-community-site card. However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.

<comment><USER18> _However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach._

Or they may be just throwing up smoke and mirrors. If they stopped doing their thing in an underhanded way, would they have much of a business left?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've stayed out this for the most part because neither company are of interest to me, but Tom's comment on this follow up post is interesting. It's almost as if 37signals knew about the site, made an attempt at using it and then couldn't be bothered to continue - instead preferring to wait a while and cause a little controversy (possibly for their own benefit). That's not to say that GS were/are in the right, but why wait nearly a year to start a conversation on this?

<comment><USER20> Do you always follow such a logical path to everything you do? I know I've gotten in situations where I've reacted to bad things way after it might have been necessary, because things build up to a bottleneck. And 37signals prides itself on being a small company where the individual people matter. They _aren't_ professional in the smooth-and-polished-and-impregnable sense, and while that leads to some immaturity, it makes their company seem more human. So I doubt there's conscious scandal-making effort here: they don't strike me as cynical enough to work like that.

[http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_service...](http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_services_sucks_totally_unresponsive)

That's from 10 months ago. The guy's mad, they respond (on GetSatisfaction, mind you), and the guy gets happier. But they don't keep using GS, because they do have their own support forum for this. Apparently they got _more_ upset responses over the past year. So the first one wasn't terrible, but when you keep getting people hating you for poor customer service, eventually you hit a point where you flip and yell at GS for not providing a good intuitive solution.

<comment><USER19> I'm a woman, of course I'm not always logical ;)

Seriously though, I personally find that the longer I leave something the less likely I am to get worked up about it. After a few weeks it's probably gone from my mind altogether, so yeah, 10 months does seem like a really long time to wait.

I don't really know that much about 37signals apart from what I've picked up here on HN, but I believe any company - any person - is capable of spinning a story for a little drama to bring their company PR. Maybe I'm just a cynic though :)

<comment><USER19> Oh dear, nobody likes my humour :p

<comment><USER20> For whatever reason, this thread's had a lot of people very quickly downvoted. Though I've got to say, humor's always hit-and-miss on HN. I think that because you started your topic off with a joke, it stood out more than the actual point you were making.

Remember that it wasn't just 10 months for that one thing. From what this entry said, they got _multiple_ complaints along the line of "They aren't responding to me on GS so their customer service sucks". That 10-month one was just the first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So do I go to 37signals' website for support on GS now?

</comment><comment><USER22> Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP .

That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO .

37 Signals isn't creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it?

Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0

<comment><USER23> somewhere around 95% of the 37s fanboys comments I have read in between the last 3 threads are seemingly oblivious to what get satisfaction actually provides

1\. there are the small companies who would like and out of the box solution for their support to save them time / money

2\. there are the large companies that have terribly supported products and the community generally has to replace them, their official support channels are usually private (so they only help 1 person), or very heavily moderated to the point where they are just a pr exercise and of very little use. (remember creative?)

the idea that companies can ban users from provided the support that they should rightly be doing themselves is just plain ridiculous

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The point of Get Satisfaction is to give people a way to corral ignorant and unresponsive companies into taking action. This a good thing. Concomitant with doing that, though, is a bit of extra work for responsive companies who are already good at support.

Fried's demands about unofficial badging and so on would destroy the good that GS does. If he can emblazon the page with UNOFFICIAL and LOOK HERE FOR SUPPORT, then what's to stop ShittyCorp from doing the same and pointing people to their own useless support pages?

To an extent, GS _has_ to subvert the official support pages, otherwise it doesn't work. Fried's real argument is "this whole business model annoys me", but instead of just admitting that, he's going on about badges and design.

<comment><USER25> If GS really highlighted the unofficial part and also linked to official support pages then companies with good support and / or people who are neutral on whether the company is ignorant or unresponsive get the check out the official support forums first and won't be confused about the nature of the GS page.

People who have already something against the support offered by ShittyCorp will stick around and use the unofficial support provided on GS - why on earth would they follow a link that they know would be unhelpful? It's only a problem if you assume a staggering amount of stupidity on the part of the target market.

As long as ShittyCorp doesn't have the option of making the GS page automatically redirect to the useless support pages all is good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The flip side is that if a company is to create a good QA site for an another company...Wouldn't they want it to be so official looking that the user would not be able to see the difference?

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally, I'm more on the side of Get Satisfaction on this one. There are some valid points about how GS is doing things, granted, but Jason at 37Signals seems to have problems with the entire concept of their business/service. I dont. I think its fantastic.

I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them.

That said, I think the 'Unofficial' notification does need to be more obvious.

<comment><USER28> They should at least take down the page on request.

<comment><USER29> Consider the flip-side: how would you feel if Comcast went around filing crease and desist notices to take down 3rd party customer support sites like dslreviews?

GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances. They should add links to the official support forum, and throw in a couple more "unofficial"s in there as well. But beyond that, they don't have an obligation to take down the whole forum. That's extreme.

The really sad part is: GS is easy to confuse with 37 signals, because they are both minimalist and elegant web sites. It's the high polish that adds to confusion.

GS should go the extra-mile to avoid confusion, but let's not lose our heads here.

Edit: It's been pointed out that I was using "DMCA request" incorrectly. I replaced it with "cease and desist."

<comment><USER30> _filing DMCA requests to take down 3rd party customer support sites_

No, don't confuse the issue. Copyright and trademark are not the same. (And are distinct from patents and trade secrets, for that matter.)

The DMCA is about _copyright_. None of the posts on GS violate copyright. [1] And, if one does, a DMCA notice can be used to take it down, but not to take the whole site down.

This GS incident is (or would be, if and when lawyers enter the picture) a _trademark_ dispute. GS stands accused of misusing other companies' trademarks in a way that creates customer confusion: Customers see a trademarked logo and a trademarked name on the GS pages, and are misled into thinking they are visiting a site that is officially associated with the trademark holder.

You can say any damn thing about Comcast you want. [2] And I believe you can even use Comcast's trademarks in the process, so long as you do so for the purpose of commentary (and not, say, to compete with Comcast in the cable business), and so long as there isn't evidence that you're misleading people into thinking that your site is officially associated with Comcast.

P.S. I am not a lawyer. Though sometimes I wish I were. I certainly spend enough time talking about IP law.

\---

[1] Well, very few, anyway. Obviously anyone _could_ put up posts on GS that violated copyright.

[2] Well, okay, anything that you honestly believe is _true_. You're not allowed to defame them.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the correction, I fixed the language in my post. But I generally agree with you: GS should be able to keep a 3rd party support forum for 37 Signals as long it makes it abundantly clear that they are not affiliated with 37 Signals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad Jason stuck to his guns and didn't back down. He's right.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand why this is top of HN. Sure, GetSatisfaction screwed up their text on one of their badges, but that shouldn't have been cause for Jason to go off on a rant.

Also, I think that GetSatisfaction could have notified 37Signals when the page got created as per this quote from Sarah: "customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question".

However, these are all issues that could have been handled differently, most notably NOT being aired out to the general public. If Jason Fried thought that GS has "blackmailed" him, isn't he stooping to their level then by publicly denouncing their service, thereby essentially blackmailing them into action? Seriously, let's all be adults.

<comment><USER30> _I don't understand why this is top of HN._

Because apparently a lot of people need an elementary lesson in trademark law and the reason it exists.

Of course, you don't have to learn about trademark law _before_ you build your startup. You could always learn about it _after_ you've constructed and deployed an automated system for violating it.

<comment><USER12> Sadly, quite a few people are having trouble grasping that _critical blog posts_ are the absolute least of your worries when you break laws and infringe on others' identities. Or that being nice, smart people running a startup with some fanboys is not actually a get-out-of-jail card for your misbehavior.

<comment><USER30> _being nice, smart people running a startup with some fanboys is not actually a get-out-of-jail card_

Well, let's be charitable. I'm sure a lot of people are in shock. People in shock say silly and even random things.

Have you ever rooted for a soccer team, or a hockey team, and then watched them lose a very important game by scoring an own goal in overtime? _I_ have. You tend to go into shock. You can't necessarily say anything rational, or even printable, at a moment like that.

It's never fun to watch another startup make a big mistake. [1] It's too easy to imagine yourself making a similar mistake. We all work with powerful tools that are capable of turning a small lapse of knowledge, attention, or judgement into a problem that potentially affects millions of people. The tools can be great -- they let two people, living on Ramen in a tiny apartment, make big changes in the world -- but they can also really amplify your mistakes.

\---

[1] Okay, okay... it's _rarely_ fun.

<comment><USER12> "Well, let's be charitable. I'm sure a lot of people are in shock."

Hell, _I_ was shocked. I didn't know GS operated that way. I had only vaguely heard of them and thought they were a community site, not a company that engages in the sorts of practices that they've openly admitted.

But shock is only a plausible justification for so long. The group of people who think the _real_ problem here is that this story became public and people got unhappy at GS have had plenty of time to think it over.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>