U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they're being created - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/05/u-s-businesses-are-being-destroyed-faster-than-theyre-being-created/ <comment><USER2> This is due to consolidation pressure brought about by long-term low interest rates combined with inaccessible small consumer loans.

When the banking crisis happened in 2008, there was some talk and pressure from consumer groups and governments (at least in the U.S.) to make capital available to individual consumers. However, this was a short-lived sentiment, or at least one that never had any teeth to it. Banks stopped lending to consumers as readily as they had before the crisis while the Federal reserve kept interest rates and especially interest rates they give to banks extremely low.

This meant that if you already had capital(large businesses, wealthy individuals) it was easy to get nearly free money. whereas if you didn't it was nearly impossible. This led to consolidation as big businesses could buy up many small ones .

I predict this will continue happening as long as the combination of low interest rates and inaccessible consumer loans continues.

<comment><USER3> That seems deeply wrong to me. Free money to grow your monopoly?

<comment><USER4> This is an interesting emergent behavior of our current financial system.

Generally speaking, access to credit is treated more importantly than possession of capital, due to the leverage credit provides. For individuals however, it is treated negatively (the more credit you have registered with the credit-reporting agencies the less future credit will be extended to you) while for businesses, because they generate income, it can be treated positively. This is generally because credit-granting institutions often do not perform a deep enough analysis to determine if credit utilization in a business is leading to organic or artificial growth; it's a difficult task to perform, and the difficulty is compounded by the long time scales it can sometimes take before the determination of organic-vs-artificial can be pronounced. Simply possessing sufficient credit to take control of assets until someone else pays more for the assets induces all sorts of "fake-it-til- you-make-it" games.

Throw into this cauldron of unintended consequences the official and quasi- governmental support (which boils down to more credit extended for these activities) for real estate development, medical care, and education, and it is small wonder we see the kinds of unbalanced stresses we observe in banking, housing, medical and education sectors.

An especially egregious example of this in action in the US are the "limits" on number of financed properties secured through government mortgage assistance programs. The layperson could be excused for believing that the mortgage assistance programs are meant for "the little guy", and the limit would be one financed property per household, owner-occupied. The taxpayer foots the bill, so it should only be for families and individuals who need the government-stabilized mortgages for the house they live in, right? What actually happens is there are a complex set of rules between Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, FHA and VA programs that delivers government support for taxpayers to subsidize hundreds of thousands of "investors" to get taxpayers to supply the mortgage assistance for up to about 10 properties, only one of which needs to be owner-occupied, up to a $2M aggregate loan value.

In HN-terms, it is as if there was a taxpayer subsidy that let you put up 10% of a $2M loan for your startup idea, dis-chargeable in bankruptcy, at credit rates you could not touch in the private markets. The scrutiny hurdle to clear to secure this financing is much lower than for YC; it's mostly taxpayer money that's at risk and the agency problem runs rampant here. This is an outright gift to the banks that originate the loans and service them for the origination and servicing fees but don't underwrite the risk, as well. You should have heard the cries of doom and gloom when the government agencies a few years ago mulled dropping the number of investment properties that could be carried. Most of these "professional investors" are oblivious to how real businesses obtain credit, and the real cost of credit in the private markets.

There are no easy answers here, unfortunately. Credit is a legitimate feature of the modern economic landscape, and a _bona fide_ tool in an honest business' toolbox.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. Also crazy. Everywhere I look, more crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Original sources:

[http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/datasets/lbd.html](http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/datasets/lbd.html)

[http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/overview.html](http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/overview.html)

Methodology:

[http://www.census.gov/ces/pdf/CES- WP-02-17.pdf](http://www.census.gov/ces/pdf/CES-WP-02-17.pdf)

Looking more carefully, I think the numbers tell a completely different story - this is not about the decline in entrepreneurship, but more about the rise of contingent workers and one-person businesses. Their definition of firm is a business that has paid employees and not all contingent workers count under that definition because they are often independent contractors or employees of a third party agency. The broader availability of all kinds of services from legal to insurance to accounting to technology to logistics to HR/staffing also allows 1-person businesses to handle more than they ever have, while potential legal and regulatory concerns have raised the cost of hiring the first employee. This is not about consolidation but bifurcation.

<comment><USER6> >more about the rise of contingent workers and one-person businesses.

This is exactly what's happening in the Netherlands as well. Lot's of one-man companies. Our government is looking to stop the growth because of some tax dedications they can claim.

<comment><USER7> I see the same thing in the circles of people I spend time with. Almost nobody is starting a business in the sense of having other employees. What people are starting are businesses that bring in some side revenue to help augment their regular incomes.

What I find interesting about this is that because these are run on a shoestring budget, they end up being a testing ground for ideas that are actually profitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Businesses shutting down faster than they are created could be a measure of an un-dynamic economy, but I think that given the relevant time scale, it's mostly a measure of consolidation. And the fact that businesses are consolidating isn't news or even surprising, or necessarily even bad.

In the Valley, technology has had the effect of making it easier to create new businesses (startups), so I can see why the HN crowd would assume that consolidation represents a negative trend. But the fact is that in the rest of the economy, technology has enabled consolidation and driven small businesses either into closing down or being acquired. Technology pushes out the boundary at which diseconomies of scale overtake economies of scale, enabling larger businesses to be more efficient.

Take a company like Amazon or Wal-Mart. Technology enables those companies to operate at massive scales, and using technology, they can replace thousands of smaller businesses while operating much more efficiently.

I suppose the other relevant trend has been what has happened in the financial markets. 1978-present was a period of massive M&A activity. Those with more capital spent it buying out those with less capital, and as a result industries that used to have dozens of competitors now have a handful.

</comment><comment><USER9> A few quick thoughts:

1) That's a particularly horrendous timeframe to try and draw long term conclusions from. 2) Small business people are more conservative than ever right now (ie not starting businesses). Large enterprises have also suffered from this same conservative approach (sitting on massive piles of cash vs investing) It's a very conservative business climate across the spectrum. 3) Some have argued that larger companies have gotten more nimble at competing in the last decade and so the opportunities aren't always there for small businesses to move into gaps 4) Healthcare costs have skyrocketed in the last 10 years and have been risky (losing coverage) which has a very real dampening effect on individuals quitting corporate jobs to start businesses. There's a pocket of people who believe the ACA will have one of it's biggest impacts in this area (workforce mobility has also declined in last 10 years)

This is good stuff and worth watching but I would want to wait until the end of 2016 for some of the above to play out before drawing long terms conclusions around the US economy.

<comment><USER10> I'd agree that long term conclusions might be suspect, but then again "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." However the US demographic shift toward a greying population suggests that the pool of people likely to start businesses is shrinking.

In the short term, people start businesses when they are optimistic or at least naive about the economy. And the sort of people who historically have started small businesses as a means to achieve economic mobility are exactly the people who are likely to be least optimistic these days.

<comment><USER9> You raise a good point I forgot to address. The proportion of new businesses that are started by first generation immigrants. It's much higher in that population than with people born stateside. When you add together the unattractiveness of the economy (dampening interest to migrate) along with an uptick in anti-immigration sentiments it's not hard to see this being a big part of any short term reduction in new businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure that this is a bad thing in the short term. Unhealthy businesses closing are better for the economy in the long run as it redistributes capitol, talent, resources to those that are productive. Japan can tell you all about their "zombie economy"

<comment><USER12> This isn't about healthy vs. unhealthy businesses. If that were the case, the businesses that closed would be balanced by new ones (of the same size) that opened. This is about _consolidation_ from a larger number of smaller companies to a smaller number of larger ones. It would be a bit surprising to hear - on HN of all places - that big companies are inherently healthier or better to have than small ones.

<comment><USER13> I don't know. We used to have a bunch of owner-run video rental shops around. That has been replaced with streaming and RedBox. Does that mean we're unhealthy?

Maybe some of the consolidation is due to the increasing importance of supply- chain at the expense of location in low-margin businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this may be a good thing. Kind of like a house cleaning for businesses. I can count on both hands how many companies I find out about each week and ask myself how are these people still in business.

<comment><USER12> _Replacement_ of bad companies with fresh new ones might be a good thing, but a consistent pattern of companies failing with nothing to replace them is a horse of an entirely different color. That means more people are deciding to work for an established company instead of starting their own, and it's hard to see the good in that.

<comment><USER14> >That means more people are deciding to work for an established company instead of starting their own.

Maybe established companies are seeing more growth. Not everyone wants to work for a new/struggling company, a lot or people want job security (if there is such a thing).

I think part of this could be the decline or brick and mortar stores.

Nowadays I probably wouldnt want to open a Hardware store vs the 70s. We have companies like Home Depot who drive the smaller guys out but they also create a lot more jobs and have better benefits than a Mom and Pop hardware store can provide.

So is it a good thing, yes and no depending on how you look at it. I really need more info on the factors that are causing the decline.

<comment><USER12> "Maybe established companies are seeing more growth."

When has that ever been the case? Small companies have always been the growth engine of the US economy, and others as well. A small company can grow 100x in a couple of years and it doesn't seem weird, whereas a large company growing even 2x would be remarkable. Even if 95% of those small companies totally fail, they're still likely to generate more growth than big companies. It's not likely to be a coincidence that declining entrepreneurship and stagnant wages (everywhere but Silicon Valley) have gone hand in hand for a while now. Yes, people seek security. That's fine, perhaps even wise, but when everyone's running for their lives there's not going to be much growth or innovation.

<comment><USER15> > _Small companies have always been the growth engine of the US economy_

That's not as clear as people claim.

The common definition of 'small business' when people say that 'Small business create the most jobs' is a company with fewer than 500 employees. That's over 99.5% of companies in the US, so of course they create the most jobs.

If you change the definition of a small business to fewer than 50 employees, then only 1/3 of workers are working for 'small businesses'. These companies are also the first to lay off employees and the last to hire in recessions due to their smaller balance sheets.

The whole thing is worth a read, but the gist;

       It makes for a less popular stump speech, but large firms
       are a vital player when it comes to job creation. Over the
       past two decades, for example, small and mid-sized businesses
       have held a larger share of the country's overall employment
       (29 percent and 27 percent, respectively) than they have of
       total jobs added (16 percent and 19 percent). During the same
       period, companies with more than 500 workers employed about
       45 percent of the workforce yet contributed 65 percent of the
       jobs created since 1990.

       Those jobs may be more valuable, too, considering large firms
       have historically paid significantly higher salaries than
       their smaller counterparts. On average, small business
       employees currently earn about 50 percent lower wages than
       those paid to workers at large companies.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small- business/who...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/who- actually-creates-jobs-start-ups-small-businesses-or-big- corporations/2013/04/24/d373ef08-ac2b-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html)

<comment><USER16> The SBA's guidelines for defining "small businesses" is definitely not what many think:

[http://www.sba.gov/content/what-sbas-definition-small- busine...](http://www.sba.gov/content/what-sbas-definition-small-business- concern)

Examples:

\- Manufacturing: Maximum number of employees may range from 500 to 1500, depending on the type of product manufactured;

\- Wholesaling: Maximum number of employees may range from 100 to 500 depending on the particular product being provided;

\- Services: Annual receipts may not exceed $2.5 to $21.5 million, depending on the particular service being provided

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could it also be because the EU, China, HK and other countries have become more attractive for small business?

Related:[http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/america-...](http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/america- not-a-small-business-country/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure his evidence given supports his statement of "no correlation" between a state's Business Tax Climate index. He says the most business- unfriendly state is showing the smallest decline, while the business- friendliest state is showing the smallest decline.

While the full data may actually show no correlation, his highlights show the correlation "business friendliness -> lower business creation."

</comment><comment><USER19> Before this discussion heads that way, this one can't really be blamed on the venture capitalists directly, because VCs are involved in less than 1% of new small businesses, most of which are local concerns like restaurants, parking garages, and bookstores. The VCs aren't at fault for what happened to them. What's happened to the Valley is just one campaign in a larger war on the middle class (and, yes, there is such a thing going on... and the middle class is losing).

The main problem is general economic disenfranchisement. When truck drivers had powerful unions (today, many unions are corrupt and weak, with union leadership buddied up to management) and made what would be six-figure salaries today, while living in houses where the land was effectively free (i.e. the cost of the house was the construction cost alone), it was possible for people in the middle class to accrue real savings. College tuitions were reasonable, because you could get a good job from a (well-funded, cheap) state school and so there wasn't an arms race to get into elite colleges.

The idea that a working-class family could bankroll a business seems insane now, but it wasn't, 30 years ago. The Satanic Trinity of housing, healthcare, and tuition hadn't been re-summoned yet, so average people had money to do things like start companies after a couple decades of working.

The Boomers pulled up the ladder, and made life for the rest of us a race to the bottom. Now, college is expensive, healthcare is a long-tail risk for pretty much anyone (even the "good" insurance policies have exclusions) and housing is obnoxiously expensive anywhere that there are jobs. Add to this the advent of consumer debt (which breaks the Fordist correlation between worker prosperity and the health of the economy) and you have a world in which almost no individuals have capital, and people are stuck relying on a few wealthy individuals and large (usually corrupt) institutions.

When most people don't have any money, fewer small businesses will be formed. It's that simple. These businesses aren't being created because people don't have the means.

<comment><USER20> ahem, son of trucker.. truckers never made six figure salaries and my father was a union trucker during unoin's heyday ie the teasmsters

<comment><USER21> I don't want to contradict you but I've heard different things. I had a student in a CS program who told me that he was getting a truck after graduating. His brothers were in the business and making 6 figures. This was in the days that a new grad would make 50K as a starting salary in tech if they were awesome. This is a data point from Canada btw.

Edit - might there be a difference if you own the truck vs. just being a driver? I don't know the details of the industry.

<comment> at-fates-hands >> Edit - might there be a difference if you own the truck vs. just being a driver? I don't know the details of the industry.

I have an uncle who's a repo man. 80% of his business is collecting big rigs when the owner falls behind in payments.

Trucking is an incredibly tough industry to be in. If you don't own the truck, you have a monthly payment that's almost equal to your house payment. Throw in gas prices going through the roof, and you're lucky to make a decent salary,

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The bar chart at the end of PDF is tells the same story we already know, that most of the decline in business entries is in manufacturing and construction: [http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/declining%20business%20dynamism%20litan/declining_business_dynamism_hathaway_litan.pdf)

We don't build stuff no more.

<comment><USER23> There is no way to read this data to indicate that we aren't building stuff any more. Rather, fewer and fewer companies are in the business of building things. This is almost certainly due more to consolidation than to output.

<comment><USER15> Also, automation!

[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=z...](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=zTD)</comment></comment></comment>


Cycorp, Inc. (Attempt at Common Sense AI) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cyc.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a project that's been going on for over a decade at a very high RD cost. Their basic epistemology for their conceptual model looks hopelessly flawed. Not only is there ambiguity between instances of concepts and concepts, they even have circular definitions (see the definition of concept on their free browser: <http://opencyc1.cyc.com:3602/cgi-bin/cyccgi/cg?cb- start.)> They admit to extensive contradictions in their system and try to solve it with contextual focusing, but the results seem very unpromising. They also admit that adding new information to the db gets increasingly hard because of the web of contradictions. I think the only hope this project has is for a system with a conceptual model more closely following the human conceptual model scanning their entire db for useful information and creating an entirely new hierarchical structure.</comment>


Keeping the Record Straight - Criteria for Round the World Sailing - <AUTHOR> http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Jessica-Watson:--Keeping-the-Record-Straight/69108

<comment><USER2> This record business is getting out of hand, especially now that the media are jumping on the 'youngest'. Here in nl we have a kid that's 14 years old and wants to do the same.

Some kid is going to get killed over this one of these days, driven by media hungry parents and a lack of respect for the sea.

Fortunately the WSSRC has discontinued the record for the 'youngest', maybe that will help a bit in calming down this hype.</comment>


Ask HN: Software study to Mastery classified along the lines of Karate/Or Music - <AUTHOR> If you had to prepare a study path for Software along the lines of Martial arts (like Karate) with different Belts - like white belt, green belt progression to a black belt OR progression in music like progression according to grades - 1st grade, 2nd grade to performance degree? How would you classify the various areas under of study under software? <comment><USER2> One way of doing it in terms of software rather than some other thing: [http://www.starling-software.com/employment/programmer- compe...](http://www.starling-software.com/employment/programmer-competency- matrix.html)

Previously on HN: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=programmer%20matrix&sort=byPop...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=programmer%20matrix&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. Thanks for the Starling-Software classification.

I think Im looking for something that leads the path between n (level 2) and log n (level 3). Especially so in the Computer Science section.

I would also be interested in a path to mastery over Mobile - IOS / Android and Web Technologies Front End(CSS/HTML/Javascript - UI/ UX) and Back end.

For Example Back end could be Language/Framework agnostic.

One way my brain is looking at it is - each language could be mapped to a musical instrument - and then you have various grades of progression in that language/framework. However the analogy breaks down quickly.

In Backend you have 2 interfaces - HTTP protocol interfacing and the data interfacing with the data store (Database). On one hand you have people who create the framework and on the other we have people who use the framework to create products.</comment></comment>


Sexism Isn't Simple (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know the details of this case, but is anybody else a bit shocked by this quote from Joyent?

> to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle > that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense > for me

They justify this by arguing that "that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software".

Is it really that impossible to believe that someone would just prefer gendered pronouns for stylistic reasons? I find it quite scary that you apparently can't risk having an opinion on something like this without committing a fireable offense in some peoples' eyes.

<comment><USER3> From a stylistic perspective, it is challenging to write gender neutral pronouns. In English, the third person singular pronouns are he, she, it. However, using "it" sounds very strange since it is often used as pronoun for objects, not for people.

You might say: "The user does an action. Next, he cooks lunch." Saying "The user does an action. Next, it cooks lunch" is odd.

A common workaround is to use "they" as a 3rd person gender neutral singular pronoun. "The user does an action, Next they cooks lunch." But this is even more odd and confusing, since they is a 3rd person plural pronoun. So you have to alter the verb to match, and you get "The user does an action. Next, they cook lunch." This is turn can change the meaning of your sentence, because you really don't mean 2 or more users. You are talking about a single user.

I have always struggled with this myself and am never really sure what to do. My default is to alternate between "he" and "she"

<comment><USER4> > they is a 3rd person plural pronoun

I don't know why people keep repeating this. The usage of 3rd person singular "they" is older than the modern English language itself: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they). In other words, it is correct, and has always been correct. If your English teacher told you differently, they were either mistaken or lying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > being polite and welcoming can help. It doesn't cost much, and it's a > positive first step.

Except, unless you're a naturally benevolent person (most people aren't), being polite usually does cost something, even if that something is a bit of time and brain cycles. The cost also stacks, and paradoxically increases as your project grows from your niceness.

In the course of business, that politeness is paid for with money in the form of risk of churn. Yet for much of open source, nobody is paying or incensing the maintainer to be polite and "considerate". Asking a volunteer FOSS maintainer to be polite is more or less asking for free work, on top of the free work they're doing by giving you software.

I actually think the problem of sexism, discrimination, and unwelcoming in FOSS is intimately tied to the fact that most FOSS is not meaningfully being paid for by its users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being polite costs me a lot. I have to keep HN on aggressive noprocrast settings or I will _never_ finish anything. I'm lucky enough to be at a stage in my career where I can do that. Wasn't always this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem here is that if we don't try to change things - nothing will get changed. Our language is currently sexist by default and if we don't try to change that it will remain sexist by default.

Why would anyone not want to change that? It's beyond me. If our language was racist by default we would rightly want to change it.

 _" To operate the vehicle a white man should insert his white man's key into the ignition and turn clockwise..."_

It looks crazy. But that's the world we inhabit for gendered language.

I'm not a woman but I would be livid if every time someone made a concerted effort to remove gendered language someone reverted it on 'principle'. I'd be calling for people's heads let alone their jobs!

I don't think it's much to ask for us to try to fix this. If we can't do it from the top down, what is wrong with attempting to do it from the bottom up?

<comment><USER7> That's nonsense, English isn't sexist by default. It's only sexist if you decide to make it so, e.g. by intentionally misinterpreting it.

<comment><USER6> The problem with that argument is that sexism is subjective and it is up to those being discriminated against to decide what is a discriminatory act, not the perpetrators.

There is no deliberate misinterpretation. The fact that there are so many women who find our default use of male gender in English discriminatory is proof of discrimination - whether deliberate or not. You can't just wave it away as "nonsense".

It is such a simple thing to change - and it hurts no-one to do it. Why wouldn't we just do it if only to make those people happy?

<comment><USER7> Are those the same women that refuse to identify as "women" and use terms such as "womyn" instead?

<comment><USER6> Nope. Now you're just trading in insults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I'm not bringing this up to reopen old wounds — I talked with antirez privately after this happened and I think we both learned a lot.

But I do think it's a good reminder, now that students are coming back to campuses and getting back online again, that things that you say hastily can stick around the internet a lot longer than you'd like. I'm relatively lucky in that most of my weird computer experiments were in the 90s when the demoscene was pretty active.

Even without policy changes to the CFAA or DMCA, it takes a very delicate hand to guide students. Those of us who teach, publicly or privately, have a serious responsibility here to make sure we're dealing with subtle linguistic issues even in documentation or comments.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the additional context, both for the importance of the repost, and in general regarding this incident.

As a woman working in tech, I was understandably very upset about the whole affair. I'm very much glad that actual outreach happened behind the scenes, and learning of this makes me feel safe to be part of certain communities again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always find this parody amusing and educational when discussing the "is a default gendered pronoun sexist?" thing. [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> That wasn't parody the first two dozen times I read it in the 80s and 90s, alas

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thank you for this brief and calm comment on the delicacy of politesse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you enjoyed it. It's really difficult for me to share writing about this stuff publicly.</comment></comment>


HTC pays Microsoft over Android patents - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20003602-56.html

<comment><USER2> First Apple, now Microsoft. Sucks to be HTC. Is Google going to step up and defend their seemingly very patent-infringing OS any time soon?

<comment><USER3> Can they?

They are not a party to the suit, and they apparently don't have any useful patents of their own in this area to fight with, even if they were.

I predict HTC and Motorola will enter into a cross-licensing deal, and Motorola will help HTC.

<comment><USER2> Why do the patents need to be in the same area (ppl keep saying that, but I don't understand why they have to counter-punch in the phone market)? They have patents on pretty broad things, non-phone related things, like MapReduce.

Doesn't seem to be worthwhile to be an Android manufacturer. Lawsuit from Apple and licensing arrangement w/Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They make patents sound like a pissing match (pardon the terminology). I really don't understand the "I have patents that are vague but are issued in the tele-comm industry so I could potentially sue you by picking one at random... So don't sue me." I need the details on what particular portion Microsoft feels is infringing, because right now it just sounds like they are throwing their weight around because they can.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, does anyone know which patents are these, then?

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't compete? Litigate.

This is covered in some detail in the great book, "High Stakes No Prisoners" by one of the founders of Vermeer (which became MS FrontPage when MS bought them) - MS sits down and starts talking about their patents on editors and editing technology in general.</comment>


Doing things with Django forms - <AUTHOR> http://uswaretech.com/blog/2010/01/doing-things-with-django-forms/ <comment> old-gregg Forms are the biggest difference between Rails itself and Rails-inspired Python frameworks (I'm talking about Pylons's default helpers, Toscawidgets and Django here)

After working with Rails for 3 years I am absolutely don't get the need for "form" classes. And indeed, judging by open sourced projects and posted code examples, submit handlers in Django and Pylons always look insanely complex as compared to Rails.

<comment><USER2> Django isn't Rails-inspired - they were developed at around the same time, with no real awareness of each other (at first).

As to the merits of "form" classes and post handlers, I think the complexity is only there if you need it, if you're doing something more interesting (read: complex) than CRUD-type inserts/updates and basic validation (if that's all you're doing, ModelForms are pretty close to magical and light on syntax).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice summary.</comment>


HiVision: Crane Operation with Virtual Reality Goggles - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiab.com/en/global/about-us/newsroom/releases/releases/?rssid=http://cws.huginonline.com/C/135578/PR/201604/2000984.xml <comment><AUTHOR> Super excited about this finally being revealed - my small startup Voysys makes the OdenVR Render Engine that powers this product :)

I think there are so many telepresence and remote-operation use cases for VR. It's not yet widely known how powerful it is to experience real time VR when you also can control something remotely.

[http://odenvr.com/hiab-reveals-hivision-remote-crane- operati...](http://odenvr.com/hiab-reveals-hivision-remote-crane-operation- using-our-odenvr-render-engine/) [http://voysys.se](http://voysys.se)

<comment><USER2> I just spent a half hour looking through your sites and vidoes... absolutely amazing.

Can you tell us more about how the networking works? Whats the lowest viable bitrate you can remotely operate something like this at? Not like a work-site heavy machine, but say even just your telepresense robot?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

On the robot we're using RTP and usually stream the individual cameras separately at about 4Mb each (1440x1080). That is a bitrate where we see little improvement in image quality from going higher. We can go lower, 1-2Mb/stream, but probably if you want to save bandwidth you'll want to process the video into equirect or cubemap or something locally and then stream that at 4K at whatever bandwith your network can handle.

Operating the robot over 4G should work, but I haven't tested it yet :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen this movie already... Sleep Dealer, 2008 ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/))

</comment><comment><USER4> To everyone saying you won't need the crane operator on site and they can work from their home, latency and bandwidth are going to make that much harder. Really you have to be able send multiple HD stream of video from different remote locations. You can't just send the view the operator is looking at because the round trip time is probably going into be at least 1/2 a second. On that matter how effective is an operator with 1/2 a second of latency going to be vs the someone one the ground?

</comment><comment><USER5> a crane operator doesn't need to be on site any more with this arrangement unless "keeping a pilot in the plane just in case" is a policy

</comment><comment><USER6> Could just operate the crane from home in pyjamas</comment>


Ask HN: Can I use a name from a novel for my company? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a fan of George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and among many things, I like his creativity with names. I was wondering if I can use a name from his series for my company. Perhaps I should ask this question directly from him, but he seems unapproachable.
So the question is, is it fine if I use a name from his books for my company without informing him in advance? Is there any legal problem with it? Is there any moral problem with it? If yes, how would you avoid them? Have you ever borrowed name of your company from a book?
Any hints/clues/ideas will be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Consult a lawyer and get an opinion letter. Copyright is unlikely to apply to names (see [http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq- protect.html](http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html)). Patents clearly do not apply. Character names may be trademarked, but it is likely using a name from the book for your company will not introduce confusion by conflicting with another use of the same "mark". (See [http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/index.jsp](http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/index.jsp))

Using a name from a book brings along a lot of baggage, some of which you might want, but some, not so much. No matter what, it's complicated.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with pmtarantino, about contacting the publisher, but you can also use those names as inspiration.

Duran Duran (the music band from the 80s) apparently got their name from Barbarella, but when I looked for the Duran Duran Barbarella, we get Dr. Durand Durand.

</comment><comment><USER4> Palantir is from LOTR and Starbucks is from Moby Dick. Unless it's copyrighted (basically every character in Star Wars would be, for instance), I think you should be fine. Ask a lawyer, though!

</comment><comment><USER5> You should ask permissions to his publishers. They will guide you.</comment>


Metallic Glass Gears for NASA Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.tribonet.org/metallic-glass-gears-for-nasa-robots/ <comment><USER2> Had never seen a harmonic drive (mentioned in the article) in action, this video rendering showing how it functions is fascinating: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk)

<comment><USER3> Harmonic drives were once popular for robot arms, because they provide huge gear reductions in a small space. But they're not back-drivable at all - overload one and you break gear teeth. As motor control has improved, the need for huge gear reductions has decreased, and harmonic drives have fallen out of favor in industrial robots.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps for some larger robots, but I can say that Universal Robots UR5s and Rethink Robotics Sawyers use them, so not completely out of favor :-)

Also the sets made by Harmonic Drive (the company) are definitely designed to be back-drivable. Your conment made me smile, because I remember that I heard the same thing about these gears. My first week at Rethink I asked my boss about it while looking on in slight horror at him moving around an unpowered robot while he was explaining the system to me -- I was very concerned we were about to break something!

<comment><USER5> You seem to know stuff about actuation systems; are there any that function like muscles? E.g. strands of wire hooked up across pulleys that repel each other as current flows to increase tension and hence move a part?

<comment><USER3> To function like a muscle, you want an actuator that acts like a spring with controllable zero point and spring constant. That allows you to adjust both position and stiffness. You also get spring-type energy recovery, which matters for legged systems. (Humans recover 60%-70% of running energy elastically. Cheetahs, 90%.)

A double-ended pneumatic cylinder will do this. Two motors pulling on opposed springs will do this. A series elastic actuator can fake it by active control. You don't get the energy recovery that way, though. There have been systems with wires and pulleys to get muscle-like actuation, but they're bulky.[1]

The series elastic actuator is a position actuator driving a stiff spring, with positional and force sensing at both ends of the spring. If a load starts to compress the spring, the control system frantically runs the actuator to unload the spring before it compresses much. This gives the illusion of a less stiff spring. The spring stiffness simulated can be adjusted in the control system.

[1] [http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/3/2/124/pdf](http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/3/2/124/pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an interesting aside, anyone who is interested in this stuff should check out the Omega Tau podcast([http://omegataupodcast.net](http://omegataupodcast.net)). In a recent episode(#247), he went in depth with Dr. Hoffman about his research and the uses of BMG materials.

</comment><comment><USER4> As another interesting aside on these gears -- besides the very cool materials in these particular gears, the technology behind "strain-wave" / "harmonic drive" gears used in a lot of precision robots is very very cool. Parts of the gear set are actually flexible yet you get very smooth* motion with negligible backlash out of them!

[http://www.harmonicdrive.net/technology](http://www.harmonicdrive.net/technology)

(EDIT: We commented at same time, so see also olivierlacan's commented video! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk) )

* - (Compared to more typical gears, and the cogging you get out of them. There are other issues with these gears the controls guys have to deal with when you start going for really high precision motion, but I don't want to seem like I'm knocking them as they do solve a lot of problems in a really clever way!)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Metallic Glass Gears Make for Graceful Robots Space Gears Harmonic drive > Bulk metallic glass, a metal alloy, doesn't get brittle in extreme cold.

What kind of sentence is that?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why do robots rely so much on gears? There is no gear in the animal kingdom, and yet their limbs are vastly more energy efficient and agile, aren't they?

<comment><USER9> Muscles/limbs are only 'vastly' more efficient if you consider they have large numbers of nano scale support systems constantly rebuilding them. Since we don't have nanobots, gears will be better for machines. Also, nature didn't naturally develop a axle.

<comment><USER10> Muscles/limbs also don't power-down for long periods. They're in need of constant maintenance (energy, food; waste removed) or they rot.

<comment><USER11> Is that an inherent property of muscle-like mechanisms, or just several billion years' worth of environmental bacteria evolved to consume living tissue if not constantly opposed by a immune system?

<comment><USER12> That's an inherent property of all living material. All tisssue is on the edge of thermodynamic breakdown i.e. Unlike manufactured material, resting state for biology is death).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >"Mass producing strain wave gears using BMGs may have a major impact on the consumer robotics market," Hofmann said. "This is especially true for humanoid robots, where gears in the joints can be very expensive but are required to prevent shaking arms. The performance at low temperatures for JPL spacecraft and rovers seems to be a happy added benefit."

Highly unlikely. Teflon (PTFE) can be injection moulded and is self lubricating and probably cheaper although it still costs and arm and a nut. Also the flex spline is one of the cheapest parts of a harmonic drive- the elliptical bearing is more expensive.

There are also other reasons not to use harmonic drives. Their efficiency usually isn't as good as advertized and is often worse than other gearsets.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shouldn't this be "Glassy Metal Gears", instead of the opposite? They say they heat it up to get rid of the crystals, then somehow cool it without allowing them to form, leading to a metal in an amorphous solid form like that glass takes on when it cools.

<comment><USER15> Glassy metal is another name for metallic glass/amorphous metal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> since there are robotics people in here, would someone mind linking me to videos or blogs about tearing down/talking about the motors and drivers used in cutting edge robotic arms such as those used in the automotive industry?

<comment><USER17> Hey there!

If you're interested in the mechanical components of the robot arms, they all probably use harmonic drives.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzRh672peNk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfmjhfN8D-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfmjhfN8D-Q)

There's a video on the Kuka robot arm.</comment></comment>


Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order - <AUTHOR> http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/06/does-prenda-believe-in-no-win-scenarios-because-judge-wright-just-gave-them-one/ <comment><USER2> Judge Wright took tremendous offense to the idea of lawyer-sharpie types trying to use his court (among others) as home base for a naked scheme of extortion.

Think about how he characterizes the lawyers and their conduct: (1) they were lawyers with failed practices; (2) they figured a way to shake down victims out of an aggregate of millions of dollars; (3) they did this by threatening to expose them as downloaders of pornographic material via the filing of lawsuits ostensibly asserting copyright violations; (4) yet, the people asserting the claims did not have any good evidence actually proving any form of violation in any given case; (5) and, when someone offered any real resistance, the case was dropped; (6) and when the ostensible holders of the claims needed to be real holders of the copyrights in question, shell entities were set up (controlled and dominated by the lawyers) in order to create a false appearance that this requirement was met; (7) and when the federal court's procedural rules specifically required the lawyer bringing the case to identify all known related cases so that the court can understand the true party relationships, the lawyer suppresses all the known facts about the relationships in order to deceive the court; (8) and when a formal assignment of copyright is needed to meet the legal requirement of standing, the lawyers set up a dummy name and forge the person's signature in order to meet the requirement; (9) and when the scheme turns on a fishing expedition by which the lawyers hunt out a list of IP addresses and then ask the court for the right to subpoena the ISP to get the names associated with those addresses, and the judge issues a discovery order saying, in effect, "hold on, you can't do this here," and yet the lawyers still proceed to serve the subpoenas on the ISPs in order to keep generating opportunities to extort settlements from even more victims; (10) and when the court finds out that the lawyers are deliberately flouting the court's orders and authority, the lawyers refuse to appear until forced to and, when they do appear, refuse to account honestly for their conduct.

Summing up and paraphrasing what the judge concluded based on these findings: This is not lawyering. It is naked extortion covered by a thin veneer of lawyering. Rules don't matter. Honesty doesn't matter. Decency doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to keep the scheme going, right or wrong, fair or foul, justified or not.

The result: not a severe money sanction, which would have been but a slap on the wrist when many millions had been gathered under the lawyers' scheme, and apparently gathered tax free to boot. Instead, something much worse, to wit, a clear conclusion that the lawyers had engaged in acts of moral turpitude, justifying referral to the state bar of every jurisdiction in which they are authorized to practice, and likely eventual disbarment; a criminal referral to the U.S. attorneys' office for possible RICO violations; a referral to the tax authorities; and an order that this devastating order be served and filed in every single legal action that has been filed by these attorneys anywhere in the nation.

This, to put it mildly, amounts to evisceration. This judge got mad. This judge had guts. This judge is smart. And that, for these lawyers, is a lethal combination.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting to me that the judge lets so much raw contempt show. I am more accustomed to judges presenting a dispassionate attitude; I always figured that this was an important part of their role of making impartial rulings in an adversarial system.

Would showing this much unmasked disgust towards one party leave a ruling more vulnerable to accusations of bias on appeal (presuming this can even be appealed)?

<comment><USER4> I suspect the turning point was the Prenda Law people turning up in court and taking the fifth.

By refusing to testify on the basis of the right to avoid self-incrimination, they effectively admitted _on the court record_ that they'd committed a crime. At which point, the judge can see the smoke, and though he may not be allowed to investigate the ignition source he can certainly point the DOJ in the general direction of the fire.

<comment><USER5> > By refusing to testify on the basis of the right to avoid self- > incrimination, they effectively admitted on the court record that they'd > committed a crime

I'm not a US lawyer, or even from the US. But surely, if courts can draw adverse inferences from someone 'taking the fifth', that makes it a pretty pointless right, no? It's not much of a right to avoid self-incrimination if exercising it incriminates yourself. Can someone from the US clarify whether that's really how it's interpreted?

<comment><USER6> I'm not a lawyer, but I am from the US. The Judge's order includes the following footnote:

"Even if their refusal was based on the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the Court still may draw adverse inferences against them in this civil proceeding. Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 318 (1976)"

The way I read it (again, not a lawyer) is that you can't convict someone based on their refusal to testify, but this isn't a criminal proceeding. In civil matters the rules are different.

<comment><USER7> Ah. Interesting.

So the fact that the lawyers are taking the Fifth can reasonably be used as evidence that some of the specific claims and assertions already made are materially fraudulent.

Taking the Fifth in your own lawsuit must be quite startling for a judge to behold. One can imagine possible sound reasons why a defendant might take the Fifth or the Sixth (right to consult an attorney, i.e. you caught me off guard but I might answer your questions later), but that is not pretty either, in a civil case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Footnote number 5 is so acidic I feel burned just by reading it. (Context: read paragraph #1 in the introduction first, summarizing the conspiracy's business model.) [http://www.popehat.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanct...](http://www.popehat.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/PendaSanctionsOrder.pdf)

<comment><USER9> It is not often I derive huge amounts of amusement from legal proceedings but this case (and especially this judge) has been very fun to watch in a slow- motion train-wreck kind of way.

We all knew this judgement would be good and the judge delivered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Holy smokes. That is some serious smack down. One hopes it causes the entire judiciary to awaken to this dark scourge of extortion through the courts.

<comment><USER11> You can bet there are a lot of plaintiff lawyers paying attention as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No sympathy for Prenda but damn if this line didn't remind me of Aaron Swartz:

"Federal grand jury investigations are very slow, but represent experienced practitioners bringing almost unlimited resources to bear against their targets."

<comment><USER13> I wonder if there was ever a movie in which the Cavalry came calling to the rescue, but went after the wrong target? I seem to recall a Twilight Zone episode (or maybe it was a Stephen King Short Story) in which an infantry platoon razed a village, only to discover that it was actually their own hometown, somehow masqueraded as some foreign land.

I willing to wager that if we looked at it with objective perspective, 95% of the time the Federal Grand Juries are doing work for good, it's only 5% of the time that they are misguided - but it's that 5% that we all seem to remember.

<comment><USER14> If you give someone a basket of grenades and 5% of the time they hit friendlies, you'll probably take the basket away...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What confuses me is that the only stuff they got smacked for was deficiency in how they operated, not anything fundamental to the business of copyright trolling. Another group of lawyers could easily do exactly this, while maintaining more arms-length relationships with the copyright owners, and not taking shortcuts on the cases, and be completely within the law.

<comment><USER16> That was the only thing they could be smacked for, so the judge smacked hard. It is possible to conduct this extortion _within the law_ and that is a problem, but judges can't change law. Notice has now been sent however that if you're going to flaunt the law's deficiencies for personal gain at the expense of the legal commons, you damn well better bring your A game.

<comment><USER17> Beyond that, they also showed that such actions now has risk involved. Hopefully this will lead to the lawyers getting jail time, and that will in turn discourage more legit lawyers from trying a similar scheme even with a A game performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law>

> Prenda Law, also known as Steele | Hansmeier PLLP and Anti-Piracy Law > Group,[1] is a Chicago, Illinois-based law firm that claims it battles > copyright piracy, but is also strongly identified with copyright trolling

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this is my favorite Star Trek reference in the decision.

page 10 line 21: "Third, though Plaintiffs boldly probe the outskirts of law, the only enterprise they resemble is RICO. The federal agency eleven decks up is familiar with their prime directive and will gladly refit them for their next voyage."

I have never had more fun reading a decision from a judge. It is heartening as well as entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER16> Righteous indignation, distilled and aged to a fine vintage... and then served up in Ten Forward by a United States district judge.

So this is the other side of the looking glass... when do I meet the disappearing cat?

</comment><comment><USER20> While I sympathize with the disdain everyone has for these guys, this judgement is the result of some lawyers that took several possibly illegal shortcuts. This case sets no precedents about the viability of copyright trolling going forward, and in fact the judge's obvious bias may serve as grounds for a successful appeal in this case. So, while this makes for amusing reading, at the end of the day it won't mean much. Everyone should still CYA when downloading torrents.

<comment><USER21> What is the judge's bias?

<comment><USER20> A good appellate lawyer would likely argue that the judge's over-the-top reaction, along with his written commentary showing clear disdain for the business model of the plaintiffs and the attorneys, shows that the judge was unfairly biased against them from the outset of the case. I don't know if they would ultimately prevail on appeal, but the judge certainly opened the door for it.

<comment><USER22> I'm curious, what can they really appeal here? It seems like the biggest impact of the ruling is the circulation of the ruling to other jurisdictions and the referral of the matter to local / federal authorities. Is that something that is immediate and an appeal can only reduce the monetary finding, or is the whole order in stasis if they appeal?

<comment><USER20> Anyone can refer any matter to local or federal authorities, so that cannot be appealed, but the monetary judgement may be subject to appeal. A large portion of the basis for the findings of fact and punishments seems to pertain to conduct that simply isn't illegal. Statements like the following undermine the judge's impartiality:

"So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry. "

It is quite obvious that this is the conduct that the judge intends to punish through this order, but that conduct is entirely legal under current law. So are many of the other things the judge complains about, including the use of boilerplate language in the lawsuits, which is routinely done.

This judge disliked the plaintiffs from the outset and went combing through their conduct to find any way he could to nail them. Judges are not supposed to decide who they do or don't like in a case, then craft an outcome based upon those personal feelings. But that is exactly what happened here. Popular rulings aren't always legally sound.

<comment><USER23> It seems rather silly to enrage a judge via misconduct during the case and then claim the judge's indignation is a form of bias. Judge Wright wasn't mad at them at the start of the case. Rather, he became angry after seeing how they conducted themselves before him.

That reminds me of the story of the child who murders his parents only to beg the court for mercy because he is an orphan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've enjoyed following the ongoing saga of this case. Many thanks for the detailed followups of each court session. It would be safe to say that the judge has gone with the "nuke them from orbit" option, as it's the only way to be sure these predators won't continue their dirty actions.

<comment><USER25> If you remember, the Xenomorphs survived being nuked ...

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't say they survived being nuked. One hitched a ride off the planet, infected a dog/cow, and was later killed; and apparently another hitched a ride inside of Ellen. Since neither were present for the nuclear blast I wouldn't say they survived it. Ellen/It were later cloned to recreate xenomorphs, but I don't think there is anything in the canon to say that the xenomorphs which were nuked were able to survive.

Nuking xenomorphs from orbit does seem to be a very good way to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's the end of the road for this brand of copyright shakedown. This is an amazing good-guys-win outcome for sure, but much more than that, it signals the end of of the random copyright troll lawsuit.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have not read many court orders/rulings/etc. in my life (IANAL), but of those that I have read, this is by far the angriest and most vicious.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hooray! for an occasion when the system worked. It's of course quite heartwarming to see someone in a position of authority coming to a sane opinion, getting incensed at the ridiculousness, and even going on the offensive.

But what of all the others that have been mired in endless litigation with no such happy ending? And while fitting, is it really _desirable_ for Prenda's punishment to mainly consist of being ground down by the bureaucracy?

Wouldn't we rather an efficient system where ridiculous cases were dismissed outright, unenforceable laws were retired quickly, the lawyer protection racket was unnecessary, and the innocent could be reasonably confident of ultimately prevailing instead of simply settling to avoid years of stress?

</comment><comment><USER30> The Star Trek references in the judgement are rather strange and (to me) diminish the judge's credibility. Is it normal practice for judges in the US to use popular culture references in their written judgements? Anyone care to explain the reasoning behind this?

<comment><USER31> It's not uncommon, for example here's a recent double-entendre ruling about a strip club:

[http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a7...](http://www.woai.com/media/lib/12/5/9/5/59511ba8-415b-4b2e-a783-cc15b6c19cc0/Itsy_Bitsy_Teeny_Weeny_Bikini_Top_Order.pdf)

The lawyers out there speculated he did it as yet another smack down to Prenda law. This will always be known in law circles as the "Star Trek Order". It'll be more widely read, and the shame will always follow them.

His findings of law are correct, a little toying with them outside of his findings is quite enjoyable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reading this I'm kind of optimistic.

Star Trek quotes? Firefox screenshot? Amazing. I read a lot of negative stuff about US law. I hope that's because people are interested in the negative stuff and there's biases operating to not publicise that good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Without better technology, prosecuting illegal BitTorrent activity requires substantial effort in order to make a case. It is simply not economically viable to properly prosecute the illegal download of a single copyrighted video."

Is this likely to have any implications for a wider range of copyright-by-IP address cases? Since I've only given a cursory glance past the details of other (let's say music and video) cases, this level of 'proof' sounds quite similar to what is being offered elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there now any way that Judge Wright might turn his eye (and hopefully his hammer) on patent trolling? The arguments he makes against Prenda's process in general - not the illegal parts, but the intent and procedure - is pretty much what the patent trolling industry does. If he sees something that he pass commentary on in a legal capacity, then I'm sure courts can and should take note that they're being played in the patent game too.

<comment><USER34> > I. INTRODUCTION > Plaintiffs1 have outmaneuvered the legal system. They've > discovered the > nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social > stigma, and unaffordable > defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by > accusing individuals of illegally > downloading a single pornographic video. > Then they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be > > just below the cost > of a bare-bones defense. For these individuals, > resistance is futile; most > reluctantly pay rather than have their names associated with > illegally > downloading porn. So now, copyright laws originally designed to > compensate > starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to > > plunder the citizenry. > Plaintiffs do have a right to assert their > intellectual-property rights, so long as > they do it right. But Plaintiffs' > filing of cases using the same boilerplate complaint > against dozens of > defendants raised the Court's alert. It was when the Court realized > > Plaintiffs engaged their cloak of shell companies and fraud that the Court > went to > battlestations.

Right at the top. Looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except for the porn part.

<comment><USER35> It looks exactly like a writeup about patent trolling except _it doesn't have anything at all to do with patents_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> popehat is great, and in spite this being one of their smaller articles, I fail to follow what it boils down to. Can someone please summarize what Prenda has to now do -- Do they serve time? Do they pay millions? Are they not allowed to practice again?

<comment><USER37> They have to pay attorney fees of about 40 grand, and another 40 grand of punitive damages. At this point, that's about it, but with a ruling like this, there's no doubt that there are going to be many more problems for the Prenda gang in the future. Don't worry though, given the gravity of the recommendations Wright's sending to the DA and to the IRS, you can be certain there will be much more popcorn to be had from this case.

<comment><USER38> Actually, the biggest bit in the judgement might be the "referral" (and not the _good_ kind of referral) to their state bar(s).

<comment><USER39> I would say the worst referral is actually the IRS one. The IRS does not play "innocent until proven guilty" it is "pay up first, then prove you are innocent if you can". The referral for a possible RICO case isn't very nice either.

Informing all other courts about this is going to kill their other lawsuits and bring some interesting new lawsuits / appeals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope all the people who paid to settle get their money back with extra damages.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am grateful that judges can bring down the hammer from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER41> Reading this article gave me great pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER42> Smackdown!!!

</comment><comment><USER43> Confused -- Why all the rigamarole, instead of going RIAA-style after the thousands-to-millions of actual porn copyright-infringers?

<comment><USER44> Because the porn industry doesn't have the representation in DC; it doesn't have the centralized power to pursue highly expensive legal warfare; it doesn't have any sympathy vote; it has very little power; it has relatively little money compared to Hollywood or the recording industry (to attract K Street lobbyists). There is no porn industry equivalent of the RIAA.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Interviewing with a startup, what questions should I ask them? - <AUTHOR>

Backgound... I have been employed for a large non technology corporation for nine years.  I realize I have been with them to long and for all the wrong reasons.  But I'm still a little nervous about working for such a small company.
I have an interview with a startup lined up and might apply to some more.  I'm sure at some point I will be given the opportunity to ask them questions about the job, etc...
So, what kind of questions should I ask about their company to feel out their stability, prospects and future?
Thanks <comment><USER2> This "archive of quality Hacker News 'Ask YC' posts grouped by subject" looks worth checking out: <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

(Thanks to jmonegro for posting it to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126993.>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow awesome resources. Thanks again for the links!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If your goal is to get equity of any significant amount, you should discuss this up front - that's not to say ask for it right away, but talk about the path for that job and whether if things go well in X months or years you will get 1% or whatever it is you want. You could also ask how much runway they have.

</comment><comment><USER2> Besides the Joel Test for programming processes, I always try to ascertain:

Their finances, business model, etc.

Can they fire people who don't work out and how careful are they in hiring.

Plus there are many warning signs to watch out for, like unwarranted secrecy.

<comment><USER4> Although the Joel Test is a good idea, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity just because it didn't fit into Joel's box. YMMV but I find it better to apply these to the situation rather than as a "by the book" technique of filtering out job opportunities. There are tons of great small startups that have yet to hit their stride yet. You could be the one to show them the folly of their ways and help them hit that stride.

<comment><USER2> If they don't have their SCM act together and won't let you fix that, I'd pass up such an "opportunity", you're going to have a _lot_ of pain. That's items 1 and 2 and source code control is non-negotiable for me (unless that alternative is starvation).

Daily builds are an it depends, bug database is something you can probably do yourself at worst case, schedule and spec are also things that will make your life miserable if they don't have anything there.

If you don't have quiet working conditions, they don't care about your productivity or the quality of your work (so why should you???).

The rest except for the last are just damned good ideas: good tools shouldn't be a problem today, but your superiors might have funny ideas about what's good. EMACS is non-negotiable for me plus access to a Unix or cygwin on Windows.

If you don't have dedicated testers, more misery, but in a startup that can be finessed.

If they don't take care in hiring programmers (no writing code during interview test), they're going to hire plenty of duds, and getting rid if them is no fun ... assuming the company survives. A startup can't afford very many if any dud hires.

Let me close with one of PG's observations about dot.bomb failures: a whole lot of them were technical failures. Failing to do enough of the Joel Test items makes technical failure more likely and requires heroics to advert it.</comment></comment></comment>


What happens if you write a TCP stack in Python? - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2014/08/12/what-happens-if-you-write-a-tcp-stack-in-python/ <comment><USER3> The idea that Python is so slow that it's confusing TCP sounds wrong to me. I think it's more likely that your packet capture scheme is slow. It looks like you're using scapy, which I assume is in turn using libpcap... which may be buffering (in high-performance network monitoring, the packet capture interface goes out of its way to buffer). Which is something you can turn off.

About 13 years ago, I wrote my own programming language expressly for the purpose of implementing network stacks, and had a complete TCP in it; I didn't have this problem. But I do have this problem all the time when I write direct network code and forget about buffering.

Similarly: "Python is so slow that Google reset the network connection" seems a bit unlikely too. Google, and TCP in general, deals with slower, less reliable senders than you. :)

What's the time between your SYN and their SYN+ACK?

<comment><USER4> The Google homepage is only about 20000 bytes... if we assume an maximum segment size of ~1400 bytes, then 14 or 15 packets is about right.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google is sending the packets all at once and ignoring the ACKs altogether.

Heck, there's even a 2010 paper from Google on the subject of sending a bunch of packets at the beginning of the connection: _An Argument for Increasing TCP 's Initial Congestion Window_[0]

[0][http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36640.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36640.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If an 8MHz microcontroller is fast enough to implement TCP, then Python should be fast enough too.

Here is my two cents on the expirement:

1\. You don't really have to ack every packet, you have to order them, drop duplicates and ack the last one.

2\. Google ignores the TCP flow control algorithm and sends the first few hundred packets very quickly without waiting for acks. They do this to beat the latency of the flow control algorithm. That's why you end up with so many packets on your side. You could just try anything but google, and you would probably see that you have a less insane packet storm.

<comment><USER6> Even 8MHz is massive overkill. It's almost fast enough to bit-bang ethernet.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to see you bit-bang a 10MHz signal with an 8 MHz clock.

You'd need something substantially faster (Nyquist and such).

<comment><USER8> TCP != ethernet. A TCP stack can run over serial and othe link layers (PPP, SLIP, etc). PPP is absolutely doable on very small microcontrollers.

<comment><USER9> Problem is that using PPP or SLIP doesn't relieve you from having to implement at least some kind of crude TCP stack.

But if you use TCP offloading, then you can communicate using TCP as cheaply as doing any traditional serial communication. I've seen those crude TCP stack implementations and those are barely LAN capable. Using those over Internet wouldn't be a great idea. Often these TCP stacks are used just as serial - <USER2> converters. Using RWIN of 16 (max) bytes due UART buffering limits etc. Not sending ACK before whole 16 byte is cleared and so on.

So with really low end devices, it's better to off load TCP to custom hardware. Many embedded devices use that approach. In such cases you'll only call to IP address and port, and when it connects, you'll have your TCP/IP connection in pure serial. TCP-modems isn't any different from other good old Hayes modems. It's just dial-up over Internet and TCP.

Btw. If the system is able to run CPython, Linux, or something similar, it's already a pretty powerful system.

<comment><USER6> Even without any kind of offloading, you can manage a perfectly good TCP implementation and super-minimal web browser with a few kilobytes of ram and 100KHz.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have actually implemented a TCP stack in python, unfortunately I can't share it publicly just yet.

The authors problems are because she is not using RAW_IP_SOCKETS.

Making TCP packets using pythons struct module is a breeze. I can post specific examples in code if anyone is interested.

Finally you can write a proper TCP stack in python, there is no reason not to. Your user-space interpreted stack won't be as fast as a compiled kernel-space one - but it won't be feature short.

PS: I guess, Google is probably sending him a SSL/TLS handshake which he isn't handling.

Edit: Corrected author's gender as mentioned by kind poster.

<comment><USER11> I believe the author is a "she". It says at the banner of the blog.

<comment><USER11> I think this downvoting thing is out of control. What was even remotely offensive about this correction?

<comment><USER12> "offensive" isn't the only reason for downvoting. "Not a substantive addition to the conversation" is one (of many) other bases. If you are going to complain about downvoting [1] why do so based on the unwarranted assumption that the downmod must be for offensiveness?

[1] And you shouldn't, see the Guidelines [2] under "In Comments"

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> In my opinion, if HN doesn't want puzzled people to ask why they've been downmodded, then instead of putting a line in the Guidelines saying "don't do this", they should separate the downmod into "I disagree" and "flag this as a bad comment", with the latter item the one that reduces the text weight. It's clearly broken - people have been doing this for as long as I've been here, and it's not going to change (sadly, 'it' means both the behaviour, and HN's braindead downmod mechanism).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm the author of hexcap([http://www.hexcap.org](http://www.hexcap.org)), an ncurses libpcap file editor and packet generator. I've also written many Scapy applications like this one([https://github.com/smutt/mcastClients](https://github.com/smutt/mcastClients)). I rewrote the DHCPv4 client in Scapy since the stock one is broken. Also as part of hexcap have made numerous fixes to dpkt. Needless to say, I've done a lot with Python and packets.

If you're interested in writing a TCP/IP stack in Python I would recommend you use Python raw sockets, or possibly dnet[1] or pcapy[2]. The Scapy level of abstraction is too high for your needs.

I agree with other posters who mention buffering in libpcap. Read the man page for pcap_dispatch to get a better idea of how buffering works in libpcap. Also try capturing packets with tcpdump with and without the '-l' switch. You'll see a big difference if your pkts/sec is low.

Don't do arp spoofing. If you're writing a TCP/IP stack then you need to also code up iparp. If you don't want to do that, then use raw sockets and query the kernel's arp cache.

On second thought you really need to use raw sockets if you want this to work. Using anything pcap based will still leave the kernel's TCP/IP stack involved, which is not what you want.

[1] [http://libdnet.sourceforge.net/pydoc/private/dnet- module.htm...](http://libdnet.sourceforge.net/pydoc/private/dnet-module.html) [2] [http://corelabs.coresecurity.com/index.php?module=Wiki&actio...](http://corelabs.coresecurity.com/index.php?module=Wiki&action=view&type=tool&name=Pcapy)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a fun write-up. If you enjoy this kind of playing around with networking in a dynamic language, and don't want to have to worry about ARP spoofing to do these kinds of experiments, you may want to take a look a Snabb Switch. It provides userland networking in Lua, connecting to the NIC directly (only a handful of popular NICs currently supported) [0].

I've not used it yet, but I've read over the documentation and am itching for an opportunity to do so.

0\. [https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch](https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch)

<comment><USER16> I can't find the list of supported NICs in the documentation, but I found [https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/blob/master/src/lib/h...](https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/blob/master/src/lib/hardware/pci.lua#L54) which suggests that only a very small subset of Intel NICs are supported. One of those may be emulated by VirtualBox, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ARP spoofing... clever. This was an amusing read and really informative, too. There is definitely something to be said for explaining lower-level concepts (e.g. TCP handshakes) using the common tongue. IMO, not a bad way to begin learning. Someone could perform the same experiment now and use Wireshark to see the raw packets, then draw conclusions to what is happening.

Anyone know why the Python program is so slow? I'm looking at the code and my first guess would be this part[1] but I can't explain why, overall, it would be so slow that a remote host would close the connection.

[1] [https://github.com/jvns/teeceepee/blob/7e93970e16fbb0c3d4bee...](https://github.com/jvns/teeceepee/blob/7e93970e16fbb0c3d4bee54bb9fb019b702fae5e/teeceepee/tcp.py#L144)

<comment><USER18> I would be interested in seeing if using asyncio would resolve the network issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This wins the Internet today for me... "my kernel: lol wtf I never asked for this! RST! my Python program: ... :("

</comment><comment><USER19> Shouldn't the TCP handshake look like this:

\---- SYN ---->

<\-- SYN/ACK --

\---- ACK ---->

rather than having the client send two SYNs to the server?

<comment><AUTHOR> absolutely! Fixed :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like your solution to prevent the kernel from interfering with your packets.

An alternative method I've used in the past is to add an iptables rule to silently drop the incoming packets. libpcap sees the packets before they are dropped, so you'll still be able to react to them, but the kernel will ignore them (and therefore won't attempt to RST them).

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems odd to me that Google would time out that quickly. You could never reach Google from a GPRS connection if that was the case. I'd investigate the ACKs you're sending. Are you missing packets or sending them in the wrong order?

In Uni we had a networking course where we got to build a network web server software stack from the bottom up, starting with Ethernet/MAC, TCP/IP, and then on the top HTTP, all being flashed onto a small network device (IIRC it was originally a CD-ROM server). It was an extremely enlightening exercise. I recommend you go deeper instead of just using a premade Python library for TCP!

</comment><comment><USER22> Please keep writing, Julia. The next time somebody asks me why I spend so much of my life absorbed by a screen, I'll point them at your blog and say "because discovery is exciting!"

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if it would have a better success rate on a site other than Google's, since I've heard that Google's done extensive tuning of their TCP stack to send page data faster.

Somebody's oversubscribed $3/month shared PHP hosting might not ramp up the speed as quickly.

<comment><USER24> TCP is TCP. If you advertise a certain window size you better be prepared to receive that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not Python that's slow, but scapy, which is __dog slow __. In fact, it is so slow that it should come with big WARNINGs that it 's only really meant for interactive use. Do the dissection yourself or use something built for that purpose.

It's really surprising to me that lots of ppl are using scapy for things that require performance but then again if you look at the scapy website or the docs, it's not immediately apparent that their tool is not meant for this. Which I guess says a lot about the scapy developers rather than the scapy users.

tl;dr Scapy is a joke, performance-wise.

</comment><comment><USER26> You don't need to spoof a different MAC or IP to implement your own stack on a raw socket, Python is not too slow to handle negotiating a connection, and your interpretation of how tcp/ip works is flawed. I highly recommend you read a good book about tcp/ip and learn how the kernel works with network applications of different types.

In terms of using Scapy for your packet crafting, here are some guides with examples that may help you work around your issues. (Hint: use the Scapy- defined sending and receiving routines and don't implement your own, or stop using Scapy and implement your own raw packet sockets) [http://securitynik.blogspot.com/2014/05/building-your-own- tc...](http://securitynik.blogspot.com/2014/05/building-your-own-tcp-3-way- handshake.html) [https://github.com/yomimono/client- fuzzball/blob/master/fuzz...](https://github.com/yomimono/client- fuzzball/blob/master/fuzz_tcp.py) [https://www.sans.org/reading- room/whitepapers/detection/ip-f...](https://www.sans.org/reading- room/whitepapers/detection/ip-fragment-reassembly-scapy-33969) [http://www.lopisec.com/2011/12/learning-scapy-syn-stealth- po...](http://www.lopisec.com/2011/12/learning-scapy-syn-stealth-port- scanner.html)

<comment><USER27> I think you'll find that either publishing an ARP entry or filtering incoming packets in the kernel is required for handling a TCP stream over raw sockets.

As the outbound TCP SYN is manually crafted and sent over a raw socket, without any corresponding state table entry on the sender's kernel, incoming TCP responses will be rejected by the kernel with a RST.

I suggested to Julia that she manually publish an ARP entry for another IP which she could send and receive on. The kernel not having an interface with that IP assigned to it would ignore responses while also passing them to the raw socket. An alternative would be to use an iptables rule to drop incoming packets for the relevant flow - although that may be more difficult to manage depending on what you're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> All three volumes of TCP/IP Illustrated may be found on the Internet in pdf form, but they are well worth buying.

Tangent: One of my favorite interview questions is to ask how traceroute works. The question works best when the candidate doesn't actually know. Then we can start to discuss bits and pieces of how TCP/IP works, until they can puzzle out the answer.

<comment><USER29> Do you know if there's a good IPv6 equivalent? I have IPv6 Core Protocols Implementation but like the writing style TCP/IP Illustrated much more.

<comment><USER24> There is a 2nd edition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Too late to join the story, but I am really curious if datacenter nodes intended for heavy mapreduce use implement this layer in user space.

The bottleneck for such processes is typically network I/O and I can imagine that taking control of the network in the user space might offer some modest to significant wins. For Hadoop in particular network packets needs to traverse quite a few layers before it is accessible to the application.

Has anyone done this sort of a thing for mapreduce. Pointers to any writeup would be awesome.

In fact TCP itself might be an overkill for mapreduce. The reduce functions used are typically associative and commutative. So as long as the keys and values are contained entirely within a datapacket, proper sequencing is not even needed. Any sequence would suffice.

<comment><USER24> There has been some work about using zero-copy RDMA and RoCE (which bypass the kernel as a side effect) for analytics. Hadoop in particular is so slow that the kernel is unlikely to be a bottleneck, but more optimized runtimes like Spark might benefit.

<comment><USER30> I dont understand why is Hadoop so freaking slow. I am no fan of Java (to put it mildly) but Java does fairly well to keep in the 70~80% of a C++ code at the cost of 4 to 5 times more memory. My experience is that Hadoop is 4 to 6 times slower.

Is it because of bad choice of internal algorithms, bad choice of internal data structures ? Bad I/O design ? Given the popularity it enjoys, and given its age, its a little frightening how much worse Hadoop is in comparison to some proprietary implementations. My hunch is that Hadoop's slowdown is in the shuffle phase, which is where faster network data transfer can help.

I like abstractions that spark exposes but it still needs a lot of engineering to catchup. I have anecdotes where Spark is slower than Hadoop by quite a bit.

All my experience is with Hadoop 1.x. Is Hadoop 2.x much better ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool :).

I also learned a lot about networking by writing a TCP/IP stack in Common Lisp. [http://lukego.livejournal.com/4993.html](http://lukego.livejournal.com/4993.html) if you are interested.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone who worked on writing protocol specs as code for simulation purposes, I can see how much fun this is. A pure python network simulator (ns2 is C++ and painfully hard to debug) would actually be nice and encourage a lot of theoreticians to get into real programming. I've spent a reasonable amount of time in the industry building distributed systems and I can say with confidence understanding low level protocols improves your thinking.

</comment><comment><USER33> Check this out: [http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/sen...](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/sending-and-receiving-packets/)

[http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/rel...](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/reliability-and-flow-control/)

C++, but very detailed articles.

</comment><comment><USER34> While not immediately relevant, if you find this discussion interesting, have a look at sshuttle:

sshuttle[0] is a pure-python one-way TCP VPN solution that is very well behaved and quite efficient. The source is highly readable as well. +1 to everything Avery Pennarun has released (including wvdial, bup)

[0] [https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle](https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle)

</comment><comment><USER35> What if every python virtual machine had a full TCP/IP stack?

IPv6 has enough address space. Object storage takes care of disk access. Generally it might be way less efficent? What would the OS look like? It seems like a lot of OS services would disappear? You'd have a cloud of processes. Each process vm would be like a cell in a body. Maybe each process vm would load an auth module. Or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's no reason to ACK every packet. It's very common to deal with things selectively. SACK: [http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/jun/17/tcp-selective- acknowl...](http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/jun/17/tcp-selective- acknowledgments-sack/)

</comment><comment><USER36> If you're interested in the matter, here's more background info on userland TCP stacks:

[http://perso.uclouvain.be/olivier.bonaventure/blog/html/2013...](http://perso.uclouvain.be/olivier.bonaventure/blog/html/2013/12/01/sandstorm.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Unfortunately, most people are going to read the headline, read the conclusion (that Python is too slow for TCP), and not realize that it's wrong.

Hopefully someone will blog a response post that gets popular on HN proving just how wrong it is.

</comment><comment><USER38> And in Squeak (Smalltalk) ? take a look at: [http://www.squeaksource.com/@Hl1Cdo4NwCmLqQl0/Im9cEg0J](http://www.squeaksource.com/@Hl1Cdo4NwCmLqQl0/Im9cEg0J)

<comment><USER39> I'm guessing you were linking to [http://www.squeaksource.com/Net.html](http://www.squeaksource.com/Net.html) \- Seaside uses non-persistent URLs by default, leading to problems like this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fun read. Does anyone here know how to deal with the Python being slow at sending ACK packets problem? Or is it a built-in limitation that comes with dealing with high level languages?

<comment><USER41> Implement it in C.

Also its likely more a python problem than a "high level" language problem.

<comment><USER42> This has nothing to do with Python or C. More likely he has a bug in his code.

<comment><USER41> Python being magnitudes slower than C for networking code has a lot to do with Python, actually. Other smarter people have already explained it better than I can up above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Ha! Nice read, perfect after lunch material with my coffee :) Good job

</comment><comment><USER44> This is not an implementation of a TCP stack.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is not a TCP stack.

<comment><USER46> Indeed

<comment><USER45> It confuses me that people make such a big deal of their little 20 lines of code toy projects.

<comment><USER47> It's not a little 20 line of code toy project. It's an engaging and accessible writeup of some basic parts of TCP that happens to include some easy-to- understand code.

It's pointless to people who understand how TCP works in depth, but the majority of programmers don't.

<comment><USER26> It's an engaging and accessible writeup, true. Unfortunately, there are also several glaringly incorrect/misleading points in the article. The fact that it's getting upvoted is just..... strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My first thought was "it'll be slow as shit", then I clicked the article to confirm. Win!

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't know what TCP stack is, but in case if you are interested in implementing TCP/IP stack [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/lwip.git/tree/src](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/lwip.git/tree/src)

</comment><comment><USER49> And there is no mention of ScaPy? [http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/](http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/)

<comment><USER50> " I was much more comfortable with Python than C and I'd recently discovered the scapy networking library which made sending packets really easy."

Did you even _read_ the link?</comment></comment>