The Milwaukee Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/the-milwaukee-experiment

<comment><USER2> > "What the reformers never want to talk about is that, in the eighties and > nineties, once we incarcerated a lot of people, the crime rate went down > dramatically around the country."

> It is true that the over-all level of crime has fallen in the United States > over the past two decades, but the debate over whether mass incarceration is > the reason for this decline has been inconclusive.

I tend to believe that mass incarceration isn't responsible for the dramatic decrease in crime rates from the 1970's, but I do think criminal justice reformers take that conclusion as an article of faith.

Just looking at the graphs, it's quite reasonable to conclude that increased incarceration was a response to increased crime rates, and once it kicked in had the effect of decreasing crime rates: [http://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/694562/inc...](http://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/694562/incarceration_vs._crime.0.png). Again, I don't believe that conclusion, but I don't think the argument has been convincingly rebutted.

<comment><USER3> > I tend to believe that mass incarceration isn't responsible for the dramatic > decrease in crime rates...

In fact, wasn't there some research that concluded that it was indeed the introduction of unleaded gasoline which decreased the crime?

<comment><USER4> Birth control & legalized abortion correlation with youth crime rates [0]

[0] [http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who- sh...](http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you- believe/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did the study account for previous convictions, having a criminal record, being on probation, having other charges present in the case, etc...

Or did it just look at race and a specific charge (ex: 'possession of drug paraphernalia'), and used that to compare white vs black?

<comment><USER6> The data, at least in the Milwaukee prosecutor's office, does account for a lot of that. In fact, it apparently accounts for really obscure state like "two or more prior convictions", "arrested under 16", and "ever suspended or expelled from school". So all of that would have been part of the study. But I think what's important to understand is that different people are going to have different advocates. And that will not be part of the study.

Maybe a lot of the white kids had better lawyers, as opposed to the black kids who had overworked public defenders ??? Also... we shouldn't minimize the impact that parents can have on the process. Maybe a lot of the white parents were very involved and maybe even talking to the prosecutors ??? So then the prosecutor says "well... this kid only had a joint... I'll just let his or her mother/father take care of it." The mothers may not be that active as advocates in the case of the black kids.

What advocates were acting on behalf of a kid... we don't know. And it's just the sort of thing that would, typically, not be recorded - and, at the same time, have an enormous impact on outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> John Chisolm is a not a good prosecutor.

He seems to have little issue with using the states prosecutorial apparatus for political ends. I think in general John Doe & no-knock, kick-in warrants are an abomination, but to use them for basically political harassment is beyond the pale.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2750225/Report- Cryin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2750225/Report-Crying-wife- drove-Democratic-DA-target-Republican-governor-s-staff-conservative-activists- five-year-investigation.html)</comment>


Where did viruses come from? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-where-did-viruses-come-fr

<comment><USER2> Just because an article sounds like something informative and good to read, does not mean it is:

 _At the end of the day, however, despite all of their common features and unique abilities to copy and spread their genomes, the origins of most viruses may remain forever obscure._

<comment><USER3> You don't find that conclusion informative and interesting? I did, much like I find Godel's incompleteness theorems or the Halting theorem very informative and interesting.

<comment><USER4> Gödel theorem / Halting problem: "We are sure that something is impossible." -> Interesting

Virus Origin: "We still don't know. We will keep researching." -> Not very interesting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the more 'out-there' theories is that new viruses are constantly falling to the earth's surface... from outer space:

<http://www.panspermia.org/panfluenza.htm>

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't expect to see an automatic microbiology context here instead of a computer one, so I was gonna answer

everyone knows where they come from, their creators: 14 year old Average Frustrated Chumps.</comment>


Webhook – demolishes Kickstarter target - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1749618880/webhook

<comment><USER2> Namespaces people. Please respect them.

Webhook is a thing that people google for information about all the time, and these jerks have just made finding information about webhooks, especially for any other CMS, twice as hard.

Stop shitting in the internet tech namespace commons and spend another five minutes naming your things.

Here's a handy rule, if you aren't 100% confident your project will be in the top 5 google results for your exact name search within two weeks of launch, you're probably shitting in the commons and should find another name.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Can I self-host Webhook > No, but we get this question a lot and obviously > want to provide it. Honest truth? We'd like to hire another engineer first. > That way we can dedicate a resource to making it as good as our hosted > solution. It's just not as simple as pushing to an S3 bucket.

This is a deal breaker for me and I suggest most dev shops working for clients.

<comment><USER4> I think that excuse is valid. Why support two very different type of support requests in the early days.

I'm not sure I like the idea of another CMS but the idea of using kickstarter to build an initial client base is a good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not to be confused with webhooks

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

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this confused me significantly. I would have picked a different name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole thing looks very nice but the fact that the resulting sites must be deployed on their servers is a deal-breaker for me.

<comment><USER8> Also, is it Open Source? It's interesting to me that they can sell with a explanation that's wildly technical, while not mentioning the license…

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea of building your own CMS but the idea of hosting on their servers might be the deal breaker.

Although i think this can be a very nice open source project and change the idea of CMS which is been set by projects like wordpress/drupal etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> This project really needs a different name... "web hook" already means something, e.g. [https://help.github.com/articles/creating- webhooks](https://help.github.com/articles/creating-webhooks)

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't totally get it. On one hand he's selling this idea that making a dream site can be easy (and it is if it's a very simple site, I guess). He's got 2 decades of experience that say there's more to creating a site than the tool that you're using.

Then running the backend of usual cms systems is made to be hard. But if you know how to install node.js and you're talking about these other components and services like firebase, really that isn't any harder than running click and point software that installs all the backend for you for these other cms solutions. It's not a breakthrough leap in simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Demolished might be a strong word. It's raised ≈50% more than what was expected but compared to Kickstarter baselines that's not super unusual. As an example, I kicked in a bit for this wallet ([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supr/slim-the- thinnest-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supr/slim-the-thinnest- wallet-ever)) that had a $10K target and raised $200K, that could potentially be described as demolishing the target.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is cool, and there's definitely a need for a better WordPress, but I feel like this setup flow is backwards. Ideally, the flow would be something like this: I go to webhooks.com. Create an account, then create a new project (newproject.webhooks.com). I can edit my site from my site's admin page (newproject.webhooks.com/admin), or as an advanced option, I can install the repo locally to fully edit the code.

Am I missing something here? Don't understand why a user would want to install locally first. Also especially for a non-technical person, this creates barriers to get started.

</comment><comment><USER14> Kickstarter has a funny dynamic to it. I'm not sure I really understand what motivates people to back projects. This doesn't sound like a bad idea. There seems to be room for several CMS companies and the good ones do well.

I'm surprised that people will kick in donations to fund what is essentially a company.

I wonder if local brick and morter businesses could raise on kickstarter.

<comment><USER15> A locally owned pizza shop in Portland, OR successfully ran a campaign to move to a larger location. Backers got all sorts of pizza and schwag.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atomicpizza/atomic- pizz...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atomicpizza/atomic-pizza-is- moving-one-block)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the idea but I'm personally not a fan of node mostly due to it's poor package management system.

<comment><USER17> I am personaly a big fan of npm. What package management system do you consider better ?

<comment><USER18> I have had no luck trying to install npm packages whenever I needed something. It's always some sort of dependency or index or some other problem.

<comment><USER6> I've had a fair bit of NPM installation issues as well and I am a big NodeJS supporter. Often their service is down. If you installed npm a long time ago, it likely doesn't work reliably with the service as it is now and you need to do an "npm install npm" to fix it.

Generally, npm needs to get more professional and I think they are trying.

<comment><USER16> Not to mention that every language has it's own package manager and all of them have a different idea of how to implement one - total not invented here syndrome IMO

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good beard!</comment>


Show HN: JARVIS on Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/swapagarwal/JARVIS-on-Messenger <comment><USER2> It's a good start :)

I've noticed people try to start out with NLP + machine learning when creating a bot, got any plans for that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! One of the reasons I made this is to lower the entry barrier in the world of open source. If we get good contributions, I'll definitely want to include NLP / ML.</comment></comment>


Broadpwn – All Your Mobiles Are Belong to Us – Hackaday - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2017/07/29/broadpwn-all-your-mobiles-are-belong-to-us/ <comment><USER2> The original article and comments are definitely worth a read:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602)

The exploit really reminded me of those in the game/CTF Microcorruption, which I cannot recommend enough if you are interested in the subject matter:

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

</comment><comment><USER3> What does this post add to the original report?

[https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/](https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/)

Discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14859602)

</comment><comment><USER4> _All iPhones after iPhone 5_

That haven't updated to the latest iOS.

</comment><comment><USER5> At some point this was a working zero day possibly held onto and dxploited by governments or organizations.

<comment><USER3> Source?

We know that governments and secret services hoard exploits (from the Snowden leaks). But we should remain precise about what we know they had access to and what not, e.g. to investigate possible past breaches.

But saying 'this was an exploit that was possibly use by a government' without any proof does not contribute to the debate.

<comment><USER6> Reading comprehension skills, bro. He wrote "possibly". There aren't citable sources for possibilities.</comment></comment></comment>


The Supreme Court doesn't understand software - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/6/20/5824426/the-supreme-court-doesnt-understand-software-and-thats-a-problem <comment><USER2> The author misses the gist of the Supreme Court's opinion in CLS Bank v. Alice:

> In Thursday's ruling, the court rejected a patent that claimed the concept > of using a computer to hedge against "counterparty risk" — the risk of > making a bargain and then having the other guy not pay up. The Supreme Court > complained that in the process described in the patent, "each step does no > more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions." > Such a generic patent, the court said, isn't eligible for patent protection. > The problem is that this criticism can be leveled at literally any software > patent. At root, software is nothing more than a sequence of mathematical > operations.

The Supreme Court in Alice came to two conclusions:

1) The concept of intermediated settlement is a "fundamental economic practice" and is so ineligible for patent protection under the judicially- created exception Section 101 for "abstract ideas."

2) The "method" and "system" claims in Alice Corp.'s patent amounted to nothing more than describing how to implement intermediated settlement on a generic computer in a generic way, and did not render the otherwise unpatentable abstract idea patentable.

The purpose of (2) is to foreclose on clever drafting that tries to get around the "abstract idea" limitation by framing it in terms of a specific implementation on a computer. What Alice says is that implementing the idea in a generic computer doesn't turn an abstract idea into a concrete implementation. It does not say that an otherwise patentable idea is rendered unpatentable because the patent describes how to implement the idea in a generic computer.

<comment><USER3> I see that it's a vox.com article. I'm betting it's a Timothy B Lee article.

* checks *

Yep, Timothy B Lee. He's the Rush Limbaugh of Hacker News, telling us exactly what we want to hear, and the incredibly bad things that are possible, where "possible" means "doesn't defy the laws of physics."

<comment><USER4> I hadn't thought about TBL that way before. Do you have other examples to help make that point? I'm curious...

<comment><USER3> [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/02/23...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/02/23/comcasts-deal-with-netflix-makes-network-neutrality- obsolete/)

"The change represents a fundamental shift in power in the Internet economy that threatens to undermine the competitive market structure that have served Internet users so well for the past two decades"

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/06...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/06/the-supreme-court-could-abolish-software-patents-next- year-heres-why-it-should/)

"But then, in the 1990s, a patent-friendly appeals court handed down a series of decisions that opened the door to patents on software. That triggered a wave of patenting _that has drowned the technology industry in litigation._ "

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron- swar...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron-swartz-and- the-corrupt-practice-of-plea-bargaining/)

"If Ortiz thought Swartz only deserved to spend 6 months in jail, why did she charge him with crimes carrying a maximum penalty of 50 years? It's a common way of gaining leverage during plea bargaining. Had Swartz chosen to plead not guilty, the offer of six months in jail would have evaporated. Upon conviction, prosecutors likely would have sought the maximum penalty available under the law. And while the judge would have been unlikely to sentence him to the full 50 years, it's not hard to imagine him being sentenced to 10 years."

I get that all these things resonate deeply with hackers. But Rush Limbaugh's broadcasts resonate deeply with his audience, too.

<comment><USER5> > _I get that all these things resonate deeply with hackers. But Rush Limbaugh > 's broadcasts resonate deeply with his audience, too._

I don't see how you should be casting stones considering the rhetorical device you're employing right here.

He's super libertarian, for sure, and he writes about technology policy, so what did you expect? There is still legitimate content here, these are not techcrunch articles, and dismissing it like this is just weak.

<comment><USER3> I don't know what you mean by "legitimate content," but saying things like "prosecutors would have sought the maximum penalty (of 50 years)" is just wholly inaccurate. If you said that on HN during the daylight hours, eventually an adult would come around and correct you.

It's not merely "unlikely" that Swartz was going to get 50 years. It was impossible. He could have plead not guilty, and then taken the stand, answered every question with "LAWRENCE LESSIG SAID I AM SPECIAL, SO I AM ALLOWED TO GO WHEREVER I WANT" and he _still_ would not have gotten even half that penalty. "It's not hard to imagine Swartz getting 10 years" says more about the speaker's imagination than any real reading of sentencing guidelines.

It's like an average-quality HN commenter got a journalism job and didn't bother actually learning things that disagree with his worldview. Saying "Swartz was facing 50 years!" sure gets the blood flowing, doesn't it?

Apparently our industry is "drowning" in legislation. Given the tremendous rise in power and salary for all players, I bet other industries wish they were "drowning" the same way we are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was with him until: "The idea behind patents is to create a financial incentive to promote innovation: patents ensure that the inventor of a new idea can get compensated for it, rather than seeing her idea immediately ripped off by copycats."

The purpose of patents had nothing to do with compensation. It was already presumed that an inventor could sell an invention. The real purpose was to promote disclosure of how to make things. In other words to reveal what would otherwise be kept a trade secret. This fits well with the notion of "non- obvious to a person practiced in the art", which would preclude Amazons one- click. The idea was: Tell us how it's made in exchange for a monopoly for some number of years. Spreading knowledge is how you promote innovation.

<comment><USER5> No, the constitution is quite clear on this point:

 _To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries._

It's clear from the historical record that this was about ensuring monetary compensation for invention, as knock-off devices were just as common then as they are now.

In fact, public access to patents was basically non-existent until the Patent Act of 1836. The "non-obvious" test came even later.

<comment><USER7> That exact quote disagrees with you and agrees with the parent comment, though.

The purpose is _" To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"_. This is __achieved __by _" securing for limited Times..the exclusive Right"_.

Monopoly and financial compensation are not the aim of constitutional patent law, merely the means to an end.

Knock-off devices were common then as they are now, and in the absence of patent law, the best protection for so-called intellectual property is to just keep it secret. This, of course, has a negative impact on society, as research effort gets duplicated, and the state of the art advances more slowly than it otherwise could.

So, the balance is - share with the world the details of making your invention (i.e., progress the science or useful art), and in exchange, we'll guarantee that your openness doesn't bite you by aiding your competitors (we'll give you a time-limited exclusive right).

<comment><USER5> They are a means to an end, absolutely. I wasn't try to imply that the constitution recognized Intellectual Property as a kind of property that people have some kind of inherent right to. In fact, I believe the opposite, but realize I may have implied that's what I believe, and that's what these responses are reacting to.

However, it's that _end_ that's being examined here, not the means. My point was that by granting a limited-time monopoly on an invention, Congress can advance the state of "Science and useful Arts". It can be argued what is meant by "promote". As I noted, the historical context makes it pretty clear that it's meant as an incentive to invent, not necessarily public documentation of inventions, which really came later. This is exactly what is said in the article: _" The idea behind patents is to create a financial incentive to promote innovation: patents ensure that the inventor of a new idea can get compensated for it, rather than seeing her idea immediately ripped off by copycats"_.

Regardless, what absolutely is missing from that clause in the constitution is any requirement at all that there be a public disclosure of the invention. _That 's_ what I was saying the constitution was clear on. Any assertion of public disclosure being the purpose is an interpolation, because the constitution has absolutely no requirement that that take place. All patents could be secretly filed away, for all it cares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >> If a sequence of conventional mathematical operations isn't patentable, then no software should enjoy patent protection.

I agree with the general idea of this piece, and I don't believe that software be patentable (or at least, software should be protected in a very narrow range of cases), but this argument doesn't hold up for me. For a person implementing a complex payroll system or a complicated user interface, the universal underlying mathematics are meaningless. Of all the time spent developing software, algorithm development is a tiny portion, much of which occurs in non-commercial environments anyway. It's comparable to the difference between the laws of physics and mechanical devices that operate as a consequence of those laws.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the decision in question even mentioned this. The Court acknowledges that in some fundamental sense all machines are just mathematics + physics. But for the purposes of patent law, the fact that all inventions are nothing more than discoveries of special cases of physics and mathematics, is not the relevant level of analysis. Rather, patent law presupposes that some novel combinations of such principles are "inventions", and the question is which ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms > for the same thing.

The Knuth quotation in the article, used in support of this position, actually seems to invalidate it in my view. "Algorithms are exactly as basic to programmers as words are to writers." The key being _words_. The value in a piece of literature has little to do with the individual words it's made from, just as a piece of software is clearly vastly more than the sum of its algorithmic parts.

Footnote: I mean this for multiple dimensions of 'value', not simply some measure of economic worth. Information processing and transformation ability, for one.

<comment><USER11> Here's a question (not sure if it is really relevant to software patents or not): Could a writer patent a novel grammatical form? If you were to invent something like this ([http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/englis...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english- has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/)), or perhaps more complex, could that be patented?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course the Supreme Court doesn't understand software. Or real estate. Or coal mining. Or any of the things they are asked to make rulings on. How would they? They're lawyers who have spent their whole lives studying the law, and they can only get a cursory understanding of any of the infinite issues they might issue a ruling regarding.

It's unreasonable to ask them to understand software as well as a software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I'm not a fan of most software patents, I don't agree with this statement, except in the most pedantic sense: 'The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms for the same thing.'

You could say that _anything_ at its root is simply a mathematical algorithm. These days it is possible to do a great many specialized tasks with either dedicated hardware, _or_ software running on general purpose hardware. Should you be able to patent an asic design, but not a piece of software that does exactly the same job? Should incredibly complex and novel pieces of software not be eligible for patents simply because they're made out of 1s and 0s instead of nuts and bolts? Doesn't make sense to me.

What does make sense to me is to reform the _entire_ patent system, in many cases drastically increasing the threshold for what is considered novel and non-obvious, and decreasing - again sometimes drastically - the time periods of monopolies offered. I don't, however, believe that this is solely an issue of software vs. not-software.

<comment><USER14> > You could say that _anything_ at its root is simply a mathematical > algorithm.

Nonsense. A brick is not a mathematical algorithm. You can use mathematical algorithms to calculate things about bricks but that's not the same thing at all.

<comment><USER13> Hyperbole perhaps, but not nonsense. A photograph can be saved as a file on a computer. The file essentially just consists of instructions for displaying the photo. Does that mean photography === mathematical algorithms?

Or yesterday there was a frontpage story about a guy who spent 13 years of his life building a (pretty cool) freeware game. I'm not arguing that he should be able to patent the mechanisms of the game, but not because it's just one big "mathematical algorithm". That's ridiculous; it's a work of art.

To use the example from the article, any design must be described with a sequence of words. You can't patent a sequence of words, so all patents should be invalid. To me, that's not much more of a stretch than saying that all software is simply a collection of mathematical algorithms. Perhaps literally true in a sense, but essentially meaningless.

Edit: By the way, since the perfect patent system is probably a pipe dream, I expect the world would be better off if software patents _were_ abolished. I just don't believe this particular argument holds much water.

<comment><USER14> > Hyperbole perhaps, but not nonsense.

It's definitely nonsense. Things with corporeal existence are clearly distinguishable from algorithms. It is unambiguously true that a brick is not an algorithm.

> A photograph can be saved as a file on a computer. The file essentially just > consists of instructions for displaying the photo. Does that mean > photography === mathematical algorithms?

Traditional photography is a chemical process. The shutter opens and the light causes a chemical reaction on the film. Digital photography is an electrical process. Light strikes the sensor causing electrical charges that can be measured and recorded. Both of those are physical processes. Neither of them is an algorithm, although the data either of them produce could be processed by algorithms (e.g. JPEG compression). Moreover, a camera as a product is the sort of thing you could patent. You can tell it isn't an algorithm because you can't load software into a general purpose computer and have the software cause the computer to be able to take photographs without a camera.

> I'm not arguing that he should be able to patent the mechanisms of the game, > but not because it's just one big "mathematical algorithm". That's > ridiculous; it's a work of art.

That's exactly why it's _not_ patentable. For art you get a copyright, not a patent.

> To use the example from the article, any design must be described with a > sequence of words. You can't patent a sequence of words, so all patents > should be invalid.

This appears to be the source of the nonsense. You aren't distinguishing between the words (or algorithms) that describe a thing and the thing itself.

> To me, that's not much more of a stretch than saying that all software is > simply a collection of mathematical algorithms. Perhaps literally true in a > sense, but essentially meaningless.

All software _is_ simply a collection of mathematical algorithms. That isn't meaningless, it's the reason it's impossible for any software to exist that you could load into a computer and cause it to be able to take photographs without a camera.

<comment><USER13> > > To use the example from the article, any design must be described with a > sequence of words. You can't patent a sequence of words, so all patents > should be invalid.

> This appears to be the source of the nonsense. You aren't distinguishing > between the words (or algorithms) that describe a thing and the thing > itself.

That's exactly my point. By saying that software isn't patentable because it is simply a collection of mathematical algorithms, you aren't distinguishing between the algorithms that describe the thing and the thing itself. Software is literally a collection of data and algorithms, yes, just like a digital photograph. (Although you could stretch further and define data as simply a single-purpose algorithm.) And legally a "collection of algorithms" cannot be patented. But in reality, much like the photograph, there is a great deal more to software than that; there is thought and creativity involved in "collecting" those algorithms. Saying software is a collection of algorithms is akin to saying a book is a collection of words. Literally true, but missing the bigger picture.

And yes, I understand the difference between patent and copyright. I was simply giving an example of something else - a digital photo - that is exactly like software: a collection of data and algorithms. Does that mean that exactly the same laws should apply to software as to digital photographs (and everything else that is simply a collection of data and math)? Of course not, because these things are fundamentally _different_ , and are each more than the sum of their parts.

<comment><USER14> > By saying that software isn't patentable because it is simply a collection > of mathematical algorithms, you aren't distinguishing between the algorithms > that describe the thing and the thing itself.

With software there _is_ no separate thing. The software is the only thing. If there was a separate thing you could identify it.

You can clearly distinguish between, for example, a physics text describing how bricks are affected by gravity, and an actual brick that you can pick up in your hand. The physics text is not patentable completely regardless of how creative it is or how much work went into producing it. The brick may be patentable, e.g. if you make it out of some novel weather-resistant material.

The problem with software patents is that people making texts and not bricks are being accused of infringing patents.

> But in reality, much like the photograph, there is a great deal more to > software than that; there is thought and creativity involved in "collecting" > those algorithms.

Now you're talking about how the software is produced. The end product is still an algorithm. Are you suggesting that if I write a computer program that can produce other computer programs, the programs produced that way should not be able to infringe any patents because they were created deterministically without any human thought or creativity? Patents have no requirement of creativity. Again, the protection for creative works is copyright, and it applies to software as well as it does to photographs and books.

More to the point, analogizing software to several other things that are all indisputably _not_ patentable is a very poor way of arguing that software should be patentable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem with saying the software is math is that _EVERYTHING_ is math.

Every single bit of physics is math at it's core. If you come up with a new physical theory you will be ignored unless you also include the math for it.

<comment><USER16> Are there any patents on physics or laws of physics, the same way there are patents on things like "swipe to unlock?"

Eg, has anyone filed a patent on something like "swing hammer to drive nail." Or "Spin wheel to turn car?"

I personally have not heard of such ridiculous claims however it wouldn't surprise me to learn some have slipped through the "filters" that are supposed to catch this stuff.

<comment><USER17> Method for Swinging on a Swing

[http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227](http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms for the same thing._

No they're not, at all. Software, as the name implies, is a commodity, which typically includes textual and graphical elements for human interaction and which interacts with multiple different mechanical and electronic subsystems. You might as well argue that mechanisms involving gears are not patentable because their behavior is expressible as a set of mathematical ratios. I'm certainly not in favor of all software patents or even software patents in general, but this notion that program = mathematical algorithm needs to die off.

Some hackers are always going on about how the judiciary fails to understand software, while assuming erroneously that they themselves have a perfect understanding of law.

<comment><USER19> I fail to see how a program is not a mathematical algorithm.

<comment><USER20> Lets flip this around: The court considers mathematical algorithms abstract. Noting that it enables you to achieve the very practical utility of posting on this forum, is the software running your computer abstract?

The obvious answer is that our definition of what is an algorithm and what is abstract differs from the court's.

<comment><USER14> The thing that allows you to post on this forum is the prior art computer hardware. The software only tells the hardware what you want it to do.

Moreover, your formulation is erroneous. Concrete things can do abstract things. The fact that a particular braking system can slow down a car does nothing to establish that "slow down a car" is not an abstract idea. It clearly is an abstract idea.

<comment><USER20> _> The thing that allows you to post on this forum is the prior art computer hardware. The software only tells the hardware what you want it to do._

The software "only" tells the hardware what you want it do? That is the most important thing! Without software the hardware does absolutely squat.

Here's another way to think about this: imagine you invented the lever. The thing that allows you to move heavy objects you could not before, is the prior art of a log and a rock. The beam-and-fulcrum arrangement "only" tells the rock and log what to do.

 _> Moreover, your formulation is erroneous. Concrete things can do abstract things._

Non sequitur. _Anything_ can be abstracted to an arbitrary degree. A very specific type of a screw with a very exact shape made of a very specific alloy can be abstractly defined as a "fastening component." That does not mean nothing is patentable.

 _> The fact that a particular braking system can slow down a car does nothing to establish that "slow down a car" is not an abstract idea. It clearly is an abstract idea._

Yes, but it's clearly not an abstract _mathematical algorithm_ , which is what my parent post was questioning. Parent was wondering how software consisting of algorithms that are "abstract" can be patented. My point was precisely that the "abstract" that the court has in mind is very different from the "abstract" that we have in mind when talking about algorithms. "Slow down a car" is a different type of abstract from "E = MC^2", even though they are both abstract.

<comment><USER14> > Here's another way to think about this: imagine you invented the lever. The > thing that allows you to move heavy objects you could not before, is the > prior art of a log and a rock. The beam-and-fulcrum arrangement "only" tells > the rock and log what to do.

I found a small rock and a stick and I told them to move a big rock but nothing happened. I think you need to do something more than communicate information to them to get them to produce leverage.

That's the fundamental difference with software. A computer takes an algorithm and an input and produces an output. For example, you might take an image decompression algorithm and a compressed image and produce raw pixel values. The important fact is that the algorithm _and_ the compressed image _and_ the uncompressed image are all purely information. It's the difference between knowing something and doing something. Computers cause information to be created, but information is not supposed to be patentable, and there is nothing else there to patent other than information.

> Non sequitur. Anything can be abstracted to an arbitrary degree. A very > specific type of a screw with a very exact shape made of a very specific > alloy can be abstractly defined as a "fastening component." That does not > mean nothing is patentable.

No, but what it means is that if you're going to say "fastening component" instead of providing anything more specific, that should not be the only part of your claim directed to patentable subject matter.

> My point was precisely that the "abstract" that the court has in mind is > very different from the "abstract" that we have in mind when talking about > algorithms.

Even if that were true I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove. Algorithms are all different kinds of abstract. And as soon as you make them specific you're straight into mathematical formulas and laws of nature.

<comment><USER20> Apologies for the late reply, I check in infrequently.

 _> I found a small rock and a stick and I told them to move a big rock but nothing happened. I think you need to do something more than communicate information to them to get them to produce leverage._

Yes, you _configure_ the log and rock to produce leverage. Just as you do a computer for it to do anything useful. You may think of it as "just information", but this configuration undoubtedly produces practical results via physical processes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms for the same thing."_

This ain't necessarily true. Unless you extend math to encompass reasoning about hardware, operating systems, browsers, other apps, networks etc. Math deals with more basic things.

The real reason software patents are harmful is because the industry moves so quickly, fueled by openness, that the patent examiners don't always know the current state of the art, let alone obviousness. This basically kicks the can down the road and creates waste.

</comment><comment><USER22> Better title: I don't understand the difference between software and algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are programs though that aren't expressible as math, namely multithreaded programs that have non-deterministc behavior such as programs where two threads increment the same counter in a non-thread safe way.

</comment><comment><USER20> TFA boils down to the following points, and a lot of people are (rightfully) questioning it:

 _> The courts have repeatedly said that mathematical algorithms can't be patented. But many judges also seem to believe that some software is worthy of patent protection. The problem is that "software" and "mathematical algorithm" are two terms for the same thing._

This is false on multiple levels:

1) Laws of physics and laws of nature and cannot be patented. Elements of the periodic table are naturally occurring materials and cannot be patented. Yet machines applying these very same laws of physics and made out of these very same materials _can_ be patented. As can compounds that are new arrangements of atoms of various elements.

This is because machines and compounds are specific applications of patent- ineligible physical laws using configurations of patent-ineligible individual materials. Similarly, software is an application of patent-ineligible mathematical algorithms (along with a healthy dose of I/O that translates wholly non-mathematical things into mathematical representations). Just as machines are patent-eligible, software is too.

Laws of Physics : Machines :: Elements : Compounds :: Algorithms : Software

2) As evidence of the above, note that most claims for software don't even claim specific algorithms, but rather just high-level descriptions that could be implemented in a thousand ways using a thousand different algorithms. A claim will almost never say, as one of its steps, "looking up a value using a key in a hashtable" \-- it will almost always say something like "determining a value corresponding to a key", which covers all O(1), O(logN) or O(N) algorithms. (If they even get to that level of detail at all... most claims are at an even higher level, e.g. "receiving a compressed image and detecting faces in it", where each element would involve a multitude of disparate algorithms) Such language could cover any number of ways of doing something.

Some take this as a sign of abstractness. But when you look at patents on physical machines, their claims also rarely ever mention the precise measurements of the various components and the actual materials used. The number of materials and relative sizes that could be used in making a mechanical invention is as numerous as the number of languages, data representations and storage technologies that could be used in making a software invention. As such, machine patents also cover _all_ ways in which to implement it. This is not abstractness, but rather the eliding of details that are irrelevant to the essence of the invention.

3) When the court says algorithms are un-patentable, they mean abstract formulae like E = MC^2. By itself, that formula does nothing, and hence is not useful. On the other hand, software for a web browser can cause your computer to fetch data from another machine a thousand miles away and display it on your screen. Regardless of level of technical competence, everyone can agree that this is non-abstract and _useful_. That's the primary reason that software is worthy of patent protection: it meets the statutory requirements, i.e. "any thing under the sun that is made by man".

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't think you understand Math. I also don't think you understand legalese. I won't comment on the latter.

Software is fundamentally no different from a physical mechanism. (Math is everything.) Software is just more tunable.

The focus should be on eliminating bad patents or patents fully. Please don't muddy the issue.</comment>


This VR Controller with built-in haptic feedback allows you to feel things in VR - <AUTHOR> http://hapto.me <comment><USER2> Which games does this support or will support? Is there an SDK?</comment>


Vodafone Brings Wi-Fi Calling to the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Edge in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidcentral.com/vodafone-brings-wi-fi-calling-samsung-smartphones-uk <comment><USER2> And like the iPhone roll-out you have to have bought the device directly from Vodafone - [http://www.vodafone.co.uk/explore/network/network- improvemen...](http://www.vodafone.co.uk/explore/network/network- improvements/wi-fi-calling/)</comment>


JavaScript Dates - <AUTHOR> https://superjavascript.com/t/javascript-dates/ <comment><USER2> I fully expected the 'use moment.js' part at the end. Javascript dates are certainly unpleasant, but moment can be kind of a blunt instrument at times.

There's growing support behind Luxon, a sub-project of moment that may eve become a full replacement. I've found it quite refreshing.

There's also date-fns which is designed with tree shaking in mind and people seem to enjoy it.

Or if you're a Java native, JS-Joda emulates the same API as the java.time libraries in Java 8.

Also +1 for GMT != UTC.</comment>


Ask HN: What can we do to attract more potential customers? - <AUTHOR>

The internet is a strange place. When we (3 of us) started out with our little service business, we had the idea of taking the service model and attempting to productize it by providing a fixed price and benefits. We wanted to make it completely transparent and do our best to provide a safe after sales process.
Our site: http://machinerepublic.com
Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way and we're really hoping to figure out a better, more unique angle to selling custom development services like this. We are not freelancers and don't want to take that approach, we do great work as a small team. Are our prices too high?
I know that search engines require us to be blogging and generating tons of content, but is that really where a small team like ours should be spending its time?
What has not worked for us:
- Social media advertising (Twitter, Facebook) - PPC
- Submission to inspirational galleries
Our site gets about 1800 uniques a month, but clearly not from the right kind of people.
What's worked for you? Any help on this topic will be hugely appreciated. <comment><USER2> 1\. A blog is simple and having one or two people write one or two articles a week on "hot" topics will go a long way to generating revenue and building traffic. You should never doubt the power of a blog.

2\. Seeing the prices is an enormous turn off. I get what you are doing and I can definitely see a benefit to being straightforward with the pricing. However, you are not building a simple 1-3 page website. You are probably getting visits from people looking for pricing comparable to the 1-3 page website, and not a mobile app.

You also say in the first sentence on the site your goal is to build small to medium mobile and web applications without breaking the bank, but then I see the price tag. I am not saying I don't think your prices are fair, it is a matter of perception though. You may want to show the types of projects that can be completed with each package. Even if you are going to stick to the pricing, I would remove it entirely from the site. Put a "Contact Us" button there instead. This forces the customer to reach out to you, at which point you can offer them the package pricing. If they don't seem interested based on the pricing, you are then able to speak directly with them to get an idea of what they are looking for and maybe come up with a price that does work for them. Otherwise you are potentially losing customers coming to the site, seeing the price, and leaving altogether.

3\. Your target market is probably not going to be on Facebook. I would go after a LinkedIn crowd honestly for your advertising.

4\. Put some case studies together for the site. It looks like you have had some pretty big name clients.

5\. I find it difficult to price web/mobile development into a fixed price/benefit model. Every site and every company's requirements are going to be different. This may cause some perspective customers to feel "boxed in" with your model and think that you are not open to doing what they are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions Jeff.

We have a few big name clients, but the size of the projects we've done for them don't necessarily reflect that, so the case studies are tough to pull off.

I never thought of the pricing like that, but definitely going to put my thinker on around it.

<comment><USER2> No problem.

The case studies don't have to be in-depth, and you could really limit it to 1 page, just showing off what you did and the result. If possible show a study for each package you have and how get a quote from the client on how much money they saved using your pricing model compared to other quotes they may have received.

Regardless, I still think the best approach is to drive the potential customer to contact you. By just hiding the prices and having them reach out to you, it gives you an opportunity to close the sale personally. Whereas, if they come to your site, see the packages/prices, are confused or think the pricing is to high, they will leave without you ever getting a chance to close the sale.

One last item I thought of on your packages. You and I both know the packages listed are for mobile applications, but I would clarify on that to the website visitor. If they are looking for a 1-3 page website, the price is going to be an immediate turnoff, and the way the site looks now it is not clear those prices are for mobile development, IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> > how much money they saved using your pricing model

Ah, that's a brilliant idea!

> If they are looking for a 1-3 page website, the price is going to be an > immediate turnoff

That might actually explain what could be happening at the moment. Potential customers are scanning the content and not noticing the headline explaining that its for mobile services.

Our designer is taking all this feedback and making changes, we'll probably roll it out early next week.

Thanks again for your input, much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ads are not likely the best place to be finding clients. I tried this with our consultancy a few times and they never seem to pay off, even when we did it on linkedin. Although at least with linkedin, we did connect to people and it helped expand our network.

Almost all of our clients come from networking and meeting people. You have to put yourself out there. Then from there you will also get referrals etc. Getting sales is still personal, especially if you are asking for $10k+, people want to feel they know you a little or know someone that knows you.

As for your pricing, if it were me, I'd likely put it as "starting at" and pick a reasonable number (gives you flexibility too). Or give general guidelines, like "typical 3 page website developed in approximately 2-3 weeks $xxxxx." Or whatever the real facts you feel are. But that way it is less a rigid structure and more a guide for people that are interested. Giving examples like this I think doesn't scare people, but when they see 1-3 pages $25k for a mobile app, they aren't sure what that means but it seems expensive. Remember, the first thing someone does is take whatever numeric metric you put on your price and divide it into your price, so in this case they would say each screen is costing them $8,333, which will scare them. This is just human nature.

For example, we price per week (or per day for small things), and the first thing everyone does is divide our rate into 40 hours or 8 hours for the day. But for us our weekly hours commitment is 30hrs per developer to a client so that the developers have time to accomplish all those other tasks that come up and meetings etc. So it isn't X/40, its really X/30, but it doesn't even matter to us because we will never bill that way, but it is still the thing every client does in their head and I still wind up answering from time to time.

My only point about pricing then is to be careful putting numeric metrics near a price where it might make your price seem high, when in reality there are 100 other things that go into making that price. Hopefully that makes sense. Additionally, I see the starting at pricing usually lets people feel like they can negotiate and get a custom deal versus having to pay a fixed price and maybe not get what they truly want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thanks for taking the time to provide so much valuable insight - I really appreciate it. I'm going to give it some more thought (especially around the psychological aspect of positioning and how we convey the message and price).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pricing - offer starts at (lowest price possible) OR have an 'Inquire' button, use the service called tawk.to to do live sales chats. I was once working at a software startup, all of the cheap pricing, we almost never had people ask questions, but for the higher plans, nobody purchased without chatting to us on live chat first. The web app i mentioned is free.

What it's missing - testimonials OR working for a big brand. Need to install 'trust' into your brand. I'm a bootstrapped startup, so I don't think startups are your best target market.

What I'd suggest: running tests with pricing & the live chat service. Likewise, I'd do the same with the web copy (USP). Chart it all and analyze it.

Another way to market your service, find out something your customers really need & build that as a free service. Then, grow your brand & sales from their.

Paid advertising, I wouldn't worry about it. Just focus on trying to get engagement from social media & growing your followers.

Craigslist, you can promote your service there. You could set up a bot that automatically posts to Craigslist for you OR a bot to automatically email out prospective clients daily.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Search engines require us to be blogging and generating tons of content, but > is that really where a small team like ours should be spending its time?

No, may I suggest a better investment of time-- learn to prospect and pitch targeted individuals. Do you have a clear idea of the true Economic Buyer for your services?

The challenge then is to engage that person in a dialogue, see if you can help them, and make a proposal. In a global market place, this can be done via phone, better still on Skype video.

You can definitely hack your way through this process. Here's an excellent read on prospecting and pitching business> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales- simpli...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simplified)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I bought the book you suggested and will give it a read this weekend.

We _think_ we have a clear idea of who the buyer is, but it's been tough trying to actually get our message/brand in front of them as the conventional ways I mentioned previously only get us attention from other people like us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suggest you have a visit to Kilometer.io (Blog and Community). They have an analytics tool which will only launch in a few months but are doing great job on reaching to potential costumers.

See their shared Marketing Hacks - [http://kilometer.io/community/forum/thread- category/marketin...](http://kilometer.io/community/forum/thread- category/marketing-hacks/)

And this post [http://www.kilometer.io/blog/talk-to-your-future-users- befor...](http://www.kilometer.io/blog/talk-to-your-future-users-before- building-the-product/) Talk to your future users before building a product

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link! Will definitely check that out</comment></comment>


Show HN: Learning about you from your credit card to automagically find savings - <AUTHOR> https://www.getmoneyworks.com/

<comment><USER2> Serious question - Mint.com has a feature like this, what makes your feature different?</comment>


Vbcc is a highly optimizing portable and retargetable ISO C compiler - <AUTHOR> http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/ <comment><USER2> Amazing that folks are still developing for the Atari ST, I miss those days on mine.

Surprised they haven't done an ARM backend yet. I wonder if this is a suitable base for a no-undefined-behavior compiler.</comment>


Ask HN: What VPN setup do you use at your company? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently exploring options for setting up a VPN, but it's the first one I've done. What VPN setups do hackers recommend? Thanks everyone!<p>Possibly relevant info: our laptops are Windows 7. <comment><USER2> Hamachi and ShrewSoft VPN.</comment>


Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need - <AUTHOR> https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/why-we-need-web-brutalism/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused. I don't see what makes most of the examples cited here "Brutalist" in any meaningful fashion.

 _Brutalism_ is, of course, a fuzzy (and contentious) label to begin with. But the article cites two interpretations of the term that we could use to evaluate how Brutalist a given design is:

 _honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois_

and

 _a sense of roughness, exposed structures and visible thought processes_

The problem is, I'm not seeing a lot of _either_ of these in the examples provided.

If you asked me to name a site whose design is "honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois," for instance, examples that would leap to my mind are Craigslist and HN -- both of which focus on simple (even drab) layouts dominated by plain old text. But the examples are full of vibrant colors, big images and irregular, unconventional layouts! They're refreshing and interesting to look at, but that doesn't make them Brutalist.

And to the other definition, "exposed structures and visible thought processes," I'd point to... well, I'm not sure _what_ I'd point to. I'm not sure there is _any_ web site that would qualify as Brutalist by this definition. Are there any sites that let their plumbing hang conspicuously out on the sides? Bloomberg and Dropbox and the Outline certainly don't. I'd think of this more as a site where you interact with it via an API or the developer console or some heavy, overwhelming user interface than as a news site that happens to have decided to use giant fonts and screaming neon colors.

If we want to have Brutalism as a valid design approach for the web, we first need to decide on what exactly the word means. Otherwise it will just become a parking lot for whatever trends happen to be fashionable at the moment, which is not a great way to build something that will make a lasting impact.

<comment><USER3> The ZK/U site (in one of the thumbnails) is one of the better examples, I thought: [http://www.zku-berlin.org/](http://www.zku-berlin.org/)

<comment><USER2> Yes, that one jumped out at me as an actually good example too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And yet for all its supposed innovation, web brutalistism still looks overly pretentious as it revels in its 'aesthetic' of psuedo-Swiss minimalism.

I'm sick of the garbage that designers these days pass off as 'form'. It ruins computing. Sci-fi showed us the future was large screens full of data and smart humans doing meaningful shit with it... but reality is we pay beaucorp bucks to waste 98% of a 4K, 9-megapixel display on a royal purple background with a couple of words in white.

<comment><USER5> Beaucorp! What a great new word. One of the world-spanning megacorporations from William Gibson _but_ decorated in a Beaux-Arts style.

<comment><USER4> It's an old word, afaik. Means 'mega' in this context. Also I mispelled it :D

<comment><USER6> I think they know that, and were riffing off the misspelling ;-)

It's about an 800 year old word in French. Wiktionary claims that it was imported to US English primarily by GIs returning from the Vietnam War. I'd assume that it would come more directly from French, in other forms of English.

<comment><USER7> I recall this being brought up by a guy who had been a helicopter mechanic in the Army... he believed it was a Vietnamese word spelled 'buku', and it took me some time to realize he meant beaucoup.

Example in context: "They're making buku bucks over there."

<comment><USER6> My father was in the Marine Corps; about a decade too young for Vietnam, but I kind of assume he picked it up from Marines who'd been in the service at the appropriate time.

From my perspective, for a long time it was just another one of those weird- sounding words that only Dad used (which turned out to be French, German, and Spanish).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually really like the usage of borders in these "brutalist" designs. Current design trends seem to minimize or eliminate borders altogether, which makes it hard to visually separate content, which makes it hard for users to find the content they want. I thought I could browse through the text on these new sites faster because the borders were so much more prominent [0].

I think the random placement of links is a tricky thing though. One one hand it brings identity to your brand, but on the other hand, it's not intuitive for the user.

[0] [http://www.zku-berlin.org/](http://www.zku-berlin.org/), pkamb below also linked [https://nwfilmforum.org/](https://nwfilmforum.org/)

<comment><USER9> In the late nineties I had the impression that Shepard Fairey's original Mozilla logo really set the tone for thick border design. So many influential web designers frequently spent time on the site, and it felt like a thousand thick border stylesheets bloomed across the web for a few years.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000229231038/http://www.mozill...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000229231038/http://www.mozilla.org:80/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think HN is better example of "brutalist" web design than most of the examples. Plain typefaces and colors, rigid lines and block-y structures.

As for the bit about brutalism being "honest, unpretentious and anti- bourgeois" \- LOL - the only people who actually rave about it as an aesthetic are the most pretentious people I know (not that there's anything wrong w/ that).

<comment><USER11> Describing a startup-happy billionaire-loving site like HN as "anti-bourgeois" is comical.

<comment><USER12> Describing any CSS style or design pattern as "anti-bourgeois" is comical.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a job for Comic Sans!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Brutalism seems like the wrong comparison to make with this new wave of design. The way I see it, brutalist websites would be websites with little or no CSS (see: [http://www.motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://www.motherfuckingwebsite.com/)). They expose the "concrete of the web".

The examples in the article seem more punk, if anything. Which, that's cool too, but different. They actually require a lot of images and really tricky CSS to create that look, even if it's intentionally chaotic.

<comment><USER15> I think there is a difference between design that is deliberately raw, and something that hasn't been designed at all.

<comment><USER16> In this sense, brutalism is not designing at all.

Brutalism was about focusing on function, with no consideration given to making it pretty for the sake of prettiness. If you treat this as a design style, you're missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of those sites _appear_ Brutalist, but open up their source and you can see they are still quite bloated. So they are just going for the _look_. Someone posted [https://wiby.me](https://wiby.me) on here regarding an article about old websites. This is an example of web brutalism, the site itself is basic but not ugly and there is practically nothing in the source that is going to slow down my machine. Hacker News is also a perfect example. Now one example from that article ([https://theoutline.com/](https://theoutline.com/) which I picked randomly) has a 284kb CSS file in it. This is the norm, not the exception for most contemporary sites.

On my phone, I don't have much data for my plan. I have to be careful just visiting websites. Literally just visiting a few websites can cause me to download hundreds of megs...

<comment><USER18> That sort of makes sense though, if the design trend (whether you wanna call if 'brutalism' or just the form du jour), is more focused on the aesthetic rather than how it gets built. I suspect the adherents to this type of design would consider themselves designers, not developers, and thus are less concerned with bloat and file size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was impressed with the brutalist architecture, those plain concrete buildings have something about them that I can't place. Maybe like the old concrete tower hovering over the backdrop of a new, colorful, city? Something about it peeks your senses. As for the web design, it was also interesting. I liked some of the designs, others not so much. The website for zku:

[http://www.zku-berlin.org](http://www.zku-berlin.org)

Something about that just feels comforting, if not nostalgic, like what you'd expect to see from an early 2000s webpage before things got fancy. I think what makes these sites pop for me is the contrast of colors, too much white ruins the effect. Having out of place, darker colors thrown in feels like its breaking the rules, in a good way.

<comment><USER20> > Something about that just feels comforting, if not nostalgic, like what > you'd expect to see from an early 2000s webpage before things got fancy. I > think what makes these sites pop for me is the contrast of colors, too much > white ruins the effect. Having out of place, darker colors thrown in feels > like its breaking the rules, in a good way.

To me, the page feels like a Geocities site that "grew up"\- in a good way. The "chunkiness" of the element borders reminds me of the traditional default styling of <table> elements.

You're also spot on with the contrast: I just checked, and this site's design is based on only three colors: #fff, #000, and #ff0. That's a pretty bold design statement, and they pull it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Please no. Branding through UX is bad UX. Simple, reliable, transferrable, easy to understand UX is good UX.

Not everything has to be a billboard. I don't want a hammer where the handle is an iron rod embossed with the maker's logo. I just want an ergonomic wooden handle that does the job.

<comment><USER22> > Please no. Branding through UX is bad UX.

I agree.

> Simple, ..., transferrable, easy to understand UX is good UX.

I disagree. I think the first part of OP raised some good points. The copy everyone's copying and that everyone understand may just be an inferior local maxima.

I think this podcast gets at some of the lost potential: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/of-mice-and- men/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/of-mice-and-men/)

<comment><USER16> > _I disagree. I think the first part of OP raised some good points. The copy > everyone 's copying and that everyone understand may just be an inferior > local maxima._

Yup. But the way out of those inferior local maxima is by focusing on making UX more "simple, reliable, easy to understand". By focusing on being different and expressing your brand identity, you go towards _even worse state_ than the local maximum you're trying to escape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> These people are conflating brutalism with postmodernism.

A brutalist website would be one without a stylesheet, or a simple txt file rendered in monospace.

These are just websites that go out of their way to be ugly and unusable. Nothing to do with brutalism, and more to do with pretentious art school graduates ruminating on the critical theory of intersectional webdesign or some other bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER24> I guess I'm missing the connection on those websites to Brutalist architecture. It seems more like they're bored with regular design, and want to be more experimental.

It reminds conceptually more of Emigre magazine [1] or Ray Gun [2], where the design didn't have to be "readable".

        [1] https://www.emigre.com/Magazine
        [2] http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/t/tag/raygun/

</comment><comment><USER25> When i think web-brutalism i do not think of anything illustrated in this article.

I think of (old) Reddit, Craigslist, this very "forum", and similar ones that are mostly text with minimal/no JS or graphics.

<comment><USER23> This.

Brutalism is inherently utilitarian. Content over presentation.

IETF RFCs _are_ brutalist.

<comment><USER26> Won the internet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article isn't drawing a clear line between visual design and design patterns. Many people confuse UI and UX design. One is artistic (UI), the other one is based on cognitive science (UX). UI will define the looks, the interface may be pretty or bold, but not necessarily usable and intuitive. UX design will reduce the gap between human and machine by efficiently implementing design patterns, and user centered methodologies (human factors).

It's expensive and challengjng to build a culture around design (Airbnb, Apple...) and build new patterns. It's probably cheaper to just go Wild on the UI, not sure if that would stick though.

</comment><comment><USER28> this isn't brutalist, this is pretentious.

the materials don't show through. the websites are ridiculously pretentious.

roughness & exposed structures are likely to be problems in function.

visible thought processes - logorrhea is the other term for that. or brainstorming. Neither should be put up for public view.

the websites the article castigates are identical in style, but not bad, per se. they exemplify a certain aesthetic, and a cookie cutter way of design that is driven by, I think, the north European minimalism trends of the 1960s via Rams and Ives at Apple.

if you want to go for a bad influence that is useful, I suggest pondering LaTeX. Textfiles. [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) . Hacker News. Possibly even the NYT or the WaPo.

design that is aimed at information transmission: not ads, not branding, not razz ma tazz to tickle the eye and neglect knowledge & understanding.

Alexander's concepts on architecture have much to commend themselves when considered for information transmission as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's a novel thought: maybe we're following Google and Apple's design frameworks because those frameworks provide the best ease of use, consistency, predictability, and usability to designers, which is the point of good UX? People who don't appreciate these things don't understand user experience applies to the process of design too?

I get that there's a point to individualism, being trendy, hip, new and having a brand. But to be brutally honest, brands these days are created through spoken narratives with their actions, their storytelling, and their advertising. I think most skilled designers learned that long ago - it's much more efficient to speak through the traditional mediums of color, graphics, stories, and text. You have to do a ton of work to create your own look and feel framework (most of it involving robust layouting, consistency, and thinking through a ton of edge cases - read the material docs from cover to cover to get a sense of how much decision making it is). While doing this, you have to balance both branding AND UX decisions(!). Sticking to using graphics, color, and text separates a lot of the branding vs UX concerns, and is much simpler to reason.

Unless you're a rock band or a creative agency, creating a novel new page styling is simply an inefficient use of time and money.

<comment><USER30> Not gonna sugar coat it. HTML and CSS are basically Bootstrap for me. I know how to tweak it and make responsive design with it. It is functional for my own projects. It is easy to tweak it to at least give a little distinction to my UI. I know the basics of UX and it's easy enough to do. Why spin my wheels dealing with going deeper when I just want UI that works as a non-designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm starting to get tired of the cookie-cutter Bootstrap and Squarespace templates taking over the web. This is a refreshing read, I like the comparisons it makes to brutalism in architecture.

<comment><USER32> It's backwards, though, because Bootstrap and Squarespace _are_ Brutalist (to whatever extent that word really applies to the web at all): cheap, egalitarian, and simple to use.

<comment><USER33> Correct. Bootstrap is the IKEA of frontend frameworks. Simple, predictable, cheap/free, and easy enough for almost anyone to pick up and build with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The idea of web pages as Brutalist is ironic. Brutalism was a movement meant to not hide structural concrete or make it look like something else. The concept has no meaningful analogy on the web, where no style that showstopper the raw structure (because there is no visible structure, it's all equally arbitrary.)

<comment><USER35> That's just not true, HTML has natural spacing, fonts, etc. What's the least amount of code you could possibly write that functions? That's going to be the most "minimalist" design.

box-shadow: black is less bits of information than box-shadow: 2px 4px 0.5em 0.2em rgba(100,55, 45, 0.9)

<comment><USER34> But those are arbitrary design choices too, just default ones. They don't reflect the underlying functional structure of the page.

Brutalist architecture is intended to reflect the functional structure of the building. That concrete is there for functional reasons; it is sized for functional reasons such as holding up the wall. Concrete is used because it's a functionally versatile material. All that functional purpose is exposed.

Brutalist web design might be something like showing the DOM without styling it. In a Lisp context, it's be like showing raw s-expressions as output.

<comment><USER35> Sure, and the grit of clay at a specific location is arbitrary too, but if that's the material you have to work with, then that's the material.

I think you're being too literal about what constitutes material. You think only something the level of hardware or a programming language is "material" and everything above that is arbitrary, but I would argue ALL of the layers of the stack constitute material properties.

How about this: form submission. You don't need it... you can use Ajax. But forms that can be submitted will work in more environments (no JavaScript, forward and back navigation, etc)

You can fight that current, but the underlying technology wants you to use forms.

I'm not really arguing about Brutalism though, so much as modernism. A modern web page would contain a minimum of changes to what the basic simplest HTML would yield. You start from the raw material with all its idiosyncrasies and you only add a dimension of "designed stuff" when you have a specific articulable rationale for it.

(This is totally different from the colloquial definition of "modern web applications" which are anything but respectful of their materials)

<comment><USER34> You're conflating minimalism with Brutalism. Brutalism is about design exposing functionality. Lots of layers in the stack expose functionality (hardware, the OS, the DOM), but presentation is design, not functional. You could switch the default font from one thing to another with zero functional effect.

<comment><USER35> I admitted as much in the comment. :) I felt that your comment applied equally to brutalist, modernism, and minimalism. Your assertion that there is no underlying material to expose. All three ideas are ways of grounding the design in material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd rather that someday someone started a social-media discussion about beautiful International Style buildings [https://www.bauhaus- dessau.de/im/1128x0/4521fb85f94dd85172f2...](https://www.bauhaus- dessau.de/im/1128x0/4521fb85f94dd85172f251a6fa3a96fe.jpg) [https://www.bauhaus100.de/en/past/works/architecture/chicago...](https://www.bauhaus100.de/en/past/works/architecture/chicago- tribune-tower/) instead of another round of clickbaiting with self-consciously gimmicky buildings from the fag-end of modernism.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was blown away by the new Northwest Film Forum website:

[https://nwfilmforum.org/](https://nwfilmforum.org/)

Also, a link to Brutalism worth protecting of the concrete variety:

[http://www.sosbrutalism.org/cms/15802395](http://www.sosbrutalism.org/cms/15802395)

<comment><USER38> 1st link, 'javascript is required'. Brutal indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Designers have fads. Why should the rest of us care and go along with their designs trends and counter reactions?

For many business minded people, it's about what's most useful and pleasant for our USERS, not about satisfying their collective art fetishes.

PS: I miss skeumorphism and the ability to quickly differentiate content areas from controls.

</comment><comment><USER40> Larry Wall (creator of Perl) was ahead of the curve on brutalist design :) [http://www.wall.org/~larry/](http://www.wall.org/~larry/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Brutalist architecture mainly involves raw concrete, proudly exhibiting the modern construction technology of its time instead of pretending to be something else, and more generally avoiding pointless ornament and complication.

It makes sense in architecture, but a similar style in web design doesn't: all web design proudly embraces high tech by its nature, even the simplest examples; ornament can only be _simulated_ , without craftsmanship and actual complication (compare a CSS box border, represented by a few number and implicitly existing even when invisible, with a plaster frame around a door); structures are always simple and evident, differing only in taste.

The point the article tries to make (escaping horribly homogeneous industry trends, with the advantage of having some identity) is valid but unrelated to brutalist architecture.

Looking at [http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/) I see an inconsistent roundup of web design that, since it departs from the mainstream style ("mobile-first", short text, rectangles, centering,...) can be automatically considered _relatively_ cool.

In reality, there are many styles represented: actually mainstream, but accidentally good; glitchy and rough and strange, as traditional for designers showing off; revival of the "Swiss" typographic style that went hand in hand with middle-late brutalist architecture and is somewhat contrary to current trends (close spacing, balanced and regular 2D layout, non-hipster fonts); camp or spiteful imitations of antique and/or aberrant ugly web pages; not self conscious, merely simple and functional.

</comment><comment><USER42> The brutalist style works when it is the right design for the job, just shoehorning it for the sake of "design aesthetics" makes no sense. In fact it would work great for HN style webpages.

I run something similar - DiscoverDev ( [https://discoverdev.io](https://discoverdev.io) ) and got a lot of compliments on the "brutalist design". Then again it is a minimilist site, I really doubt this would work well for larger applications.

</comment><comment><USER43> No no no. No more. No more isms.

Here's the problem with web design: Nobody actually designs anything. They mindlessly copy the look of things, without giving thought to how things actually work. Examples:

1\. Apple made the first iOS have references to real world items (the dropdown menus looked like rolling dials.) Makes sense because touch mobile interfaces were new, and the references gave users a clue how to interact with them. The takeaway for hack designers was to cover everything in fake wood and leather textures.

2\. Some designers rightly avoided this trend, and made designs with less references to physical textures. Hack designers declared this the "flat design" trend, and proceeded to strip as much depth from their designs as possible. Now buttons were just squares, with no indication whether they could be pressed or not. There were no borders to break up featureless blobs of content. Icons were redesigned to be as minimal and abstract as possible, to the point where you couldn't tell what the icon was supposed to be.

3\. Google created their own design guidelines (material design) that tried to keep the flat look while adding back some much needed affordance by way of slight shadows and animations. Hack designers mistook material design for a new trend, and made their own copy cat interfaces. A style intended to give one company a visual identity, in the hands of poor designers, made every company have the same identity.

The same thing keeps happening. It will happen to web brutalism (whatever that is.)

It won't change until web designers and the people who hire them start seeing the role of designers differently.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article reads like it was written by a web designer who coined the usage of brutalism in the web space and uses it to try to sell themselves and differentiate their design work, even though their design isn't particularly unusual.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sounds to me more like a terrible idea that nobody needs.

</comment><comment><USER45> Key points that we can take away from this article:

1\. Brutalist design means having huge-ass boxes floating around, with cool animations, sans-serif fonts, all powered by 500MB of JS libraries

2\. Dropbox is exactly the same as it has been for the last 10 years, they just conformed to the ubiquitous standard of modern web design, and redid their logo to be EXACTLY like the logos of all the other tech companies in the world: sans-serif font, simple stylized icon

Good read.

As a side node, I think that this experiment I did on my blog a while back accidentally matches the definition of brutalism better than the examples in the article: [https://danielegrattarola.github.io/metaverse/](https://danielegrattarola.github.io/metaverse/)

<comment><USER46> > > [https://danielegrattarola.github.io/metaverse/](https://danielegrattarola.github.io/metaverse/)

These are really cool, did you come up with that function for the mandelbrot set? Do you have an explaination of how it works??

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is this just a new type of monotony though? Look at the sites in these two rows from the Brutalist Websites collection (1 & 2 below).

My favorite of the entire set is the ZK/U site, as it has strong borders and contrast and other elements of this new langauge, but not at the expense of being easy to use and navigate.

[1] [http://osscreenshots.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/bruatalist1....](http://osscreenshots.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/bruatalist1.png) [2] [http://osscreenshots.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/brutalist2.p...](http://osscreenshots.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/brutalist2.png)

</comment><comment><USER48> Sorry, but unless your site is an open directory full of plain text files, it's not "brutalist."

<comment><USER26> Like an RFC?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> As a shameless self-plug, I was inspired by [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/) for my personal website: [https://kroltan.github.io/](https://kroltan.github.io/)

I did not go all the way, however. The site is still 11kB plus a 16kB non- essential image. It has quite a bit more than 7 CSS declarations. I did not minify the markup like Better M* Website.

Any feedback is welcome, however!

<comment><USER17> Nice work. I see you used your CSS sparingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I _want_ everything to look the same. Terminal apps all look the same, Emacs "apps" all look the same. When things look different it's hard to tell what the hell is going on, and for what? So your stupid brand can advertise more efficiently? I don't _care_ , I want to do whatever it is the app is supposed to do. So I'll pass on this brutal nonsense, thanks.

<comment><USER51> We lost that when the gopher protocol went away. I was hopefull about RSS for a bit but then they started just pushing a tag line or summary...

...I take it you have tried local style sheets (or w3m)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So it's all about tossing around magenta printing plates and calling it a day. Meh... it looks like mocks to me, but I'm an old geezer

</comment><comment><USER53> "honest, unpretentious and anti-bourgeois" and then cites Habitat 67 in Montreal.. I thought Habitat 67 were high end

</comment><comment><USER54> This is a fun website to peruse every once in a while: [http://brutalistwebsites.com/](http://brutalistwebsites.com/)

Its submission from 2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11517491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11517491)

<comment><USER55> In what ways are these "brutalist"? The first two I clicked on had (in one) music auto-playing over a video with your mouse pointer a Terminator-style claw and (in the other) a 3D animated leg that you could spin before hitting 'access' to get to the actual site. These aren't brutalist, they're the trying-too-hard-to-be-cool teenager phase.

[1] [http://gregroque.com/#/home](http://gregroque.com/#/home) [2] [https://heel.zone](https://heel.zone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Reminds me of the Adbusters Magazine I used to read as a kid. Philosophically and aesthetically brutalist and uncomfortable.

<comment><USER32> What does "Philosophically and aesthetically brutalist and uncomfortable." mean?

<comment><USER56> Will understand when you pick one up by accident at a local library if they have it, its very aesthetically well done but also usually uncomfortable content

Example: [https://adbusters.org/](https://adbusters.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> > Naturally, a lot of graphical and aesthetic principles ended up dictated by > languages such as Google's Material Design or Apple's Human Interface > Guidelines.

And I'm fine with that. Generally I'd trust Apple's guidelines a lot more than J. Random Designer's, so for those that are not willing to do a lot of work, I'd really prefer if they chose a decent guideline rather than trying to fake it themselves. Yes, I know that there are those who are great with design, and I'm not discounting them: they should be free to do what they want, but I'd like for there to be a barrier to entry. If you really know what you're doing, sure, go on ahead; otherwise, stick to the default.

</comment><comment><USER58> I agree with the premise of the article, but maybe [simple][1] is a better term than brutalist for [good web design][2].

Brutalist architecture is only rarely not ugly while simple buildings are often beautiful.

Here's to more variety and diversity on the web!

[1]: [http://s3.amazonaws.com/simpleuseful/index.html](http://s3.amazonaws.com/simpleuseful/index.html) [2]: [https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/web-design-where-to- be...](https://www.simongriffee.com/notebook/web-design-where-to-begin/)

</comment><comment><USER59> Archived link since the site has been, ahem, brutalized:

[https://archive.fo/3W7yY](https://archive.fo/3W7yY)

There isn't really an argument for brutalism except laziness and the usual contempt the design community has for its end users. Minimalism has its place, as does maximalism, depending on the context within the application. But that requires actual thinking and then both taste and skill, respectively. Much easier to just wallow in contempt with occasional outbursts of sarcastic novelty, as architecture has done for the last sixty years.

<comment><USER26> Whas the site down?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> These websites are not of a brutalist style. Habitat 67 and the like, while having a plain aesthetic, never did so at any expense of their user's ability to find their way around. These websites are relatively incomprehensible, and categorically closer to deconstructivist than brutalist.

A raised material design button is not ornate, it is plain and simple way to propose an action to a user.

</comment><comment><USER61> Brutalism was usually pretty functional. To compare mediocre web design to a widely respected (at least for the time) architectural movement is reaching.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think it's possible to create visually stunning and unique designs without relying on (IMO) low quality brutalism.

Take the following couple of sites as examples:

[https://www.designbetter.co](https://www.designbetter.co) [https://dropbox.design](https://dropbox.design)

I wholeheartedly agree that we should resist homogeny in product design.

</comment><comment><USER63> The author made a few points I thought were odd ("web design is now brutalist, which is Neoflat but also good") but one point that seems helpful:

Graphic designers _have_ , in fact, shrugged off individuality in favor of convention in the name of usability.

Is the design universe bent toward homogeny? I mean, look at cars or houses. Is everything destined to come in 4 colors, 3 models and a trim package?

</comment><comment><USER64> Original article currently offline for me and so I found it here:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180413180014/https://www.imagi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180413180014/https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/why- we-need-web-brutalism/)

</comment><comment><USER65> Anything to get away from this boring, corporate sanctioned influence of web design! Please!

The web used have identities, you KNEW you were in Vimm's lair. Now it's all the same bootstrappified muck.

[https://vimm.net/](https://vimm.net/)

The question is, how do you convince management to allow this direction?

</comment><comment><USER66> No, the "bad influence" we all need is COLOR. I am so fed up with all of this meaningless "flat" design. It's awful. Our monitors are capable of making millions of colors. An icon can be more than white. This isn't paper and you aren't paying per color.

</comment><comment><USER67> Personally I miss Brutalist buildings. We build very cheaply and flimsy now, especially in the west, with 2x4 construction where you can hear everything happening in the building. Brutalist buildings made extensive use of concrete which we should use more of.

</comment><comment><USER68> Convince me this isn't just a ploy by designers to justify their existence over templates.

<comment><USER12> "Hey, looks like your website isn't using the most cutting-edge design theory, because look at this one that I just made up"

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Perhaps a bit off topic, meta even, but the design of the copy here (which borrows from Medium) ruins the experience for me. One shouldn't have to bold text or use quote type styling to make something stand out. Write engaging prose.

</comment><comment><USER70> Most web design trends since the 90s have been progressive. Brutalism feels like a step backwards for the sake of being different. Feels like one of those trends that will be very short-lived.

</comment><comment><USER71> I've been in love with the Bloomberg redesign since it was launched, not sure I'd call it "brutalist" though. Strong/high-contrast, yes.

</comment><comment><USER72> The Humanities building at the University of Wisconsin Madison is a great example of Brutalist design in my opinion. And its beautiful.

<comment><USER7> I grew up admiring the brutalist inspired buildings at UNM (the style blends nicely with adobe and Pueblo architecture). There are many in Albuquerque. The style also reminds me of late 70s science fiction art depicting spaceships and vast buildings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Homogenized is OK. Better UX that is evidence based than betting the farm on an art project.</comment>


A Man's Obsessive Fight to Reclaim His Cambridge Analytica Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/one-mans-obsessive-fight-to-reclaim-his-cambridge-analytica-data/ <comment><USER2> This is the big battle playing out right now, but I'm not sure that "his data" should be taken for granted vs. "data about him". But "A Man's Obsessive Fight to Reclaim Cambridge Analytica's Data about Him" sort of begs the question in the other direction, and doesn't sound like something that should obviously work.

More to the point, the framing of the article points to legal remedies and such. The reverse framing points to technological solutions in the vein of federation, encryption, etc. I tend to prefer the latter.

<comment><USER3> How are you going to encrypt all your public facebook interactions, or your use of a "game" that - unknown to you - has been designed to harvest user data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An excellent demonstration of how there's often a big gap between having legal remedies available and actually enforcing them.</comment>