Lab-Grown Human Retinas Illuminate How Eyes Develop Color Vision - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-human-retinas-illuminate-how-eyes-develop-color-vision/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this means that hereditary red/green deficiency is correlated with hypothyroidism.

As a severely green deficient individual however I'm glad there's still active research into this. Maybe some day I'll be able to experience the full color spectrum, not just the approximation I get with my enchroma glasses.

<comment><USER3> Years ago, someone sent me info supporting the idea that zinc deficiency impairs vision, specifically suppressing perception of the color green.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why, when we read articles about lab-grown human body parts, are we never given a single photo?

<comment><USER5> It's because these "lab-grown human body parts" are in fact organoids, which have the correct microanatomical features but do not at all look like the full-scale organs we are used to from biology class.

<comment><USER6> They don't look like what laypeople would expect them to look like? All the more reason for a photo.</comment></comment></comment>


FCC votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/fcc-votes-for-net-neutrality-a-ban-on-paid-fast-lanes-and-title-ii/

<comment><AUTHOR> Chairman Wheeler proves that he isn't a dingo.</comment>


New York is installing its promised public gigabit Wi-Fi - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/28/10674634/linknyc-new-york-public-wifi-installation-photos-gigabit <comment><USER2> Wifi is still not a good WAN (municipal) technology. It has never succeeded. Many NYC public parks offer free wifi and I don't know anyone that uses it.

4G/LTE/etc is engineered for uncontrolled, outdoor spaces. It works more reliably than Wifi in that environment.

Wifi's UX is poor in that environment – you're already connected to 4G but connecting to Wifi requires effort. And one assumes that if one is on the street, one will be walking out of range of that Wifi within a few minutes. I don't understand the use case.

(The sitting-in-Starbucks use case makes more sense.)

Politicians like the sound of Wifi. Users walking down the street, by and large, ignore it.

<comment><USER3> Minor win: it's fantastic for tourists. Roaming kills, and it's great to have access to free wifi (maps, booking sites, e-mail, messaging, whatsapp calls, &c) in a foreign country.

<comment><USER4> Agreed -- Vienna has free wifi (at least in the CBD) and this was awesome when visiting the city.

<comment><USER5> Same for Wellington's waterfront wifi! It was very helpful for quick Skype calls and looking up information, especially when internet anywhere else in the city was very expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to state this is a way that would just get massively downvoted.

It doesn't feel to me like internet access works the same as other utilities. The need for water per individual hasn't changed much in 80 years? 100years? more? The need for electricity has gone up a little since say 1940. Natural gas, and other utilities. Maybe even streets also seem relatively static?

But internet? So NYC installs gigi wifi today. In 10 years Korea and Japan and Singapore and China will have tera-wifi or peta-wifi and NYC would likely have nothing. Getting public tech services upgraded at or near the speed that tech accelerates seems highly unlikely. Having public wifi would seem like it would remove a huge incentive for anyone to come in and offer better faster service because competing with free will be hard for a very very long time.

Am I wrong?

Also, please don't devolve this into ISPs suck in America. I fully agree with that statement. I'm just not sure public wifi is the answer.

For example in Japan it was competition that got internet faster in general. Specifically Yahoo/Softbank Japan kept undercutting the competition with faster and cheaper internet and all the other ISPs were forced to respond. That doesn't seem to happen in the USA because of poor regulations (local government approved monopolies)

I'm just curious if public wifi is really the correct solution or if it's actually going to end up much worse in the long run.

<comment><USER7> > The need for water per individual hasn't changed much in 80 years? 100years? > more?

Unlikely. 100 years ago we didn't have nearly as much water infrastructure and appliances. It's difficult to find data on past years though but when looking at other countries that have less amenities than the United States the water usage is staggeringly different [1].

I would be shocked if, per person, the water usage hasn't gone up by double since 1915. Don't forget the infrastructure also has to handle a far denser population as well.

> The need for electricity has gone up a little since say 1940.

Define little. Almost everything we do today involves electricity whereas in the 1940s that was far from true plus the population has grown significantly since then. WorldBank seems to indicate it's been increasing (they have data since 1989) [2].

> Natural gas, and other utilities. Maybe even streets also seem relatively > static?

Are you sure? Where are you getting this data? According to the EIA[3] natural gas usage has gone up about 5x since 1949.

> Getting public tech services upgraded at or near the speed that tech > accelerates seems highly unlikely. Having public wifi would seem like it > would remove a huge incentive for anyone to come in and offer better faster > service because competing with free will be hard for a very very long time.

While I agree with you there is also a huge burden on getting around publicly allowed monopolies for the last mile (since the wifi needs some sort of data connection) so I'm not convinced any private companies are going to do this anyway due to that unless the government is going to offer some serious incentives or someone invents a better wireless technology which doesn't require a physical internet connection to the access point.

[1] [http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757](http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757)

[2] [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC)

[3] [https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_cons_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_cons_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm)

<comment><USER8> I believe your parent post was referring to household usage (which determines infrastructure needs in a city), while you are referring to economy-wide usage.

Energy usage per household seems to be essentially flat for the past 40 years according to Residential Energy Consumption Survey[1].

As for water, I can't find any links at the moment, but I would guess that per capita indoor residential water use is also flat or slowly declining as appliances become more efficient.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=6570](http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=6570)

<comment><USER7> Per household is kinda irrelevant for his point, is it not? You need the additional infrastructure to handle a more dense population and his point was regarding the upgrading of utilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Free wifi is very popular, though it makes me wonder why free wifi providers don't provide data the same way cellular networks do though 4G/LTE/etc, albeit in a limited area?

I don't know about the technical limitations but it seems a solution that would cover a much larger area, and most peoples phones already have mobile data enabled.

Are phones simply not set up to handle multiple mobile data networks ?

<comment><USER10> Without significant changes to most phones, you would need to issue SIM cards to all participants. It's not impossible to change, but the provider would need to convince 3GPP and OEM vendors to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How would a city handle the pressure from telco's if they offer free, reliable wifi? Wouldn't all residential's switch to the free wifi, making telcos lose hundreds of thousands of customers?

Has there been a case where free wifi for a city has been implemented reliably where residential stopped purchasing internet from a telco?

<comment><USER12> Free public wifi, unless intensively engineered in cases where problems develop, can't promise 100% coverage to everyone's residence. Some people will get a windfall that effectively replaces their SP's service. Some will get only unusable connectivity.

SPs have a simple way to compete: Offer service that provides a lot more bandwidth than the free service. They should do that anyway, now that Google Fiber has announced a push into some major cities.

<comment><USER13> Would people in the "good coverage" area be able to run repeaters for this kind of WiFi provider so that, for example, their friend across the street could be covered? I'm not familiar enough with large-scale WiFi infrastructure to know whether they have mechanisms in place to prevent such practices (or if they'd want to).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Companies absorbed, dead links, contracts that had to be met at midnight, one booth with wifi, zero chance of getting anything like this out into NYC wasteland (where millions live). Soon the flashing giant ad monitors will all be strewn across midtown, not a byte will make it to deep Brooklyn not a one.

Do some googling on this one, follow the trail of disappearing companies involved, in the end, Google took it all over, that's the footnote, its all Google running the show now. But hey, more screens, that's Times Square. I'm ok with that. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope the data they gather on people connecting to each gateway as they move around the city is anonymised (as much as it can be) and then made open and freely accessible. That'd be fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER16> > The city estimates that ads served by the new hubs will generate more than > $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years.

Seems a bit optimistic to me. Are they going to inject ads in your http connection.

<comment><USER17> The physical "wifi booths" they are installing have 2 - 55" flat screen TVs that will run ads on them.

Back of the napkin math time: that's $41mil a year generated over 8000ish ("over 7500" is what the official announcement said) booths, which is $5125 or just shy of $500/mo in revenue per booth to hit that target.

I'm not in the physical display advertising business, but that would generally seem pretty doable given some quick research into NYC ad costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Uh, so... how will we know it's not being spoofed?

And uh... how many people will know enough to be mindful on the total lack of encryption?

You know, just like at Starbucks and the like?

<comment><USER19> [http://www.link.nyc/faq.html](http://www.link.nyc/faq.html)

<comment><USER18>
      Question:

      How secure is LinkNYC Wi-Fi?

      Answer:

      The LinkNYC Private network is one of the first
      free municipal Wi-Fi services in the country to
      offer an encrypted network connection between your
      device and the hotspot, securing all wireless
      communications between devices and the Link.

Gee, sounds swell! But how?

<comment><USER20> Probably, not at all.

I just visited the site, and it has this extraordinary claim:

 _In addition to Link's features being free to the public, they also come at no cost to taxpayers._

So either they have a money printing machine, or they will be doing DPI and adding in / replacing advertisements in no time.

<comment><USER21> Did you read the article?

"The full network will install more than 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each replacing a pre-existing phone booth. Once completed, the hubs will also include USB device charging ports, touchscreen web browsing, and two 55-inch advertising displays. The city estimates that ads served by the new hubs will generate more than $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This makes a lot more sense than municipal wired.

<comment><USER23> Genuinly interested in understanding your viewpoint. If you have some time, please elaborate. I have always been under the impression that municipal fiber to consumers has the best benefits in the long run but I might have missed something.

<comment><USER22> Municipal Fiber is a solution looking for a problem. The overwhelming trend is toward mobile. Many people, particularly lower income people, have a smart phone but no computer. At the same time, municipal Fiber is incredibly expensive. Chatanooga spent $330 million plus on their network, to wire up about 71,000 subscribers. Plus, maintenance of that infrastructure is very expensive. Given that most states and municipalities are broke, and have neglected crucial electric and water infrastructure that already exists, they can't afford to take on the cost of a Fiber network.

<comment><USER24> The wireless technologies we have today don't deliver anywhere close to the throughput of fiber. There's no way municipal WiFi will support every household running a couple of Netflix streams at the same time in the evening, something that's (occasionally) possible on cable infrastructure. We've already seen from dense apartment buildings that WiFi does not deal well with more than a handful of active users at close range, even on separate SSIDs.

Some form of radio communication might be the answer, but there is very little unallocated bandwidth and it's bandwidth that we need.

<comment><USER22> If we're going to spend limited public resources on building network infrastructure, the target use case shouldn't be households watching a couple of Netflix streams in the evening on their iPads. We should instead build the technologies that can deliver the broadest connectivity at the lowest cost, so people can apply for jobs, kids can do homework, send pictures to their friends or parents, etc. Wireless wins big on flexibility, and can be deployed at a cost that might allow cash-strapped municipalities to offer it as a free service. You'll never achieve that with high-cost and high-maintenance wired infrastructure.

<comment><USER24> Every New Yorker can already get good enough internet to apply for jobs and do homework, both from an ISP and a local public library. That need is already well served by current infrastructure; there's no point in duplicating it. If current options are too expensive, than subsidies would seem much simpler than new infrastructure.

Municipal fiber is not proposed in places that lack internet service, it's proposed in places that lack _good_ internet service. People are upset that aging and oversubscribed cable company infrastructure isn't good enough for their media consumption desires, and municipal fiber is the solution.

Where we have problems getting people online _at all_ is in rural areas, where 1) there are no municipalities and 2) distances are far too long for WiFi. There, the best option is low-cost point-to-point antennae on high ground. The hard part for rural Wireless ISPs has been finding someone to sell them transit at a fair price.

<comment><USER12> I've got better internet in rural New Mexico, due to a subsidy to a local ISP to put in fiber, than I do in a town in Massachusetts that is full of people in the tech industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The link seems to be broken at the moment.</comment>


The Electric DeLorean - <AUTHOR> http://delorean.com/2011/10/electric-delorean/

<comment><USER2> Does it have a built-in Flux Capacitor?</comment>


Diskee: Apollo's Most Important Crewmember - <AUTHOR> https://paleotronic.com/2019/01/22/the-diskee-apollos-most-important-crewmember/ <comment><USER3> The DSKY was a _demo_.

"The DSKY and PINBALL (something flashy with buttons) was a demo. And that demo got us to the moon. "Apparently, nobody had yet arrived at any kind of software requirements for the AGC's user interface when the desire arose within the Instrumentation Laboratory to set up a demo guidance-computer unit with which to impress visitors to the lab. Of course, this demo would have to do something, if it was going to be at all impressive, and to do something it would need some software. In short order, some of the coders threw together a demo program, inventing and using the verb/noun user-interface concept, but without any idea that the verb/noun concept would somehow survive into the flight software. As time passed, and more and more people became familiar with the demo, nobody got around to inventing an improvement for the user interface, so the coders simply built it into the flight software without any specific requirements to do so."

[http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ForDummies.html](http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ForDummies.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's funny that the personified user interface is used as the title, because the star of the show is something much more hidden - one of the first multitasking "operating systems" correctly handling, and limiting the impact of, an unforeseen CPU-hungry process in the midst of the first moon landing! The OP's a fascinating read and more technical than the title might imply.

For anyone interested in the process of compiling and loading the code for these systems (available at [https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/) ) into the "core rope memory" used for program storage in the capsules, here's one of the original spec documents, as well as an image from that document showing what I'd call a "compilation-bureaucracy-pipeline" that's a fascinating glimpse into software deployment practices.

[https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/HSI-208496.pdf](https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/HSI-208496.pdf)

[https://imgur.com/a/wBYt1o6](https://imgur.com/a/wBYt1o6)

</comment><comment><USER5> _"the DSKY (which they pronounced Diskee), a simple LED and button-based interface"_

Wikipedia says there were visible-light LEDs in 1962 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light- emitting_diode#Discoveri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light- emitting_diode#Discoveries_and_early_devices)), but even ignoring they emitted red light, which the photos do not show, I think it's unlikely they used them in this device.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#DSKY_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#DSKY_interface) claims it used _"green high-voltage electroluminescent seven-segment displays"_. That seems more likely to me.

<comment><USER3> They were indeed EL displays.

Fran Blanche attempted a GoFundMe project to recreate these displays. Unfortunately the project stalled.

[https://www.gofundme.com/apollo-dsky-display- project](https://www.gofundme.com/apollo-dsky-display-project)

[https://hackaday.com/2017/05/29/re-creating-the-apollo- dskys...](https://hackaday.com/2017/05/29/re-creating-the-apollo-dskys- display/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article makes it seem more dramatic and spur-of-the-moment than other writings on the same topic I've read. The Wikipedia article on Jack Garman asserts (unsourced) that they'd generated a 1202 alarm in simulations and Bales had (incorrectly) called for an abort there. So it was actually a rehearsed scenario, with an analyzed "should go anyway" decision.

<comment><USER7> I read the same thing in Gene Kranz's book Failure Is Not An Option - <USER2> should probably be added there as a reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're interested in the Apollo Guidance Computer there's some really excellent material out there in the world to learn more. My two favorite books are:

* The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation - Frank O'Brien

* Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight - David A. Mindell

Fascinating machine.

<comment><USER9> I recommend Journey to the Moon by Eldon Hall, designer of the AGC. The O'Brien book has a lot of good information but also a lot of problems. Sunburst and Luminary is also interesting, written by Don Eyles who wrote much of the lunar landing code. He goes into a detailed explanation of the 1202 program alarms.

<comment><USER10> Eyles came to the Vintage Computer Festival-East in Wall, NJ last year, and was introduced by Frank O'Brien who's a regular there. He actually did a code walkthrough of the Apollo 14 flaky-switch hack - coolest talk I've ever attended. Scott Manley did a pretty good Youtube episode on the Apollo 14 hack last year also; the two of them complement each other nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excellent 1960's video demonstrating the AGC, which gives an indication of the thought processes and design rigor that were going on:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6S-mmunKuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6S-mmunKuo)

</comment><comment><USER12> The AGC source code is up on Github these days [https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ongoing effort of restoring an AGC

First episode: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU)

</comment><comment><USER14> More technically accurate description: [https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html](https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html)

It describes that not just DELTAH was killed due to overload, but that whole system restarted (and reloaded critical landing tasks that were restart- protected)

</comment><comment><USER15> The DSKY gets a fair amount of air time in Nova's recent episode on Apollo 8. Well worth a watch.

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/apollos-daring- mission/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/apollos-daring-mission/)</comment>


A simple cat implementation in JavaScript, Go, Python, and C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rspivak/2x25/blob/master/simplecat.md <comment><AUTHOR> Now also in Scheme (GNU Guile)</comment>


Latent Dirichlet Allocation on Tweets - <AUTHOR> https://wellecks.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/these-are-your-tweets-on-lda-part-i/

<comment><USER2> Shameless plug: if you're interested in MALLET you might also be interested in FACTORIE: [http://factorie.cs.umass.edu/](http://factorie.cs.umass.edu/)

<comment><USER3> Is development on FACTORIE ongoing? I played with it a bit a long while back and loved the "imperative-declarative[1]" idea you all were pushing for model construction toolkits.

[1] edit: Because I'm not sure if I just made that phrase up or if it came from one of your papers, the idea that ML libraries that take declarative model descriptions are great, but what's even better is if we also have an imperative API that can dynamically generate those declarative specs for us, even based on train-time inputs, so we can essentially "program" the structure of a model but still benefit from keeping everything generalized and declarative at the base.

<comment><USER2> Development is very much ongoing and that's really interesting/nice-to-hear feedback :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did something similar to this with tweets during the Boston Marathon bombing [0]. One of the coolest things that I saw was that the topics themselves were neatly ordered in time. In other words, you can visualize how the distribution of vocabulary evolves with time [1].

It would be interesting to extend the LDA model to include a temporal variable. Never got around to doing it, but it seems like it would work well for social media data.

[0] [http://blog.dc.esri.com/2013/04/18/the-evolution-of- discussi...](http://blog.dc.esri.com/2013/04/18/the-evolution-of-discussion- around-the-boston-marathon-events/)

[1] [http://blog.dc.esri.com/files/2013/04/topic- distribution2.pn...](http://blog.dc.esri.com/files/2013/04/topic- distribution2.png)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a fun exercise for a single tweet feed, but it is unfortunately not very useful when applied to larger scale learning, since you start hitting the model's limitations of a fixed number of topics and, its potentially long runtime, and the fact that it's not an online method (although there are online variants of LDA).

<comment><USER6> Would you like to point us to some progress on how to overcome these limitations with LDA?

<comment><USER7> The gensim [0] package has a nice implementation of online LDA that can handle massive streaming datasets. If you want to avoid specifying the number of topics, you can use HDP-LDA. David Blei (inventor of LDA) has a reference implementation on his website [1], along with many other variants of LDA.

[0] [http://radimrehurek.com/gensim/](http://radimrehurek.com/gensim/)

[1] [http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~blei/topicmodeling.html](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~blei/topicmodeling.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shameless Plug: I did this in Python:

[http://josephmisiti.github.io/using-latent-dirichlet- allocat...](http://josephmisiti.github.io/using-latent-dirichlet-allocation- to-categorize-my-twitter-feed.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Very cool!

I've read that LDA doesn't work well on short documents. Your approach of concatenating all tweets for a user appears to work quite well. One other technique I've seen is to concatenate multiple tweets together that contain the same hashtag.

One of our intern students at 99designs did some work on applying LDA to classify graphic design tasks:

[http://99designs.com.au/tech-blog/blog/2014/01/22/Swiftly- Ma...](http://99designs.com.au/tech-blog/blog/2014/01/22/Swiftly-Machine- Learning-1/)

.. you might find it interesting. :)

<comment><USER10> Also used to classify genes related to lifespan - LDA on Statistical modeling of biomedical corpora: mining the Caenorhabditis Genetic Center Bibliography for genes related to life span. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16681860](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16681860)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We did something similar about 3 and a half years ago where we detected online communities based on their follower network and text of tweets. Something you might be interested in - [http://www.slideshare.net/akshayubhat/twitter- lda](http://www.slideshare.net/akshayubhat/twitter-lda)</comment>


Show HN: Retry – A stateless, functional way to perform actions until successful - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Rican7/retry <comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for a well made and reusable "retry" library, but all I could find were libraries with awkward interfaces/APIs, overuses of state/pointers, a lack of extensibility, or they'd somehow opinionate themselves towards a specific purpose (HTTP retry libraries are in a major abundance).

So, I figured I'd take a stab at creating a retry library that worked in a simple loop with functional composition that would allow for easy extensibility. I ended up writing an API that somewhat heavily used the functional option pattern described so well by Dave Cheney in his blog post: "Functional options for friendly APIs" ([http://dave.cheney.net/2014/10/17/functional-options-for- fri...](http://dave.cheney.net/2014/10/17/functional-options-for-friendly- apis)).

Ideally, the library's packages can be used separately, so you could use the `jitter` transformations even if you don't want to use the actual `retry` mechanism. That is why the library is split into a few packages.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what HN thinks about this library. Anything that I could definitely improve? Is there anything awkward about the API in particular? Something that I missed?

I appreciate the feedback! Thanks!</comment>


Elizabeth Warren thinks the IRS should fill out your tax returns - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/04/13/elizabeth-warren-just-proposed-a-bill-to-make-tax-return-filing-way-easier <comment><USER2> Why limit this approach to tax filings?

Perhaps we should move to a federal banking system where the federal government takes over the services currently provided by the Consumer and the Merchant banking systems? Because all financial transactions would go through the federated banking system and would be cross-checked mechanically, studied by big-data AI systems for anomalies, errors, and fraud. Risks could be substantially reduced. The accuracy of economic projections could be improved because they could be based on real data. A Federal bank account would become a birthright. Bank accounts could be merged with Social Security and Health accounts.

If this were to happen, Federal Cybersecurity would need to be improved significantly.

The implementation would need to be operated and managed directly by the Federal Government and NOT SUBCONTRACTED to commercial enterprises to ensure systems integrity.

There is also the question whether, in this instance, financial information of individuals, business entities, and the government would be entitled to privacy and confidentiality. It might be argued that making all financial information open and available to everyone would have positive benefits. Others might argue that to do so would kill the free market. More study is needed.

</comment><comment><USER3> The IRS can reject my efiled return if the information I enter doesn't match what they have on their end. So why not just save me the hassle of entering a bunch of data if they already have it?

This seems like such an obvious no brainer that could save millions of people hours of frustration. That's why I'm 100% sure it'll never happen.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. As part of buying a house a few years ago, I prematurely drained a couple of small 401k accounts from previous employers to pay for some repairs. That was in Feb-March. Then a year later when I was doing my taxes, I had received the appropriate 1099-whatever for only one of them - I either lost the other, or it didn't get forwarded to my new address- I don't know. And by that time, I had forgotten all about it. The following year (2015) I wound up getting whacked for under-reporting my income in 2014 (house purchase was 2013). It's annoying that since the IRS knew about this (the 401k company had reported it to them, of course), but I had long since forgotten. There must be a better way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea, if implemented correctly. In the UK, most regular employees don't have to file a return because the correct amount is automatically withheld. I'd love to never get another tax refund again and offload the work of filing taxes to the government!

<comment><USER6> But why via witholdings? I don't take witholdings and then just cut the appropriate check come April. They're basically a zero interest loan to the government.

<comment><USER5> Under the UK scheme, for an ordinary employee (basically the kind of person the cheap and free editions of TurboTax are designed for), you're simply paying your tax as you go. It's not really a zero interest loan to the government; it's just paying off what you owe one paycheck at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about people who file Schedule C? The IRS isn't going to know about our business deductions, expenses, etc.

<comment><USER3> Those people continue as usual. Everything doesn't have to benefit everyone equally.</comment></comment>


The Easiest Way to Create a Lean Canvas Canvas for Free - <AUTHOR> https://cnvs.online/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, my name is Ivo and I am a founder of cnvs.online.

In those days, when the Lean movement begun, I discovered a wonderful tool – Lean Canvas. It allows to look at the whole idea from the top in a few minutes after it leaped to your mind. We all know that if you have something brilliant in your mind, it's usually like a mess in the begining. With Lean Canvas you can organize this chaos.

I have been helping my customers to build startups that's why I immediately started to use this new tool in my work. Today I use the Lean Canvas to test all my ideas as it helps me to decide whether I should start realizing the idea or I have to improve it before.

I'm sure that many of you, who are reading this, either use or know this tool. I created this service for you. And yes, it doesn't require registration and it is completely free forever.

I'll be glad to receive your feedback and suggestions so feel free to write here or to my email firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment></comment>


Expedia on how one extra data field can cost $12m  - <AUTHOR> http://www.silicon.com/management/sales-and-marketing/2010/11/01/expedia-on-how-one-extra-data-field-can-cost-12m-39746554/

<comment><USER2> To be fair there's _absolutely no frickin' way_ that you could predict that people would enter their bank in place of their employer.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand if they weren't trying to gather as much information about users as they possibly could this wouldn't even have been a problem in the first place. What possible benefit does an optional "Company" field provide?

<comment><USER4> "It would be great if we knew what percentage of our customers were business travelers. It would really improve marcomm.". "The web guys say they can ask, it won't take five minutes.". "Brilliant! Do it. Next order of business..."

Six years later, nobody has checked the form since. After all, that isn't their job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That $12m/yr might be added revenue, but it's hard to see how it could represent added profit (as claimed in the article).

Say Expedia earns $200 profit per transaction (total WAG, but intended to sound high). Then $12e6 means 60,000 people a year - or 165 people a day - were failing to complete their transactions because they thought "company" meant "bank name". Similarly, $500 profit per transaction means 66 people a day were thrown off by an input field that's actually pretty common on the web. Neither of those seems even vaguely plausible to me.

Take another tack. According to this article (<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69R56X20101028>), Expedia had $177m net income this past quarter. That's framed as a big jump from the past, but say they make 4 x $175m or $700m a year. Before this change, they would have made $688m per year. So 12/688, or 1.7%, of their customers were being thrown off by the "company" field? I find that hard to believe.

If, on the other hand, that $12m is added revenue, then (taking the article's $6.89b revenue per quarter figure) we have 0.044% of their customers failing to complete due to this problem. That sounds a bit more plausible.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know what's more surprising, that one small change is worth millions or that A/B testing is still news to some companies.

<comment><USER7> This wasn't A/B testing. This was fixing UI mistakes based on UX analysis. There was no 'B'. They weren't comparing A and B.

<comment><USER8> In this case, the A/B testing would have been with that field and without.

<comment><USER9> How would you know which fields to use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It occurs to me that instead of removing the field (which I'm sure people who used Company credits cards are looking for) they could simply have made it clear that it was the user's billing address they were looking for, instead of the bank's.

It might have resulted in more revenue if they had done it my way, since there may be people on business trips that now think they can't use a company credit card.

Or not. That's the thing with dealing with the public... Without paying really close attention to what's really happening and people are saying, you are just guessing.

<comment><USER11> What they should do is a randomized control trial in which they either keep the field and make its meaning more explicit or get rid of the field at all.

Then they should look at the differences in sales by comparing the two groups.

Nothing wrong with being a bit academic..

<comment><USER12> Problem is, that this field is question is actually useful for some subset of clients. Making the intent of both "Company" and "billing address" fields is probably most meaningful way to go, possibly hiding the "Company" field behind checkbox like "Bill my employer".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those curious Expedia actually captures a stupendous amount of information down to session level activity. They can play back failed sessions to discover areas of opportunity. This was discussed at an analytics conference I attended on how they implement testing across a range of systems to find possible areas of friction and improve the business.

</comment><comment><USER14> Convenience is king and this is an excellent example of how easy it is to go too far when collecting data from users. I already expect to jump through a few hoops when using a credit card online, so asking me for my life story will only encourage me to bail out and never return.

<comment><USER15> You've clearly not comprehended the subject article - I'd suggest reading it again.

<comment><USER14> I did read the article, and the title says it all. They _lost_ money because they got greedy for data that was unnecessary to complete the transaction. As a result, another point of failure was added and frustrated users bailed. The body of the article may try to spin it as a case where analytics boosted the bottom line, but the truth is that it was a bad design choice that _cost_ them money from the start, because they ignored the KISS principle.

<comment><USER15> According to the article the sales they lose were due to customers who didn't understand the form and therefore filled in the wrong information, not because people couldn't be bother to provide the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what the percentage was of customers who made that mistake and then corrected it in a second try. The increase in sales after correcting the problem implies there were plenty who didn't, but how many were stubborn enough to try again after making the bank mistake?

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't forget Amazon's $300,000,000 button:

<http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Now, if only they fix all the other issues on their site. I tried twice at the weekend to make a booking and the whole convoluted process simply did not work (saying there is errors on the form even if there was not etc...).

</comment><comment><USER19> Confusing customers costs money: news at 11

</comment><comment><USER20> While designing the database, it is better to have a _notes_ column in every table so that we can use it in future without changing the schema and breaking the application.

<comment><USER21> Wow... seriously?

<comment><USER22> Why not? I'm a big proponent of the SQL K-X model. You have two text fields in each table: key and xml. The flexibility of this model is incredible.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu 16.04 will support 'Snaps' alongside Deb packages - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3056668/linux/ubuntu-1604-will-support-snaps-alongside-deb-packages-for-improved-software-installation.html <comment><USER2> Seventeen days too late for april fool's.</comment>


Show HN: Jekyll Asset Pipeline (v0.1.0 released) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matthodan/jekyll-asset-pipeline#v0.1.0

<comment><AUTHOR> With v0.1.0, you can now:

      - Run multiple preprocessors on an asset via nested extensions (e.g. .css.sass.erb)
      - Turn off asset bundling via a config variable (good for debugging)
      - Automatically create Gzip versions of assets

The codebase is also cleaner and fully tested.</comment>


First manufactured non-cuttable material - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65976-0 <comment><USER2> Also submitted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23901635)

<comment><USER3> Comments moved thither. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Element 115 Confirmed - <AUTHOR> http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.112502

<comment><AUTHOR> PDF of the paper available without paywall here:

[http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12683&postid=4002...](http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12683&postid=4002358)</comment>


The Intention Behind Think Kit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fiftythree.com/posts/the-intention-behind-think-kit <comment><USER2> Makes me think of what this would look like generalised... drawing with lines and shapes that have their own programmable constraints.

See Sutherland's Sketchpad demo (1962!) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI)

Really this is when drawing goes beyond the physical world, and we get to start treating the computer as a co-worker. Snap-to-shape is the first step.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks good, but no Android version? The wacom sensor on a Samsung tablet is far more precise than the larger "pen" used for iPads.</comment>


Watch LetsEncrypt issue its millionth certificate live - <AUTHOR> http://crt.sh/?Identity=%25&iCAID=7395 <comment><USER2> For reference:

* Certificate # 250k: Jan. 5, 2016 [1]

* Certificate # 500k: Feb. 4, 2016 [2]

* Certificate # 1M: Mar. 8, 2016

Seems they went from 250k certs per month in Jan to 500k certs per month in Feb.

[1] [https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/684221075966705664](https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/684221075966705664)

[2] [https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/695077737380208640](https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/695077737380208640)

<comment><USER3> [https://letsencrypt.org/stats/](https://letsencrypt.org/stats/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who is publishing this list of possibly not-published-anywhere-else SSL sites? Having them all in a big easy to download list is not what I expected from LetsEncrypt.

<comment><USER5> It's intentional. The general idea is to make it easier to detect fraudulently issued certificates. LetsEncrypt submit all certificates[0] to Certificate Transparency[1] logs.

Chrome won't actually show the green address bar for EV certs unless a CT proof is provided along with the certificate[2].

[0][https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/](https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/)

[1][https://www.certificate-transparency.org/faq](https://www.certificate- transparency.org/faq)

[2][https://blog.digicert.com/certificate-transparency- required-...](https://blog.digicert.com/certificate-transparency-required-ev- certificates-show-green-address-bar-chrome/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a Certificate Transparency log ? It does not look "live" though. How often is it refreshed ?

<comment><USER2> It refreshed a few minutes ago. Perhaps all 15 min?

<comment><USER6> Yes, and it just grew by ~20 certificates, which means people aren't gettings those as quickly as I thought.

<comment><USER2> It jumped from 997,800 to 998,500 to 999,905 within the last 30 minutes. So i guess in in the next hour they will break 1M.

<comment><USER7> Lucky me, I saw it at 999,905 and then immediately refreshed and it was at 1,000,038. I feel so blessed to have seen it pass 1M. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does it look that most of issued certificates are for malware /ads domains? I'm guessing from the weird names.

<comment><USER9> It could be very well that most domains on the internet are for malware and ads where the cost of the domain itself is just slightly below break even point and LetsEncrypt now allows to serve them over https without extra investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yay to : webdemo.jung.de

You win some internet points.

<comment><USER11> Its vuweb.smf.telema-stg.whitecloud.jp actually!

<comment><USER12> I counted the same.

[https://crt.sh/?id=14392504](https://crt.sh/?id=14392504)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> has anyone been able to use letsencrypt with AWS api gatway? I've been struggling for months. I keep getting https crossed out in red when accessing my aws api gateway endpoint....

I generated certificates for *.mysite.com and when I go to api.mysite.com it throws warning and if you continue the https in the address bar is red and crossed out....

</comment><comment><USER14> Woo! Just hit the 1,000,038th!

<comment><USER15> I think this was the 1,000,000th one: [https://crt.sh/?id=14392497](https://crt.sh/?id=14392497) [but I just counted back down 38 from the page list...]

<comment><USER16> If you include the most recent you have to count down by 39, yours is the 1,000,001st

<comment><USER17> Why can't it be simply ?id=1000000? .__.

<comment><USER16> the site is owned by Comodo, it shows logs for various CA's

<comment><USER17> Hrm. Ok. Never saw it before and looking atm from mobile. Sorry :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Controlling the Spice, Part 3: Westwood's Dune - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/controlling-the-spice-part-3-westwoods-dune/ <comment><USER2> I can't help being reminded of Astral Projection:

      The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness.
      The spice is vital to space travel.
      Travel without moving.

Dune & the Spice surely made their impact on pop culture.

<comment><USER3> "Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm" \-- possibly the only Dune reference in a Top 40 hit (Fatboy Slim)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dune I has one the best soundtrack for the adlib card

[https://youtu.be/FjHon6yg-r8](https://youtu.be/FjHon6yg-r8)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful story, assuming you've played Dune II. Please take the time to play Cryo's Dune also, it deserves nothing less than a VR remake!

</comment><comment><USER6> If you pop the hood of Dune II or Command & Conquer you will find out they are driven by the same INI configuration file based scripting system.

It would be nice to get some historical insight what led to the development of this system.

<comment><USER7> That INI system persisted until Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, it was only gone when Westwood switched to the SAGE engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Played so many of these titles, in particular Dune 2, and Eye of the Beholder 2 (vastly preferred this to the original) but also recall Hillsfar and of course later C&C. Hillsfar was sort of like Witcher 3 for 286.

</comment><comment><USER9> I vividly remember renting Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis as a child and not understanding _anything_ about it, but years later clicked instantly with Dune II. I could have sworn it was titled 'The Battle for Arrakis'[0] and it turns out that was a similar but different game made on the Megadrive!

[0] [https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586152-dune-the- battle...](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586152-dune-the-battle-for- arrakis/faqs/1519)

<comment><USER10> My copy of Dune II also had a different subtitle than "The building of a dynasty", and I never owned a Megadrive. "Battle for Arrakis" is probably what it said, but I'm not 100% sure.

I bought my copy in France, at bargain bin, so maybe the international version had a different subtitle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Both games were among my favourites growing up, for very different reasons. I always wondered why a "sequel" was so different from the original - fascinating to learn the reason 25+ years later!

I might have to fire up Dune I again. Unlike Dune II, I suspect it is still quite playable today, even if much less known.

<comment><USER12> Exactely! I still occasionally play Dune I (say, once in two years) and set some new goals for each game: top the spice production record, win the game in shortest period of in-game days, find previously unknown caves...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I loved Dune II as a kid, but I have a tough time getting back into the game ever since Warcraft 2. Because I was spoiled by the ability to select multiple units and direct them.

<comment><USER14> Go look at the Dune Legacy engine. It takes the original Dune II PAKs and adds a bunch of modern features to the game like multiple selection and unit grouping. My sole gripe is the inability to turn those features off.

<comment><USER15> There was also Dune 2000, a remake made with the C&C engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know how many hundreds of hours I spent playing dragon strike. It may be too this day the only dragon back flight simulator.</comment>


Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html <comment><USER2> This sounds very Wittgensteinian. In terms of his philosophy of language, what we have here is a "metaphor gone wild". You take "intellectual" and "property", you put them together as a metaphorical phrase that on the face of it seems meaningful and semantically sound, and people start believe that there's actually such a thing; that it's not made up word-lego.

It takes careful awareness to language to be able to point this out, as Stallman does. Just because there's a word for it, doesn't make it meaningful.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, in Wittgenstein words are meaningful if they correspond to predictable results in communication. If we can reasonably predict how the world will react to the words "intellectual property", then the phrase is "real". Meaning, for Wittgenstein, is usage.

The world, if you were wondering, will look dimly upon second-hand interpretations of a dead, legally irrelevant philosopher if you're caught in the courtroom violating someone else's intellectual property.

If you want to fight intellectual property you first have to acknowledge that, yes, it is a real thing. Our legal system has made it so. Just like physical property is a thing, corporate free speech is a thing, equal protection of the law is a thing, &c.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but "predictable results in communication" is not the criterion for being meaningful. If you fart in a courtroom, you get very predictable results, too. The phrase isn't 'real' just because some people use it. People use "God" quite a lot, and that doesn't make it a meaningful concept.

(why do I feel I just unleashed an unholy flame war from hell with that last analogy?)

<comment><USER4> I suppose that strictly speaking, the use of a phrase by many people does not imply that it has a "meaning" (for certain definitions of meaning) (if many people inserted "whum" as an adjective into some of their sentences, but had no real idea behind it, I suppose it might not be meaningful)

However, if many people say "invisible cherry" when they are talking about a door or opening, or means of accessing something, then it would be reasonable to say both that "invisible cherries exist", and to say "the phrase 'invisible cherry' is meaningful."

Also, while there is no set of all sets, I would argue that (again, for some definition of meaningful), the phrase "the universal set(the set of all sets)" is both meaningful and useful.

Also, if you wanted to avoid a flame war with that last bit, it may have been useful to instead claim that "magic" is meaningless due to being inherently self contradictory (by definition). I would disagree with that claim, but I think it would make a similar argument without being as likely to cause a flame war (though I doubt it would happen in either case)

However, I acknowledge that you did not say magic, and I am not attempting to use a straw man as if you had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always been fascinated by the FSF's interplay with IP law. Mostly because of the 'copyleft' hack, which is the core underpinning of the GPL and, by extension, GNU.

If you didn't have IP law at all, what you'd have is effectively public domain, without even the 'moral right' of attribution of authorship.

The kinds of systems you'd be able to build with that would resemble BSD codes, _not_ GPL codes. This would suffice for open-source software, to be sure, but not for Free software with all the political trappings that it brings [1].

In much the same way as DRM aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of media and code in favor of the 'IP holders', copyleft aims to restrict what you can do with the bits and bytes of source and even binary codes in favor of the 'IP users'.

While the class of set of people benefiting from IP is different, it all still relies on IP.

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why- copyleft.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.html)

<comment><USER6> I believe that copyright law should be abolished. (Eventually, slowly, responsibly.) While I release some works as CC0 [1], I still use the GPLv3+ on much source code because it's the best way to protect freedom _given_ the existing system. This isn't a dichotomy nor hypocritical.

I would prefer for the GPL and other copyright licenses to be unenforcable; unfortunately that isn't the case. So I prefer not to BSD-license my works because then copyright could be used against me to take my rights from me.

[1] [http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

<comment><USER7> > I prefer not to BSD-license my works because then copyright could be used > against me to take my rights from me

I agree with you about GPL now vs. ideally no copyright, but one thing that would definitely be lost is the ability to coerce releasing source code. Companies in a hypothetical no-copyright future could still keep source code secret, and still release compiled/obfuscated software. They could still take code others had released, make modifications, and then only release obfuscated binaries. They wouldn't be able to sue if someone leaked the source code, but is that enough of a protection?

Personally, I'm willing to live with it, because I think in the long run people would rather share. But from, say, RMS's point of view, people are losing some measurable level of protection.

<comment><USER6> I really do value individual freedom. If I have access to some data, I want the freedom to share it. If I have some data, I want the freedom to _not_ share it as well. "You must share the software" is not the world I want.

Legal requirements to share, would actually make it a burden to provide _anything_ : If I give my friend this disk, am I legally required to give them something else along with the disk? If my computer is accessible on a network, do I have a legal obligation to make any source code that is accessible also available? What are the rules about that?

I think it's too messy. And honestly, if a kid writes a game, maybe they're embarassed about the source code... the law shouldn't require them to share that with their friends/teachers/etc.

Although there might be merit to regulations on industry / corporate actions, especially in so far as their works affect the public (voting machines, safety equipment: software that we might want to require keeps its source-code alongside binary distributions).

I'm _much_ more comfortable with people keeping data to themselves in a world where they have less legal ability to prevent others from sharing it.

<comment><USER8> These are non-issues. The idea is not "share all data". If we copy the GPL model, all you need to share is the source code to any program you distribute in an uneditable form, and then only when someone asks for it (at which point you may charge a reasonable processing fee for the trouble). It's really not that onerous. No one is making you share your private software.

For "software" replace "food" and for "source code" replace "ingredients". You can cook whatever you want at home, but when you start selling food to people certain responsibilities kick in. If a kid is selling lemonade but is too embarrassed to tell you what's in it, would you drink it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Language affects perception, perception affects reality.

<comment><USER10> Are you sure it's not perception -> language, or perception <-> language.

<comment><USER9> My statement doesn't preclude the reverse relationship. Each relationship is almost certainly bi-directional.

Altering the language is a powerful technique to shift views and change the debate. Totalitarian regimes have used it extensively (and Orwell parodied/warned about in 1984) but it is used in democracies too, see the battle over the language for abortion (life/choice), the US redefinition of liberal and I'm sure many other things too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want to believe, but there's an elephant in the way.

GNU, Linux, the free BSDs, etc. have done a lot, but in the end they have only copied the work that came before them. You can see it from the surface down-- the GUIs are copies of Windows or Mac, and the OS kernel is a copy of AT&T Bell Labs Unix with ideas from other newer OSes.

I've come around to the view that the basement/garage hacker who changes the world is largely a myth. It's a very popular one and a very American individualist one, but I see few if any real world examples.

Most people around here have probably seen this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv- zdhzMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)

This wasn't the product of basement hackers. It was the product of enormous amounts of DARPA money used to pay a good number of very smart people to focus on the problems of human-computer interaction _full time_ for many years.

I want to believe. Please show me the basement/indy hacker equivalent of that demo.

Sure, basement hackers can make innovations... a little here, a little there. They can also do an excellent job making copies of commercial/military stuff, and in some cases the copies are a bit better than the original. I'm not saying this work has no value. But it doesn't innovate much and it certainly doesn't _invent_. Invention is a hundred times harder than innovation.

IP sucks. It's a bad system. But consider what it is _attempting_ to accomplish. It's trying to create a mechanism whereby really innovative work can really pay. It's attempting to reward investments in really pushing the line forward. In its present form it does a poor job of that, but that's the intent.

Edit: I think the same logic also applies to startups, but to a somewhat lesser extent. Startups do sometimes have money, and can therefore focus on problems and employ people. But they must get revenue fast, which hugely limits their ability to play and experiment. As a result startups can innovate -- improve existing things -- but they generally cannot _invent_. Most startups that attempt to invent run out of runway and crash in the weeds. Invention seems to require a financier who is willing to throw money away, such as DARPA, NSF, etc... traditionally either nation-states or really freaking huge companies with money to burn. Invention is also hard for startups because there is little to no way to monetize it. That's the problem that IP attempts but largely fails to solve.

<comment><USER12>
       It's attempting to reward investments in really pushing the line forward ...

No, I don't think so. IP was never meant to help innovative people. IP -- at least as it was created in the last decades (before, nobody talked about IP, but patents and trademarks and ideas -- no IP) -- is a fighting term that was coined to create a new form of property -- thus, after having things and than land, now also have ideas "own-able". Ideas are no property. How can they? That is just a bad, bad word.

And when you say, that the intent would be to help people with ideas, I can not consent! It is something to make investors and owners happy! To make rich people happy and steal from those with the ideas.

<comment><USER11> It's an attempt to make ideas, inventions, etc. into something like physical goods that can be put on balance sheets like physical goods. Accountants like that, investors like that. But it doesn't seem to work very well.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. Ideas don't fit into their system of wealth and money -- so they try to put it into the system. But it does not fit and only brings much trouble, since ideas can not be measured. The patent system is awfully broken because of this and it will go downhills more and more if nobody stops it (it does not seem so, because the neo-capitalism is still going strong and has more might than all governments together).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I prefer the term "Imaginary Property".

<comment><USER14> All "property" is imaginary. Having physical things without the backing of the law is just possession. We create a legal notion of property for the benefit of society. Property law adds the force to the state to my possessions, to stop someone beating me on the head and taking them. Intellectual property law adds the force of the state to concepts/ideas/media/etc that originated by the sweat of my brow, to encourage the creation of more, and to enable me to make a living from it.

We can argue to what extent this force is necessary, but to claim that intellectual endeavours are just "imaginary" is to do a huge disservice to millions of people who pour their lives into the creation of new and exciting things.

<comment><USER15> EDIT: I'm sorry three of us replied at the same time. I didn't mean to gang up on you.

> All "property" is imaginary.

When it comes to the current legal notion of property, then yes, assigning something as someone's "property" is imaginary.

The problem is "real" property cannot be duplicated without expending resources, whereas IP can be duplicated for free. For example:

If I make a car, you can't just "copy" it. Taking the car is stealing, and I think that is immoral because you have deprived the original owner of their work.

If I make a short story, then "copying" the story means using your own pen and paper (or your own hard drive to place a sequence of bits) to copy. I don't think this should be illegal. That is, I don't think that having a particular sequence of bits on your hard drive should legally allow men with guns to enter your home, label you a criminal, fine you, and/or send you to jail.

In that sense, not all property is "imaginary." We can make a distinction between tangible property, that exists as mass, and intellectual property, which is a set of ideas/words/code/etc. Tangible property is rivalrous; we can't both use it at the same time. Intellectual property can be used by many individuals at once, so calling it someone's "property" and enforcing that claim with force creates artificial scarcity.

I do feel bad that people who expect and rely on IP laws could feel cheated if IP laws were to disappear tomorrow. But to pretend IP law is some sort of natural thing is a bit naive. People have been creating ideas since we evolved a brain. People will continue to create without IP law. To make money off of your creations just requires a different business model.

<comment><USER14> There are no natural laws. Just because you (or your forefathers) were first on a piece of land, what natural right grants you it? Surely it's far more natural that, if I can overpower you and take it, it's mine? That's actually how nature typically works. The notion that it's "immoral" is a purely human construction. Why is that immoral, but my spending 5 years writing a book, only to see nothing in return because everyone hands it around for free is moral?

I'm not saying people will stop having ideas, or creating music, etc. What I am saying is that people without private means or patrons will _have_ to stop performing creative acts that require a significant time investment. If I've got a wonderful idea for a book/film/game/whatever, but know it will take 5 years to make, how do I make it when I need to work 8-6 to pay for food/shelter etc?

Eliminating IP is to construct a return to patronage; the very wealthy deciding what creative output it worthwhile. IP is actually a hugely egalitarian concept; the world can decide what has value, and reward the creator post-hoc, because the creator is _ensured_ a return.

<comment><USER12> >because the creator is ensured a return.

No it is not. There can be ideas and "copyright" without having IP. But IP does also mean that the "property" can be owned by people that did not create it. This notion is fundamentally wrong and de-valuates any creative work. In patents you can already see it (most inventors are getting just a little fixed money -- the most of the value goes to the companies) -- but also in copyrighted work. The most of the value goes not to the performers of the art (eg music) but to the distributors.

<comment><USER14> Why is it "fundamentally wrong"? I created the work, I'm free to do with it as I please. I can give it away for free. I can charge $10 a copy. I can come to an arrangement that someone else has the right to set the price, in return for something else I want. That many musicians choose to sell their creations to distributors is entirely their choice. It obviously didn't "devalue" it to them at the point of sale, else they wouldn't have sold it. That many patents are owned by companies is because they were created by employees whose creative output was owned by the company in exchange for a salary.

If creative output has a value, then people should be free to exchange their creations for anything they like. To create restrictions that prevent people from writing a book then making an arrangement with a publisher, is just to prevent people from actually being able to _do_ anything with their creations.

<comment><USER12> >I created the work, I'm free to do with it as I please.

Under the current law: NO!

That is just a dream from the people that are pro-IP -- they know, that is a dream, but they want you to dream it.

If you are working for a company and have an idea, the company gets the patent and you get (if you are lucky) a fixed amount (~$500 is a typical amount in my country) and the patent belongs to the company -- you don't even have the right to use the stuff for yourself.

IP means, in its conclusion, that the creators are disowned and the "owners" own your ideas. You created it, you are busted!

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing you're being deliberately obtuse here. You were completely free to do with your work as you please, and you "pleased" to sell your work to a company in exchange for some consideration. If you don't want IP transfer, or first-refusal fixed price patent transfer, then don't sign that employment contract. I had them negotiated out of my last agreement, and I'm free to spend my personal time creating whatever I want, knowing the rights to it will be owned entirely by me.

<comment><USER12> No I am not "obtuse".

I guess, you are.

When you still find an employer, that makes a contract like that, call yourself lucky. In my country, it is a law -- and you can't cancel out laws in my country in contracts.

Not everybody is so lucky, that he has enough money or finds fitting freelancer work.

Ask the music people. They (oftentimes) can't sell their music without having contracts with big companies -- and they have to sell out all their rights.

But it seems that you just view the world from your standpoint -- fading out any negatives -- and everybody that has different experiences as you do, is just stupid or "obtuse" in your view. With such an attitude on your side, a discussion makes little to no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely.

Not really - just like the clearest way to separate criminal and civil liability isn't to just stop using the word "illegal".

The easiest way is to just learn the distinction. It doesn't take long.

It takes about 30 seconds to explain intellectual property (copyright = exact original content, patent = protects a general mechanism, nobody can solve the same problem the same way, trademark = about consumer confusion, only one company can use a word or other thing to sell a specific type of product).

Actually that was more like 15 seconds, wasn't it?

I have absolutely no problem with calling all of the above intellectual property, because all of it keeps me from doing certain things, just like I'm not allowed to walk on some tiles just because they happen to be in the middle of my neighbor's house, and his property is protected by law. I'm not just referring to taking them - I can't even walk on them without his permission. Property rights are a fine expression. If it causes confusion, this can be cleared up directly.

I just don't see the problem here.

</comment><comment><USER12> Intellectual property is a wording that shows, what the intention is:

Making ideas and thinking property, thus de-valuating it

What is the property of "property": Property is owned by somebody independently from the creator of the property. Thus, the person that has the ideas becomes less important -- important is only the owner and the money, that was paid for the property.

Without "IP", rich people can live from their money, and their money pays them a living, just from the interest they "earn". But with IP they can also own your ideas and we all become slaves to the rich.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmmm... no mention of "trade secret".

</comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting to re-read this article: [http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-17/free-as-in-we- ow...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-17/free-as-in-we-own-your- ip.html) with an eye towards the overgeneralization of the term.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think most people have an intuitive notion of "intellectual property". That intuition is probably not inline with actual laws on books, but I'm reasonably sure if you ask most people, they'd agree that a film studio, a writer, a painter, a musician, a software developer should be able to have exclusive rights of distribution of their work under some constraints. Obviously the devil is in the details, but at a high-level, I think that's a pretty mainstream, reasonable view.

<comment><USER18> You missed the entire point. Software uses patents, so people literally can't imitate others' works like some artists do. And that's the problem with over- generalization: it's a useless abstraction that doesn't generalize well.

<comment><USER10> >You missed the entire point. Software uses patents,

I haven't, I just didn't focus on software patents because software patents are just one niche within the larger "Intellectual Property" framework. Even if you get rid of software patents, and I can be convinced either way, you're still left with patents in general, and copyright.

>And that's the problem with over-generalization

IP? I think it's a useful abstraction. Patents, software or otherwise, trademarks and copyright all are rooted in the same ideology. Giving a content creator a conditional exclusive right of distribution of a creative work.

<comment><USER18> You did miss the point. Read the article. It's about how all IP is not the same because they originated from different places and they do different things. For example, software uses patents. That's not just a niche, that's an entire category of IP. Copyright is also an entire category that artists use to "protect" their work. But what kind of protection? It's different between patent and copyright, so just saying I have IP rights, is as vague as you can possible be because you don't have them all - just some.

<comment><USER19> > so just saying I have IP rights, is as vague as you can possible be

No, its not, because you could say "I have intangible personal property rights" or "I have personal property rights", or "I have property rights", each of which is vaguer than "I have IP rights", as IP is a strict subset of intangible personal property, which is itself a strict subset of personal property, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting Started with Rust: Reference and Lifetime - <AUTHOR> https://www.mathieu-nivoliez.com/posts/2018-03-05-getting-started-with-rust-reference-and-lifetime.html <comment><USER2> > I may express here a crucial point, LIFETIMES ARE HARD TO DEAL WITH, so try > to not use them to often.

While this can be true, you are always dealing with them if you have a reference to something. Sometimes the compiler will elide them for you but other times you need to explicitly write them. The code snippets in this blog need lifetime annotations for example.

<comment><USER3> I have found harder to use Strings. I start build a little interpreted language and boom! the strings is the roadblock.

I still not figure what the hell is the deal with it. Why rust no "just" give a "string for mortals"?

<comment><USER4> It's fundamental to rust's view of ownership and borrowing of data. It's not just strings, but it's everything. Strings represent a single exclusive owner of mutable data. &str represents one of possibly many read-only shared references to the internal data of a string.

Once you understand this concept you see it over and over. It's how every type in the language works (unless that type implements the Copy trait).

I actually think this is something really fundamental and amazing the more I think about it. Most languages, like Java, tell you to make defensive copies of your data because you never know who will be modifying it later. Also most languages will enforce that all strings are always immutable, to prevent people from needing to make defensive copies. Rust just naturally handles this with it's ownership and borrowing rules. And then the very same concept is what makes concurrency safe.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I get this, but still is very hard cliff. "String" is so fundamental and when you see how operate with ints, floats and sudenly strings is a hard climb. In the mind of many, strings are at the same "level" than other primitives.

I wish it have a "easy mode" and a "advanced" one for when is necessary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sealab II: Porpoise Post and Life Beneath the Waves - <AUTHOR> https://www.navalhistory.org/2019/04/23/sealab-ii-porpoise-post-and-life-beneath-the-waves <comment><USER2> He vaguely mentions it in the article, but one of the phone calls was circulated for years among Navy divers because of its comedy value. Commander Carpenter speaks to President Lyndon Johnson, but he's in a helium environment:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0pMbc7Opk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0pMbc7Opk)

And when he starts talking to the president:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0pMbc7Opk&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0pMbc7Opk&feature=youtu.be&t=226)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the 1950s & 60s, there were dual dreams of human settlement both of space, and of the continental shelf. One dream continues to have a hold on popular imagination, one not so much.

You don't have oil industry divers looking around the seafloor and thinking, "yeah, this is where I want to raise my kids someday". And yet, Mars is a planet-sized perchlorate superfund site, and the Moon is worse. So might it have gone the other way?

One argument for pushing rapidly to human settlement is we're in a window now where it both seems at the edge of technological plausibility, and it has some popular appeal. And it's possible to imagine the latter going the way of ocean settlement.

<comment><USER4> Mars makes a lot of sense for a viable colony in the category of getting _all_ the eggs out of the single basket they're in. So would literally any other place. (Though Mars might be lower hanging fruit since the gravity, pressure, and temperature are only a little off.)

<comment><USER5> Living under the ocean adds a lot of redundancy a lot more easily. Getting Mars self sustaining so it can produce everything including CPU's would require a truly massive colony. Until then it's not really useful.

Under sea on the other hand assuming undersea gardens could protect from a dinosaur killing asteroid, with a small population able to repopulate earth in a few years.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying it shouldn't be done as well, I'm just pointing out that having some bubble-wrap around one of the eggs near the bottom of the basket isn't the same as having an egg in another basket on the table. Or in a basket in another room entirely.

PS: the background of the SOMA storyline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're looking for me

You better check under the sea

Cause that is where you'll find me

Underneath the

Sealab, Underneath the water

Sealab, At the bottom of the sea

</comment><comment><USER7> Another great underwater video game besides BioShock is Subnautica.</comment>


Discovery of giant neurons could help explain how brain creates consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/919819/giant-neurons-from-the-claustrum-found-wrapped-around-mouse-brains-could-explain-the-biological-origin-of-consciousness/ <comment><USER2> for whatever reason, the byzantine generals problem comes to mind</comment>


The Unbearable Whiteness of Breaking Things - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/521cb394fda2

<comment><USER2> This argument reminds me of the recent submission asserting that it's a hell of a lot easier to break into the Silicon Valley ecosystem when you're wealthy or white, and how the Valley likes to think it's a meritocracy.

Refuting this essay's point can be done by looking into the meritocracy argument. Sure, there's economic filters in the way of making it to places like Stanford or YC, but you can't complain that the lessons and morals these institutions impart are somehow 'racially tinged' because of socioeconomic gates inbuilt in American society.

If the author points out one thing correctly, it's that there is a striking disparity between the quality of life on either side of 101 on University. Companies like FB are making small initiatives to inject support and money into the local communities, but we need a larger, governmental effort before any real progress can be made in those areas.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's being white so much as it is just being from a privileged background.

Had the teenagers in question had been South Asian or East Asian or African American but dressed and carried themselves in the way that people whose parents can afford to send them to Stanford for summer camp do, they would have had a similar outcome.</comment>


FieldSkill is launched-join our list of delighted users and share your feedback - <AUTHOR> http://fieldskill.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> Dear fellows Hackers,

we just wanted to inform you that we finally launched our FieldSkill app - field service software that helps businesses in field service to schedule jobs, track work, manage clients and generate invoices.

If you have time please check our app and any kind of feedback would be appreciated, just drop me an email at email@example.com! Who knows maybe some of you find it useful for your business :)

Cheers!</comment>


$3.2B self-driving car company Zoox has ousted its CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/zoox-ousts-ceo-tim-kentley-klay-2018-8 <comment><USER2> I don't have a strong opinion on Zoox, this CEO, or even this story, but there sure does seem to be a lot of frustration in the self-driving world.

Leaves me with two thoughts:

There's a lot more runway for these bike sharing startups then I thought there'd be.

Self driving is hard.</comment>


The State of JavaScript Build Tools 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.walkercoderanger.com/blog/2015/06/state-of-js-build-tools-2015/

<comment><USER2> That list of features is a tall order indeed. The author is looking for a lot more than just a JS build tool.</comment>


The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development - <AUTHOR> https://js.foundation/announcements/2016/10/17/Linux-Foundation-Unites-JavaScript-Community-Open-Web-Development/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was interesting at first. An effort to push the JS environment towards standardization is a much needed initiative.

Then I saw the "initial projects" list.

"Appium, contributed by Sauce Labs, is an open source Node.js server..."

"Interledger.js, contributed by Ripple, enables instant payments and micropayments in any currency..."

"JerryScript, contributed by Samsung, is a lightweight, fully-featured JavaScript engine for Internet of Things..."

"Node-RED, contributed by IBM, is a flow-based programming environment built on Node.js..."

This made it very clear that the founding members of the "JS Foundation" are not interested in developing and promoting the best open source tools, those tools which are most deserving of broad adaption. To them, this is a way to promote _their own_ tools. They aren't doing this for the good of the of JS ecosystem, they are doing it to push their own brands on developers.

<comment><USER3> Though nice to see moment and webpack

<comment><USER4> Agreed, at least with webpack. My number one gripe with moment is that I have to shim it in when using webpack. It still expects to be added to global scope, just like jquery. I'd really like to find a modular version, or another project that has as much functionality.

<comment><USER5> I haven't had any problem with `require('moment')` doesn't leak into my global scope. jQuery is a different story, given how plugins tend to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure why this announce is so upvoted (maybe because the title is full of buzzwords?).

If we look at this announce:

* the jQuery foundation (jQuery + jQuery UI) becomes the JS foundation (jQuery + jQuery UI + IBM + Samsung + unknown companies)

* the list of founding members is awkward. IBM to unite the JavaScript community? IBM is the company who creates things like JSONx [1]. These founders have done nothing for the web, for JavaScript or for the open source community. Where are the main actors like Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Netflix?

This new partnership is an attempt to gain visibility by companies that are non-existent in the JavaScript community.

To be clear: the JS foundation will not make the JavaScript ecosystem finally less fragmented and more standardized (the common complaints on Hacker News).

[1] [https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS9H2Y_7.5.0/com...](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS9H2Y_7.5.0/com.ibm.dp.doc/json_jsonxconversionexample.html)

<comment><USER7> >Where are the main actors like Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Netflix?

I'd argue that the main actors (and others) have driven the web backwards, not forwards. They've done this by the push towards capturing consumers in a walled garden, the rejection of open standards, the embrace of DRM, the selling of user private data for profit, etc.

You listed companies I'd invite to sit on the board of some kind of User Tracking Foundation, but not anything to do with open web development.

<comment><USER8> > I'd argue that the main actors (and others) have driven the web backwards, > not forwards. They've done this by the push towards capturing consumers in a > walled garden, the rejection of open standards, the embrace of DRM, the > selling of user private data for profit, etc

That could well be. I just don't quite see what that has to do with moving Javascript forward.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't, it's about Javascript being driven backwards by big $.

<comment><USER10> That just opens a pedantic conversation on what "forwards" is, which is mostly relative. A PM will think "forward" is faster development, an engineer might view "forward" as better best practices and better mean software quality. "Forwards" to Facebook is more ad impressions.

The real answer is probably a combination of all the above, which qualifies for GP's comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see the need for this to cherry pick a few project and push them with the Linux brand. The JS landscape is fragmented for a good reason and I don't see that as problem in fact, rather as a feature. With NPM and YARN we already have a good enough package management system and their platform can help me evaluate if a package is community supported enough. I'm talking about the stats that I can just check: number of stars, contributors and open/closed issue ratios.

If someone understood it better than me please add your thoughts.

I also don't see faces here: [https://js.foundation/members/](https://js.foundation/members/) Who runs the show?

<comment><USER12> How can you find the js fragmentation a feature and not a stinking pile of shit? Seriously.

<comment><USER11> First the term. By fragmentation I mean two things: 1) we have many libraries doing the same thing. 2) the implementation is JS is not the same in every environment.

If you are spending most of your time writing other languages which have a standard library, I can understand your opinion.

However, I see fragmentation as:

1) It introduces the opportunity everyone on the planet to give a shot at implementing something that may or may not be better than we consider today the best. For example I used a datepicker in my latest project but in the current it failed and I could replace it in 15 minutes rather than spending hours finding the issue with the "standard one". I'm not really experienced in the C++ world, but I guess people would call me crazy if I proposed a new stdio lib. Maybe there could be better libraries, who knows. It's a settled game there. See jQuery in JS land, it was for many years, "the golden tool". Now we have alternatives for more specialized workflows. Not everybody wears the same hat all the time.

2) EcmaScript is constantly evolving, that causes another fragmentation, but this also allows the dev community to propose changes, implement new features and create a really vibrant feedback loop. If you stick to the latest stable (currently ES5) you are safe to build whatever you like with great stability.

<comment><USER13> The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

<comment><USER11> That's because "modern javascript" is not there yet, it's still in an experimental phase, we need transpilers and other stuff to use features that are not in a finished state. It will get better with time.

<comment><USER14> So when is Javascript not going to be in an experimental phase? A couple of years ago it would have been 'when browsers support ES6'. Now it's 'when browsers support ES7'. Next year it's going to be 'when browsers support ES8'.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, ES6 was huge. ES7, and probably ES8, are tiny by comparison with only a few new features. Once browser creators get caught up on ES6 it _shouldn't_ be too hard to stay caught up after that point.

But, most of experimentation isn't around the core ECMA features. The experimentation is happening around the toolchain, the libraries, the frameworks, etc. which are separate from stuff like ES6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Expanding the jQuery foundation in this way is an exciting change, and one I'm interested to follow and learn from. Ember.js for example has taken some tips from how jQuery grew and managed itself, however we've also avoided what we think were some missteps.

I hope the organizers of JSF can share what works and doesn't with the wider community. If they want to solve fragmentation in JavaScript projects, no one organization will do that. The need to share their ideas where they work well.

I asked a few questions on Twitter yesterday to this end, and if there is a JSF member around I would really appreciate some thoughts:

* What does the "mentorship program" look like? It is mentioned several times but not with much detail. ([https://twitter.com/mixonic/status/788046983437037568](https://twitter.com/mixonic/status/788046983437037568))

* Can provide context re: "Today the JS Foundation touts a new open, technical governance structure"? What are the changes, and what led to them? [https://twitter.com/mixonic/status/788038708364587008](https://twitter.com/mixonic/status/788038708364587008)

* What are the motivations for moving to Apache 2.0 as a default license? I expect something about IBM and the patent clause. Does adopting this license attract more corporate participation?

Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER17> A few years ago, some high profile organizations (W3C, Adobe, Facebook, Google, Hp, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera) came together to try to help standardize the web platform [1](Javascript, CSS, HTML). That was a HUGE failure - because it was driven by business rather than developers. How will the "Javascript foundation" do better?

[1] [http://webplatform.com](http://webplatform.com)

<comment><USER18> Developers can't be trusted to make good decisions about the tools they use either.

<comment><USER19> We're all just pretty much screwed :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From my perspective the main benefit of this is there is now a non profit that can take over administration of JS projects the community values but the original developers want to abandon.

<comment><USER21> Has such an argangment ever worked in practice? I have read here on HN about how the Apache brand is used as a dumping ground for zombie projects. Why would it be different for the Linux Foundation?

<comment><USER22> Isnt CouchDB an Apache project?

Seems to me like it get's updated

<comment><USER23> ~45% of the releases listed on the Apache website are older than a year (900 out of 1961).

Source: [https://projects.apache.org/releases.html](https://projects.apache.org/releases.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Shocking how the javascript community has done just fine before this group of well funded enterprises organized and nominated itself as leader of that community.

This is an attempted capture of a major open source community by commercial interests.

<comment><USER4> If that is the case, I say good luck to them. They might as well try to hold on to a handful of sand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _We 're uniting the community by...declaring that we're uniting the community!_

</comment><comment><USER26> "founding members include Bocoup, IBM, Ripple, Samsung, Sauce Labs, Sense Tecnic Systems, SitePen, StackPath, University of Westminster and WebsiteSetup."

There's a name missing there I would have expected to see. Starts with M. Mo... mo ... something.

<comment><USER27> That's a really odd list of founding members, period.

And yeah, managing to do this without having ONE of:

* Mozilla * Google * Microsoft * Apple * Adobe * Facebook * eBay

Is just... weird. But they have IBM and Samsung.

<comment><USER17> * Mozilla * Google * Microsoft * Adobe *Facebook

DID work together to try to help standardize the web platform [1] a few years ago.

Unfortunately, it failed, mostly because of politics.

[1] [http://WebPlatform.Com](http://WebPlatform.Com)

<comment><USER28> It looked like documentation and had no clear benefit over MDN. If it wasn't just documentation, a terrible job was done in communicating that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "aims to drive broad adoption and ongoing development of key JavaScript solutions and related technologies and to facilitate collaboration within the JavaScript development community to ensure those projects maintain the quality and diverse contribution bases that provide for long-term sustainability."

Does this mean this new foundation will be offering funding for projects?

</comment><comment><USER30> As confusing as this appears (are they going to handle new ECMAScript specifications? I am so confused), I am glad that they're supporting Moment.js. It has become one of my default libs, like jQuery, when working on a new project.

<comment><USER31> The JS Foundation is just the rebranded jQuery Foundation. Despite its name the jQuery Foundation already had a much broader scope than just jQuery (e.g. also Dojo).

The JS Foundation is not related to TC39, the organization in charge of new ECMAScript editions. I guess they might sponsor a TC39 member eventually and engage in JS advocacy beyond merely supporting JS open source projects -- similar to what the PSF and its affiliates do for Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm OK with foundations or even companies that want to attract folk with opensource.

Will see in 3 or 5 years the results but looking at recent Facebook activity this strategy works fine.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone know if this will affect the licensing of these projects? Linux uses GPL, but I believe most of these projects use MIT.

<comment><USER34> The Linux Foundation already has a wide variety of projects besides Linux which are covered by a number of different licenses depending upon the project.

[https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects)

<comment><USER22> Also, they say "open web" not "free web" so we're probably save.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Interested to hear - what kind of effect will this have on the fragmentation we see in the JavaScript ecosystem?

<comment><USER31> Most likely? None at all. But it might ensure the long-term survival of some popular libraries that could otherwise eventually die off (kinda like Apache).

Case in point: [https://medium.com/webpack/sustaining-webpack-for-the- future...](https://medium.com/webpack/sustaining-webpack-for-the-future- part-2-7055282d7864)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone use JerryScript? I found it to be incomplete.

</comment><comment><USER37> And when I thought we are about to get ride of JS(though wasm)... Still doesn't make any sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER38> NPM actually did that.

</comment><comment><USER39> Here's my take on all of this: [https://www.sitepen.com/blog/2016/10/17/announcing-the-js- fo...](https://www.sitepen.com/blog/2016/10/17/announcing-the-js-foundation/)

The feedback is interesting, but I think it helps to understand more of the history to get that most of the negative feedback here is overreaction. Some thoughts:

* No, the foundation isn't trying to dominate or tell people what to do. It's trying to support open source projects through their lifecycle. Running a project can be a rather lonely and frustrating experience at times, but can also be very rewarding

* Open source foundations provide legal protection to individuals and corporations that contribute and use open source software, and help ensure that one company or person doesn't turn evil and try to pull the carpet out from under the community (which has happened many times in the history of OSS)

* Regarding standardization, the foundation has members on TC39, W3C TAG, etc. Helping with standards is time consuming (and something I personally don't want to spend any time on), but it does help to gather ideas and have a way to contribute in a smaller way to the process

* As a foundation, we don't require any project to merge or conform with another. We have 3 testing tools (Intern, Mocha, and QUnit) which all have different philosophical approaches. But there are certainly things we could collaborate on, inside or outside the foundation.

* The foundation is not a place for projects to go to die. For example, many think of Dojo 1.x as old (because it's been under active use and development since 2004), but if you look at the work being done on Dojo 2 ( [http://github.com/dojo/meta](http://github.com/dojo/meta) ), you'll see that it's on its way to reinventing itself as a modern TypeScript based approach to building web apps.

* Over the years we've worked with many large companies, and it's important to remember that companies are made of individuals. These companies have behaved on the OSS front in a very helpful manner (and I'm a huge skeptic in general). IBM has contributed as much over the years to JS OSS as anyone out there. The amount of help they provided in a11y and i18n is second to none, and they've helped Dojo, jQuery, PhoneGap/Cordova and others in significant ways.

* The list of founding members is smaller than we would have liked, but many times, you need to put something out there before people will join (it's more difficult to convince someone to sponsor something not yet announced than something fully baked). And just because you haven't heard of a company doesn't mean they don't do interesting and important things. The goal was not to just get a bunch of large companies to push their logos, but to get a group of people that care about the open web involved.

Overall it seems like the community loves to hate on things out of FUD (nothing new), but really we're just a group of people that create OSS that solves problems we have as developers. Really we just want to help, and a foundation is just one way to encourage collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER11> #927 :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow can you say "scope creep"

<comment><USER31> Why?

The Linux Foundation is not specific to Linux and already includes the Node Foundation which maintains Node.js.

The JS Foundation is just the rebranded jQuery Foundation which already included projects not related to jQuery (e.g. Dojo or Grunt).

Neither foundation has changed its scope with this announcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't have a ton of experience with the Linux Foundation, but publishing a list of "official" JavaScript libraries to seems like a step in the right direction. One of the largest complaints about the JS ecosystem today is the huge number of choices in libraries available. Maybe this provides a good starting point for a lot of people who feel lost. Or maybe it's just one more library that we all have to understand and make a decision about.

<comment><USER42> I am not sure if anybody can pick the right library for a company other than the technical leadership, though.

<comment><USER41> Very true. Hopefully this provides a good starting point to get the the discussion going, especially for things where there are multiple options. momentjs is a good example - I don't think there's a better library for dealing with time in JavaScript. But Mocha might be contentious - some people love the Jasmine/Mocha/Jest family, other people prefer the Tap/Tape/Ava lineage. Here's to hoping this makes the discussions easier to have.</comment></comment></comment>