Google, Detroit diverge on road map for self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/30/uk-google-detroit-idUKKBN0F50BV20140630 <comment><USER2> It seems obvious to me that industry outsiders are going to have a drastically different road map for self driving cars than the entrenched players.

Clearly the end game for self driving automobiles is far, far fewer cars in the world. In 25 years, relatively few people are going to be owning cars at all. You'll subscribe to a self-driving car service (or maybe your government will run it) and whenever you want to go somewhere, you'll enter your automotive needs into your mobile device and five minutes later the appropriate self-driving cycle/car/truck/van will pick you up in front of your house.

There won't be a need for every family to own 3 cars that spend 90% of the day turned off and taking up parking space. Of course Google and Detroit aren't going to see eye to eye on this...

<comment><USER3> I'm really not sure that this is the case at all. Taxis already exist in basically every city in the US, as do vanpools, bus services and heavily subsidized public transportation, but we still have significant rates of car ownership. Self-driving cars do _improve_ on the "human-driven-car" model because they have faster reaction times and the like, but the aspect of self- driving cars where you don't have to be in control of the vehicle isn't anything new.

It's certainly _possible_ that cost was the major driver of these sorts of things, but my guess is that the convenience of having your own car ready at all times will remain paramount. It's also plausible to me that airbnb-like services renting out self-driving cars will be common, which would simultaneously alleviate the need to own a car _and_ reduce the cost of car ownership.

I imagine the switch to primarily self-driving car services will have a greater impact in cities, where the density will be high enough that the latency between wanting a car and getting one will be smallest. If a car has to drive for 20 minutes just to pick you up and take you to the store to get some milk, you'll probably just want your own car.

<comment><USER4> I've frequently heard the idea bounced around that self driving cars will eliminate the need for ownership. I'm glad you mentioned taxis, because it brings up something that has bugged me about this idea for a while. I live in a metro area of 200,000. This metro area has exactly zero taxis. (We do have a free ride services that is funded by the local city for getting the elderly and disabled around, which probably has six cars.) The three reasons are size density and wealth. As density goes down, mileage to get from point A to point B goes up, which means costs go up. It also means that cars are potentially occupied for longer periods, so you would likely need more cars to service the same population in denser areas. So ultimately taxis are not economically feasible here. So because you don't have to hire drivers, those costs go down and potentially lower the barrier to entry, but you have potentially more expensive vehicles, and higher maintenance costs that may somewhat offset the savings. So you could charge more for the service here, but being a poor city, would anyone here pay the extra costs? Enough to sustain the business model? Or will we have to suffer with significantly worse service--wait an hour to get picked up. I'm sure the business model would work in SF, NYC, Chicago, but here it will have to come down a lot in cost. Also (to the parent poster,) I just see the possibility that a migration like this could take place within 25 years just ludicrous.

<comment><USER5> "Also (to the parent poster,) I just see the possibility that a migration like this could take place within 25 years just ludicrous."

Why is such a time-frame for this kind of a transition so ludicrous?

In 1989 cell-phones were uncommon and looked like this: [http://phoneevolution.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1.jpg](http://phoneevolution.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1.jpg).

In 1899 there were about ~8,000 automobiles in the United States [1]. In 1924 Ford was producing over 2M Model T's per year [2].

In 1903 we saw the powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft by the Wright brothers. In 1927 somebody flew an airplane across the Atlantic ocean. [3]

[1] [http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_19th....](http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_19th.htm)

[2] [http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_30.ht...](http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_30.htm)

[3] [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb- timeline.html#1903](http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb- timeline.html#1903)

<comment><USER6> I would like to point out that all of your examples are of expanding industries, not industries that underwent large societal, cultural, and legal transformations into entirely different industries. Society, culture, and laws are _made_ for expanding industries, they have to be evolved and rewritten for industries of change.

So I am going to have to disagree, 25 years would have to be the most optimistic kind of prediction, assuming that all players are willing and pro- active, rather than passive and resistive (both in society and legally speaking).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Incumbents are correct that adding evolutionary features will allow maturation of technology and public acceptance. However, you cannot use that route to get to a completely autonomous vehicle. There will almost certainly be a red area once you get to the "car only needs human attention X% of the time" phase, where X will be somewhere between 60 and 1. Once the human is allowed to tune out, they're going to and won't be able to come back fast enough in many many circumstances. Heck, that happens today when X is 100.

Once you find X, you're going to have to stop and/or back off a little on automation. You can't just keep on pushing towards 0. I presume Google has already found the X point during their program.

Google is ultimately right to be aiming at fully auto if the goal is fully auto, not just "driver assistance." There's a big area where half measures just won't work. I wager it'll take quite a lot of work to get to that goal, but it at least seems achievable. And appropriate for an entity not already "in the business".

<comment><USER8> Exactly this. The moment you make an autonomous vehicle where some period of time can be done with no driver interaction, drivers _will_ fall asleep. What do you do when it's time to get the driver back into the action, and they don't respond?

If expressway shoulders were consistently safe to pull over upon, that would be a good approach, but they're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Some industry observers have suggested that Google should pair up with Tesla, which is also developing self-driving technology and which shares Google's Silicon Valley mindset."

I wish the article had expanded more on this topic. Both companies could make significant gains by partnering and cutting out the old money from the automotive industry. Not that I'm saying I hope that happens, I'm neutral on that matter for now, but I'd like to see a lot more R&D done on autonomous driving tech in my lifetime.

<comment><USER10> It is much better to develop self driving technology in-house rather than risk being stuck licencing technology from Google in perpetuity. The software is the easy part. The regulatory and societal hurdles are the hard part and Google is already working on that for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting quote:

 _" Moreover, a study by consulting firm KPMG last year found that American consumers would trust brands like Google and Apple more for self-driving cars than they would automakers."_

Which reminded me of this from a while back:

 _" Early concept research had made it clear that cueing the GM name resulted in a substantially lower quality perception and credibility, whereas cueing a Japanese name (such as Sony) did the reverse."_

[http://books.google.com/books?id=OLa_9LePJlYC&lpg=PA1946&pg=...](http://books.google.com/books?id=OLa_9LePJlYC&lpg=PA1946&pg=PA2001)

<comment><USER8> Too bad so many Asian brands seem hell-bent on destroying that good name with cheap garbage. Vaio laptops, anyone?

<comment><USER12> Yeah give me an American Dell any day! Oh, wait...

<comment><USER8> They never had a good name in the first place to destroy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Driving home from visiting a friend recently I had a lightbulb moment on self- driving cars; much as I really enjoy driving (heck, I've got a sports car), the _second_ a mainstream car with an autonomous mode becomes remotely affordable for me I _will_ buy it.

I confess I don't understand why the focus is so strongly on the taxi- replacement market; it's interesting, sure, but largely unviable outside metropolitan areas. It can't serve people who go shopping and want to use their cars as lockers during the shop, or people who leave sports gear in the car while they work then go to the gym later, or a number of other cases. Who pays for them? It'd be an expensive business to set up and you'd have regular arguments about taxi licenses that'd make the fuss about Uber look tiny. Who'd clean them? You bet people would do unsavoury things inside them. No; it's a small, awkward to serve.

Fit a 'self-drive' button to my next mainstream car though, and you have a killer product. You can keep it just like your normal car whenever you want, but when you don't - just press the button, program the navigation and do what you want. That night I'd have slept. This evening I'd probably have read on my way home from work. The technical challenges are no greater and it's much easier to set up.

 _That 's_ a killer app, not an autonomous taxi. Your car, with an invisible chauffeur on demand. The first manufacturer to properly pull it off won't be able to keep up with demand.

<comment><USER14> You have enough money to own a car, which implies you're old.

Very few of my age cohort have a driver's license. Even if we had the time and money to get licensed, due to student loan debt we can't afford a car, or insurance, which is much more expensive for the young.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty young (22) and the overwhelming majority of my peers are licensed and usually have cars (disclosure: I don't have one myself). Although I do believe youth car ownership rates are much lower than in the past, there are a lot of places where it is near impossible to live without a car. The cars young people drive are usually cheap and old (potentially hand-me-downs from their parents or older siblings) and they only have liability insurance, but it is possible for a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This discussion should probably start from commercial rather than passenger vehicles. In the latter category the driver is usually the owner as well as the cargo and the principle agent (my driving pleasure). There is an inherent distortion in the discussion around what the current drivers imagine they'd want.

Commercial vehicles live or die on their economics alone. Separating concerns in this way makes the issues clearer. Assuming they become established in the commercial market, producers can then address the consumer market. At that point, car drivers may rationally decide whether they'd prefer to pay the prevalent market premium for _not_ using a self-driving vehicle.

Amazon might never deliver by drone, but the market for micro-deliveries by autonomous, wheeled vehicle could be huge.

</comment><comment><USER17> This reads a whole lot like an industry that has lost touch. If you read some of the stories out of SpaceX when they talked about Aerospace companies quoting 6 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a part, that SpaceX turned around and did in a few weeks, you realize that there is the status quo, and the folks who don't accept the status quo, and the people who try to enforce the status quo but have forgotten (or never knew) why it was that way in the first place.

Self driving cars are sexy and all but there is so much that could be done with a much simpler system.

The old 'personal rapid transit' ideas come to mind. For those too young to remember, that was a system where the cars would show up at the station when paged. The cars were on tracks but travelling either on a 'through' track (no stops) or pulling into the station when passengers enter/exit. Built using rubber wheels on a paved "track" such a system could be built more cost effectively than highways (no trucks) and with much better efficiency than metros (your car stops at your entry station and exit station only.). All the technology to build that exists today, and it would be massively more efficient than BART, but it isn't even being advocated.

<comment><USER18> If you think Detroit is out of touch and slow moving I can hardly believe you're advocating getting hundreds of municiple governments involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google doesn't have the experience with liability that traditional automobile manufacturers are and I bet they tend to brush over items that made the other guys pause.

Its one thing to deliver ads and mail, a simple mistake or improper product usage by the end user doesn't hurt someone, but cars are a whole different ball game.

and don't underestimate that some people who get in one will try to cause problems.

<comment><USER3> >Its one thing to deliver ads and mail, a simple mistake or improper product usage by the end user doesn't hurt someone, but cars are a whole different ball game.

Except for when they released Google Buzz and exposed a bunch of private data to the world, endangering some people who were relying on their trust in google to keep themselves hidden from abusive exes and/or various other dangerous sorts of person. Oopsie!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a big mapping problem that could maybe be solved by selling cars that have plenty of sensor hardware--can figure out curb positions to the inch and all that--but at first only use it for semi-autonomous features (lane assist, auto emergency braking, etc.). As people drive them, they're recording a ton of data that can be sent back to the mothership to build detailed maps will be useful to provide full-autonomous driving later.

Google might effectively pay for the data and field testing they're getting from early users by charging a lower price than you'd ordinarily expect for all that fancy hardware.

I don't know how all this will, in fact, play out; I'm just saying driving assistance and full autonomy don't have to be rival approaches.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is why I think the major "car companies" of the future won't be the current "auto companies", but the current major tech companies. The "tech" part is going to become increasingly a bigger competitive advantage, while the "auto" part will be completely commoditized, and you'll see current car companies going bankrupt or being bought out by the major tech companies. I think Tesla is mostly part of the "tech companies" than the auto companies.

<comment><USER22> > while the "auto" part will be completely commoditized

To some extent this is already the case with some manufacturers, many models across a range are built on a consistent _platform_ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_platform](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_platform)

There is a point where physical improvements on platforms are well into diminishing returns and the bigger improvements are in software and control (the classic "software is eating the world" thing applies here).

I don't have a problem with this but I suspect the automotive industry might ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "We'd say, 'Well you don't really know that much. And we're not going to put our name on a project like that because if something goes wrong, we have a lot more to lose.'" \----- I think that says a iot about the automaker point of view. They have experience with being sued for defects decades later, and they know the story of Audi and alleged "unintended acceleration"

</comment><comment><USER24> I just don't see computers being able to be better drivers then humans. Especially when dealing with something a programmer hasn't thought of or situations which are hard to predict.

I would definitely would prefer my taxi driver to be a person than a computer. (and honestly the trip would take twice as long in the city with a computer driver)

</comment><comment><USER25> Just work with a car company from a different country that isn't so backwards.

I'm sure Volvo would be interested with their focus on safety.</comment>


How Trigger went international with Y Combinator's help - <AUTHOR> https://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blog/2012/02/07/cross-platform-and-cross-continent-how-trigger-came-to-be-international-with-y-combinators-help/

<comment><USER3> > With all that said, it remains incredibly tough to set up business in the > US. Even with the US funding behind us, and an American co-founder, options > are surprisingly slim as the usual work visa – H1-B – is not suited for > companies that are just starting out or for founders who have major stakes > in the company. It doesn't matter how many jobs you do or promise to create, > the options are surprisingly limited.

One gloomy forecast, this.

Can anyone who's gone through the motions of starting a company in the US as a EU citizen share their experience?

<comment><USER4> We (UK-based, with 2 UK founders) created a US subsidiary with relatively little work - at least compared to the work of actually growing a US part of our business.

We initially created an LLC (Distilled LLC) that was wholly controlled by the UK limited company (Distilled Ltd). We have just recently changed that to a UK holding company that owns the UK trading company and changed the LLC to a wholly-owned US corporation.

So we now have Distilled Group Ltd owning Distilled Ltd and Distilled US Inc. (we weren't allowed Distilled Inc. because of potential confusion with Distilled LLC).

I wasn't personally involved with the paperwork / legal hurdles but I believe the company creation stuff has all been pretty straight-forward - <USER2> compared to visas for the (2, non-founder) UK employees we sent to the US. They haven't been too troublesome, but they certainly could have been and they did cost us money (in advice).

Sidenote for anyone considering this slightly convoluted process - if you have an EMI options scheme in the UK, you need the US subsidiary to be a corporation as it must have shares (the parent must own "all the shares" (or some such language) in all subsidiaries to qualify for EMI tax protection).

<comment><USER5> > I believe the company creation stuff has all been pretty straight-forward - > certainly compared to visas for the (2, non-founder) UK employees we sent to > the US.

Hmm, I guess what OP and grand-parent comment are talking about is exactly the visa question. The problem is not so much setting up a US corporation, but actually running the business while living in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm also British, and found YC invaluable setting up in the US. Kirsty Nathoo, one of the YC team, proved very helpful with her knowledge of both UK and US accounting norms.

<comment><USER7> Thanks Nic!

Remember that for anyone wanting to apply for funding to Y Combinator that we only invest in US corporations (registered in Delaware), which means that the parent company will need to be a US company. So if you're thinking about applying you probably should hold off on any type of incorporation in the UK, until you know whether you'll be in Mountain View over the summer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article. I run a British startup and we're thinking about doing business in the US at some point. Randomly I grabbed coffee with Amir this morning and just a few minutes from someone who's been through it was incredibly useful! Information sharing amongst startups needs to happen more!

<comment><USER4> I went to college with Amir and also caught up with him while he was in London. I'm one of the founders of www.distilled.net - we have a US subsidiary (see comment elsewhere on this page) - let me know if you have any questions I can help with.</comment></comment>


Brexit: Revoke Article 50 petition crashes Parliament website - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47652071 <comment><USER2> If there's one thing that has brought remainers and leavers together, it's how badly May is handling the negotiations.</comment>


EdgeDB 1.0 Alpha 4 - A new DB with GraphQL support and more - <AUTHOR> https://edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0-alpha-4-barnard-s-star <comment><USER2> Congrats on the release! I'm super bullish on EdgeDB and what it will represent for the database ecosystem / orm space in the long term, keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Syrus! BTW, we have a pretty detailed comparison of EdgeDB to some Python ORMs here: [https://edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0-alpha-1](https://edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0-alpha-1)

The post also includes benchmarks. And to see how EdgeDB stacks up against JavaScript ORMs please see [https://edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0-alpha-2](https://edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0-alpha-2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A much needed innovation in a rather stale segment of dev tools

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the co-founders. Would love to answer questions!

</comment><comment><USER4> Woah. This is exciting!</comment>


Co-working in Delhi, India - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone here know of any good co-working space in Delhi, India.<p>Or, would anyone be interested in sharing office space? <comment><USER2> <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/New_Delhi></comment>


Monitor and Log your Docker containers from a container with packetbeat - <AUTHOR> http://agonzalezro.github.io/log-your-docker-containers-from-a-container-with-packetbeat.html

<comment><USER2> Hi! I wrote the post, if you have something to ask, feel free! :)</comment>


8 embargoed Xen Security Advisory to be released on 2015-10-29 - <AUTHOR> http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/?asdf <comment><AUTHOR> Here's Linode's notice: [http://status.linode.com/incidents/ltchxw3jmx0s](http://status.linode.com/incidents/ltchxw3jmx0s)

They're rebooting Xen instances October 19 - October 27.

</comment><comment><USER2> Rackspace is also affected: [https://community.rackspace.com/general/f/53/t/6120](https://community.rackspace.com/general/f/53/t/6120)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish they would stop with the new features and get their security under control.</comment>


Getting 100% uptime on public cloud. An interview with T.Luu, Nephoscale CTO - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mist.io/post/75804062301/getting-to-100-uptime-on-public-cloud-an-interview

<comment><USER2> I liked the twist on partnering with PaaS instead of shunning them as a threat. Can't want to read the next post with other providers, thanks mist.io.</comment>


Ask HN: How secure is the JavaScript NPM eco-system? - <AUTHOR> I feel like security is a big issue for the JS eco-system. Every app replies on at 10 if not more modules. Each of those modules then imports a bunch of other modules. You often end up with 100+ modules in node_modules/<p>Is this as big an issue as I think it is? Who checks the code? I would love to get HNers view on this. <comment><USER2> >Who checks the code?

This is not specific to NPM. You can ask the same question for any language repository. And the answer will be in the most cases same.

<comment><AUTHOR> True but with NPM, I feel like the surface area is much larger because of the number of modules.

If you use Golang, then you'll mostly be using the stdlib plus some libraries. A much smaller surface area and checking that code becomes more feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably no one. It only takes one deranged mind to leave something innocent in a tiny module.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you consider switching jobs if applying for new ones was faster? - <AUTHOR> Particularly, I'd apply to many more jobs if I didn't have to fill long application forms and that initial part of the process wasn't so annoying and take so much time.
Do you feel the same?
Asking because I'm considering building something to make this part of the process suck less and let candidates talk directly to companies, but I wanna see if it's a pain more people than me suffer before developing something no one wants. If you'd like to see more, you can see a very simple MVP I have of this at https://airtable.com/shr86AAeWs5mSBmhY <comment><USER2> Nah. We in the IT have it easy enough already.

Pretty much no other industry obsesses as the IT industry over things like job interview process, salary comparison and compensation.

Also, I take it very cautious when switching jobs. Google says that missing on a good hire is better proceeding with a bad hire. Similarly, I prefer to apply to and interview with a few companies at the time, and do my best at making sure I'm making a good choice. I'd prefer to miss on a good company that to end up in a shitty one.

IT is not body rental, I would actually be suspicious of a company hiring me too fast: why are they so desperate? What did drove them to such desperation? Did the previous people leave? Why? Is that bad technology? Bad management? Company-wide unwillingness to fix long-standing problems?

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. Great feedback, thanks for taking the time to reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Applying is easy enough as it is. Developer jobs typically don't have complicated forms to fill, assuming you're a developer?

The challenge is not the time to apply, but the time to do the coding tests and phone tests and onsite interviews. Days for each company, which doesn't scale.

Consider that if you make applying more streamlined, you will actively hurt the chances to get a job. You want it to be one click, like linkedin? Guess what, companies are flooded by applications, hundreds -if not thousands- of applications from anyone and anything, it's just one click, so easy to apply. It's totally unmanageable to review so they're never read. Remember that there has to be human on the other side to review resumes and schedule phone calls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thanks for taking the time to reply!</comment></comment>


Startup Cost Comparison Berlin, London, San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://appstretto.com/startup-cost-comparison/

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, the reason people choose San Francisco is for logistic reasons. It makes more sense to be in a city where many other businesses/startups are growing too, and it is easier to connect and network.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are from the USA then this might be very true!</comment></comment>


Microsoft Has Horrible Website Design & It's Hurting The Web. - <AUTHOR> http://sitespress.com/2009/10/17/microsoft-has-horrible-website-design-its-hurting-the-web/ <comment><USER2> Great catch, it's surprising how many large companies do not practice converion-oriented website design. Multivariate testing would have eliminated that site design in 15 minutes flat.

</comment><comment><USER3> is it because he's browsing on a mac? microsoft don't show download links for software that won't work on your system.

I bet if you look at that page in IE6 there's a big ol' download button.

<comment><USER4> Exactly - environment fail.

There's no download link for IE when you're looking at the site from a Mac because...there is no IE8 for Macs available.

So where you'd think there would be a download button, there's text saying "IE8 is only available for Windows", which is correct. If you look at the site using Windows (<http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3662/iedownload.jpg>), there's a big ole' download link, which is exactly what the complaint is about.</comment></comment>


Should top CS schools offer Software Engineering as a separate major? - <AUTHOR> http://nerdcollider.com/challenges/3/responses/64 <comment><USER2> Having done degrees in both electrical engineering and computer science, it seems to me that EE schools on the whole manage the theory vs. practice a bit better than CS schools do.

Just as in CS/SE, EE has a wide range of topics, from the very practical ("how do we organize a team to build this") to the very theoretical (quantum mechanics, nonlinear control systems, signal processing). Yet somehow, no one in the EE industry is lobbying for two separate majors (I know; I work in it).

In EE, it is just accepted that you just need a theoretical background to be a top circuit designer. This isn't really open to argument: the best ideas and the best designs are almost always the result of careful analysis and deep understanding of the underlying phenomena. When I interview someone, I'd much rather know how well they understand control theory than how well they can throw together yet another folded cascode. (I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but frankly I have yet to meet one.)

Most good EE departments naturally have a few separate tracks that you can follow as an EE. For example, at MIT, the EE headers are circuits (6.012), signal processing (6.011), E&M (6.013/6.014), and bioelectrical (6.021). You had to do some work in each, but everyone generally gravitated towards one or two of them. As a result, people who want to do hard core device physics can take a very different set of classes from those who want to design microprocessors.

At MIT, the same model applies in the CS department. There, the headers are 6.033 (computer systems engineering), 6.034 (AI), and 6.046 (algorithms), and under each there are vastly different topics offered, from compilers to classes basically indistinguishable from pure mathematics :). As a result, I don't feel at all like my CS education was too theoretical: I was able to choose a somewhat more practical path.

Given my experience, I hold with those who favor the ability to diversify in accordance with one's interests. It has served me well, anyhow.

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of diversifying, but CS borders a _lot_ of disciplines, some of which it's either gradually annexing or gradually being annexed by (sometimes it's not clear which is which ;-)). I'm not sure it's possible to fit everything into 4 years, at least as all mandatory components, unless someone decides by fiat where the boundaries of CS are.

For example, as someone interested in going into AI research, the main things I wanted to add onto a PLs/theory/algorithms CS core when I was an undergrad were statistics and philosophy, plus a bit of (computational) linguistics and cognitive science. A rigorous grounding in advanced statistics, in particular, is becoming indispensable in some areas, especially as portions of the statistics field are actually migrating into CS departments (machine-learning and data-mining type stuff).

Within the confines of a 4-year program, I took basically no software engineering, and relatively little low-level systems/compilers/architecture stuff, to free up room for that other stuff. Other people chose differently, but I don't see any reasonable way to fit in _all_ the relevant stuff in 4 years (for example, the people who took all the architecture/OS/systems classes typically didn't take more than one intro statistics course).

<comment><USER2> It's fair to observe that there is a whole lot to learn. I'm not sure the extent to which you're disagreeing with me, but I'll submit that if it's not possible to learn it all in 4 years, adding a SE major won't magically make it possible.

I doubt any engineer or scientist with a remotely interesting job is in a position where they knew everything they'd ever need coming out of college. In the end, the most important experience you should get out of college is how to teach yourself more stuff later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have attended both UT Austin and Texas A&M, who both proudly and decidedly adhere to opposing views.

UT places CS under the Natural Sciences, and indeed I have spent the lion's share of my 3 years here studying algorithms, discrete math, and numerous levels of predicate logic.

At A&M, however, the focus was on engineering robust software, using theory where applicable (straight from Dr Stroustrup's mouth during a lecture, actually, and his views were widely accepted among the faculty I spoke with). CS is under the Engineering School there, and they felt that was where it belongs.

I think part of the issues is semantics. A&M CS is not known as a prestigious department, but their engineering college as a whole is; they might see it as an admission of inferiority to be "merely" the practical side of things. However, what they do is not inferior (even if it's not what I want to study): it's the other side of the coin, but they want the department to be just as well known so they use an improper term to catch attention. I think they have a great opportunity here to differentiate their offerings and start the trend if they would just call it the Department of Software Engineering to complement their well-known Petroleum, Electrical, Computer, Nuclear, Mechanical, Civic, etc offerings.

[edit: apologies for poor articulation and verbosity. resolved wontfix].

<comment><USER5> I'm studying at UT Austin, and I love all the theory work. It's challenging and makes my brain hurts, but the insights you get out of all this work changes the way you see programming and software engineering. You start yearning for beauty and elegancy, much like the algorithms we study. You find that you start thinking like a theorist in your every-day coding: what am I trying to solve? What are the constraints? How do all the pieces work together? Do I need this piece over here?

Some theory may not be practical, but learning to think the way theorists think is very, very practical. And a lot of fun.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Hence my transfer ;) But I do respect what TAMU is attempting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In all honesty (said as a Canadian with a Computer Engineering degree -- I should note we take the term engineering a bit more serious here in Canada, we don't allow people with CS degrees for instance to call them selves engineers) I don't see why there has to be software engineering as a separate program and not just a specialization of CMPE.

The SWE program in my school was basically CMPE minus all the hard EE courses. And while I can see there being an argument for not requiring SWE students to know advanced fields / waves etc. It's been my experience anyway that SWE students seem to not get enough of the common engineering knowledge that the other departments share. (again in Canada)

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

<comment><USER7> I also think it sort of waters down Computer Science to wedge it into engineering and treat it as such. Ultimately it's more about theory, formalisms, and mathematical/logical foundations than it is about "making it go". I think when we start treating a CS program like it's a EE/ECE program, then the CS program is impeded by getting too caught up in the nitty gritty. Don't get me wrong, I think the hardware portions are very important, but I like writing compilers. I'll learn as much about a system as I need to get a good compiler going, but the physical nature of a system generally are of no interest to me. They should be somebody else's job (who enjoys such things and derives pleasure in doing them [more power to them for it ;-)]).

<comment><USER8> I've replied to similar sentiments on HN a few times:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=968013>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1131606>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=690798>

People who do systems research don't do much with theory and formalisms, but they are decidedly doing computer science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am continually astounded by the things my CS degree prepared me for. The breadth that my CS program gave me (UIUC) is very good: rigorous theory classes, introductory classes to systems, security, compilers and languages, numerical analysis, RDBMS systems, information retrieval, the list could go on forever.

I don't have a super-deep understanding of all these fields (who could?) but it's enough to give me quite an advantage over some of my colleagues. And I always thought they were worthless at the time.

<comment><USER10> I might be enrolling at UIUC as an undergrad this fall. Could you spare a minute and tell me a little bit about the CS dept. and the school as a whole? Email's in my profile, if this isn't the right place to ask (sorry if I violated HNettiqute).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Absolutely, CS and SE are distinct fields of study. My school offered majors for both.

SE is unabashedly about software and the process of developing it. It's about design patterns, how to manage software projects, testing and verification, etc. I just looked over my school's latest curriculum and it looks like they've added electives on embedded, real-time and distributed systems.

CS is, well, CS. The software is just a means to an end. I was a CS major, and prefer it that way.

My issue with SE degrees in general is that we don't have the decades (or centuries) of process experience that other engineering disciplines (mech, civil, EE) have. Agile? Waterfall? Pair programming? OOP? TDD? We're still figuring out best practices in software.

There is a noticeable lack of rigor in most software projects, but that is correlated with software being incredibly hard to get 'right', as opposed to a bridge or other fixed piece of critical infrastructure.

<comment><USER12> > _SE is unabashedly about software and the process of developing it. It's > about design patterns, how to manage software projects, testing and > verification, etc._

True, but is an academic setting (especially a university) the right place for such a curriculum? What languages, platforms, testing methodologies, coding practices, etc. do they choose to teach? Do they try to teach things that will get their graduates jobs at Fortune 500 enterprises, or cater more toward the local/regional offerings? What about the start-up world, where you're almost guaranteed to be using a large number of cutting edge technologies that you probably won't have used before you got the job?

The thing with CS, at least as it's taught at my university and the several others I looked into, is largely concerned with making sure the students understand theory. It doesn't matter a whole lot what programming languages or textbooks they choose to use, because the assumption is made that when you get a job, you're going to have to learn the ins and outs of that particular job no matter how much you learned about specific software engineering practices in class.

This is why I wouldn't even _want_ to study "software engineering" over "computer science," unless I knew exactly where I wanted to live and who I wanted to work for and thought the particular SE program would prepare me directly for that specific job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please don't do that! Programming is just not there yet.

All attempts to establish best "engineering practices" in programming have so far been resulting in incredibly messy and inefficient technologies. UML, Corba, Object Oriented programming -- just to mention a few.

Also, whatever comes from an academic institution, as a rule, doesn't pass the reality check until it get stress-tested by the industry. Professors who don't build real-life software systems, can't tech engineering by definition -- they should stick mainly to theory.

Until programming matures, CS algorithms and data structures should remain our nails and wood.

<comment><USER11> Agreed 100%. Algorithms and data structures provide a better guarantee of correctness than any design pattern ever will.

But that's not only what SE about. It's also about taking all the various algos, data structures and design patterns in a system, and pulling them together on time, on spec and on budget. SE is a discipline of process, not of theory or algorithmic correctness.

But you're right in that most SE 'best practices', as they teach them in school, are sorely lacking.

<comment><USER14> > But that's not only what SE about. It's also about taking all the various > algos, data structures and design patterns in a system, and pulling them > together on time, on spec and on budget.

Unfortunately, no-one has yet worked out how to do that reliably and repeatably, which is why "software engineering" isn't.

Then again, "computer science" isn't either.

If we're going to have a sensible discussion about splitting theoretical/mathematical courses from practical/applied ones, perhaps we should start by completely removing the misleading terms CS and SE from the debate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Carnegie Mellon University offers a Software Engineering minor as part of their Bachelors in CS undergraduate program. As for the Master's degree, they already have one.

I think students have enough freedom to mold their own strengths and passions into the CS program here.

<comment><USER16> When I was there, there was also the Information and Decision Sciences program. It was a little CS, a little economics, a dash of social science, and a pinch of management.

There was a two semester final year course that students had to take. In this course, project teams had to design and implement a software system for a local business or organization. While I had my own concerns about the formal curriculum, I always thought this capstone project was very good experience.

<comment><USER17> My alma mater has the same type of program [1]. It's a mix of CS, business, communications and finance. It's also a liberal arts school so you end up taking another ~60 credits outside of your major. You take the classes plus 3 semesters of the capstone project. For the projects, you start as a "grunt" and work your way into complete control of a project.

I was a Math/CS graduate, but ended up being part of the pilot for the program. I spent a semester plus a summer internship working for a local company dealing with integrating GPS tracking of public transportation systems. It was a cool hands on experience for what was then (2000) an emerging tech area.

[1] <http://www.juniata.edu/departments/itcs/i4i.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, most people who take CS probably mean to take something more like Software Engineering (SWE) (actually they probably mean to take something like Programming, but that's not generally a field of study, maybe I.T. or I.S. is closish to what most people want to take, but the prestige just isn't there)

CS and SWE are really quite different disciplines, as much as say Math is from Physics...perhaps a better analogy is Physics and Civil Engineering.

<comment><USER19> >CS and SWE are really quite different disciplines, as much as say Math is from Physics...perhaps a better analogy is Physics and Civil Engineering.

I really am not sure about this. Software Engineering really is the process or craft of creating software. Computer Science is the theory behind how computers work. A good SE program should really be teaching more topics on top of a good CS program, because a good theory base can make a huge difference in creating good software.

The main problem is that Software Engineering, as a vocation, is just too large to really be taught. A developer that works in scripting languages only doesn't really need to be concerned about specific architectures or even most data structures because they don't really use them. However, a kernel developer needs to know all of that, and be extremely proficient in using those topics for their work.

So while a Civil Engineer only needs a subset of all the Physics topics, it's not really possible to do the same with CS and SE.

<comment><USER18> I have a feeling that in 10-20 years, SE will split into several independent disciplines. There's quite a bit different in building say, an e-commerce system from hacking code on a robotics kit.

Civil engineering is quite different from EE or CE in the same sort of ways. Sure there's some overlap, but they are different disciplines.

I'm afraid that schools that haven't even thought about differentiating CS from SE at _this_ date are really doing themselves a disservice and in my opinion shows how little the faculty understands about the applied arts and crafts of modern computing.

Again, in my opinion, it's _shocking_ to me every time I hear of a school that _doesn't_ differentiate these disciplines. It's like lumping accounting and math into the same major because "it's all numbers anyway".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I definitely think this is worth trying. I love computer science, but I think it is a fact that much (most?) of computer science is not very useful for most programmers.

Of course, much of computer science is not very useful for computer scientists either! Today if I want to study programming languages, I might need to take a qualifying exam in machine learning -- this particular combination of subjects surely is just a historical accident. I think CS as a whole might be better off by splintering a bit. Alan Kay observed [<http://markmail.org/message/vsnhl7l6igpess65>] that UCLA has 1 computer science department but 25 biology departments! CMU has one "school of computer science", which includes the department of computer science, institute for software research (SE), machine learning department, etc -- that seems really nice!

If degrees in Software Engineering do become more popular, I think many students who want to become programmers would still choose a Computer Science degree instead, because the two fields tend to stress different aspects of ideal software development: mathematical elegance versus well-managed teamwork. And there are still more ideas: see Richard Gabriel's proposal Master of Fine Arts in Software [<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/MFASoftware.pdf>], which seeks to produce "master hackers" much like "master painters"...

<comment><USER4> > I definitely think this is worth trying. I love computer science, but I > think it is a fact that much (most?) of computer science is not very useful > for most programmers.

Take this with a grain of salt because I do not have a successful business or a rockstar CV, but I would argue that studying CS is of critical importance to writing good software. One does not need music theory to be a great musician but I think you will find that many great musicians with "no training" have some isomorphic model in their head with different terminology that they developed independently. Same applies to any engineering discipline.

Your application constitutes data flowing through various functions, processes, etc, and the algorithm you write to get those data from point A to point B and apply intermediate transformations can be represented, studied, and optimized mathematically. You may not be consciously doing it, but you are doing just that. Studying theory explicitly allows for unambiguous discussion and refinement of generalized concepts among different people, and an absolute framework on which to analyze and improve one's own understanding.

Or did I miss the point? I do find this debate engaging. And, yes, if you are studying to become a programmer or developer you may not need to dive into the proofs of why, but there should still be study of the what.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems really difficult to offer a compelling software engineering program. Computer Science has a lot of history and theory that is well suited to classrooms and professors. A software engineering program would have to be constantly (at least each semester) evolving to explore all paths for designing good software. In fact, we offer a Software Engineering degree at San Jose State University, in Silicon Valley, we should have an unfair advantage in that field. As a CS/Math major I am required to take a few SE courses. All of them have been 10-15 years dated in both execution and their definition of good software and what constitutes solid design. I'm so sick of these SE classes that I'm tempted to drop out or transfer. Engineering (not just software) is mastery of a craft, it isn't something you can learn by passing classes and getting a degree. You need to get your hands dirty, something other engineering disciplines focus on highly. For an SE program to be effective there should be one class: Software Engineering 1, the curriculum should consist of working with your peers to build awesome software. You should have to take it at least six times. The instructor can mentor the veterans and the veterans can mentor the freshmen The masterclass is to start a project that you spin up into a publicly available piece of software, then watch how you're design scales and what needs to change. Anything else is history and lies.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting: he doesn't identify the biggest problem with offering Software Engineering as a separate major. I have my suspicions as to why.

Here's the big problem. Incoming students usually pick majors as freshmen or sophomores. These students do not understand the difference between software engineering and computer science: they naturally assume that by signing up for a software engineering major they'd be preparing themselves for the exciting world of coding. After all that's what you're doing, right? Electrical engineering students learn to build actual circuits. Why shouldn't software engineering students learn to build actual programs? Totally reasonable.

Much of this problem is due to software engineering's misappropriation of the term "software engineering": but to students that term is largely synonymous with "software development" (and students aren't alone -- this is a common association in the industry as well). Unless software engineering faculty do a better job of explaining the difference, this will continue to be a major bugaboo.

The problem is that it's not in the interest of software engineering faculty to make this distinction to students, because to nearly all students, building a computer game is much cooler than defining its UML layout on paper. Departmental budgets are driven by butts in seats... why make it clear that a student who wants to code that he's in the wrong major because of an unfortunate terminological distinction coined in the late 1960s?

</comment><comment> wh-uws I think the biggest problem with many CS schools is a more a marketing / message one than anything else.

Before you get there, on their websites, and on arrival they should explain.

"This experience is all about the meta. Not learning <blub> but how you could design <blub> itself. By the time you are done whatever you haven't learned seeking to complete your education here will be exponentially easier to learn because of what you spent your time here learning.

How to learn. Better."

</comment><comment><USER23> This is actually an ongoing discussion. Weigh in and vote here: <http://nerdcollider.com/challenges/3/>

<comment><USER24> Good call. One of commenters is Tony Wasserman at CMU who is one of the fathers of Software Engineering who tells why he worked to separate SW from CS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had a bunch of thoughts about architects vs home builders, and nurses / doctors, but when I thought about it, I realized that I can't think of any directly analogous splits to the CS / Engineering ideas here in other disciplines.

Well, one does come to mind. I've been told to get an Architect's stamp in Germany you need to have done a significant body of work in an area related to architecture, say bricklaying, or some other such trade. If this is true, I think this would show a similar sensibility as I hold, and the comment at the link mentions -- academic pursuit of algorithms is aimed at and motivated by totally different things than software engineers who need to push and release code NOW.

It would be nice to have them talk more, though. If I were king of CS programs worldwide, I think I'd implement a multi-year practicum requirement as the master's equivalent -- no serious academic work can be taken without going out and building some real world software in your area(s) of interest.

Then you can go play with algorithms and stuff, THEN you can go back out as a PhD/Certified Software Engineer and crush everyone you see..

</comment><comment> adam-_- I did a course that was mostly CS with some SE (SWE) modules. In the first year the SE modules were about team work, version control, development methologies, requirements analysis and so forth.

In the second year the SE modules were mostly a practical team project, collaborating with another remote team from another University, designing and developing PDA and desktop geocaching software, for a client (representatives from IBM).

I strongly believe that for doing this course/project we were much better suited to industry, having developed soft skills that could otherwise go a miss from an academic course.

Alongside this we also has the theoretical CS modules, so it seemed like a good mix, and you could specialise however you liked in your final year.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't this what internships and part-time jobs are for? Plus you can integrate basic software engineering by working in teams in school or just have one class.

What specifically in software engineering does it require an offshoot a new major? Languages, tools, how to work in a team? You can have just one class that is required for that instead of having an entirely separate major. All those things can become outdated quickly. You can also provide student-run courses or hackathons for generating real projects outside of class.

I might sound callous, but I'm honestly curious what kind of material would be taught in "Software Engineering" major that would separate it from computer science as a major?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is good software engineering something you can truly learn in the classroom, or is it something that's emergent to applying good learning techniques to real life experiences (kind of like being a journeyman)? I think a good Software Engineering degree would be one that somebody who has a good amount of real life programming experience would return to get to signify a level of "mastery" in the field. My two cents at least. I don't want to act like I know a ton about the trades, but I'd like to think that there is some similarity in mastery of Software Engineering to being a master craftsman in both learnedness and years of practice.

</comment><comment><USER27> In some state schools it might not even be possible. I remember discussing this with one of my profs who told me that he was prohibited by state law from using the word "engineering" in a course title or description, as the charter for engineering curricula was with a different state university. The research school had the CS department, the engineering school had the SE program.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes of course schools should offer students a choice, with CS focused on theory and SE focused on practice. In addition to those I like Richard Gabriel's proposal for a "Master of Fine Arts in Software". <http://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html> We need all kinds.

</comment><comment><USER29> No. While there's lot of value of offering more courses that teach the key aspects of software engineering, I can't see it ever being better than the experience at an internship at a real company, which an any serious industry- bound CS student at a top school should be able to find.

</comment><comment><USER30> I still like Gabriel's idea of an MFA in programming.

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html>

If anybody ever made this happen I'd come running.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think some of both is good for both sides of the coin: Why not just split them into separate specializations?

</comment><comment><USER32> UIUC already offers a bunch of graduate level courses in SE as part of the CSE program. If you take the courses, does it matter that the major is something else? :)

<comment><USER19> Those courses were basically a senior design project with some added software engineering topics put on top(the year I took it was extreme programming and something else I don't remember).

In all honesty, the actual coursework was pretty useless. I don't think that it's really possible to teach a lot of true SE concepts in a classroom. They're social paradigms that are constantly in flux, and very difficult to effectively teach.

The project itself was more helpful to me because of the group nature of the work, which meant that we had to work out scheduling, progress metrics, etc. Again, this is more of a social system than academic work.</comment></comment>


AIDE - Java IDE for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5haWRlLnVpIl0.

<comment><USER2> And while you wait for every other desktop application to be reinvented for your "tablet with keyboard", you could always just use a laptop.

Not that this isn't pretty cool, but it does seem like we're coming full circle sometimes. I almost expect that soon one of the tablet manufacturers is going to say "hey, know what'd be great? A _fold-out keyboard_ so you don't have to carry it around separately!"

<comment><USER3> [http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20109567-243/logitech-f...](http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20109567-243/logitech- fold-up-keyboard-for-ipad-review-killer-keys/)

You were saying? And it's only $130!

<comment><USER4> What do you think its more portable and powerful that, or an ultraportable such as macbook air ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. There's no question that this is what the future of mobile development looks like.

<comment><USER6> This _is_ pretty cool, but why the heck would I want to develop _on_ the platform I am developing for? We've had cross compilers for the last 30+ years and they have served us well. I don't want to use a crappy on screen keyboard and an environment that doesn't have all my tools for 10 hours a day. It's not healthy and it's not productive. How is it even better than the status quo?

<comment><USER7> Clearly op was being sarcastic.

Edit: just tried the app. Honestly, its miles more comfortable than I had first assumed. I might actually use this.

Does anyone know if there is a way to use git on android?

<comment><USER8> It's true. You know those times you're away from the laptop/in bed, and you're thinking hard about a certain platform bug? Well now you can just whip out your phone and test it out. It's not a full blown solution, but it is convenient. And it will only get better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would it be possible to load the files in Eclipse (or any editor) via USB, then edit and save them, and have AIDE compile and run it? This would save the hassle of maintaining Eclipse and the Android SDK on you development machine.

<comment><USER10> The notes say "AIDE is fully compatible with Eclipse projects. Just copy the sourcecode to your device, open any source file in AIDE to load the project and start coding." Assume that's what you want :)

<comment><USER11> Conceivably you could even access the same files via SMB of NFS. Huh, that's pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a useful for playing around with code on a commute or making a tweak to existing code. I don't believe they think people are going to be writing entire large apps with this.

I used to use a program called OnboardC on the Palm Vx some 13 years ago that compiled PalmOS programs on-device. It had its uses, as does (say) the ConnectBot ssh client for Android. Sometimes you need to make that quick change on the move.

</comment><comment><USER13> So one of the interesting projects I've got baking is running Android ICS on a Pandaboard connected to an HDMI monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

This looks like a very nice setup for 'banging out' a widget/app that I can use right away. Assuming that someone does an Android port to the Rasberry Pi that would be a good use case there too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice. I'm building one for the iPad <http://worqshop.com> (sans executing code on the iPad, forbidden by Apple)

<comment><USER15> Seen <http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/> (formally Codify)?

It allows you to build iPad apps on the iPad..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First I was interested then I read "tablet" then I read "Ice Cream Sandwich". What about my expen$ive Nexus One paperweight that I just paid off Google?

<comment><USER17> What are you talking about? This app runs on 2.2 (froyo) and up, phones or tablets.

<comment><USER16> You're right, it says so in the right hand column, I was reading through the description and didn't notice it at the time.

I installed it, nice light easy on the eyes color scheme, it makes me think my next Android phone will need to have a real keyboard so I can enjoy using this app to write code on occasion. Cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool. Hopefully more will follow and mobile devices will become content producers rather than just content consumers.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is slightly more interesting than a port of gcc to Andriod - but it's still an conventional approach that targets edge case devices in Europe, not handsets in Nairobi's slums.

Touchdevelop is the shape of on handset programming.

<http://www.touchdevelop.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting. Note there is already a cli based Android development environment running on devices called TerminalIDE that uses vim, complete with very useful plugins already installed, as the editor. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5zcGFydGFjdXNyZXguc3BhcnRhY3VzaWRlIl0).</comment>


White House Doesn't Want You to Know the TPP's Effects on U.S. Copyright Laws - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/white-house-doesnt-want-you-know-tpp-effects-us-copyright-laws <comment><USER2> After contributing money to Obama's campaign and voting for him twice, this is annoying.

At the risk of boring the few dozen family and friends I am closest with, I have been SPAMing them with emails about TPP and links to complain to their Congress-critters.

<comment><USER3> But Obama has always been broadly in favor of more trade - he was never one of those candidates promising to dismantle NAFTA or use protectionist tariffs. Much as he always made it clear that he was no peacenik and would deploy US military power where he felt it would advance US interests.

I'm not saying you should like or agree with these policies, but I can't sympathize with your expressions of surprise. I'm hawkish enough (as a classical economic liberal or 'neoliberal' if you like) that I broadly support the policies mentioned above, and it was part of why I decided I'd prefer to see him in the job back in 2007.

<comment><USER4> This isn't about free trade, though.

It's about raising trade barriers together to protect incumbent industries at the cost of consumers and competition. They want to lengthen copyright, invade privacy, regulate internet services while empowering gatekeepers, strengthen licensing and reporting and taxation demands on small business, expand and unify patent regimes, and the like.

Canada, Mexico, China, Australia, and Japan are already reciprocal Most Favored Nation trading partners. We're not going to be getting any more access to their markets. They're not going to be selling us anything new, either.

The contents of the deal are still an official secret, but we've had leaks. It looks like the worst kind of big cartel, Disney, telecom monopoly, NSA, surveillance state, patent troll plan to terrorize consumers and innovating businesses. In fact, it's probably exactly what you might expect powerful insiders to negotiate in secret at the expense of the public.

Free trade is something different.

<comment><USER3> Make sure that straw man is well and truly dead before you stop beating him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The trouble with TPP and other such "advances":

Big corporations are pulling strings in the background, to annul democratic control. With bigger institutions (e.g. Washington, Brussels, ...) it becomes simpler and simpler to find people that are far enough from the voters and corrupted enough to support such endeavors. The result are secret proceedings and parliaments that become pressed to vote for big legislation where the effects for democracy and nations can not be foreseen.

In effect, those lobbies have their way (at least oftentimes in the last decades) and destroy democratic control and control of the big corporations. So it comes, that big corporations have a "free hand" to do what they want but are liable for nearly nothing.

The worst thing about this is, that when one "advance" is rejected by democracy -- no trouble, just give it a different name, make it a little different and give it an other 3 or 4 letters acronym ... and bring it back next year!

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. I'm not aware at any especial effort of secrecy about the TPP. It's normal to negotiate treaties behind closed doors; the time for public debate is when they come up for ratification in the Senate, which is in accordance with the Constitutional design.

2\. This has little or no effect on US copyright law, but seeks to promote that standard elsewhere: * What they want is the most restrictive interpretation of U.S. policy to become the international "norm" by which all other TPP countries will be forced to conform their national laws.*

3\. All TPP negotiating coutnries are already signatories to the EBrene convention and in principle are alsready signed up to these terms as fr as foreign works are concerned.

4\. The US copyright regime got to be the way it is largely as a response to changes in European law (specifically the Sonny Bono copyright act extending it to life + 70).

I'm heartily in favor of copyright reform but until such time as it takes place it's entirely understandable that international trade negotiations would be based on the law as it currently stands rather than some hypothetical future version. Furthermore, the TPP copyright rules as discussed are basically just an affirmation of the existing copyright regime rather than some drastic change. The normal thing in _any_ kind of trade deal is for the parties to try to get theri commercial marketplace rules onto the same page so that they can minimize the legal barriers to selling goods in each others markets.

<comment><USER6> What's your take on TPP's proposed criminal enforcement provisions which would criminalize noncommercial activities such as fanzines, even when rightsholders have no complaint?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/latest-tpp-leak- shows-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/latest-tpp-leak-shows-us- still-pushing-terrible-drm-and-copyright-term-proposals)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/10/17/latest...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/10/17/latest- tpp-leak-shows-even-harsher-copyright-rules/)

[http://japanitlaw.blogspot.com/2013/01/tpps-effect-on- fanzin...](http://japanitlaw.blogspot.com/2013/01/tpps-effect-on-fanzine- environment.html)

<comment><USER3> OVerblown, when was the last time you heard of anything like that inside the US? Of course there's no way to make definitive statements unless and until an official draft is presented to the Senate for ratification, but the reality is that authorities are much more interested in going after obvious knockoffs of commercial property (fake DVDs, t-shirts or whatever) than obviously fan- driven projects that do not represent themselves as 'the real thing'.

If anything, the trend in US courts is towards expanding the boundaries of fair use. I think you might be interested in this recent case: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cariou_v._Prince](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cariou_v._Prince)

<comment><USER6> All the articles are based on leaked drafts and interpretations by local lawmakers who are not allowed to take notes, e.g. TTIP (similar to TPP) lawmakers in the EU are allowed to read the drafts but not to leave with copies. The leaks have been consistently reported by multiple countries who are at the negotiating table.

If the concern is overblown, why has the US offered to delay enforcement of _non-commercial_ criminalization laws until current governments are out of office? Are existing US laws not sufficient to prosecute commercial violations?

Under TPP, trends and views in U.S. courts may be less important than an ISDS arbitration panel which would rule on any multi-country conflict between a country and a corporate investor. Under current law, a country can tell a corporation e.g. that _" guesses don't make valid patents"_, e.g. [http://t.thestar.com/#/article/business/2015/02/11/canadian-...](http://t.thestar.com/#/article/business/2015/02/11/canadian- reply-to-500-million-us-pharma-suit-guesses-dont-make-valid-patents.html) .

There are already $30B of corporate ISDS claims against EU nations, [http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/ttip- up...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/ttip-update- xlvi-3592332/) , and that is before the expansion of scope that will come with TPP and TTIP, which will reportedly require that countries (including the US) submit to non-public arbitration.

<comment><USER3> Criminal enforcement proceedings take place in courts, _by definition_. Now you've switched to arguing about ISDS claims, a completely different subject. I'm not here to sell you the TPP; I've given my opinion and a good faith answer to your initial question, I have better things to do than follow a moving set of goalposts around.

<comment><USER6> Based on the limited available information, my understanding is that ISDS claims are arbitrated by an extra-national panel, then they become law in the affected country, then the country's courts are bound to enforce the ruling. So the question of "what is normal in US courts" seems inseparable from ISDS and any other extra-national trappings of TPP/TTIP.

Thanks for your original answer. I agree completely that the reported proposals seem absurd and inconsistent with precedent. Yet, the reports of leaked documents have been consistent in their absurdity, for more than a year. The push for fast-track does not inspire confidence that such a complex agreement will receive sufficient due diligence and public review by affected stakeholders, before being subjected to an all-or-nothing vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is what I think about whenever someone talks about "international law."

<comment><USER8> Indeed, and a similar shiver down the spine when they talk abstractly about "reform".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great overview of what's going on behind such "trade" agreements: [http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/](http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Last week's TPP discussion with 80+ comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9078954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9078954)

</comment><comment><USER10> What happened to democracy? I know no absolutely one that is in favor of this, yet it seems like it will happen.

</comment><comment><USER11> Our lazy friends who give money to (Netflix, iTunes, etc) are directly supporting this.

<comment><USER12> Some people's time is important. Teenagers with lots of time and little money can futz around with being a pirate.

<comment><USER13> Projects like PopcornTime are just as easy to use, if not easier to use than Netflix/Amazon. It doesn't require a credit card, and has no region/platform restrictions.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, do you know what it would take to make a PopcornTime for ONLY Creative Commons and Public Domain material?

Just a CC/PD tracker?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Login" is not a verb - <AUTHOR> http://www.loginisnotaverb.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm beginning to think that linguistic prescriptivism is going to have a hard time holding up against the crazy mixing bowl that is the Internet and, to a wider extent, globalization. It's fun to play grammar nazi and all, but I've started to resign to the fact that people are simply going to do what they're going to do. Look at the state of English only a couple centuries ago. Language evolves quickly.

Who's to say login can't become a verb? "Google" and "email" did. Busily propping up websites like this with guides and corrections is like a finger in the dike.

<comment><USER3> > "Google" and "email" did

"Google" and "email" don't contain prepositions.

I log in. You log in. We all logged in.

I login. You login. We all logined. What? We all loggedined? We all loggedin?

If we just acknowledge that "login" is a noun referring to your credentials, where as "log in" (or "log on") means to supply one's login/credentials, then it's all hunky-dory.

<comment><USER4> 'If we just acknowledge that "login" is a noun referring to your credentials, where as "log in" (or "log on") means to supply one's login/credentials, then it's all hunky-dory.'

If only. According to the James Study of Casual TV Activity, "log on" means "visit this Web site". Any use of user name or password is coincidental.

E.g "Log on to CNN.com for all the latest headlines."

It's a lost cause. I'm saving my energy to preserve the distinction among "few", "fewer", "less", and "lesser".

<comment><USER3> > According to the James Study of Casual TV Activity, "log on" means "visit > this Web site". Any use of user name or password is coincidental.

That's just incorrect usage of terminology by (most likely) marketing/PR people.

In the olden days, you had to log on to your ISP over a modem. "Logging on" happened all the time to access anything outside your computer.

I suspect that the occasional use of "log on" in reference to simply visiting websites will disappear in favor of simply "visit". "Log on" will continue to be used and abused with connection to sites that actually want you to log on (after all, what better way to turn your website into a money maker than by gathering user data).

> It's a lost cause. I'm saving my energy to preserve the distinction among > "few", "fewer", "less", and "lesser".

This is reminding me of the article about the recent English grads who traveled the country correcting grammar and spelling errors in signs on the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not worth getting upset about. Personally, I'm more concerned that we're going to lose the word "lose". Everywhere I look, I see people sticking an extra o in there. "You loose" etc.

<comment><USER3> I suggest a new, combined form: looose. The meaning will be drawn from context. I anticipate efficiency improvements world-wide.

<comment><USER6> The English language doesn't have a word with three or more repetitions of a letter. "LOOOL" and "mmmmmmuah" excepted.

<comment><USER7> From /usr/share/dict/words on OSX, I get the following:

whenceeer (probable corruption of whenceever, and hence not legit)

wallless

bossship

demigoddessship

goddessship

headmistressship

patronessship

<comment><USER8> First one is probably a contraction missing the apostrophe: "whencee'er". But that doesn't explain why "wheree'er" doesn't show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        "First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing
        because verbing weirds language. Then they arrival
        for the nouns, and I speech nothing because I no
        verbs."
                     -- Peter Ellis.

And from the wonderful Calvin and Hobbes:

        Calvin: I like to verb words.
        Hobbes: What?
        Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them
                as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing?
                Now, it's something you do. It got verbed.
                Verbing weirds language.
        Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a
                complete impediment to understanding.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cute, but English has tens of thousands of "phrasal verbs": Stand up, stand down, stand out, stand over, stand against, _understand_.

Even more remarkable is that native speakers use these constructions all of the time, yet the idea of a phrasal verb is apparently not taught in school.

<comment><USER11> The point is that phrasal verbs are written spaced: "stand up" -- even when conjugated: "stood up", not "*standupped".

<comment><USER10> Well, some phrases (and yes, phrasal verbs) get concatenated over time, like "understand", "overtake", "courtmarshal", "becalm", "whipsaw", etc. The conjugation and number rules work themselves out eventually, for example, "courts-marshal", "overtook".

It's just one of the ways languages mutate. Usually the noun form mutates first, and later on the verb form, but not always.

<comment><USER12> Following the model of "understand" -- I'm going to start going with "inlog". Inlogging, inlogged, inlogs -- it just works!

<comment><USER10> Go get 'em, tiger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TL;dr - People "log in" to your site using your "login" page. You use your "login" details to "log in."

<comment><USER14> Technically, I don't think "log in" is a compound verb. It's a verb followed by a preposition.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. While what you say has "logical" written all over it (given variants like "logged out" where "logged" is clearly the verb), "log" as the verb for this activity doesn't _feel_ right to me. I will, however, update my previous post :-)

<comment><USER15> People have said as much in other places in the thread, but it's probably better to consider "log in" a phrasal verb. So your instinct ("doesn't _feel_ right to me") is right: they form a single semantic unit. You _don't_ log (full stop), you _log in_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People out there seriously think "login" is a verb? Why make things complicated? You just forgot the space. The usage of the verbs "log" and "sign" (as in "log in" and "sign in") is clearly a metaphor for the paper forms ("logs") used for buildings, equipment cabinets, etc.

Here's a visual aid: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/riggzy/3177839298/>

Also see meanings 6 and 13 at <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/log>.

</comment><comment><USER17> Login is whatever 350 million people say it is.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ok, _login_ isn't technically a verb... yet. Fact of the matter is, any language is an evolving form of communication (except maybe latin at this point). Along with words like _signup_ , _setup_ , etc, these words are nearly ubiquitous on the web, and widely accepted/understood.

 _...we can't let one little conjugation problem make thousands of programmers and technical writers look like fools_

"login is not a verb" + "many websites use it as a navigation element" != "programmers look like fools"

I could use a simple _door with an arrow_ image for logging in as well. That image is not a word at all. Yet it would still serve as an effective navigation element.

Also, who says that all websites intend for it to be a verb anyway? I have another navigation called "account". I do not want users to _account the site_. I simply want them to know that is the _account page_. Likewise, "login" signifies that is the link to the _login page_ , for which this article granted that it may be used as a noun.

Ok, I've spent entirely too much time on this subject.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://loginisaverb.com>

<comment><USER20> It seems someone didn't read. One of the links on that page is to [http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal- verbs/log+in.h...](http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal- verbs/log+in.html). How does an entry for the phrasal verb "log in" which doesn't even contain an occurrence of "login" corroborate that the latter is a verb?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also, "pedant" is a noun.

<comment><USER22> It simply is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Login can be a verb, we just haven't collectively decided how to conjugate it. Correct in language is usually more a function of convention rather than functionality. There just aren't rules to handle this. It can either be "he logs in" where we just revert to the two word version, which appears to be the most common approach, or you just conjugate and recombine. "He logsin". This is harder to recognize and pronounce so I prefer the former. Eventually, the matter will get settled by convention and then grammar nazis will nitpick people for not knowing the rules for conjugating verb phrases correctly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Login = log in without the space, just like some people use awhile as an adverb whereas a while is the correct usage everywhere else (some people just use a while everywhere). Log is the real verb. I logged in to the website.

</comment><comment><USER25> _No other verb in the American language behaves that way. Even in the arcane, deprecated predecessor of American (English), no verb behaves that way._

Wait, what? _American_ language? _Deprecated predecessor_? Somebody really seems to hate the English people. The name of the language is still English. American English. Just as the language they speak in Australia is Australian English. See here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Countries_in_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Countries_in_order_of_total_speakers)

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I totally switched off when I read that phrase. Taking a dig at the British is totally unnecessary and betrays the author's childishness. He needs to get that chip off his shoulder.

It takes away from his otherwise, carefully constructed argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think it's almost silly to admit "log in" has the correct meaning and then quibble about the orthography. I'd contend that it very much is a verb in the same vein of phrasal and separable verbs as found in, e.g., German and English. The fact that to log and to login are different is curious enough. If I were a betting man, I'd say this is part of a lexical entry that composes the verb, and being non-finite, is left in its generated position as the finite portion becomes tensed. Regardless, usage trumps all.

</comment><comment><USER28> "impact" is also not a verb. I'm sure Nero Wolfe would agree with me on that, if he were here today.

<comment><USER12> Actually, impact has been a verb for a very long time... though generally referring to wisdom teeth or, uh, feces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Even if it behaves like no other verb in the language doesn't mean it's not a verb. Look at "go."

</comment><comment> B-30 "Asinine fascist unwilling to brook dialogue (thus, no contact or comments on the web site) and unwilling to consider that English is English precisely because it has no rules that cannot change, and thus became the international lingua franca" is a longish phrase.

It simply is.

</comment><comment><USER30> It is if I use it as a verb. Now go away and find something worthwhile to rant about.

</comment><comment><USER31> Login - is a noun. To login is actually "to log in" and thus "I logged in"..

</comment><comment><USER32> Ah, the past tense has always jarred with me and I now know why. Makes sense. It's going to be hard to eradicate from my technical writing though.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, if 'login' is still missing in the dictionary, then it is time to add it. Maybe as noun at first which can be verbalized later?

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://www.google.com/search?q=loginned>

About 33,300 results

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.google.com/search?q=%22logged+in%22>

About 224,000,000 results

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 'Magnanimousness' is not a noun. It's simply not.

</comment><comment><USER36> It is now. Just like Google has become a verb.

</comment><comment><USER37> If it walks like a duck....

</comment><comment><USER38> Nor is "Yellow-carded".

</comment><comment><USER39> Welcome to English where we've been turning nouns into verbs and vice versa for quite a while now.

<comment><USER20> I think that would hold more weight with people on this issue if it weren't the case that there's already an appropriate verb here—"log in".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Language mutates, often in unfortunate ways. "Login" is not actually a verb if you follow the "rules" of English. You log in. "Log" is the verb. As much as it bugs me, though, I've learned to accept misuses becoming the norm; this is hardly the first time a word has evolved from butchery. There used to be a billboard in SF on which a gym advertised that you could "workout in your pajamas!" I've learned to grimace inwardly about that, "alot", "alright", and other "violations". Because -- as in the case of "alright", we already have ... "already".

</comment><comment><USER41> If login isn't a verb then why when i try to comment does it prompt me to "login"?

Example: Please login to comment. Example: Please exit to your right.

Yeah, that's what I thought.</comment>


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