What happened to Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/105602688 <comment><USER2> Some stats about Microsoft's current market position:

* Microsoft holds almost 90% of the operating system market share [http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-shar...](http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8)

* MSN Messnger is the most popular IM client in the world, 60% market share <http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2006/04/3557.ars>

* Internet Explorer is still the most used browser, 65%+ market share [http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qp...](http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0)

* Microsoft Office is still the most used Office suite (95%+ market share?)

* XBox is selling great and they are taking a market leader position [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jan09/01-05XBo...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jan09/01-05XBoxBigYearPR.mspx)

* Hotmail is the most used web-email with 250 million users+ (GMail does not have 100 million yet) [http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist...](http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm)

* Microsoft are a big player in web-backend market. IIS and ASP are catching up with Apache [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_server_survey.html)

* .Net has the largest market share amongst developers [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=.net%2C+java%2C+c%23%2C+ru...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=.net%2C+java%2C+c%23%2C+ruby%2C+python&l=)

* Even in one of the biggest financial crisis, Microsoft still makes shit loads of money (almost $15 billion in revenue for Q1 2009) [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/23/microsoft-rev...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/23/microsoft-revenue-plunges)

Taken from <http://amix.dk/blog/viewEntry/19446>

<comment><USER3> The article is about the decline of MS. Statistical points that aren't rates or aren't compared to past statistical points are meaningless.

<comment><USER2> It points out that Microsoft is still a market leader in a lot of markets (including web-markets such as IM and email), they are earning lots of money in a bad economy and they are known to be excellent business people (some of the best in the market)... I think it's very naive to label one of the biggest companies in the IT industry as dead in any foreseeable future.

Btw. I also point out statical rates: Microsoft shares in IM, web-email, console market, developer tools market, web-server market etc. are all growing and aren't declining.

<comment><USER4> _"I also point out statical rates: Microsoft shares in IM, web-email, console market, developer tools market, web-server market etc. are all growing and aren't declining."_

Depends on how you measure it. For instance, apparently in terms of monthly uniques hotmail is declining and will be overtaken by gmail this year:

[http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArti...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213300662&subSection=News)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is filthy with mis-information. Just to give a few...

* Microsoft did make mistakes in it's early days. To make that point I need only cite all the Microsoft Execs who were quoted saying "OS/2 is the way of the future and We'll be phasing Windows out"

* Vista isn't popular with "die hard Windows fans". In fact, a big part of the reason Vista is failing is because there are a lot of things you can do in XP that you can't do in Vista (try right clicking on a network drive and looking for "Search" if you don't believe me)

* I don't see how you can have this sentence "Today's Microsoft is impulsive and sloppy." and then follow it immediately with this "It has become massive and complex with too many layers of management, committees, and bureaucracy to produce anything great " You're either bureaucratic or impulsive but you can't really be both

* Microsoft did not "rest on their laurels" after IE6. What did happen is that Jim Allchin decided Windows = IE and disolved the IE team by integrating them into the Windows team. So when Vista's development timeline went to hell so too did IE. But there were always people working on it.

* Microsoft did not "get lazy" and miss the Internet boat in the mid-90s. What they did do was "get proprietary" and back MSN as a competitor to the Internet (remember that back then AOL was the competitor to beat and they didn't even have Internet access integrated yet).

I could go on but the point is made I think. You should know a little something about Microsoft before you write a post on how the company went wrong.

<comment><USER6> It's largely irrelevant to most startups wether Microsoft went wrong because of X, or because of Y. Point is, they don't matter any more. Interesting from a historical point of view, but not much more.

MS still shows at every single opportunity that they do not understand the internet, and they'd actually rather it didn't exist. That's unlikely to change.

<comment><USER7> I would tend to disagree since nearly 30% of web servers run IIS, and ASP.NET is one of the most popular web frameworks on the market today. Considering that it is largely competing with _free_ servers and frameworks, that's fairly impressive.

[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/06/april_2009_web_server_survey.html)

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's useful to just go for raw numbers - it'll be skewed in ms favor with tons of big irrelevant corporations using it by default. How many big consumer sites use IIS/ASP.NET? How many startups? How many high traffic sites use it?

A web startup using IIS/ASP.NET is quite a rarity. I'd expect maybe 2% of startups? If that.

The fact the xBox doesn't even have a web browser should be reason enough for alarm.

<comment><USER8> I don't think irrelevant means what you think it means. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but they are certainly relevant. And those "big corporations" are certainly relevant too - they spend billions of dollars on hardware and software.

<comment><USER6> OK to clarify, Irrelevant if you're doing a consumer based web startup.

If you're doing B2B or corporate stuff, then sure, you have to deal with that rubbish along with everything else.

<comment><USER9> You're so wrong. And even if you weren't wrong,writing off the huge B2B market is pretty silly.

In any event, MySpace and PlentyOfFish both run off of .NET

So the largest dating site in the world, and the second largest social network. I'd say that's pretty relevant.

<comment><USER10> > So the largest dating site in the world

Ahem, largest FREE dating website :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These days more and more I realize that none of the people who comment on Microsoft are generally biased against microsoft and have no clue about Microsoft's business strategy. First the greatest fact of Microsoft is not innovation it is perseverance.

Generally they don't come up with any innovative products but they try to simulate other existing popular products but make them better over lots of versions by eating into competitors market share. (You can look into the history of microsoft products which will be easily proven)

The reason Microsoft can do is because they have lots of cash and they can take losses on the products for couple of versions. The greatest example is SQL Server with 1% market share in late 90's and close to 38 to 40% market share in 2009.

The revenues are generated for Microsof is because of volume of licenses. Every body knows that microsoft is microsoft because of Bill Gates who will be there for another 20 years to guide Microsoft just in case if it is needed. This is not true for Apple (Pancreatic cancer for Steve jobs) and also true for other companies.

\--R

</comment><comment><USER12> I would not dismiss Microsoft that easily, they are still a dominant force in software world and probably will be for a long time to come. Maybe they just lack focus here and there, which comes along having battles on so many fronts as they do have. Microsoft is a gigantic battleship with lots of bad and good stuff, for example Microsoft is a way to go if you want to be at the bleeding edge of 3D research these days, and that is just one very small segment of what they do - and lead in.

<comment><USER13> And don't forget Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. That's where Simon Peyton-Jones works on the Glasgow Haskell Compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated." - Mark Twain

Much like the endless stories of the death of Apple in the 90's, this article exudes an arrogance unsupported by the facts. Certainly, Microsoft has made many mistakes and are not at the top of their game right now. But to suggest that "Internet Explorer's marketshare will probably dip below 50% within three years." is a sign of their decline is comical. Below 50%.. within three years.. the horror.

Microsoft continues to be a dominant force in the business world and will for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, they now have competition again on many fronts that will only serve to push them to refocus and improve the products that have declined in recent years.

<comment><USER14> You know, not too long ago Internet Explorer was regarded as dominant force on the web (98% after all), now (at least where I am) it is already on the edge of falling below 50% (last week's numbers are 51.5% of all IE versions combined). And yes Firefox pushed MS to refocus, which gave us IE7 and IE8–so what? Being the dominant force at the moment does not mean you will stay here for long. Unless you have a clear vision ahead. I fail to see any signs of that vision on MS side.

<comment><USER7> When IE was at 98% they had almost no competition in the marketplace and the Internet was still just catching on. Netscape, through a combination of MS's actions and their own incompetence had become irrelevant. That was never a situation that could endure for long.

I don't disagree with your larger point. In my opinion as a web developer, IE7 and 8 are horrible browsers. My point is that Microsoft is more likely to rebound from this situation than to go out of business or become irrelevant.

<comment><USER3> And what did MS do? They disbanded the IE team and sat on their asses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a point of view, I hope you don't down vote it and understand it first.

Most of HN users are web developers. In web developement, MS was a stupid company, they try to make "their standards" and not respect the other standards; which leads them to a big failure, now they are changing (with Microsoft Expression), but their visitmix.com is still missing a lot to compete even products like wordpress.com, also the tools provided their (I tried them) are buggy... So MS needs lot of monetization to get in the right track.

This happen with me also, I didn't learn ASP.net although I'm a dot net developer. I learnt PHP, PHP servers are cheap, fast, simple and do what I need. So why go with the very costing ASP.net and SQL Server??

In Windows Developement, I beg to differ and I consider MS had succeeded. why? Because Dot Net (whether it has good shares or not (and it has)) it a GREAT product. I use Vista and I'm very satisfied with the results.

WPF and Dot net are little buggy, but that's normal for anything that goes big to have problems here and there. The Dot Net FrameWork is an important evolution in the domain of programming, is there any other competent framework? If you didn't tried it and want to develop OS applications then you should. Yes, Dot Net is for any OS, Windows, Linux, MAC. With the mono project (although I didn't tried it) I think only few tweaks are needed and your application is cross-platforms.

That's for the developers. MS didn't succeded online but did Offline.

Now when I come to the office, Office 2007 is much more advanced than 2003 and worth buying, there's a lot of whole new features to create nice documents (on word) the best feature I liked, is that i can convert my document to PDF and then it can be viewed by my clients whatever their OS!

MS is not good on all things, just few and what's wrong with that?

Is google good on all things? Was google good in his "knol"?? did google succeed with "orkut"?

Every company fail and succeed that's normal and every company is an "EVIL" and try to show us that they are "GOOD" people.

The future:

I think in the future MS will stay a power, but no longer a dominance, Market will be divided between MS, MAC and Google, but as the internet, computers and technology are getting wide spread, there will be a big market for each and no matter each one to work with, just the one you like most

<comment><USER16> There is no company called MAC, there is a company call Apple which has a line of computers commonly referred to as "Macs".

<comment><USER15> thx i had confusion on their OS, company name and computer name

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's telling that the article has no mention of Windows 7 which, unlike Vista, has been widely praised for it's polish and performance. The rollout through to RC has also been handled in a slick but low key manner.

Seems a little premature to write off Microsoft at this point.

<comment><USER18> I've been using Win7 for months, and I'm as happy as a school girl in a new Christamas dress.

<comment><USER19> It does look pretty good: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLU34h8SCF4>

If they restore search that they damaged with vista it could be a winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Xbox 360 is doing well against its similar competitor, the Playstation 3. The problem is that the Wii is doing even better - not be _being_ better, but by changing the basis of competition.

That is the one of the few ways that successful wll-run companies can die.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does google really have the much higher a success rate with moving into new markets? How often do you really use Knol, Lively, Google Base, Checkout, Sketchup, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER22> These days, I could care less about Microsoft. When I hear that they're about to announce a new product or enter a new market, I don't consider it important because innovation and quality just isn't in their genes. IMHO, they're living off past successes while companies like Google and Apple continue to innovate and make Microsoft a marginal player.

<comment><USER23> Innovation is term thrown awfully loosely.

Apple did not invent the MP3 player, smart phone, GUI. Google did not invent Web search, web mail, online maps. Microsoft did not invent the OS, IDE, Office suite.

Innovation is not a core-strength of these companies. As most large companies they focus on quality (creating a really good user experience) and marketing.

Companies like IBM, Philips, Amazon.com, Toyota run on innovation. AT&T and Apple (pre-90s) used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What happened to Microsoft last quarter was about thirteen billion dollars in revenue.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wishful thinking.

</comment><comment><USER25> _"Microsoft's entry into a market previously meant imminent death of any other players, but now it's usually a source of comedy for the tech press."_

As always, a sad end for the bully.

Geeks have never and will never tolerate bullies, ever.

Progress can not be caged and tamed, no matter how much money is spent on locks and chains.</comment>


Microsoft v MikeRoweSoft - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft <comment><USER2> When I was in college (mid 70s) we wrote a compiler for the 6800 - it fit in 2k, we were very proud .... we copyrighted everything under the name μSoft (everything was μ this and μ that back then, in retrospect it was a terribly obvious name).

A year later some upstart showed up on the scene using our name, and he just had a BASIC interpreter, sooo lame! We were college kids in NZ, pre-internet we had no real access to the rest of the world so our project, and our name died .... I so wish we'd incorporated, or at least registered the trademark

<comment><USER3> legally would you be entitled to royalties if you had registered the trademark? i dont know how long you can squat on a trademark before the obviously bigger entity has proper claim on it...

<comment><USER2> Probably not royalties, but we'd own the name, MS would have to trade under a different name in NZ (just as Burger King has to operate as "Hungry Jack's" in Australia), or come to some sort of accommodation.

BTW it's not "squatting" if you've come to the name for a genuine purpose, and as I said it was a pretty obvious name at the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I may play devil's advocate here, I've wondered if the motivation behind this was actually the fact that if you do not defend your trademark, your inaction can be used as a defense in future cases and you effectively lose your trademark. So you may have to pursue cases that you think are ridiculous to retain your right to pursue cases that you actually take seriously.

<comment><USER5> If I may play devil's advocate to that argument, it sounds like firefighters selling fire insurance, or something like regulatory capture for the legal system.

"If you don't hire enough lawyers to defend your trademark, you'll lose it!"

It hurts small actors in both directions; how many Mom/Pop shops can afford to "aggressively defend" their intellectual property, and how many can afford to actually defend it if a large incumbent comes after them with a frivolous suit motivated by these sorts of ridiculous fears?

I'm not saying the legal system doesn't work that way, it just sounds like a scuzzy argument.

<comment><USER4> I absolutely don't think it _should_ work that way, and I don't know if there's a case in which it has worked that way - but I've heard that from enough legit lawyers that I personally would weigh the cost of losing a trademark into whether or not my lawyers had my blessing in sending a cease- and-desist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mike Rowe did an AMA:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ajsih/i_am_the_guy_wh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ajsih/i_am_the_guy_who_owned_mikerowesoftcom_ama/)

<comment><USER7> He just posted here recently, btw: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16851021)

<comment><USER8> Link to his comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16852133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16852133)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> interestingly i dont think this would fly at all in China, where URL's are entirely made up of homonyms. [https://newrepublic.com/article/117608/chinese- number-websit...](https://newrepublic.com/article/117608/chinese-number- websites-secret-meaning-urls)

<comment><USER9> Or Japan. There are quite a few homonyms there too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want a funny one today look into JASON[1] vs JSON[2]. Douglas Crockford hasn't made a fuss yet but it certainly confuses people.

[1]: [https://github.com/xk/JASON](https://github.com/xk/JASON)

[1]: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/JASON](https://www.npmjs.com/package/JASON)

[2]: [http://www.json.org/](http://www.json.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Trademark is as much to protect consumers as it is to protect companies. For example, this kid could have shopped his services to unwitting small business owners in town, the kind of folks who might believe it when someone cold calls and tells them they have a virus on their computer. Turns out he's probably not a jerk, but how's Microsoft to know that?

All that said, this was clearly a case of bad PR management by Microsoft. It can't be that hard for Microsoft to buy off a 12th grader.

</comment><comment><USER12> 2013 HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6074388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6074388)

</comment><comment><USER13> also relevant: [http://nissan.com/](http://nissan.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> this makes me angry</comment>


Fatal Flaws in Deolalikar's P ≠ NP Proof? - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-deolalikars-proof/

<comment><USER2> Just for fun, check this video about Hitler and P vs NP problems...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSIodz9GWxc>

</comment><comment><USER3> oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

<comment><USER4> The ride isn't over yet. This happened - in private - to Wiles many times over, but each time he had the knowledge, insight and ability to add the extra material.

Then it went public, and even then there was a hole. That eventually required Taylor's assistance.

Math is like this. Lots of people with tangential deep knowledge are bringing their attention to the problem, but Deolalikar likely has more that he hasn't presented yet. I'm not betting the proof is right, but it's not dead yet.

Even more, there're ideas raised here yet to be explored, and who know, even if this proof doesn't do it on its own, perhaps it will form the foundation of a successful attack later.

Math goes on.

<comment><AUTHOR> If even R.J. Lipton would "hesitate to draw parallels" between Wiles and Deolalikar, how much more so should we? As Terry Tao writes, the consensus at this point seems to be that Deolalikar's general proof strategy -- exploiting independence properties in random -SAT or similar structures -- does not have much hope of establishing non-trivial complexity separation result. Link to Tao's comment on Lipton's blog: [http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in- deol...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/fatal-flaws-in-deolalikars- proof/#comment-5223)

<comment><USER4> I agree - what I'm saying is that people in the blogosphere and twitterverse seem to flail between the extremes all too quickly, rather than letting things take their course. It feels like people are going to declare "Well, that's that, then." and move on to other things despite there still being much to mine, and potentially results still to find.

Perhaps that would be a good thing. Let the experts work on it carefully, calmly and quietly without being constantly harried by the kibitzers demanding definite answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> While the non-experts did get excited early on, I haven't observed any flailing between extremes on the blogs of the computational complexity theorists I follow (R.J. Lipton and Scott Aaronson). Initially, Lipton seemed neutral, and Aaronson was skeptical. Since then, I've seen the dial on Lipton's blog move steadily towards "nothing to see here, move along".

I personally agree with those who believe that the draft is too disorganized to warrant further study by experts. If the author had used the traditional definition/proof/lemma style, the problems that have been pointed out so far would have been immediately visible, rather taking the experts days to untangle. [edit: For example, John Harrison, the author of the HOL Light proof-checking system, wrote on August 10: "As far as I can tell, nobody's quite managed to work out what exactly the statistical property of k-SAT he's using _is_." <http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=456#comment-44852>]

I don't mean this as a critique of the Deolalikar himself, but I do think he sent out his draft too soon.

<comment><USER4> It seems to me (with no privileged information) that he suffered from sending a written copy to a selcet number who he expected would treat it in confidence, but not all of whom did. I think it's great that he had a "thought piece" written, and I think it's great that he started to consult a few trusted colleagues. I think it's a real shame that the "think piece" was leaked.

If he'd taken six months to go over it in person, orally, calmly and in seclusion with a few chosen colleagues then there may have been a chance to either declare it unworkable, or to fix the holes. As it is, that didn't happen and we get this mess.

On the other hand, lots of people have seen - in some sense - real math in action. Maybe that's a good thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Writing a Book: The Imposter's Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://rob.conery.io/2016/07/04/imposters-handbook/ <comment><AUTHOR> Subhead: "There is so much I don't know about Computer Science. I figured I'd share that with you"</comment>


Show HN: Video Scrubber for Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-scrubber-for-instag/apondjajmejlodhkaenofcicoiiekghf <comment><AUTHOR> FYI: I made this. One of the best side effects of this extension is that an HTML5 video download button is now present. Also, because the video element itself is not hidden behind a transparent div, you can right click the video and "Save to Google Drive" if you have that extension too.</comment>


The Enemy Gets a Vote - <AUTHOR> https://cybersecpolitics.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-enemy-gets-vote.html <comment><AUTHOR> None of you are going to like this.</comment>


"babies too young to speak or understand intentions root for justice." - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/before-babies-even-babble-or-roll-theyre-primed-to-be-superhero-fans/ <comment><AUTHOR> The study design appears to have attempted to account for potential procedural bias (but I'm not a psychologist / psychology researcher).

That being said, does this not imply that a sense of justice is independent of, and perhaps one of the foundations for society, rather than society being the source of justice..Sort of the difference between natural law and common law at some level(??) :D

From the research article, the experimental procedure:

"Stimuli: Two familiarization animation scenarios were created using Poser 6.0 (e-frontier Inc.). In the familiarization scenario, each geometric cube agent (green or orange) with eyes, which was within a white bounded enclosure, watched an aggressor–victim interaction outside this enclosure in which one geometric spherical figure with eyes (aqua coloured) hit and crashed into another similar-looking (but yellow) figure. After this aggressive interaction, the cube agents (green and orange) either interfered in the interaction at the top of the display (interfering event) or did not interfere at the bottom of the display (non-interfering event) (Fig. 1a, Supplementary Videos 1 and 2). The two types of familiarization events (41 seconds in duration) were presented four times in alternate order (that is, the roles of the different coloured cubes and the presentation orders of the two familiarization animations were counterbalanced between participants). Following the familiarization phase was a forced-choice task in which infants were presented with two real cube objects corresponding to the colours and features seen in the animation (each cube was 6.5 × 6.5 × 6.5 cm). The presentation position of these two objects (left or right) was counterbalanced between participants."</comment>


Perl7 is a fork of values - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/leon_timmermans/2020/08/perl7-is-a-fork-of-values.html <comment><USER2> I think most people using Perl for anything non trivial (eg, large web app with Catalyst) are unlikely to be changing their version of Perl without a good reason, and very few people are starting large Perl projects now days. My day job is working on a fairly complex app running 5.28.1, we have no desire to change the Perl version without a very good reason to do so.

I find this post a little unsettling. It seems like even the Perl community is unsure why they are doing this.

At least for me, Perl === Perl 5 (and probably always will). It works, and it's ecosystem is very mature.

<comment><USER3> Something's gotta change though. The path perl5 is on ends in dead language. It's not attracting young talent, the last really high profile project that sticks out in my mind is Perl Dancer which was released in 2011, and modules on cpan are getting dusty/losing maintainers.

I also created and maintain a large Perl stack and in my opinion, the things that made Perl great 10-15 years ago, other languages have adopted and did better. Now for lack of want of updating the language, it's just languished. I just don't see a compelling reason to start a Perl project in 2020.

<comment><USER4> Then let it die in maturity, going down providing value to its users to the last, and focusing on any needs its remaining users may still have. Way better than stabbing it's user base in the back, and _still_ not attracting any new users. Because there's no feasible way Perl can just tweak a couple things and open up a new user base. It is what it is.

The whole "stab our existing users in the back and chase a new user base" model has been bizarrely popular lately, but I'm not sure I've seen it work even once.

(I exaggerate a bit with "stab", but still...)

<comment><USER5> > Then let it die in maturity

That can be achieved right now for anyone who is interested: download Perl5.32 and never update it. No one will ever force you to upgrade to Perl7 if you don't want to. Why hold everyone else back when remaining in a static state can be done in isolation?

<comment><USER6> > download Perl5.32 and never update it

I think this is an interesting sentiment when contrasted with the Python 2/3 split, where most people are pushing to get projects into on 3 and warning users of 2 they will not be getting official security patches any more. Maybe because Perl's community is smaller they wouldn't be as hard-line on this and release security fixes for Perl 5 if they were merited (though I don't see Perl as a tempting target for malware authors).

It feels like that article states that some people in the Perl community want to make the breaking changes to free themselves of legacy and gain the advantage of accessibility from new users by doing so, being that Perl 5 desperately needs new users, but contrasts this with the fact that protecting that legacy was both a core value of the Perl project and possibly one that held it back for too long.

I honestly wonder where we would be if Python never made the 2/3 split and we'd all still be using Python 2 at this point with all of its design flaws. Surely it wouldn't die from becoming outdated, seeing other languages do the same things better, as with Perl?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like Perl, and I think that changing the defaults is a sane thing to do. Starting a new script with dozens of "use strict", "use v5.30", etc is less than ideal and it's easy to forget something and shoot yourself in the foot. Almost 30 years will pass between Perl 5 and 7, and going back to the old values is just a matter of adding a few lines at the beginning of your old script. It's not a mess like the whole "Python 2/3" ordeal that was deeply more complex and painful.

Heck Perl in the last 30 years has been even more stable than C. I remember when gcc and clang switched from a default of GNU89 to GNU99 and it broke several packages who didn't set or check for the right flags; nobody bitched about it and just went on to fix their Makefiles.

<comment><USER8> I am not a Perl person, but it does sound to me like a lot of this thread is is missing what's going on, yeah. They're not changing the language, they're just changing the runtime to use better, more modern defaults. I don't know if you would be able to put in "use unstrict" or something and get back the old behavior, but any actively-maintained code is probably using most of these newer defaults anyway.

<comment><USER9> Brian D Foy wrote a pretty good post on this. [https://www.perl.com/article/announcing- perl-7/](https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/)

Essentially, it is just perl 5.32 with more modern defaults. They will keep evolving the language. Perl 5 isn't going anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Had a chance to work with Leon on the TestAnything protocol. Really great guy to work with.

>I don't know where we're going. I'm not even sure if this forking is good or bad in the long run (it could be good if managed well, but so far it isn't). And that terrifies me.

Hopefully this new version will make Perl easier for newcomers. But maybe before the final decision they will find a compromise solution where some old features may be dropped, while making it not-so-hard to migrate Perl5 to Perl7.

<comment><USER11> > Had a chance to work with Leon on the TestAnything protocol. Really great > guy to work with.

Why thank you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wait, hold on. They're talking about Perl7. Is this the next version after Perl6, which is called Raku? Or is Raku already completely forked off and now they're talking about another fork of what remains of Perl?

<comment><USER13> They are talking about the next iteration of Perl 5. [https://www.perl.com/article/announcing- perl-7/](https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So now that Perl 7 wants to actively remove backwards compatibility from its culture, where are people to turn now for stable/non-moving scripting languages?

<comment><USER15> /bin/sh?

I am not sure what the balance of facetious vs serious is here. The various Unix shells have been stable for quite a while. Obviously sh is very barebones, but zsh and bash, for example, have associative arrays and other modern conveniences.

Outside of various shells, there are several other options that come to mind which do not teeter on facetiousness.

So far as I know, tcl is also quite stable.

Common Lisp is perfectly usable as a scripting language and has a very stable standard and mature libraries.

<comment><USER16> The reason I reach for Perl rather than bash is it has far more features and far easier to manage.

I don't bother with python as you get into a horrendous mess with pip breaking and the v2/v3 issue.

Not every piece of code needs to serve a million people, not every piece of code needs to be sold to google, sometimes you just need code to do a simple occasional job and not change every couple of years.

<comment><USER17> Python is fully on v3 now. It was a terrible transition, but it's done.

<comment><USER18> Hahaha no. Much of our code is still v2, with no hint of a transition happening any time soon. It's mostly in maintenance mode.

Quick edit: To sibling comment's point, we're not a tech company, so it's very difficult to get this type of work done. It pretty much only happens on new development (where we are using python3), but that new development doesn't replace the old code.

<comment><USER19> Python 2 just reached end-of-life with the last-ever update arriving in October this year. So you better get moving soon if your code isn't completely air gapped.

[https://adtmag.com/articles/2020/01/09/python-2-end-of- life....](https://adtmag.com/articles/2020/01/09/python-2-end-of-life.aspx)

There are current three outstanding CVEs for the latest version of Python 2. Hopefully, they'll be patched up in the upcoming release, but good luck after that.

[https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-1021...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-10210/product_id-18230/version_id-305022/Python- Python-2.7.17.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Exactly. "7.0 doesn't aim to bring new features, it doesn't enable us to do anything that isn't possible without it (other than not writing that guard). Instead, it aims to change perl culture as we know it. The whole point of perl7 is radically choosing approachability over stability."

Breaking back compat without any new features on the horizon to justify them is not only ridiculous, it's suicide. They even broke back compat in 5.30 with the change of attribs on subs, which is heavily used outside of perl5, but not at all within. Totally unjustifiable.

<comment><USER21> > Breaking back compat without any new features on the horizon to justify them > is not only ridiculous, it's suicide.

I disagree. EmberJS is a great example of this philosophy done right. Major releases of Ember typically have no new features, they just break backwards compatibility in favor of more efficient ways to do things. This "sets the stage" for features that get added in minor releases. So when Ember releases a new major, you typically don't have to upgrade to it if you don't want the new features. But it's released so you can measure the level of effort as well as the impact the upgrade would have on your codebase. Contrast this with the way Ruby on Rails releases new major versions, with one giant release every couple years that either breaks compatibility, causes performance/cognitive issues, or some combination of the two.

In my opinion, major versions _shouldn 't_ have new features. The way Ember gets away with this is by sometimes releasing two versions simultaneously, a major "X.0.0" version for upgrading apps to measure the level of effort, and a minor "X.1.0" for new apps. Want to start a new app? Choose the first minor. Want to upgrade your old app? Choose the major.

<comment><USER22> I am not sure one can compare some JS framework with a language that was already 8 years old when JS as a language appeared. By the time JS was invented, there was already legacy perl code in production that needed to be maintained.

<comment><USER21> I don't see how that's relevant to software project management. The ways we release software and plan out roadmaps don't really have much to do with what language or framework the software was made in. Just because Ember is "some JS framework" doesn't mean it has no good ideas.

<comment><USER23> To me it's really not about whether it's a good idea or not. What works for an 8-year-old project that has always done it that way, may not work for a 33-year-old project which has _never_ done it that way. The latest perl will run a huge chunk of the perl 1.0 test suite unmodified. That's a long history of backwards compatibility. This sudden change in focus and project-management may really backfire on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Much of the problem is that people see things like Perl or Python as holy grails that must not be changed or questioned. This stance mainly comes from these languages having been installed by default on almost all Unix platforms for the past 25 years. That's quite a long time to bludgeon people into thinking that these things are sacred and fixed.

Computerists should not be afraid to try something new at every turn, and then reject that something if it does not measure up. In the short run, change is often scary, but in the long run it is the only way to survive.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if Perl 8 will also be a fork of Perl 5.

</comment><comment><USER26> a similar argument is going on in c++ community - whether to value stability or performance.

one thing that always struck me is that the number of developers of X language is some factor times the number of developers at the point in time when it first had a strong community. if that factor is greater than 2, and it usually is, then to me dividing the language into two distinct dialects with different values makes sense.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps spreading out the breaking changes as PHP has done from 4 through 7.

<comment><USER28> One thing specific to C++ is that the main point of discussion isn't necessarily about the language itself, instead it is about breaking the ABI or not moving forward. Breaking the ABI would allow for significant performance improvements, but that would require a huge amount of libraries to be recompiled, which is something a lot of vendors don't want and sometime cannot because sources aren't available anymore.

<comment><USER29> What about something like this? [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040108-00/?p=41...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040108-00/?p=41163)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Which kind of greenfield projects would the perl community like to claim? Is there anything it's particularly suited for?

</comment><comment><USER30> If I understand right, all they are doing is changing the per-script, per- module defaults to enable current language features, instead of having most features since about 2005 disabled by default.

Perl5 has a very strong position on backward compatibility. Even when they change behaviour or add new syntax, that's disabled by default unless a script or module explicitly asks for the new behaviour.

Each significant feature can be switched off or on per module. Even if the main program turns on features, they remain off for the modules used by the main program.

So as far as I can tell, the proposal is just to change this default, so that modern Perl5 features are available to new code by default, instead of having to be explicitly requested, and there's no radical change or incompatibility planned for v7.

That's a change of compatibility-first culture. It means scripts which don't specify what they do and don't want will indeed break with newer versions, occasionally. However Perl5 changes quite slowly, and it's unusual for something new to break something old anyway.

But it should be easy for scripts to specify what they want.

If there's a "no v7" directive that should be enough at the start of any script or module that wants to keep working while being insulated from future changes. That's not much different, in practice, than what they already have to do to ask for features they do use.

Another idea would be to have two search path directories, with different defaults in each, and modules install into the appropriate one according to module metadata. This would allow existing, old modules to carry on working in v7.

</comment><comment><USER31> I really don't get any of this. Here's the full picture: Larry Wall mostly gave up on Perl 5 in 2000 and announced the next release would be "Perl 6". A few small updates happened to perl 5 up until 2002. Larry started working on Perl 6, forever leaving perl 5. Perl 5 goes stagnant for 5 years, meaning it had no updates released for 5 years. During this time, droves of people picked up python. Perl 6 was no where near complete in 2007, and a small team of devs pushed out perl "5.10" after a 5 year hiatus.

Perl 6 was finally released in ~2018 but by this time no one cared. The perl 6 team feels because of the name 'perl', people aren't adopting this new language, so they change the name. And now a year later, the small perl 5 team is wanting to take perl into the modern age by breaking backwards compatibility. It makes no sense at all, that was the job of perl 6.

It would no different if I started complaining about python 2 not getting any updates and then making a plan to better improve its parser and object model and break backwards compatibility and bring it into the modern age. Python 3 already did that, so like what the heck are you doing???

And then the comments from the perl 7 supporters... saying things like we can either "fight or die" or doing nothing is "certain death" but the alternative is "uncertain hope". I just don't see the point in fighting for something the original author of gave up on over 20 YEARS ago.

I've stated my points [0] before on how companies that stick with perl 5 do so at their own demise. They get cultured into a train of thought where updating software is seen as bad and unhealthy. And if they are a consultancy, their downstream customers also get cultured in to never having to worry about "updates" and/or paying for updates. So then long term contracts with said customer only take into account the cost of feature enhancements instead of "maintenance". So then it becomes impossible to move either consultancy or customer off of the "perl platform" because going to something like django, while a big cost in its own right, would involve a different long term contract that would require paid support and downtime for future django updates/releases. Never mind that finding devs would be easier (and probably cheaper), and the fact that django gets regular security audits and has a much larger plugin/library support ecosystem.

Anyway, to each their own. And godspeed to the perlings out there, I just don't see how any of this is worth it...

[0]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23633478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23633478)

</comment><comment><USER32> Perl does have a fair few quirks but those that know it are probably content for it to stay the way it is and those who don't like it have probably moved to another language.

Personally, I don't like a major version of a programming language making major breaking changes because upgrading a programming language is not at all like upgrading an app.

Would it be so bad of them just to keep Perl as it is and imagine the 'new shiny' and give that a new name - maybe Porl or something?

<comment><USER33> I mean they already tried that with Raku (Perl6) and it didn't gain the adoption they wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am honestly disappointed, I think Raku is a much nicer language than Perl 5 or 7

And I really wish, if those working on Perl 5 would have switched to Raku, but sadly i think CPAN for Perl 5/7, have a lot more activity than the equivalent at Raku

Most new and modern languages are Compiled, Functional or targeting the JVM or .Net frameworks

Raku is I think the last and only modern scripting language , it could have used the helping hand of the Perl 5/7 community

<comment><USER35> Isn't Python typically considered a scripting language, and usually ranked as at least top 3 in popularity?

<comment><USER34> Yes, but the way i see it, Raku (Perl6) was a complete rewrite of Perl .. was a radical change (rational numbers, grammar, multimethods, ...)

Python 3, is in my opinion more of an incremental and conservative change

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Expressiveness + Extensibility + Stability

Sounds like excellent values for a programming language.

I'm interested to hear what the top three values for Perl 7 are?

Exciting times for Perl!

</comment><comment><USER37> what happened to perl6? I'm confused :)

<comment><USER34> They renamed it to Raku, the renamed have two benefits in minds

1\. Reintroduce Perl 6 (Raku) as a completely new language, since some thought that being linked to Perl prevented adoption

2\. Open the road for Perl 5 to evolve and add features, many people in the Perl 5 community thought that Perl 6 prevented Perl 5 from growing

In Summary, the sentiment was, Perl 5 and Perl 6 are two different languages each with its own roadmap, but that the name gave the impression they are one, and prevented both from evolving

<comment><USER37> cheers, TIL :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Perl7 is as important as Rocky 7 or Terminator 7.

</comment><comment><USER39> Love to see the Perl team discussing these issues in such a thoughtful way. Over the years I have learned to value stability and backwards compatibility, through hard lessons (which were often quite expensive to my employer). But no one value is good or bad, per se, rather they should be selected carefully: and that is the point I took away from this article.

</comment><comment><USER40> I always wondered what the trolls on slashdot posted about Tom Christiansen when he died. The posts were all deleted.

<comment><USER41> Huh?

Last I heard, Tom Christiansen is still alive. And I'm not sure what the connection is, other than that he's done a lot of work with perl.

<comment><USER42> I believe he's talking about the thread when W Richard Stevens died.

<comment><USER41> (Apologies for the very slow response.) W Richard Stevens died in 1999. HN started in 2007. Is it possible that you're thinking of someone else?

<comment><USER42> They said slashdot, not HN.

<comment><USER41> Ohhhh, duh, so they did. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online Bank Startup Leaves Customers Without Access to Their Cash - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/online-bank-chime-suffers-major-outage-stranding-customers-cash <comment><USER2> As Stripe, Brex and others do: if you are serious about payments, build your own infrastructure. Most processos run on 80s tech</comment>


Google's Project Soli radar is sensitive enough to count sheets of paper - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/4/18168083/google-project-soli-radar-hardware-applications-radarcat-solinteraction-university-of-st-andrews <comment><USER2> _> And unlike with object recognition that uses cameras, there are no privacy concerns, or need to maintain line-of-sight or good lighting conditions. Radar works through different materials and in the dark as well as the light._

Wait, what? The ability to see through walls and not require line of sight leads to _fewer_ privacy concerns?

Seems to me the privacy concerns are significantly greater for radar than facial recognition. Radar can see places that cameras can't, and while it doesn't capture color information, it does capture detailed 3D data that camera-based systems need to interpolate.

Plus, you know, the whole working through walls thing. Seems like there are at least as many opportunities for abuse as with facial recognition technology.

<comment> Digit-Al Firstly, I think (though I could be wrong) that when they talk about privacy concerns they mean the sort of concerns the average person would have about having a camera about... I.e. naked or compromising pictures of themselves getting leaked. I would guess this wouldn't be a problem with radar as it doesn't create images.

Out of curiosity though, not having much knowledge on the subject myself, what would be your security concerns? I would be genuinely interested in knowing what we should be looking out for, privacy wise, with such technology.

<comment><USER3> Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That's because you want privacy, not secrecy. (From I have nothing to hide. Why should I care about my privacy? : [https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide- why...](https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why...))

From a previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14394863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14394863)

google has no business needing to know where I am or am not. (even though they already do, thanks android/google-fi/chrome-cast/nest/etc etc.)

<comment><USER4> Your Medium link didn't work -- here it is after a google search:

[https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide- why...](https://medium.com/@FabioAEsteves/i-have-nothing-to-hide-why-should-i- care-about-my-privacy-f488281b8f1d)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering about applications of this to robotics? Like, could this replace any of the needs/uses for force-feedback sensors in robotics, and/or for all the cool stuff Dexter[1] is doing to precisely locate it's arm in space with solutions less coupled to the hardware specifics/manufacturing? Could also maybe be really cool way to train robots on really precise behaviors if they can copy with really fine precision exactly what someone does with their hands and fingers, maybe can generalize/learn from a few simple demonstrations really complex interactions if the 3d fidelity is good enough? Dunno, definitely lots of other concerns/questions but robotics and VR/AR stuff come to mind for me and weren't mentioned at all in the article or any of the other comments, curious if any reasons I'm missing why not relevant there.

[1][http://hdrobotic.com/dexter/](http://hdrobotic.com/dexter/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This small radard is sensitive enough to identify playing cards by looking at the tiny texture. Looking forward to seeing magicians using this in card tricks. Face ID with hyper sensitive radard should also be very accurate.

<comment><USER6> Do facial recognition systems retrain themselves to compensate for change caused by growth or age?

<comment><USER7> Random side-fact: a co-worker who climbs a lot stopped using fingerprint sensors on his phones because his prints change frequently enough due to climbing, that it's basically useless.

<comment><USER8> Many years ago I had to clock in and out of a job with a fingerprint scanner. I had the same issue because I played acoustic guitar a lot and had thick calluses on my fingers that would occasionally crack.

<comment><USER9> > Many years ago I had to clock in and out of a job with a fingerprint > scanner.

Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of a company doing this. Was it like a second factor in addition to some type of card reader?

<comment><USER8> It was an entry-level IT support job at a US public school district circa 2005. They had just recently installed the scanners at every building. I believe that part-time and hourly employees like custodians, mechanics, groundskeepers, and cafeteria workers were the primary target, but the policy also extended to the tech support department (which was only me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> VIDEO HERE > [https://youtu.be/FCi56T8X-eY](https://youtu.be/FCi56T8X-eY) (1:00)

<comment><USER11> Crazy fast video that is hard to follow, but thanks for the link.

<comment><USER12> It is difficult to cramp everything into a 3 minutes video that's why. The first part is just the summary so it might be really fast but the next part should be slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The developer in me is like : "wow the potential is huge!" And the concerned citizen in me is like :"great another sensor in my pocket!"

</comment><comment><USER14> Inane gos, but I see a Monzo card at 1:35. That means this was very probably developed in the UK?

I have to say the branding choice for the colour of that card was a pretty brilliant move.

<comment><USER15> Tangential, but I can't find a definition for gos online, is that an abbreviation for something?

<comment><USER16> I figured it was "gossip".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If a sheet of paper is roughly .1 mm, then this must be running over 300GHz, or what is more commonly called infrared light, no?

<comment><USER18> I think it runs around 60Ghz and uses phased arrays / doppler to make up the rest of the resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't say I see the win with the from a HCI standpoint. I personally lust for more tactile feedback, not less!

<comment><USER20> The big gain I see is enabling more controls on smaller devices. Right now physical size is a hard limitation on the number of different control interfaces (buttons or screens or, for future devices with Soli or it's kin on board, gestures), with Soli though the whole volume above the object becomes interface space and the limit is the number of gestures that can be recognized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This tech is taking ages to get to market. I worked at a place hired to come up with app ideas for it 5 years ago. I would have expected a pair or bangles by now that give you hands in VR and a finger gestures library.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. What is the range of this device? If its effective range is anything above half a meter then it would raise serious privacy concerns.

I can image that different persons would produce a different movement signature when moving into the range of the sensor.

It is definitely an interesting device but any additional sensory data at the hands of Google makes me tiny bit more nervous.

</comment><comment><USER23> so if I understand this correctly, if it can pass through many materials then does that include clothing? so a passive the target system by which you can determine what they have hidden on their person? what is the range?

set it recognize certain shapes, walk past a sensor laden wall, and have it high light in bright green images objects of interest like total recall?

<comment><USER24> That's how american TSA airport security scanners operate. They use a millimeter wave scanner to identify foreign objects on a person. The only lacking bit is the real-time hollywood-style visualizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is fantastic!

I remember a talk Pranav Mistry (Director of Samsung Think Tank) gave at TED, which is what Soli turned out to be.

</comment><comment><USER26> But can it see through clothing?

<comment><USER27> interestingly - they are already ___integrating_ __this into clothing. Specifically Levis jackets.

Source - A close friend of mine is on the Soli team.

<comment><USER20> That sounds like you're thinking of Jacquard [0] not Soli which was a woven cloth interface.

[https://atap.google.com/jacquard/](https://atap.google.com/jacquard/)

<comment><USER27> Yes - but based on info from friend on Soli team, same tech+team... (but I could be wrong)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Counting sheets of paper can be done very accurately simply by weighing the stack. It's how banknotes are counted.</comment>


Two self-driving startups team up to build a different kind of Lidar - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/how-optical-telecom-innovations-could-lead-to-cheap-powerful-lidar/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> This looks very promising. A more robust lidar based on some pretty simple scientific principles.</comment>


Esoteric Input Methods: Dasher and Morse - TBF-RnD http://tbf-rnd.life/blog/2019/05/27/dasher-method-and-what-i-am-trying-to-accomplish/ <comment><AUTHOR> Nice, I remember playing with Dasher many moons ago; visited David MacKay (RIP) back in 1996. In 2009 I developed my own text input system called D-Board. There's a brief video of a prototype here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do0fUWME0Mw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do0fUWME0Mw)

Source code of the prototype is here: [https://github.com/kranzky/d_board](https://github.com/kranzky/d_board)

In fact, with the help of Paul Geerts, I submitted an earlier version of d-Board to SONY in 2006 or thereabouts while working in game development. It ran on the PS3 and used a similar interface to that shown in the video. The search menu in the PlayStation Store on PS4 later adopted this interface (although it's been replaced by an OSK these days), perhaps because somebody saw the prototype and decided they'd use it there.</comment>


The Internet Is a Brain - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/stibel/2008/06/the-internet-is-a-brain.html

<comment><USER2> This analogy is nothing new, and unfortunately it is just the latest analogy of the brain to the latest technological gizmo.

The brain was analogous to the telegraph, the telephone switchboard, the computer, and now ... the Internet.</comment>


How to Protect Your Android Phone from the Stagefright Bug - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/07/how-to-protect-your-android-device-from-stagefright-exploit.html

<comment><USER2> Just posted this in the comments on another article about stagefright.

Even better, use TextSecure ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms)) by Open Whisper Systems ([https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/)).

 _Supposedly the vulnerability is in stagefright, which is the Android framework responsible for audio /video encoding/decoding and playback. TextSecure doesn't do any pre-processing of received audio/video messages, so it seems unlikely that a vulnerability in stagefright could be triggered simply by sending audio/video to a TextSecure user._

 _TextSecure plays audio /video by handing it to the system's default media player. If there's a stagefright vulnerability, it's possible that the system's default media player is vulnerable. From TextSecure, that interaction should only happen by physically tapping on an audio/video attachment, then tapping through a warning dialog about insecure playback. At that point, it's out of our hands._

 _\- moxie_

[https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/whispersystems/2015-07/msg0...](https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/whispersystems/2015-07/msg00084.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm a huge fan of Text Secure, been using it for a while. That and Red Phone (also by Open Whisper) makes your life indeed more secure on Android.

<comment><USER2> Unlike TextSecure, RedPhone is a bit rough as it hasn't been updated in a while. If someone wants encrypted calls _today_ it does the job but it will soon be merged into TextSecure (guessing the name will change to Signal like on iOS).

The team at Open Whisper Systems has done a great job making privacy this easy. For people that aren't interested in encryption I don't even go into that when telling them to use TextSecure. I just tell them it's better and kind of like iMessage for Android, as it sends regular sms to contacts without it and (encrypted) data messages to those who do.</comment></comment></comment>


Evolution of the WordPress interface from 2003-2008 - <AUTHOR> http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/12/a-journey-through-five-years-of-wordpress-interface/ <comment><USER2> Personally, I dislike the new design. It has good intentions but it misses the mark. This would have been a good example of when not to listen to your users-- of _course_ the majority of them is going to prefer gradients and flashy dropdowns.

It feels to me as if it was built like a crappy powerpoint presentation: sliding and fading just for the sake of sliding and fading. Everyone thinks "Ooh, ahh!" but there really isn't any added usability to the effects.

In some parts of the interface, you have to click multiple times to get to something you shouldn't have to click on to see _at all_. Once again, you click _just for a dropdown_. Then you have to click again to get to where you want to go. Eye candy for the sake of eye candy.

In my opinion, the 2.5 Happy Cog design was the best of the bunch. It improved drastically, usability-wise, on top of the previous release, and it did so by re-aligning, no re-designing. You may argue that Happy Cog was limited by the fact that they had to base their work on a previous structure, but I really believe this is the best way to improve UI: incremental updates, each improving upon the last, instead of one quick release that wasn't too well thought out.

<comment><USER3> The pont of animations is to slow down the interface so that changes are more obvious and flowing.

"Shiny" animations almost always make a user interface dramatically slower to use, as you have to wait for them to finish!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also, I know it's an informal blog, but I think it's really unprofessional to call something the "DO NOT WANT" release. I'm really sick and tired of half- baked "memes" being included in writing as weak attempts at humor. It just comes across badly to me.

<comment><USER4> Do you also notice that you frequently need to shake your cane to get the kids off your lawn? :P

<comment><USER5> He doesn't have a cane; he's got a walker, you insensitive clod!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What skunkworks project are you working on? - <AUTHOR>

I guess I'd just like to know what type of thing everyone's working on - new projects, products, process improvements, tool integration, etc. <comment><USER2> I'm have a skunkworks port of part of my company's software to a different hardware platform. In addition to being fun, and interesting for performance comparisons, it's also a useful discipline for keeping the code portable.</comment>


MobileCoin Tech Talk #1 Starting in 9 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/161656367781693/videos/593068141553491/ <comment><USER2> Finally! Looking forward to this</comment>


Ask HN: MariaDB, OurDelta or Percona? - <AUTHOR>

Apparently there are now three different active distributions of MySQL. Are you guys using any of them already? <comment><USER2> For 5.1 OurDelta are MariaDB builds. So there are only two to consider. See this thread on Stackoverflow, and my reply:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2450534/which-mysql- fork-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2450534/which-mysql-fork-version- to-pick/3009643#3009643)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Percona is what I've been using lately.</comment>


A Computer Afflicted with 6 Infamous Viruses Has Passed $1M at Auction - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb93jx/a-computer-afflicted-with-6-infamous-viruses-has-passed-dollar1-million-at-auction <comment><USER2> Wow. I guess the art world will really buy anything. Surely the computer will die at somepoint and become worthless?</comment>


UN privacy watchdog says 'little or no evidence' that mass surveillance works - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/un-privacy-rapporteur-says-little-or-no-evidence-that-surveillance-laws-work/ <comment><USER2> oh, it works, just not for the ostensible purpose of "fighting terrorism" or "fighting crime".

Clearly the purpose is to keep tabs on Enemies of The State, ability to suppress dissent, and chill actions of the populace.

For example, since the Snowden revelations, how often have you decided _not_ to google for "HERF gun" or something else you were curious about, just so you wouldn't earn the attention of a FVEYES motherfucking pervert snooper?</comment>


What do real writers want from a writing host like pen.io or quitewrite - <AUTHOR>

webapps like pen.io and quitewrite provide a service where writers can have a nice place to host their writing outside of a blog, pdf or ebook format.  Are there any writers out there who KNOW what they want? What are the key features, what keeps you coming back and what are the nice-to-haves.<p>Some possibilities to get the discussion started. - Sharing features ( Twitter, Facebook , Reddit?) - Unbranded by the host (ie. no quitewrite logo) - WYSIWYG - Custom CSS - Pagination - analytics - Anonymity
- ability to sell the content - Private / Public viewing - blog cross posting - short-URLs - Permanent vs Editable - "show more from this author" link - HTML, Markdown or other markup languages <comment><USER2> Well pen.io already offers no logos (branding), pagination, anonymity and HTML support.

A professional version of the product will be released later on this year which covers pretty much the rest of the features</comment>


Wireless System Could Offer a Private Fast Lane - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/technology/wireless-system-could-offer-a-private-fast-lane.html

<comment><USER2> The pCell spatial demonstration [1] is really amazing. If this delivers what it promises, we could finally have the technology we needed to cut the cord entirely for personal/business Internet access and to no longer be at the mercy of Comcast/TWC/Verizon to deploy the last mile. That is, if we aren't just trading one despot for another.

1\. [http://vimeo.com/86746051](http://vimeo.com/86746051)

</comment><comment><USER3> Old white paper [http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf](http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf)

via: [http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/story/artemis-pcell- offer...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/story/artemis-pcell-offers- personal-cell-every-device-promises-dramatic-lte-capac/2014-02-19)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Artemis demo [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OoXQGUZye_g](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OoXQGUZye_g)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds kinda like CDMA. Anyone have a more technical description?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been looking for a technical explanation as well. The best I've found so far are a host of the patents ostensibly associated with pCell implementation [1], [2], [3], etc.

[1] System and method for DIDO precoding interpolation in multicarrier systems [https://www.google.com/patents/US8571086](https://www.google.com/patents/US8571086)

[2] System and method for adjusting DIDO interference cancellation based on signal strength measurements [http://www.google.com/patents/US20110002371](http://www.google.com/patents/US20110002371)

[3] Systems and methods to coordinate transmissions in distributed wireless systems via user clustering [http://www.google.com/patents/US20110002371](http://www.google.com/patents/US20110002371)

<comment><USER3> [3] is [https://www.google.com/patents/US8542763](https://www.google.com/patents/US8542763) , you pasted [2] twice.

These are quite readable; worth a look. Thank you, ashwinl.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 19 Feb 2014 demo. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bO0tjAdOIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bO0tjAdOIw)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7316606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7316606)</comment>


Ask HN: When interviewing, what are the telltale signs of a very good candidate? - <AUTHOR> What are the signs you use to sort out the best candidates before an interview (or after having the initial chat with them)? <comment><USER2> Our main metrics for hiring are be based on Skill, Knowledge, Quality, Ownership and Collaboration. Which is similar to @ruraltechnocrat. But I will explain how our process is and at what point we measure qualities.

1\. Skill: we review his works in Github, Behance etc. If he made an application and release we will go through it also.

2\. Knowledge: through interview

3\. Quality: We will give him a one-week test task to make a small application using some web services like Flickr, Instagram etc.

4\. Ownership & Collaboration: After reviewing the test task we will invite him to the office and work with the team on the real project. may be peer program with a developer.

This is a very long process but we got a better result from out old fashion of hiring. But Still @dsacco quote is very true, there is no universal sign for a good candidate.

Most of the candidates are like the yin-yang. but I had seen and inspired a lot of good managers who maintained the equilibrium in the team. This is something out of the scope of the question but shared the thought.

Peace

</comment><comment><USER3> There are no universal signs that a candidate is very good. This is one of many reasons why hiring is difficult.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hiring is very difficult. I think looking at a prospective hire with the same lens you'd use to review them is helpful.

So you're trying to understand how this perform as:

1\. Employee - are they capable (motivation + skill) of doing a good job across the dimensions of quality and speed?

2\. Owner - are they the kind of person who can display ownership of an area? This can be demonstrated by outside activities/projects they worked on, or ways they made their former work environment better/more efficient

3\. Teammate - are they going to be a good teammate, a nice person, and collaborate well with others?

If you see red flags in any of these areas, probably not a good hire. If you see excellence in these, probably a great hire.</comment>


Inventor Claims to Have Solved Floating Point Error Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.hpcwire.com/2018/01/17/inventor-claims-solved-floating-point-error-problem/ <comment><USER2> Considering the over-the-top language ("a game changer for the computing industry") and questionable or imprecise comments like, "[it] allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" (um, who reads that without thinking of irrational numbers?) it sounds too much like a sales pitch and not like serious research.

I could be wrong, but based on the similarities to interval arithmetic everyone has already identified, I'm pretty skeptical. At best, this could be a patent on a more efficient way to build interval arithmetic into a CPU architecture rather than a completely new technique.

As my British friends would say though, I can't be arsed to actually read the patent.

<comment><USER3> That's what I was thinking too; If I do 1 / 3, then of course it will have to truncate, and integration errors would still be inevitable.

<comment><USER4> Actually it's possible to represent 1/3 perfectly accurately, but what about all the numbers that it's theoretically impossible to compute? (Almost all real numbers have this property)

<comment><USER5> > Almost all real numbers have this property

> Almost all

I love this comment because it brings back memories of school.

In a layman's terms, I think almost all in this case means all but a finite amount

can we say almost all real numbers are irrational?

1 1/1 2/1 3/1 4/1 5/1 ... 2 1/2 2/2 3/2 4/2 5/2 ... 3 ...

so clearly we can count all the rational numbers but how many irrational numbers are there? are there (many) more irrational numbers than there are rational numbers?

<comment><USER6> The rational numbers are clearly countable. The irrational numbers are uncountable, which means that for every rational number there are infinitely many irrational numbers.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't talking about irrational numbers.

<comment><USER7> But all non-computable numbers are irrational.

<comment><USER8> No, there are also non-computable numbers that are imaginary, complex, or transfinite.

<comment><USER7> All rational numbers are real. Therefore all non-real numbers are irrational.

<comment><USER8> Uh, no, "irrational" is defined as a subset of real numbers.

<comment><USER7> Non-rational, then.

This is about as consequential as debating whether 1 is a prime number.

<comment><USER8> This thread was about "all the numbers that it's theoretically impossible to compute". If you think the difference between "irrational" and "non-rational" in this context is irrelevant, you have a weak grasp of number theory. Yes, all are non-computable, but in different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The floating point error problem has not been solved. This patent describes a floating-point representation that includes fields for storing error information. The standard IEEE floating-point representation has three fields: a sign field, an exponent field, and a mantissa (or significand). This patent proposes reducing the size of other fields and adding additional fields to store error information. The error information would be updated by hardware during regular operations. The patent proposed adding a configurable amount of precision to the numbers. If an operation exceeds this limit, an insufficient significant bits signal "sNaN(isb)" would be raised.

Not only does this method not reduce floating point error, it reduces the precision that you have for any given number of bits.

Unfortunately I can't find any of the figures referenced in the patent to help me understand the novelty of this patent.

<comment><USER10> > If an operation exceeds this limit, an insufficient significant bits signal > "sNaN(isb)" would be raised.

What about for binary repeating decimals like 0.3? Wouldn't it always raise that signal?

<comment><USER11> Presumably if you specify that you want more units of precision than are available, then yes. But if you say you only want 1 significant digit, then it can store it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this different from/better than?

unums: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_(number_format)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_\(number_format\))

interval arithmetic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic)

<comment><USER13> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >The inventor patented a process that addresses floating point errors by computing "two limits (or bounds) that contain the represented real number. These bounds are carried through successive calculations. When the calculated result is no longer sufficiently accurate the result is so marked, as are all further calculations made using that value."

That does seem useful but it's a bit akin to saying that you've solved the division-by-zero problem by inventing NaN. Suppose you're writing some critical piece of software and a floating point operation raises the "inaccurate" flag, how do you deal with that? Do you at least have access to the bounds computed by the hardware, so that you may decide to pick a more conservative value if that makes sense?

Besides the link to the "1991 Patriot missile failure" kinds of contradicts the claim that this would solve the issue since Wikipedia says:

>However, the timestamps of the two radar pulses being compared were converted to floating point differently: one correctly, the other introducing an error proportionate to the operation time so far (100 hours) caused by the truncation in a 24-bit fixed-point register.

If the problem comes from truncation in a FP register I'm not sure how this invention would've helped.

<comment><USER15> > a floating point operation raises the "inaccurate" flag, how do you deal > with that?

You can trap. ...but then again, existing arithmetic traps are not uniformly enabled by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And immediately patents it... so no one else can use it.

EDIT: and for some other methods: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unum_%28number_format%29), particularly the latest one being the Posit method: [http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232](http://superfri.org/superfri/article/download/137/232)

EDIT2: of course other people can license it, but the other way to bring a new floating point to the scene would be through the same process that happened with IEEE 754. There are plenty of people who wouldn't touch anything patented at all, sometimes even with a patent clause.

<comment><USER17> He's an inventor. Inventors usually work towards patents. Also, it's not so "no one else can use it". It's so that he can license out his work to a company like Intel. The patent is to protect him from a company like Intel going "sweet, thanks for the fix." And then profiting off his work. Or do you expect this guy to work for free?

<comment><USER18> I don't expect him to work for free, but I do want Intel (and AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, TI, and anyone else who makes a floating point module) to go "sweet, thanks for the fix" as quickly and, almost more importantly, as collectively as possible.

I want this guy to be compensated, but I'd prefer this guy be compensated in a manner that doesn't prevent third parties from fixing their hardware. In general, I think bounties are a good solution to this. Failing that, there are plenty of trade groups and nonprofits and regulatory bodies that could be tasked (and funded) with acquiring and freely redistributing this class of innovation if we wanted to.

<comment><USER19> You're living in a fantasy world. You're looking at the status quo: some guy has invented a better floating point circuit, and you think there are two options. 1) The guy releases it to the public for general use, or 2) the guy patents it and holds a monopoly over its use.

Obviously 1) is a greater public good than 2), but in reality these are not the only options.

Here's some other realistic situations: 3) With no incentives to make things public, this guy either stops working on this much earlier, doesn't tell anyone, or throws it in the garbage. 4) This guy goes and talks to Intel about his design. They quietly pay him some money or hire him and implement it in secret. Two years from now they launch a processor with this feature and for the indefinite future, until their competitors spend costly time reverse engineering the secret hardware, only Intel processors have this circuit. 5) Same as 4) except Intel says, "Haha, thanks for being a sucker" and doesn't pay anyone.

This is the patent system at its best: incentivizing some guy to work on this invention, then publish his work and describe it in detail. For the next 20 years, he can license it to anyone he wants and profit from his work. After that point everyone can implement it as a public good.

<comment><USER20> The fantasy world is thinking that plucky little inventors creating something is the status quo. You think big companies like Intel don't have hundreds of people working on research full-time? That they freely lease all fruits of their research out to their competition rather than keeping a 20-year monopoly?

Patents, like any monopoly-granting device, benefit market incumbents much more than encourage new entrants

<comment><USER21> maybe large companies shouldn't be able to own patents.

<comment><USER11> Okay, so now we will have a bunch of 1 person in-name-only companies which hold patents, which offer exclusive licenses to big companies for $1 per 1000 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It doesn't actually sound like he "solved" it. More like he put error bounds around it and can detect when the error is more than X.

> When the calculated result is no longer sufficiently accurate the result is > so marked, as are all further calculations made using that value.

Solving it would be a pretty big deal. This doesn't feel like it is, though I admit I haven't worked on a similar problem in a long time. Kinda feels like patent trolling as I imagine that lots of companies have put bounds on detecting floating point errors when they need it. There are certainly lots of papers on it: [https://www.google.com/search?q=floating+point+error+bounds](https://www.google.com/search?q=floating+point+error+bounds)

<comment><USER23> IANAL, but if other companies have already done it and it's that easy to find, then it wouldn't be a good patent troll, because there's obvious and easily discoverable prior art (which would invalidate the patent anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Without reading the patent it sounds a lot like interval arithmetic [1] which sounds like a really good idea at first but is not without its own problems. For example the inverse 1/x for an interval x like [-1,+1] containing 0 consists of two intervals (-∞,-1] and [+1;+∞).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic)

<comment><USER25> In your example, this would correspond to having the number x = 0 +-1 and then wanting to compute 1/x. If your number can potentially be zero, why would you want to use it as a divisor?

<comment><USER24> The problem remains if you wrap the division in a non-zero check. Or maybe the interval [-1,+1] is already kind of a lie, i.e. x is known to be in the interval but you additionally know that x is non-zero when you are about to perform the division. The example is just meant to illustrate the problem that using a single interval is not good enough to track error bounds in the general case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Even worse, a patent for a "processor design, which allows representation of real numbers accurate to the last digit" is obviously nonsense. Pi (=3.141...) is a real number where there is no "last digit".

<comment><USER27> I assume it means accurate to the last digit of the representation, not the number being represented. obviously the latter would be absurd to suggest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic) ? I.e. you carry the lower and upper bound all the way?

<comment><USER29> In the patent he contrasts his "apparatus" with interval arithmetic. He says IA greatly increase computation (while his method doesn't) and requires twice as much storage (while his method doesn't.

To me, it looks like a specific mechanism for encoding the bounds and scale of error into a floating point representation, along with a pipeline for processing operations on operands of this form (presumably efficiently). So to me it looks like a specific variant of IA.

It looks like the purpose is to be implemented as an alternative to conventional floating point libraries and CPU modules. E.g., Intel might license this and add a floating point module based on this + instructions to access it to a future CPU. (Well, even if it's great and all is as advertised, and proves to be generally useful, I'm not sure it would jump right into the CPU. It would probably have to grow more organically first, but that's another discussion.)

I mean, I have no idea if this does all of what it says or if it does, whether that would prove to be generally useful enough to make it out of niche cases.

But it's interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > "In the current art, static error analysis requires significant mathematical > analysis and cannot determine actual error in real time," reads a section of > the patent. "This work must be done by highly skilled mathematician > programmers. Therefore, error analysis is only used for critical projects > because of the greatly increased cost and time required. In contrast, the > present invention provides error computation in real time with, at most, a > small increase in computation time and a small increase in the maximum > number of bits available for the significand."

I'm not sure how much it increases computation time, but software for exactly this is freely available, see for instance Arb: [https://github.com/fredrik- johansson/arb](https://github.com/fredrik-johansson/arb)

<comment><USER31> Does anyone know a similar library for Rust?

<comment><USER30> Arb depends on lots of other numerical libraries (namely FLINT, MPFR and GMP or MPIR). If you want pure-Rust alternatives, the ecosystem is just not there yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > "Apparatus for Calculating and Retaining a Bound on Error During Floating > Point Operations and Methods Thereof"

It seems to be a system where the hardware design itself keeps track of the accuracy losses in floating point calculations, and provides them as part of the value itself.

The title is (predictably) exaggerated, but it's an interesting idea, and could potentially be a significant improvement in particular use cases.

</comment><comment><USER33> Patent in case anyone is curious

[https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US9817662](https://encrypted.google.com/patents/US9817662)

<comment><USER34> The usual advice w.r.t. patents is to _not_ read them.

This may seem odd, but it can be the difference between knowing and unknowing infringement. Knowing infringement results in triple damages.

IANAL — just repeating consistent advice I have received

<comment><USER35> Unless you are planning to infringe (which is knowing in itself), this is very bizarre advice.

Reading a patent is more likely to make you _not_ infringe upon it than to make you knowingly infringe upon it.

<comment><USER36> Reading a patent will make you not infringe in the short term, but will you remember you got the idea from that patent in ten years?

For people who are writing novel software it can be better to always avoid reading patents, that way they can honestly state they haven't read a specific patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Mathematica has the cool ability to do symbolic tracking of numerical precision, for the ability to tell you when, for example, your differential equation solver is giving you meaningless results.

<comment><USER38> Is there a reason why we can't have that as a compiler warning?

<comment><USER39> Because it depends on the algorithms you put a float through.

Addition has a maximum accuracy of 1 LSB. Makes sense: the last bit could have been "rounded off" and 1.5+1.5 == 2 (but really 3 should have been returned).

Subtraction has unlimited error bounds (!!!). Well, I guess there's 53-bits of a double-precision float. So subtraction can theoretically create 53-bits of error.

In practice, you need to keep track of the error bounds during the runtime of the program. Its not something that can be computed at compile time. After all, addition of a positive and negative number IS subtraction. (so some subtractions are additions: with accuracy of 1LSB. While some additions are subtractions: with unlimited error bounds)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> At a glance this reads similar to Interval Arithmetic in that it places bounds on how much error a value carries.

Is there something more novel to his approach?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic)

<comment> mark-r I think the novel part is in the encoding of the error in the bits of the value. It's hard to see how much value this patent really holds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Here's the issued patent: [https://www.google.com/patents/US9817662](https://www.google.com/patents/US9817662)

Note that it's a claim on the processing unit implementation (e.g. the FPU), not the method.

Nonetheless, I'd be very surprised if this stands the test of interval arithmetic prior art.

<comment><USER42> The beauty of the patent is that it will never be tested, being of no practical value, for numerous reasons already mentioned in other comments, plus a few more not worth the bother of going into.

So the inventor gets a patent number for his LinkedIn profile, and USPTO get their fee, and that's the end of it. A win-win for all involved.

Earlier HN discussion of the phenomenon: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015371)

<comment><USER41> "Win-win"...not at all.

Patents like this have "threat value", which is often happily exploited by "IP monetization" companies, contingent law firms, etc.

This is the kind of stuff that turns into 100x $50k settlement demands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Unless the article is missing some important nuances, this is just "range arithmetic" or "interval arithmetic"from the 1950's. Here's a wikipedia page explaining how it works:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic)

</comment><comment><USER44> Wouldn't something like what Douglas Crockford built with DEC64 be more useful and practical?[0]

[0] [http://dec64.com/](http://dec64.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> This looks so obvious. How could this be patented ? The real question is why no one already implemented it ? It wouldn't surprise me if it already exist.

<comment><USER46> If no one's thought of it before, how can it be obvious? If they have thought of it, the prior art can be brought to the attention of the patent office and the patent invalidated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Terrible title with a terrible description of the invention.

What he is doing appears so be interval arithmetic: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_arithmetic)

Because we don't have infinite computer memory or processing power numbers have to be finite, so no one will ever "solve the floating point error problem" however being able to quantify the error is both extremely useful and extremely complex because you have to try to determine how the error propagates through all of the operations applied over the original input values.

In science this is also done based on the precision of the raw data... roughly through selecting a sensible number of significant figures in final calculation. In other words they omit all of the digits they deem to be potentially outside of the precision provided by the raw data, e.g your inputs a:123.456 and b:789.012 but your result from some multistep calculation is 12.714625243422799, obviously the extra precision is artificial and should be reduced to something slightly less than the input precision (because it will have been rounded).

For floating point math this is about going a step further by calculating the propagation of error from the end of the maximum length significand provided by IEEE 754 (where anything longer causes rounding and thus error), and trying to quantify how that window opens wider and wider as those rounding errors propagate towards more significant digits as more operations are performed. With interval arithmetic this is done by keeping track of the upper and lower bounds of that window (the real number existing somewhere within that window).

This doesn't solve any of the many issues that floating point math has, but it allows whatever is consuming it to potentially assign significance to the output of a calculation more precisely. i.e so that you can say 1369.462628234m is actually 1.4e3m (implying ± 100m) perhaps translating into understanding that your trajectory calculation isn't actually as accurate accurate as the output looks, but instead the target has a variance of up to 100x100 meters.

I expect the patent details a hardware implementation to make this practical at the instruction level rather than a likely very slow software implementation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obvious crank.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wrote an interval arithmetic package once too. It was slow, because it had to change the FP rounding flags multiple times for some operations.

In the end, it seemed like any substantial computation ended up having extremely wide bounds, much wider than they deserved. Trying to invert a matrix often resulted in [-Inf .. +Inf] bounds.

</comment><comment><USER49> Here's a link to the patent [https://patents.google.com/patent/US9817662B2/en?oq=No.+9%2c...](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9817662B2/en?oq=No.+9%2c817%2c662)

</comment><comment><USER50> He reinvented interval arithmetic, it sounds like.

Funny. There was a project at Sun Labs in the early 2000s that way far down this road. Without looking at its specifics, I am still surprised that the patent was accepted.

</comment><comment><USER51> This appears to be complete nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER52> You can't patent math.

</comment><comment><USER53> Has he solved [http://0.30000000000000004.com/](http://0.30000000000000004.com/)

<comment><USER9> Not really, the idea is to store the amount of error in the binary representation of the number. When converting from decimal "0.3" to this floating point representation, it's more like 0.30000000000000004 ± 0.00000000000000004</comment></comment>


MoviePass parent company stock briefly doubles after announcing price increase - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/31/moviepass-parent-company-stock-more-than-doubles-after-announcing-pric.html <comment><USER2> >3 million members

Who are these people? I go to the movie theater like 2 times a year. I would never in my wildest dreams consider buying a subscription to go to the movie theater.

<comment><USER3> > Who are these people?

People who like going to the movies more than you do.

> I go to the movie theater like 2 times a year. I would never in my wildest > dreams consider buying a subscription to go to the movie theater.

Tastes in entertainment are not universal. That on the order of 1% of the US population buys into an entertainment product you aren't interested in should hardly be surprising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Briefly doubles...but loses all the gains.

This might buy some time, but where is the roadmap to sustainability?

<comment><USER4> At this point it seems like it's "make more money" and "lose less money" and that's about it.</comment></comment>