7 Reasons No One Likes Your Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://thepeoplebrand.com/blog/2008/01/04/7-reasons-no-one-likes-your-ideas/

<comment><USER2> Ideas are nothing - execution is everything.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Scientific experimentation is everything.

Putting significant effort into execution of a bad idea is a complete waste of time.

<comment><USER2> Depends on what you are after.

Very few scientists are rich, and very few businessmen are good at science.

But if the goal is to make money I would pick good execution over a good idea any day. Just look at myspace ;-)

<comment><USER4> Myspace had a very good idea. This is obvious because it had a million copycat sites that were pure knockoffs but still became incredibly rich.

<comment><USER2> Well tripod did more or less the same 5 years earlier, and had a million copycat sites. What exactly was the great idea that myspace had?

If you read up on myspace history and how they came to dominate the market it is quite obvious that it was by pushing their product relentlessly - not by innovating or having excellent ideas.

<comment><USER4> Its a good idea because with most other ideas you would have to work much harder to reach the same level of success.

<comment><USER2> Well that's the most cunning and insightful comment I have read in quite a while.

"because if they had done something else they would have to work harder..."

I give up. I concede. I appraise your superior intellect. I will never be able to give a due answer to that amazing argument.

<comment><USER4> fucking think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> because they're SOBER.</comment>


Why Google's monopoly abuse case in Europe will run and run - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-antitrust-case-europe-details-analysis/ <comment><USER2> In my experience many/most Americans dislike Google (because they don't trust huge companies that have lots of personal data - this is sane.).

However, those same Americans will often become really hostile towards the EU if there is any claim of monopoly abuse from a European company.

So far I do think the EU has been fair to Google.

A parallel can be found in the EU browser monopoly case. Opera spearheadead that case. The criticism here was massive. Then Mozilla joined - suddenly it wasn't primarily a EU vs US thing, but more of a company vs company thing, and the attitude changed quite a bit.

(I just enjoy pointing out hypocrisy.)

<comment><USER3> Do you have any data on the majority disliking Google thing? Most people I talk to are completely unaware of internet privacy concerns, let alone using that to form opinion of dislike about companies (of those that do, it's usually the anti government crowd). But both your and my anecdotes are just that...

<comment><USER2> No, it's just anecdotal from my experience online.

I do feel that I have felt a very heavy nationalistic response from americans in the past, e.g. during the time of that browser ballot, for example. This always struck a nerve with me.. that americans would find it more probable that the nasty foreign europeans would try to get more money out of the americans, than the to more obvious fact that these companies were committing obvious anti-competition crimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The essence of the law in question lies in the following quote, saying that a monopoly can act in the market so long as that action "doesn't prevent competition on the merits and does not harm consumers and innovation."

I just wanted to note, as a clarification, that it is important not to conflate diversity and competition. Diverse standards - for example multiple gauges for railways - STIFLE competition by creating lock-in and silos. That's why governments tend to enforce or at least encourage standards, including units for measurement and screw sizes, FRAND licensing, etc, rather than vigorously taking companies to court to prevent standards from forming. Diversity isn't necessarily a sign of a healthy marketplace, nor common standards or technology proof of an unhealthy one.

Unfortunately a large chunk (including the app store, and lots more) of what we call Android is NOT open source, and not a standard others are free to adopt. Unity is enforced and bundling insisted on. Google seems to have believed that highly illegal bundling wasn't highly illegal bundling if neither consumers nor corporations (OEMs) were directly charged for it. Where they got this fantasy I can't possibly imagine, it has not the slightest basis in law nor ever did. Yet Google remain mesmerized by this whimsical and entirely invented bit of logic.

Harm to competition is "the dog that didn't bark." Of course we can't point to all the innovations that didn't happen - because they didn't happen; and yes Google can point to a few scraggly competitors that have somehow held on by their fingernails, and to the silo of Apple users locked in to a different network effect. But the harm done has been profound.

Excellent article.

</comment><comment><USER5> Given what I have been hearing on the voice/chat bots/digital assistants, it seems to me the landscape of competition is already shifting.

Amazon Echo. Potentially bypassing Google for people searching for things.

Viv. Same.

Google. Kubernetes, GCE, open sourced Tensor Flow, revealed TPU and how AlphaGo ran on it, right around Allo and Google Assistant.

Apple Siri. Have not heard from Apple, but I doubt they are just twiddling their thumbs.

Facebook.

Microsoft. Maybe they will bring a working Clippy back.

And lots of other chat/voice AIs. There are different advantages to each. Competition here is heating up.

Just as how smartphones changed how we primarily access information, voice- first interfaces will as well. How will ads work in this world?

The antitrust regulators seem a tempo beat behind. Same with that shopping comparison site.

</comment><comment><USER6> In typical Ars fashion, this is a pretty comprehensive summary of the case so far.</comment>


Sending a window a WM_DESTROY is like prank calling pretending to be the police - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/09/26/10216420.aspx

<comment><USER2> Then WM_DESTROY should have been called NM_DESTROY, since it is clearly a notification message not a command. The user is not wholly innocent here, but the Windows API team should be blamed for the misleading naming as well.

<comment><USER3> No, because the NM_ messages are for standard controls only. There are more messages in the WM_ family that aren't really 'command' messages, but more 'notification' messages, like WM_CREATE. It's not like one can create a window by allocating memory, casting to an HWND and sending WM_CREATE to it.

I guess the conclusion is that one cannot blindly take WM_xxx message and think 'oh I can use ::SendMessage() and friends to make windows do certain things'. Only the documented behavior are valid use cases.

I guess one could say that the WM_xxx message should've been split up into more subclasses, but where to draw the line? I'm quite fine with using WM_xxx for all the fundamental window manager messages, as long as one minds their documented behavior there is no problem. (I realize that this last sentence can spark a whole discussion by itself on how far self-documenting a 'sane' API should be, but that's rather subjective imo).

<comment><USER4> I disagree with you and I think the grandparent is right. Even though the handle based architecture of the wind32 system is not object oriented, it was meant to have some object oriented features. If you think about this system as one in which a window handle is a window object and a message to that window represents a function call, then the WM_CLOSE is a public method that anyone can call. WM_DESTROY, on the other hand, would be a protected method that can only be evoked by the window system. Even though they decided that the overhead of a full OO system was too much, they still could have made the intention more clear by doing something like this:

WM_PUBLIC_CREATE and WM_PROTECTED_DESTROY

Then there would be no confusion about who was supposed to send the messages and how they were meant to be interpreted. Of course they don't have to use this exact terminology, but you get the idea.

<comment><USER3> "If you think about this system as one in which a window handle is a window object and a message to that window represents a function call, then the WM_CLOSE is a public method that anyone can call. WM_DESTROY, on the other hand, would be a protected method that can only be evoked by the window system."

Yeah well there's the error in your thinking, and exactly what the OP was about: window messages aren't that. _Every_ message is a callback, a 'notification' if you will. If you call RegisterClass() and pass a WNDPROC that does nothing (ignores all messages), it can still be created/destroyed with CreateWindow()/DestroyWindow(), and the 'notifications' it gets (WM_CLOSE and WM_DESTROY) can happily be ignored ('happily' as far as the window manager is concerned).

Win32 is _not_ an OO API, and thinking of it too much in those terms will cause all sorts of confusion. Win32 is a C api, and yes things like MFC put an OO wrapper around it, but at some point the abstraction _will_ start to leak if you take it to the extreme without thinking about the underlying system. Win32 is based around the OS calling back into your code through a well- defined callback function (the WNDPROC), a function with a fixed signature, and taking two arguments that are for all intents and purposes void*'s. The message ('WM_xxx') is a way to tell you how to interpret its arguments, and inform you about changes in the life cycle or state of the window. Everything else (like being able to 'send' messages to HWND's and make them behave in a certain way) comes from there, and much of it is convention - which often works, but when it doesn't, it's not the design's 'fault'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very good example of the kind of thing I see in all sorts of frameworks, where someone (often me) is trying to do something that isn't 100% plain vanilla, and TheOneTrueRightWayToDoThis isn't obvious. Our hapless programmer thinks of something, tries it, it appears to work, and they move along. Meanwhile, it only appears to work "by coïncidence," and in reality there is a hidden bug waiting to bite.

The ideal situation is to do more research and really understand how the leaky abstraction actually works, but there is never enough time in the day and deadlines in the calendar are closer than they appear...

<comment><USER6> Haha, this happens to me a lot when learning new libraries or frameworks. My current solution is to just search StackOverflow with what I'm trying to do. Often, the Right Way is posted as a snippet, but even if there are no directly pertinent answers, related ones can also give insight on other things I'm doing wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Irrespective of the article and its crux, the analogy is plain weird. Maybe he had a particular aspect of a prank call in mind, but it's tough to relate to.

</comment><comment><USER8> > This thread creates an invisible window whose job is to do something until > it is destroyed

Is this a common pattern? Why?

Wouldn't it be simpler to just create a thread or separate process without an attached window?

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, thanks for exposing me to how braindamaged win32 really is.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure every operating system has weird quirks like this.

The odd thing about this article is it tries to pretend it's the user's fault. Which is doubly odd as Raymond Chen's stuff is usually pretty good.

<comment><USER9> This is more than just a quirk. Lets go through the bogons here:

1\. Signal system confuses notifications with commands

2\. API ties windows to threads

3\. System allows you to send WM_DESTROY from one thread to another even though it provides undefined behavior

4\. DestroyWindow() can only be called from a particular thread (related to item #2)

5\. The API doesn't detect that the window has been destroyed as far as the application is concerned (whatever happens in ForgetWorkerThread() or PostQuitMessage(), the window actually goes away) without a DestroyWindow() call.

In short, WTF.

[edit: format]

<comment><USER3> "2. API ties windows to threads"

OK, so what's the alternative? Automatic locking at OS-level? How can the performance penalty in those many cases where it is not needed be justified? Same goes for your arguments 3, 4 and 5 btw. Why should such low-level functionality impose important design decisions on those who follow the documentation, just to protect the beginners who don't? I much prefer my raw control, thanks - and I'll happily take the few times I shoot myself in the foot with it, err, with it.

Despite its warts and its legacy cruft, the win32 is quite flexible, and easy to understand - at a very basic level, not much studying of under-the-hood stuff required. For an OS-level API, it packs a lot of power into a small set of concepts.

<comment><USER9> You argue for more control, but tying windows to threads at the OS layer is actually enforcing less control.

<comment><USER11> Just a quick meta response because i see you're new.

You don't need to sign your posts as your user name appears above your post.

<comment><USER9> Hi, thanks but that is what I've been doing for ages.

<comment><USER9> Is it really necessary to downmod me for that?

<comment><USER11> I think we're way off topic but I'll try to end on a good note by pointing out that I can't downvote you as you responded to my post.

You'll find the community here is great, but you should try to play by it's rules:)

<comment><USER9> Sure, that wasn't directed at you personally. Thanks and cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chrome extensions lets you attach large files to emails and send instantly - <AUTHOR>

We created two Chrome extensions. One for Gmail and one for Hotmail (now Outlook.com). With it, users get an extra button in their email service that says "Attach with Ge.tt".
Attach as many files as you want no matter how large. A link to the files is added to the email, and files are being uploaded to our service. BUT you don't have to wait for the files to be uploaded before you can send the email. So you can attach as many and as large files as you want without waiting for them to upload.
Would love some feedback on this if you have any.
The extensions are available here:
For Gmail - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ccbciedilfeajpopddflmkgggjgefcme
For Outlook.com - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ppmjceoiaemcohnikoniifdmoemkegej <comment><USER2> This is wonderful, as it allows me to quickly send executables through Gmail, which has been an issue (small, but annoying) when dealing with clients.

How is the login through Gmail secured, though? Also, just a little complaint: grabbing a file from ge.tt brought up a dialog asking me to install the Chrome extension, which I already have; is it possible to detect that? (Top notch only asking me once, though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The extension requires login to Ge.tt (it's free). And the Gmail login goes through the normal Google login.

What the extension does is to add a button to the page and when you click that files are uploaded to Ge.tt and a link is added to your email body. There's no exchange of any Google login needed.

<comment><USER2> I don't mean the actual login to Google or Gmail; I mean the login form that pops up to login to Ge.tt when I click the button to upload to Ge.tt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, ok. With the Ge.tt API you receive a token which is stored in local storage. So the pass is never stored locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Questions about the technology is more than welcome as well :)

</comment><comment><USER3> How are the files secured?</comment>


Speeding up Android Gradle builds - <AUTHOR> https://www.tengio.com/blog/speeding-up-gradle-builds/ <comment><USER2> Regarding the short first tip:

> Google works continuously to fix bugs and improve the building process. Just > by updating it from 2.2.0 to 3.0.0-alpha2 you will save a lot of time.

if you use a new "major changes" version tagged "alpha" of any software, you are guaranteed to pay back many-fold any short-term time savings you make. I didn't read after that first tip, and hope your advice isn't official Google advice.</comment>


Quoterio: for those who save quotes into a text file - <AUTHOR>

I've built this small app (http://quoterio.com/) for those crazy people who like me still save their favorite quotes into a text file.
The app is free and all inserted quotes become public, so we all can profit from inserting our quotes into the DB.
Thanks for all kinds of criticism in advance.
PS: I know there are alternatives, but I also have used it as a chance to learn Sinatra (the app is deployed on Heroku). <comment><USER2> I like it. I am one of those crazy people as well and have been kicking around the idea of making something like this. I keep quotes in a google doc and I have a ton of them so I'd love the ability to import a list of many quotes from a text file. Also would like the ability to edit quotes after I submit them. I included the quotation marks in my quote so the result has \" in it.

A couple of other notes: the export link seems to be broken, and when I click on the star the quote disappears. Using Chrome on OS X.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

I have thougth about automatic import, but this requires all imported quotes to be in one uniform format, doesn't it? And to adjust the existing quotes would require a manual work which might be as hard as just adding the quotes one by one to quoterio?

I also have though about editing, but didn't like the idea because since your quote might be added by many users it would not be good, if your changes would affect all of them right? So in this cases I should duplicate the quote object for every user... But maybe I can let users edit quotes as long as they are not favorited by others... Thanks for this point. Until now you can just unmark the quote and create a new one, I'll take care about the rest.

> the export link seems to be broken

I'm quite sure it is broken by the quotation marks in your imported quote :) Thank you as well, I'll fix it.

> and when I click on the star the quote disappears.

That's true, because if you click on the gray star on your 'home' page, you unmark a quote and it disappears. This is a good point and makes it clear, that this behaviour is not obvious at all. Thanks for this. My idea was, that all you can do on the site is mark or unmark quotes. All marked quotes appear in "My quotations". All unmarked disappears. All inserted quotes are automatically marked as favorites. Probably, I have to rethink this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you going to make the code available? I love reading other people's sinatra code.

</comment><comment><USER4> clickable: <http://quoterio.com></comment>


The Purpose Hotel: Change the World in Your Sleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thepurposehotel/the-purpose-hotel-change-the-world-in-your-sleep <comment><AUTHOR> Jeremy Cowart is one of those people I never heard of, until a friend of mine sent me a link to this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC- rpAkfE2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC-rpAkfE2I)

The man is on a mission, and yet he has accomplished so much already. The guy's much younger than me, but he's become a hero of mine.

And _this_ idea, the Purpose Hotel, is incredible! Not only do I hope it succeeds, but I hope others will clone the idea, and continue in this vein of social entrepreneurship.</comment>


America's New Religions - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2018/12/andrew-sullivan-americas-new-religions.html <comment><USER2> I think the methodology is broken here. If we start to extend the notion of religion to be able to mark any world view as a religious one, than what a point to have a notion of a religion? With such a methodology religion becomes unfalsifiable by means of Popper, so it have zero value as an idea.

In particular they tend to name any belief as a religious one. So if I believe in the power of progress, then I have a religious belief therefore I'm religious. But not every belief is religious, some are very rational and based on evidence.

What I cannot comprehend is why? Why people do it and for what reason? Why they want to believe that everyone bears religion? They want it so much that they are ready to turn inside out the notion of religion, which seems very important for them. They are ready to make the notion of religion to become meaningless this way. Why?

I have a hypothesis for it. Those thinkers just know nothing about science, methodology and rationality, and they are making their best trying to wrap a very big and complex world into something they understand. It happens that they understand nothing but religion, so all the world for them becomes religious.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somehow this author completely skipped philosophy 101... nihilism is an often observed point of view in atheism: There is no existential meaning or commonly shared human need to appeal to a universal, unprovable truth. The only meaning that exists in life is the meaning people assign to it.

The premise of this book is flawed. Humans are not meaning seeking, humans are meaning assigning. Most of the time, the meaning we assign are logical and reflect reality. Sometimes the means we assign are internally consistent, but do not match reality. And occasionally, we come up with some pure crap. This occurs at both the individual and the cultural levels.</comment>


WebKit & Gecko :hover Bug - <AUTHOR> http://tumbledry.org/bug/

<comment><USER2> Seems to be fixed in Ffox 4.0b8? On OSX, 10.6.5

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note -- I'll keep looking for a fix.</comment></comment>


A Simple Guide to the Bulking and Cutting Cycle - <AUTHOR> https://blog.workoutwithbolt.com/a-simple-guide-to-the-bulking-and-cutting-cycle/ <comment><AUTHOR> When it comes to building the body of your dreams, there are many different strategies. Two techniques for gaining muscle mass and losing body fat are commonly referred to as bulking and cutting.</comment>


GNU Binutils: The ELF Swiss Army Knife - <AUTHOR> https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/gnu-binutils <comment><USER2> Author here: thanks for sharing! I'm curious to hear what other interesting ways people use Binutil commands or if there are other ELF introspection tools that I neglected to mention in the article. I only touched on it at the end but some of the commands in libabigail such as abidiff are really neat and useful too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice write-up!

FWIW, there's a bunch of other interesting tools for ELF, [https://github.com/MattPD/cpplinks/blob/master/executables.m...](https://github.com/MattPD/cpplinks/blob/master/executables.md#elf)

LIEF (Library to Instrument Executable Formats, [https://github.com/lief- project/LIEF](https://github.com/lief-project/LIEF), an interesting project on its own) also has good references, [https://lief.quarkslab.com/doc/latest/references.html](https://lief.quarkslab.com/doc/latest/references.html)

<comment><USER2> Very cool, I haven't used LIEF before but it looks quite interesting ... thanks for the links!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Julia Evans has written a great yet succint overview of ELF files: [https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/09/06/how-to-read-an- executable/](https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/09/06/how-to-read-an-executable/)

Among other things she points to this graphic showing the structure of an ELF file which I hadn't seen before: [https://code.google.com/archive/p/corkami/wikis/ELF101.wiki](https://code.google.com/archive/p/corkami/wikis/ELF101.wiki).</comment>


Create .gitignore files for your project - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitignore.io/ <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/github/gitignore](https://github.com/github/gitignore)

<comment><USER3> VSCode also has a nice .gitignore extension that uses the same repository as source.

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=codezomb...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=codezombiech.gitignore)

I like this extension because I can easily merge multiple gitignores with a couple of keystrokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I kinda don't get this. Don't you just >> .gitignore patterns that cause problems as you see them in git status?

<comment><USER5> Until your Eclipse co-worker checks out your project you've been using Intellij on. And then some wackjob uses Vim or Emacs.</comment></comment>


Technology in 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10410912&fsrc=RSS

<comment><USER2> I doubt that spam "accounts for 90% of traffic on the internet". Maybe 90% of email traffic.

<comment><USER3> Makes you wonder about the Economist and its fact-checking department. Really, everyone who looked at that should have questioned it.

Oh, well:

[http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-the-one-third-of-all- inte...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-the-one-third-of-all-internet- traffic-myth/)

...realistically, I wouldn't be surprised if the bandwidth consumed by gmail's page views (html+javascript+css+images+etc) exceeds its backend email load.</comment></comment>


Opportunity - A Better Way to Consume Facebook? - <AUTHOR>

With the News Feed becoming busier every day with third party apps, ads, etc., wouldn't it make sense for someone to develop a website + app that lets you consume Facebook as simply as you'd like to?
Maybe the default would be status updates and photos, and you could feature either all your friends or certain people. I only think of this because it's become a real paint point for me to visit Facebook and feel like I'm getting less and less out of it because of how it's changed. I think there's still valuable content in there just waiting to be surfaced, it's just too cluttered right now. In this hypothetical app, you'd still have to be able to see all the comments and likes, and add comments and likes of your own, too.
Also - if a product like this already exists, I'd love to hear about it...didn't have any luck in a Google search. <comment><USER2> Beginning to feel like MySpace part 2. Cluttered and congested, ads becoming an interference from experience. Also, something that MS probably didn't do, invasive tracking of user activity on and off their site. Facebook has it coming, they are not as invincible as they seem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the ads are definitely becoming more noticeable and there's usually one at the top of my News Feed most times I log on. I've always laughed at the people who hate Facebook changes and becoming used to it literally days later, but I think the product quality is seriously deteriorating...and that's not even mentioning their mobile offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been browsing userscripts.org to find something to remove the sponsored advertisements from FB. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/131326> seems to work for now.

If you use Chrome you can install the script natively to the browser, otherwise use GreaseMonkey + Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER4> I expect it likely that Facebook would gladly break any software that alters how users interact with their datastore.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the second app on my list and I am going to try and make something like this on iOS in a few months.

I have thought about some other features too around photos and filtering friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you decide to do it, please post to HN...would love to take a look.</comment></comment>


Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myth-of-the-job-stealing-immigrant.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> "Logically, if immigrants were "stealing" jobs, so would every young person leaving school and entering the job market"

It's bizarre that people don't see this. Anyone concerned about immigrants is surely, logically, also concerned about people having babies. But somehow people think that limiting birthrates as a bad thing and limiting immigration is a good thing. Just a complete inconsistency.

<comment><USER3> It's not an inconsistency if they see native-borns as of superior worth to immigrants. I find this assessment abhorrent, but it isn't totally inconsistent.

<comment><USER4> Homogenous societies are more cohesive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kausfiles is one of the best sites that advocates against illegal immigration from a liberal perspective. [http://www.kausfiles.com](http://www.kausfiles.com)

Most of us don't compete in the lower end of the market. Those who do are negatively effected.

<comment><USER2> People at the lower end of the labor market are also adversely affected by each other. Why are they not proposing deportation of low-skilled Americans? No justification seems to escape from the fact that anti-immigration is fundamentally just discriminatory tribalism no different from racism and homophobia like the OP's father had.

<comment><USER6> So you will be giving up your citizenship?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He may be right that the overall affect of immigrants is positive, but the benefits go to people who are already doing well and the costs are paid by the people at the bottom. I don't see how anyone can complain about about income inequality on the one hand and advocate unrestricted immigration on the other.

The US should adopt Australia's point system based approach with a preference for the young and well educated.

<comment><USER3> Unrestricted immigration would reduce global income inequality. I don't judge the worth of individuals by their nationality, so it is global inequality that I must be concerned about, if income inequality is my concern.

<comment><USER7> I'm not interested in global income inequality. It's more important to me that my country functions well.

<comment><USER8> According to the ILO (UN labour organisation) [1], in PPP dollars global average wage is 1480$ per month. So for the US equality would mean that 50% of working age people earn less than that. This is only counting wage-earners. No freelancers, children, elderly or anything like that are collected.

In the US, average wage for employed individuals is about 42000 [2]. Since there are 300 million Americans and 6.7 billion non-Americans, America should shift almost entirely to the average to get income equality. This will mean the equivalent of a 55% across-the-board pay cut for every American, provided prices do not go down. Your rent will stay the same, but your income should go down 55%.

(This is in fact happening, but is manifesting as uneven inflation without corresponding wage rises, so you'd experience an 81% rise in average prices, rent, food, restaurants, ..., while seeing your wage stay the same)

Also note that average worldwide unemployment is at least a factor of 3 higher than in the US. So it would not just take a massive pay cut, but also firing close to 20% of all workers, to bring the US into the worldwide average.

This is why socialists are (or should be) against immigration, and should be pro-isolationist. I think that if you want to improve the conditions of the American working class, that would be the correct attitude to have.

In reality the period of 1950-today has been a very exceptional period in history where not only incomes were higher, by most measures, than ever before, but income inequality was far lower than the vast majority of economic history.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040) [2] [http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml](http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _And yet the economic benefits of immigration may be the most settled fact > in economics. A recent University of Chicago poll of leading economists > could not find a single one who rejected the proposition._

Sure, but the University of Chicago is full of neo-liberals, of course they'd say that. Economics is more of an ideology with some math thrown in for taste, than a hard science.

<comment><USER10> As opposed to your comment, which lacks the math.

Could you point to harder evidence on the subject, from a harder schience? Or are you claiming that there has been no real science done on the subject?

<comment><USER11> If it were economically beneficial for you to liquidate your family in an insurance scam, would you do it? Some people have other values.

<comment><USER12> Your comment paints a picture of an economist who would happily liquidate his family for enough cash. This indicates a weak grasp of the field. Economists are quite happy to discuss things that are "economically beneficial" (or, to use the jargon, "utility") not merely as a specific amount of cold hard cash (modulo the risk of prosecution) but in terms of all the things that people value, like family and love and human decency and maybe even _having your soul rot in Hell for murder_ if you happen to believe in such things.

Indeed, understanding that money is just a means to Utility is very important to understanding economics in general, especially when you start getting into macro topics like Inflation where the value of money fluctuates. And any economic analysis which hides important costs or benefits (like Values) off the balance sheet is bound to produce nonsense results.

Perhaps if you'd taken an introductory course in the topic, you would have been disabused of these notions. Cute straw-man, though.

<comment><USER11> I wish I wouldn't have written my second sentence the way I did because I don't actually believe any economists would do that, though in my defense I didn't think anybody would take it seriously. I was using an extreme example to demonstrate that nobody actually gives primacy to economic arguments, so their perfectly valid conclusions aren't going to be effective when someone for example cares more about their own countrymen than foreigners. I 100% agree that some immigration would improve America economically and reduce global inequality, but I feel that I have an moral obligation to not throw poorer Americans under the bus to accomplish it. Also taking everything into account, maybe that financial benefit wasn't worth it for other reasons. Massive illegal Mexican immigration seems to have completely fucked over many Black Americans, for instance. Economics is a useful tool to find these things out, exactly as you say. I believe that most low-skill immigration to the US is a process of enriching the richest by replacing the poorest with even poorer and transitioning the other poor to government assistance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This thread isn't going to be productive, so in HN spirit, I would like to propose a side project for anyone interested:

\- Develop a tool that monitor front page of HN

\- Train a classifier that detect immigration topic

\- Automatically post a well explained comment for your side of the debate

\- Make it open source so the other side can have one.

</comment><comment><USER14> Every set of hands comes with a mouth also. Immigrants increase the supply of labor but also the demand for what labor produces.

Perhaps the confusion arises because the immigrant does not necessarily purchase goods and services produced in their new country. We all work in a global economy were its impossible to follow all of the transactions between what we produce and what we consume. That would be true even if nothing ever crossed international borders.

<comment><USER15> From a purely economic perspective immigrants capture almost all net economic boost for themselves. Capital/property owners get a small boost. It's a wash or net negative for the general population of the country.

That's from a purely economic perspective. What nobody ever wants to discuss is that creating an ever-more culturally and ethnically fractious country is a huge problem looking ahead decades quite aside from near term GNP prints.

<comment><USER2> Did you just say that immigration is harmful because workers get most of the benefit and property owners relatively little? This economic perspective seems to be only looking at the economy of one group of people.

<comment><USER15> An immigration policy should be crafted to serve the needs of the citizenry. Is this controversial? If you're an open borders nutjob, let me know and I'll allow you to carry on in peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So the same companies that conspire to suppress wages in every other way are pushing for an immigration policy that does the opposite? Um, no.

</comment><comment><USER11> I didn't see anything new in this article, it pretty much rehashed the same arguments I've seen since forever. I feel like the low-skill, repetitive nature of the work of a pro-immigration NYT columnist makes it specially suited for cost-saving through automation or outsourcing. The field seems ripe for disruption, any takers?

</comment><comment><USER5> Those generally shilling for illegal immigration are the ones getting benefit of cheap labor not competing in the manual labor market. You increase supply the price you can charge plummets. Pretty easy to understand.

<comment><USER13> At the very least, you have to prove that demand is fixed. Otherwise it's meaningless to claim that supply increase have any effect on price (price may momentarily decrease, but cheaper price could increase demand which bring price back up).

And before someone claims that immigrants don't participate in normal labor pool, then you should advocate for open border, free market style

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ooh boy, trickle down immigration!

Really though they do take jobs. It just depends on where you are in the job world how affected you are. Where I am we end up with a lot of people from India, a lot because some of the contract companies we use are owned by immigrants, now naturalized, or the like. Still they are displacing a good number of natural born. I am all for their immigration, they bring good skills and a great work ethic which is lost on a lot of people born here.

Looking south of the border, the damage here is that low skilled low pay jobs will get filled likely by those who come to work. Whether they displace natural born citizens is another thing, the difference is the later likely qualifies for more assistance programs and have been on them to the point of dependance.

Make no excuse though, the push for integration of the large influx from Mexico and Central America is business oriented. They want these people as they are coming to work jobs many already here turn their noses up at. That some will become dependent on the government makes both parties salivate, that they cause concern to people of both parties doesn't hurt either

</comment><comment><USER18> "Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ Louis C. K.

As one of those people stealing your jobs. I agree. And I don't even have to be on-site to do it. Because internet is awesome.

<comment><USER9> > _" Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without > contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ > Louis C. K._

Or, you know, you're working class/poor black/unskilled laborer etc, which for a rich american or upper/middle-class it's same as "shit".

I find this argument BS. Those people, from factory workers, to cooks, to street cleaners, to miners, nurses, construction workers, farm workers, etc, do a valuable job, much more essential actually than most of "knowledge economy", in that everything would stop to a standstill without those jobs, whereas we did have an economy in the 70's even without Google and the internet.

<comment><USER15> > Louis C. K. being a cunt

The lack of fellow-feeling with these people really disturbs me. OK, you were blessed with some brains and are doing well. Everybody grinding it out in your country with a worse job deserves your scorn?

Newsflash: odds are good one of your kids won't be especially smart. Unless you've lined up a huge inheritance, a horrible cut-throat labor market is probably going to hurt your progeny.

That's an appeal to relatively narrow self interests. The lack of concern for fellow citizens out of principle amazes me. If you think citizenship and borders are irrelevant you need to grow up. Who do you think will have your back if it hits the fan and we have to tough out a nuclear war or similar? These fresh of the boaters sure won't.

<comment><USER18> > Who do you think will have your back if it hits the fan and we have to tough > out a nuclear war or similar? These fresh of the boaters sure won't.

 _People_ will. FOB or not doesn't matter. I'd venture as far as saying that most FOBs I've met are far nicer people than most americans. Regardless of the originating culture.

Most Americans in fact display the exact same arrogance you just did. They're better than everyone else just because they happen to have won the geographic lottery.

<comment><USER15> > won the geographic lottery

America is great because it is filled with Americans. The geography is relevant but not so much as is fashionable to claim.

If you fill America with people from other places it ceases to be America. It will more and more resemble the inferior places the newcomers come from.

> FOB doesn't matter

Have you renounced your foreign national citizenship? How many passports do you hold? It definitely matters. You're going to go wherever you can earn a buck. Rootless cosmopolitan and you know it. I'm here until I die for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> More shilling for cheap labor. Articles like this are the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denial. "Unlimited immigration has literally no consequences but rainbows and sunshine!"

<comment><USER12> Oh, man, you need to be careful about bringing up the specter of "climate- change denial" like it's going to buttress your point. If the consensus of scientists is something you actually respect, we should consider the attitudes of people whose job it is to study this sort of thing. I'll just leave this here for a user-friendly start and some good references on the consensus of economists: [http://ew-econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf](http://ew- econ.typepad.fr/articleAEAsurvey.pdf)

Spoilers: while I don't see immigration specifically addressed here, "cheap labor" is very, very high on the agenda. Free trade and outsourcing score each score >85% support... and it seems unlikely that the free-trade attitude will evaporate just because it's free trade in _labor_ that we're talking about. The sentiments you've expressed can neatly be construed as another kind of economic protectionism of the sort economists loathe...

<comment><USER20> For the most part, economists don't really discriminate between the free trade of goods and the free trade of labor. They're so closely linked in any case that they're functionally the same in this context.

<comment><USER21> That's a funny idea in a world where you can't ask someone what they're making and mentioning _union_ will get you fired.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dan Benjamin of 5by5 talks about his equipment, business [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://5by5.tv/afterdark/75

<comment><USER2> It's obvious that Dan puts a ton of care and time into the quality of his broadcasts, and it shows. The 5by5 shows, both in sound quality and in content, make you feel like you are sitting in a room with Dan and Host, and could join the conversation if only you too had a microphone.

It's a hard dynamic to pull off, but Dan's pulled it off.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of radio shows online that I used to listen to (primarily on TwIT) became dull and repetitive after a while. With so many tech podcasts already around, I wasn't sure if Dan would be able to make 5by5 successful. Against my expectations, he's managed to find hosts and topics that remain interesting even after months and months on the air.

I have a slew of Back to Work and Hypercritical in my backlog that I intend to get through; those are my favorites. I used to listen to The Talk Show and Marco's show, but both of those started to rub me the wrong way after a while.

I hardly have time to do anything outside of work these days, but it says a lot about 5by5 for me that I'm willing to listen to the old episodes even after they're no longer the latest episodes. Keep aiming high, Dan. Keep it interesting.

<comment><USER4> I agree on all counts. Shows like Macbreak Weekly and TWiT itself became insufferably tedious. They are like raucous dinner parties while the 5by5 shows (usually 1on1) are still conversations.

Back to Work is essential, Hypercritical is good, and Build & Analyze and The Talk Show are decent if you don't mind a bit of Apple-club party-line (Benjamin/Mann/Siracusa are also Apple-club, but not annoying about it).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dan Benjamin, creator of 5by5 and host of various shows on the network, talks about his home studio's past and current equipment, and then answers questions from the chat room. If you're at all interested in producing podcasts, or in what it takes to host a successful podcast network, this is worth a listen.

</comment><comment><USER5> The setup Dan describes is high-quality, affordable over time but not over the top, and sensible across the board (no pun intended).

I invested an hour and a half and saved countless hours of research.

Thank you for this post.

</comment><comment><USER6> The setup he's suggesting is cool, but it costs a lot of money is isn't easy to set up.

If you want a less expensive & simple alternative, try this:

MAC \- Connect: Skype \- Record: Ecamm Call Recorder \- Mic: rode Podcaster or Blue Yeti \- Edit: ScreenFlow (or iMovie) \- MP3: use the converter that comes with Ecamm Call Recorder

PC Use the same thing, but try VodBurner for recording and editing.

What I love about Dan's programs is that he can get the people he has on to _care_ about their sound because he has them on consistently. At Mixergy, the entrepreneurs I interview don't seem to have the same appreciation.

<comment><USER7> My expectation when I was doing some of this stuff was to expect to have flight kits for folks with a usb soundcard + mic + IFB with in-plastic tips. Theoretically it'd be "plug in the USB soundcard" and go.

Points of failure and all of that... but it was a fun thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Big fan of Dan, but he sure takes his time getting to what he uses. Fast forward about 6 minutes in for the goods.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it takes a while to get to the interesting stuff; he was also interacting with the chat room during the show. There's good information in the FAQ portion of the show as well, like his reasoning behind NOT doing double-ended recording (anymore).</comment></comment>


Do We Deserve -- or Even Want -- More Jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/do-we-deserve-or-even-want-more-jobs.html

<comment><USER2> OP's post misses the root of the problem: Increasing technological productivity slowly eliminating the market for manual labor and low-skill jobs. The only jobs left for these people is service jobs which don't pay enough. These people aren't going to go away.

Not every human being is a well-adjusted intelligent computer programmer. Some just want to be told what to do, and get paid for it. These jobs are slowly being replaced by machines and they will never come back. McDonalds will eventually replace order-takers with machines, but they will still need customers. What will this segment of society do?

That seems to only leaves three options to solve the lack of jobs: 1) Create busywork jobs for them 2) Provide welfare for them 3) Oust them from society

First and third options tend to be impractical, and the second and third options are objected to by the populace on moral grounds. Leadership chooses the status quo and the problem just gets worse as the economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based.

You might think that another option is to give businesses money, but that doesn't work in the long-run because business' opportunity for investment is increasingly in ventures where menial labor/low skill jobs are either done overseas or by machines. Especially in America where you can often get that labor elsewhere for much cheaper.</comment>


Project ShapeOko: a $300 complete CNC machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edwardrford/project-shapeoko-a-300-complete-cnc-machine

<comment><USER2> This is a TERRIBLE cnc machine. The only constraint on the gantry in the direction of the long slide are two sheets of 1/4" mdf. It's going to wobble terribly. Seriously, there are much better machines available at even lower prices, most notably <http://makeyourbot.org/mantis9-1> which doesn't even need lasercut parts, only a saw and a drill.

<comment><USER3> @kliment: I'd love to see a better machine at a lower price than $300. Seriously.

I've spend the last 6 years trying to create one and if it ends up there is already one out there, I'm going to feel like a real fool.

You'd be surprised, it doesn't wobble terrible. In fact, it doesn't really wobble at all. There are 2 cross pieces in the back of the Y-axis at the top (one vertical, one horizontal) and then a full box under the work area which is tied in to each of the x-axis uprights in both the front and the back.

You can see some assembly pictures here: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardford/sets/721576228624053...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardford/sets/72157622862405328/)

You can see some more pictures here (these include the full box under the work surface): [http://keen101.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/progress-on- shapeoko...](http://keen101.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/progress-on-shapeoko- cnc/)

If you have a suggestion to make that particular section even more ridged, I'm all ears. Not having an engineering background, I'm always interested in other peoples ideas! After all, I just made this up :-)

<comment><USER2> Sure it won't flex if you're only milling foam. The Mantis I linked to costs about $150 in hardware and motors and $100 in electronics (using, for, example, Sanguinololu from the reprap project and pololu stepper drivers) . It can mill PCBs and harder woods.

The problem with your setup is that your gantry is held on by two pieces of plywood. The gantry itself is decently rigid, as is the base, but the linkage between them is subject to flexing. The two wood plates are not rigid, they will bend like a springboard. What you need to do to stabilize them is to add a vertical support to each side that is at a 90 degree angle to the existing one. Wood can handle compression better that deflection, so adding a support like that (which of course must be rigidly attached to the sliding part below) would prevent it from flexing and give you a much more rigid machine. The gantry axis itself is stabilized by the slides, though it will deflect somewhat around the middle. The vertical axis seems okay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea with a wicked execution; another why-didn't-I-think-of-that moments. 'Over' funded is a good thing too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if it can cut high carbon steels. It looks like it uses a Dremel- style tool. I guess it might work on annealed steel if you can slow the movements way, way down and maybe applied some cutting fluid.

<comment><USER2> Not a chance. It can only cut things less hard than the wood panels that keep it together. Anything harder and vibration is going to destroy your workpiece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> thats gonna be big</comment>


Inside Amazon's $3.5M competition to make Alexa chat like a human – The Verge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/13/17453994/amazon-alexa-prize-2018-competition-conversational-ai-chatbots <comment><USER2> I just tried this, the team I chatted with has a long way to go. Delay responding was 2-3 seconds, it kept asking me if I wanted to chat about movies.</comment>


What I Learned Building Twitter Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/b95033c270af

<comment><USER2> Interesting... For some reason I had always assumed that Bootstrap was associated more closely with Twitter because it had the word "twitter" in the name.

Now I understand why some business are so concerned with preventing other websites and people from using their name. I'm not saying that Twitter should have demanded that these guys change the name of their framework to something else, but this is a good object lesson of how using someone other company's name can cause confusion.

In retrospect probably one of the biggest things that motivated me to investigate Bootstrap was because it had Twitter in the name, and I had the mindset "If Twitter uses it, then it must be good."

So I'm surprised to find out that it wasn't actually that deeply tied to Twitter.

Edit: I went back to the website for Bootstrap and the website clearly says:

 _Built at Twitter by @mdo and @fat,_

versus here @fat is saying:

 _it isn't actually maintained by a team at Twitter (nor was it ever)._

So now I'm actually more confused.

<comment><USER3> Mark and I built bootstrap while we were employed at twitter on twitter hardware. Also, undeniably it was largely influenced by our work there (and later would largely influence a lot of the code at twitter as well as power lots of projects both internally and publicly) – but it was never a company mandated project. It was something that Mark and I came up with on our own and pursued outside of work hours.

<comment><USER2> Okay thanks... I understand now. You started the project at Twitter, but it wasn't owned by Twitter. I'm glad that Twitter didn't claim Bootstrap as company owned code, because I and thousands of other people have really enjoyed using it in our projects.

<comment><USER4> One of the reasons I worked at twitter is that they want you to open-source virtually everything. They weren't likely to put up a fuss, and everyone was really proud of bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dear fat,

This post comes off to me as cocky and untrue.

First, the general tone of this seems very pompous to me. To me, it reads: "I know so much that even building the most popular project on github and possibly of any library on the web can't teach me anything new." It might have been a little more gracious perhaps to thank people for using and contributing to the project...?

Also, you definitely learned something building bootstrap. I'm willing to bet you learned a lot of things between the few major version updates and 2,500+ issues, most of which are closed. In fact, here's a presentation that _you made_ detailing something you learned from bootstrap (accessibility, specifically): <http://wordsbyf.at/2012/05/21/jsconf-argentina-2012/>

I'm really not trying to be that negative guy on hacker news, this was just my immediate reaction upon reading the post. That being said, congrats on building an immensely popular and important library, and here's to hoping that you learn and always continue learning.

<comment><USER3> hm… sorry it came off that way. :(

fwiw, the amount of technical things i've learned from working on bootstrap is not proportional to the amount of work i've put into this project… at all. But, i never expected it to be, and that's totally fine.

Have I learned any technical things? lol sure, of course!

Funnily, the accessibility thing you linked to wasn't really something I learned building bootstrap… the presentation was all about how accessibility is too hard to really learn… and you need to become a specialist, which is sad times. Paul Irish wrote a great post about it a while back: <http://paulirish.com/2012/accessibility-and-developers/>

maybe i learned that i knew nothing, but that was about it :P

My friend Dustin (who created this writing topic on medium) asked me to write about the single most important thing i learned from working on bootstrap.

And for me, that single thing was that I love working with people and hate working alone.

It took me a while to realize that what was bumming me out the most about running bootstrap (and other projects) was that as they became more successful, there was more of an expectation that i would be working on them all the time (which meant the expectation that i would be working on them independently/alone all the time).

That's ok from time to time, but isn't why I get excited about free software and ultimately i became pretty depressed/negative about the whole thing.

I'm just now starting to identify what makes we want to continue to dedicate all my free time to a project like bootstrap. And right now, the main motivation is to spend time creating stuff with my favorite people.

I can assure you – it's definitely not to learn more about css/js !! :)

<comment><USER6> Hi,

I just wanted to say thanks. I have been integrating bootstrap into my site for the passed few months and I am happy to know it will look better then otherwise ever would have. I still have some trouble figuring out why the hell some parts don't work (can you recommend a debugging tool?) but all in all I am pretty chuffed and can appreciate why it is popular.

Take it easy = )

PS - wtf was with the radioactive download bootstrap button on the download page of the last release? I don't think you were involved with it, but I was surprised to see it . EDIT> It has been removed and now is a normal download button again.

<comment><USER3> haha! mark loves these, i think he started doing them way back at zurb.

we took them away because they are _hooorible_ for perf – and were exposing a memory leak bug in chrome i believe

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I want to know is... Why LESS and not SASS?

Seems to me, TBS is the only thing keeping LESS alive.

SASS/Compass seems to be the better choice? <http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs- less/>

(Logic and Loops are big ticket items).

<comment><USER8> From whispers I've heard within the TB community, is that it may at some point jump from LESS to SASS. But right now its not a priority. Someone tell me if im wrong here.

<comment><USER3> ha, well that is definitely not happening anytime soon…

but, here is a whole thing on "why less" I wrote up about it a long while back, and it still holds true today: <http://wordsbyf.at/2012/03/08/why-less/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not what I expected from the link-baity HN post title, that post does not actually tell us what he learned at all, if anything.

Not complaining about the post itself, just thought it'd be very cool to have an actual "what I learned building bootstrap" post one day.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking the same thing. All I've learned is how much power/draw the Twitter name has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes me sad that all my post-work hacking on things has been by myself. As a musician his description sounds similar to playing an instrument by myself; fun but not as great as with a group of friends.

<comment><USER12> Same here.

Is there an app with traction that helps people like us find fellow hackers to collaborate with. If not, sounds like an idea right there. Want to help build it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I Learned from reading "What I Learned Building Twitter Bootstrap.": Unironic "brogramming" is still alive and well. What a slap in the face of the community that made bootstrap successful.

<comment><USER14> If having fun making things with friends is "unironic brogramming," I'm proud to be an unironic brogrammer.

<comment><USER13> No, but extreme arrogance and braggadocio is. The only thing missing from that article was a keg stand in the top photo, to show just how little they need to try to be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW, I learned this same thing working cashier at a dry cleaning shop in my teens.

TL;DR Hooking up with people you like and making something cool is way better than doing something annoying and stressful that sucks.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot of truth to the notion of 'building things with friends' is what fuels a lot of developers. I am the same way. I think the same thing can be said for building a startup. It just has a completely different feel and excitement when it's something mutually taken on with a friend.

Also major props to Bootstrap for everything they have done for the web.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is twitter trying to claim ownership over bootstrap? I assume you 2 guys left twitter to do this as-a-living. The post reads like a "Twitter does not own this, we made it on our own time, Its just the two of us, etc. etc."

Do you even need to worry about this? Pretty sure since its open source you guys are fine, unless something in your twitter employment contract says otherwise. That being said, Bootstrap is a valuable asset to the web and I think you would be not-paranoid in assuming that twitter might want to call it a asset it owns.

Step 1 for you guys should really be moving from <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/> to <http://domainyouownpersonally.com>

<comment><USER18> The short answer is no, Twitter is not trying to overtake bootstrap. Although we have some ownership of the code base, the community has definitely let its mark on Bootstrap with Mark and Jacob's great leadership.

In fact, we have been working closely with Mark and Jacob on the bootstrap transition. There are plans to migrate bootstrap into its own organization soon and kick off an effort to migrate it to the MIT license, all supported by Twitter.

Stay tuned for details!

<comment><USER3> yep, twitter has been great. And mark and i didn't leave to start a bootstrap support company :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I met a Twitter engineer at startup school who said any side projects had to be approved by Twitter's legal team. Was this the case with Bootstrap?

Also, was it put on Twitter's GitHub account in order to increase visibility?

<comment><USER3> yep, lots of legal hurdles to go through – took us like 6 months – but now they have a full time opensource shepherd @cra which makes this _much_ smoother

<comment><USER18> <3, thanks for the kudos

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is Bootstrap mainly for CSS? Or should it be viewed as a fully-blown alternative to HTML5BP? I would love to read a guide on how to incorporate Bootstrap with other tools like HTML5BP and the Javascript framework of my choice.

<comment><USER21> Bootstrap is primarily a CSS framework with some accompanying JavaScript (jQuery) plugins to provide things like tooltips and popovers.

You can very easily use it with HTML5 Boilerplate. You incorporate it in exactly the same way you would any external CSS file. And if you want to use their JavaScript you add that the same way you add any other JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What stuck out to me was how you pursued this on _your own time_ ... does Twitter not give its engineers time on the clock to pursue things like this? How do you feel about that?

</comment><comment><USER23> While this post is a bit on the brogramming side (I would actually love to read what you learned from the project technically, and why you made certain design decisions), I have to give you and @mdo props for building Bootstrap.

I have to say that Bootstrap is the best thing that has happened to client side web development since jQuery, even if the web is doomed to drown in an ocean of Bootstrap-looking sites.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am, for one, thankful you did this. I have been able to stand on your shoulders and see farther. certainly the front end work I have built with bootstrap and derivates has made the shallow end of the web I swim in better.

</comment><comment><USER25> Technical issue, but... is the "Recommend" button doing anything? (or supposed to be doing?)

I push it and nothing happens.

<comment><USER26> Redirects here for me: [https://medium.com/m/signin?redirect=%2Fwhat-i- learned-build...](https://medium.com/m/signin?redirect=%2Fwhat-i-learned- building%2Fb95033c270af)

Check your javascript console for errors

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> this project makes building a project with friends even more fun. thank you for all your hard work on it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think we all should just say thanks for building this, and nothing more, well, perhaps thanks to Twitter for not claiming the code. We all should aspire to do what fat and mdo did, build something out of passion, in our spare time, that will be freely available for everyone. There is nothing that anyone can say, (including them) that will take it away from them. They belong in the hall of fame of FOSS and hacker spirit. This is true whether you like or don't like what they write in a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER29> So, what did he learn exactly?</comment>


Energy Efficiency in Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy-Languages#energy-efficiency-in-programming-languages <comment><USER2> Previous discussion on HN, 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15249289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15249289)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always suspected using "like really productive" languages creates it's own scalability problem in production. Ruby/Python/Node/PHP consuming anywhere from 2x to 15x the amount of energy and time as a language like Java/C# comes as no surprise, which likely means you'll need a corresponding increase in servers for particular use cases.

What's not a surprise is C stomping everything with a lead boot. I _am_ surprised that Fortran is a lower than it is (considering its role in HPC/research). It's no surprise to see Java leading the virtual machine pack on speed, I thought it'd take a larger hit on energy consumption due to JIT.

But Rust, WOW. Have we finally created the perfect language? Always something I've wanted to learn, now I think I have a good reason!

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's the paper - [http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/pape...](http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/paperSLE.pdf)

 _On average, compiled languages consumed 120J to execute the solutions, while for virtual machine and interpreted languages this value was 576J and 2365J, respectively._

<comment><USER5> Does this mean for mobile devices like phones, tablets. watches, VR/AR headsets, etc, would should prefer compiled languages?

<comment><USER6> Linux and Darwin is written with C. They are the OSs of Android and iOS.

But would be nice to have some mobile apps written with C.

<comment><USER7> Lots of mobile apps are written in Objective-C, and Objective-C is C. A superset of C to be exact.

Since it's a single hybrid language, it's trivial to remove slower features fro, performance-intensive parts.

See my UIKonf talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHG_zw7%205SjE&feature=youtu...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHG_zw7%205SjE&feature=youtu.be)

Or my book: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321842847/ref=as_li_tl?ie...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321842847/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0321842847&linkCode=as2&tag=metaobject-20&linkId=4f7c355096938fece9d7c880e6916ce8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before all of you go out taking these results as definite truth, remember that a language benchmark is only as good as the particular implementations. A $LANGUAGE fanboy can easily game the benchmark by overoptimizing the $LANGUAGE implementations into unmaintainable atrocities that perform extremely well, thus making people think that average $LANGUAGE programs will exhibit the same performance/efficiency/resource usage characteristics.

There's no easy way to guard against this problem when you're only a handful of researchers. If you have a large team with a background in a lot of languages, you can have them write and peer-review implementations that are idiomatic (i.e. representative of the language's practical usage).

<comment><USER9> And before you all go out taking the possibility of scepticism as an actual motivation to be sceptical, remember that conclusions do not need to be proven beyond all doubt to be reasonably believed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nice to see that some newer languages like Rust and Swift are performing well!

<comment><USER11> Well, Rust and Go are performing very well. Swift performs worse than languages like Java, Haskell, OCaml, C# and Lisp.

\-- Edit --

My bad, I only looked at the paper. The results ([https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency- languages/re...](https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency- languages/results)) show that Swift and Go are doing about as well as Java. (Which means they're right behind C, C++, Rust and Fortran).

<comment><USER12> The summary results for Swift do not reflect the individual tests. There is a single anomalous test, reflex-redux, where the Swift implementation sucks badly.

Anecdotally, Swift string handling makes it easy to do the right thing when handling Unicode strings, but also makes it easy to burn up several orders of magnitude too much CPU when you use those functions for simple tasks. I once saved three orders of magnitude clock time by dropping to POSIX IO and C run time library string handling for an application that needed to read a text file containing 10000 lines of 81 digits at launch and process them as single digits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't intuitively understand why Go was so space efficient (#2 and ahead of C) but then so time+energy inefficient wrt C (3.23 and 2.83 vs 1.00 and 1.00).

Any clues?

<comment><USER14> My guess would be that Go's GC (which is supposedly pretty good) takes care of space but pushes up time and CPU usage anyway.

<comment><USER15> No, GC shouldn't take that much time.

<comment><USER14> I assume it just adds up in these kinds of "benchmark" tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope C/C++ programming picks up again.

<comment><USER17> Picks up? C/C++ never went anywhere(except you know web stuff).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Search popular articles on startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.qolleqt.com/collect/startups/search?q=growth+hacking

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. This is just an example what you can do with Collect.

This is my first web app, let alone SaaS. It was built in golang. I would love any feedback you can give me, from general to specific.</comment>


Is Youtube down for you? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/search?q=Youtube%20down&src=typd <comment><USER2> Yes it is.

[http://postimg.org/image/snthdrf77/](http://postimg.org/image/snthdrf77/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but they say the're working on it :)

> A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this > situation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, youtube.ie</comment>


Edward J. Snowden email inquiry to the NSA Office of General Counsel - <AUTHOR> http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/87218708448/edward-j-snowden-email-inquiry-to-the-nsa-office

<comment><USER2> _" There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims."_

As a contractor, he was not entitled to whistleblower protection.</comment>


Bezos In 2012: People Won't Pay For News On The Web, Print Dead In 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/05/bezos-in-2012-people-wont-pay-for-news-on-the-web-print-will-be-dead-in-20-years/ <comment><USER2> AOL is _really_ pumping these stories out.</comment>


Ask HN: What were your favorite MS-DOS productivity programs? - <AUTHOR> Some of the MS-DOS stuff was a productivity heaven. Norton Commander comes to mind. Then Turbo Vision apps, including Turbo Pascal editor. Any else you remember? <comment><USER2> NewKey for storing/recall of keyboard macros. Lots of people raved about SideKick which loaded as (one of the first?) T.S.R utilities.

</comment><comment><USER3> Norton Commander was insanely awesome.

Borland C++ was really cool (even back then, I favored C++ over Pascal :D).

</comment><comment><USER4> Xtree blew my mind when I first found it and it was then THE first thing I installed on every new DOS computer I built/got.

<comment><USER5> If you still use Windows, ZTreeWin is awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tornado - which ended up being the IMHO insanely overpriced and now almost unusable InfoSelect. I once wrote an inventory app using Tornado, batch scripts, and a barcode interface... Was insanely fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you link which firm/company/product Tornado is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lotus Metro I preferred it over Borland Sidekick

</comment><comment><USER7> Borland Sidekick

QuarterDeck Desqview

Borland Reflex

Microsoft Word

</comment><comment><USER8> GrandView: a note taking outliner.

</comment><comment><USER9> SemWare's QEdit

</comment><comment><USER10> Lots, many of which have been mentioned, but there is one whole category of app that didn't really make the leap to Windows (or Mac OS X over in Apple- land) and is basically dead now:

Outliners -- [http://outliners.scripting.com/](http://outliners.scripting.com/)

The seminal PC Outline was shareware and it's still out there: [https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2200/0/pc- outl...](https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2200/0/pc-outline)

But it evolved into Grandview: [https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/grandview...](https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/grandview/)

As for the others... well, there were lots! Back in the boom days of MS-DOS (DOS 3.x, mainly, and before) it didn't include a decent text editor, directory navigator, file manager, memory manager, program launcher, task- switcher, inter-computer file-transfer tool, file or disk compression and lots of other things, so there were many 3rd party replacements.

Some still have fans.

DOS 4 started to fix some of that, including a pretty good file manager/program launcher called DOSShell, but otherwise it was bloated: it was buggy and took a lot of RAM, a scarce resource under DOS.

DR responded with DR-DOS 5, which was leaner, meaner, gave you more free RAM than even MS-DOS 3.3, but gave you big (>32MB) partitions, a graphical shell, a full-screen editor and lots more.

MS responded with MS-DOS 5, the first ever retail version, which included all this and more.

There was a brief "arms race" \-- DR-DOS 6, then MS-DOS 6, 6.2, 6.21, 6.22, DR-DOS 7. I've blogged about this: [https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/58013.html](https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/58013.html)

Then Windows 95 integrated DOS and that ended the battle.

DR-DOS got acquired by Novell, then spun off with Caldera, then went FOSS. I am working on some updates: [https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/58013.html](https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/58013.html)

IBM continued with PC DOS 7 and the little-known PC DOS 7.1, which fixes a load of bugs, adds FAT32 support, LBA disk access, support for modern >8GB disks, and more. It's a free download if you know where to look: [https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/59703.html](https://liam-on- linux.livejournal.com/59703.html)

These later versions of DOS -- DR-DOS 5, 6 & 7, MS-DOS 5 & 6, and PC-DOS 6, 7 & 7.1 -- included replacements for most of the 3rd party utilities. 32-bit Windows then made most of them irrelevant. A lot of the companies went under.

Most of the office-type apps made the jump to Windows: WordPerfect ended up a good word-processor. Borland's DOS apps got bundled with it. IBM bought Lotus, Samna and others and made SmartSuite.

There's no burning reason to favour the ancient DOS versions now.

But outliners never really made that leap and so there's now a choice of MS Word or run ancient DOS stuff. The FOSS world has never embraced outliners: LibreOffice doesn't include one. There are some FOSS 2-pane outliners -- what Wikipedia calls "extrinsic" outliners -- but they are a totally separate, different type of app, and personally I have no use for them.

So I run an ancient version of MS Word, Word 97, just for Outline mode. It runs perfectly under WINE on Ubuntu and other distros.

</comment><comment><USER11> edit.com

</comment><comment><USER12> xenix

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean MS Xenix aka UNIX variant, or was there some CLI tool with the same name?</comment></comment>


AR Comparison Guide: ARCore vs. ARKit vs. Vuforia vs. AR Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://circuitstream.com/blog/augmented-reality-guide/ <comment><USER2> One other cross-platform (i.e. using either ARKit or ARCore as a base) AR solution is Niantic's "Real World Platform" \- [https://nianticlabs.com/blog/nbrdc- update-110619/](https://nianticlabs.com/blog/nbrdc-update-110619/)

</comment><comment><USER3> For reference, Vuforia currently seems to be the most installed SDK on both iOS (53%) and Android (70%) apps, beating ARKit (45%) and ARCore (34%).

Source: [https://appfigures.com/top- sdks/ar_vr/all](https://appfigures.com/top-sdks/ar_vr/all)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for this stat.</comment></comment>


Iterating through startup ideas - how long does it take? - <AUTHOR> How long does it 'typically' take to find product market fit for YC companies when doing this fulltime? I understand that there is no right answer to this question, but this is a humble attempt to scope timeline and expectations as and when I/fellow readers decide to dive into the deep end of the pool. Anecdotes, horror stories and personal experiences are most welcome. <comment><USER2> Perhaps a week, perhaps never.

There really is no answer to this except that the more tries you make, the higher your chances one of them might have some people interested in it.</comment>


Show HN: Neural network turns photos into a specific style of painting - <AUTHOR> https://www.instapainting.com/ai-painter <comment><USER2> Another take on it from Kyle McDonald [https://medium.com/@kcimc/comparing- artificial-artists-7d889...](https://medium.com/@kcimc/comparing-artificial- artists-7d889428fce4)

<comment><USER3> _> I'd like to understand this algorithm well enough to generalize it to other media (mainly thinking about sound right now)_

A DeepDream for audio would be very interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'd probably be a lot better for usable results, since you can easily restrict it to certain musical scales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will there be an API for this for digital-only, high resolution pics?

Some feedback too:

1) when submitting it was a bit weird that I have to upload pics in order vs explicitly 'this is my pic', 'this is my art pic'

2) a lot of people won't have a catalog of digital art to upload as their reference pic, some samples to select from would be nice

3) after uploading my source + reference pics and clicking 'submit artwork' it takes me to a login/signup page for AMANUFACTORY.COM. That button really stands out as what-you-should-do to finish the process!

4) would be nice if instead of selecting one painting it generated lots of different styles

<comment><AUTHOR> I hacked this in one day using some UI for existing stuff, so the UI will be a bit weird.

After uploading your source + reference, you don't have to do anything. The Submit button at the bottom is UI for other people to submit a resulting image. I'll probably remove it since it's for the other stuff.

As far as API, the process is fairly expensive (uses EC2 GPU instance), so any heavy application type usage would probably be better served by setting up your own instance. We use implementations found on github (credit at the bottom of the page).

<comment><USER5> Funny, I hacked something like this together too recently, although it did take me a bit longer. Nice job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also: [http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/](http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image-analogies/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Quick off the mark eh? When was this idea published by those researchers, two days ago?

No wonder universities are getting super serious about IP protection/licensing/commercialisation

<comment><USER8> > No wonder universities are getting super serious about IP > protection/licensing/commercialisation

oh god, the knowledge might be free with only attribution and no revenue! the horror!

<comment><USER7> Eh how do you incentivise the creation of this knowledge given that it costs money to do?

<comment><USER8> The kids who know what's up will know where to do the research. That should be incentive enough. Considering you can't stop another organization from building on your research, the "competition" is a little hard to explain.

A university should be run like a school, not a business.

<comment><USER7> You should look up the financial statements for one of your local colleges and see if it _can 't_ be run like a business. Just one of them costs a lot of money to keep going..

That's why they have to protect IP and commercialise it. Because if they don't, the colleges can't keep teaching as it all costs so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be really surprised if someone isn't already hard at work on an iOS app that uses this tech. The scalability is of course a problem, but I'd pay 50 cents per photo (assuming I got a small preview of it first) or something of that order to support the costs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's no public list, so if you ran an image feel free to share here.

</comment><comment><USER10> I accidentally submitted something four different times, since I thought the form wasn't loading. Does it just start as soon as you post two images, without a submit button?

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what it looks like if you upload something cubist or otherwise abstract.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view- asset/55e8a42290...](https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view- asset/55e8a42290f1f848178b4569?asset=55e8a42290f1f848178b4569_aipainter.jpg)

<comment><USER11> [https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view- asset/55e7f37e90...](https://www.instapainting.com/requests/view- asset/55e7f37e90f1f8b87c8b4581?asset=55e7f37e90f1f8b87c8b4581_aipainter.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> The art style image should be the second image. So it tried to do the artwork in the style of the photo instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> that was quick, the paper just came out

<comment><USER13> What paper are you refering to?

edit: Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Bethge, A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style

<comment><USER14> _A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style_ by Leon A. Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Bethge

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06576](http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06576)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> can we get a bigger version of the resulting image? The output is very small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just upgraded the implementation used. I'll see if I can increase the size without running into memory issues.

EDIT: Increased to 768px max size.</comment></comment>


In 'Sherlock Holmes' Rights Dispute, Conan Doyle Estate Slammed Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sherlock-holmes-rights-dispute-conan-723114 <comment><AUTHOR> The following quoted paragraph may illustrate the degree to which the court sided with Klinger and against the Conan Doyle Estate: [http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp...](http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2014/D08-04/C:14-1128:J:Posner:aut:T:op:N:1392405:S:0)

"The Doyle estate's business strategy is plain: charge a modest license fee for which there is no legal basis, in the hope that the "rational" writer or publisher asked for the fee will pay it rather than incur a greater cost, in legal expenses, in challenging the legality of the demand. The strategy had worked with Random House; Pegasus was ready to knuckle under; only Klinger (so far as we know) resisted. In effect he was a private attorney general, combating a disreputable business practice—a form of extortion—and he is seeking by the present motion not to obtain a reward but merely to avoid a loss. He has performed a public service—and with substantial risk to himself, for had he lost he would have been out of pocket for the $69,803.37 in fees and costs incurred at the trial and appellate levels ($30,679.93 + $39,123.44). The willingness of someone in Klinger's position to sue rather than pay Doyle's estate a modest license fee is important because it injects risk into the estate's business model. As a result of losing the suit, the estate has lost its claim to own copyrights in characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories published by Arthur Conan Doyle before 1923. For exposing the estate's unlawful business strategy, Klinger deserves a reward but asks only to break even."

Note that the above is the official opinion of the court, and not just that of Klinger and his attorney. And although only citing it as a quoted example, Posner makes it clear that he feels Warner Brothers is using the same strategy with "Happy Birthday":

"Depoorter and Walker (id. at 345 n. 172) give the example of the Summy- Brichard Company, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group, which "receives approximately $2 million per year in royalty payments for licenses to the song 'Happy Birthday to You,' despite the fact that the song is most likely in the public domain," as argued in Robert Brauneis, "Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song," 56 J. Copyright Society U.S.A. 335, 338–40 (2009.)

<comment><USER2> My God, I love Posner's opinions, even a trivial one like this. You have to appreciate the part where he calls out the estate as having "enlisted [Amazon and other booksellers] in a boycott of a competitor of the state, and boycotts of competitors violate the anti-trust laws. ... It's time the estate, _in its own self-interest_ , changed its business model."

Ouch.

<comment><USER3> The point is that this _isn 't_ a trivial decision. Thought it's only a very small slap on the flagrant abuses and extensions of copyright over the past century and more.

<comment><USER2> Trivial only in the sense that there was no question Klinger had the right to recover under 17 USC§505; the decision on the case itself was obviously more important.

Even then, though, it was obvious the estate had no case in regards to the out-of-copyright work, and their argument was laughably specious. If their theory had won out, judges would be called upon to do double duty as literary critics, which no sane jurist would go anywhere near. (When a judge calls your appeal "bordering on quixotic," you aren't facing a sympathetic bench.)

It is important to note that the lower court did find that the use of elements from in-copyright stories (such as Watson's athletic background, or Holmes' retirement from detective work) would constitute infringement, and that such elements were incremental expressions that were protectable. My expectation is that, until the entire canon is out of copyright, publishers will continue to pay the estate rather than have to run the risk of an author illegally if inadvertently importing still-copyrighted aspects into a story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone interested in the reasoning behind the creation of copyright, and how the various interests are balanced out, these two speeches by Macaulay should be of interest. The interests and rights of legatees are specifically discussed.

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2170/2170-h/2170-h.htm#link2H...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2170/2170-h/2170-h.htm#link2H_4_0018) [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2170/2170-h/2170-h.htm#link2H...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2170/2170-h/2170-h.htm#link2H_4_0019)

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but feel that it would be fair for copyright to stay with an author until they die.

<comment><USER6> That's how I feel about it too. When the author dies, so should the copyright. There is no valid reason for copyrights to last as long as they do; corporate greed aside.

<comment><USER7> I think a fixed, _short_ term might be better.

Considering two extreme cases:

Author A writes something incredibly popular and dies the moment he wrote the last word. His children end up in the poor house because they don't get any royalties from sales.

Author B writes something incredibly popular at the age of 15 and is still living large off his royalties at the ripe old age of 100.

If you just set it to, say, 20 years and it's done (or IMO better would be an exponentially increasing fee for renewal, $1 for the first year, $2 for the second, $4 for the third, etc.) then it seems to be more predictable and cleaner.

<comment><USER8> 20 years would be culturally terrible. That would make it so just around the time your kids are old enough for you to introduce them to the great comics, cartoons, movies, music, and books of your childhood it would enter the public domain and become widely used in advertising and low budget productions. You are not going to be able to share the magic of, say, Calvin & Hobbes, with your kids if your kids have already been saturated by those characters as TV pitchmen for toys and junk food.

<comment><USER9> I think you have it exactly backwards. A reasonable length copyright (like 10-20 years) would be awesome for culture. You'd see loads more great new comics, cartoons, movies, music books all remixing, reworking and drawing inspiration from an renewed and thriving public domain.

Advertisers and branding wouldn't find much use for them because they were public domain. They gain value from these things by limiting the use through exclusive deals enabled by copyright.

<comment><USER8> > Advertisers and branding wouldn't find much use for them because they were > public domain. They gain value from these things by limiting the use through > exclusive deals enabled by copyright

That's one way advertisers can gain value from using a character. Exclusivity strengthens the association between the character and the product being advertised. Without exclusivity, many advertising characters probably would indeed be of little value and advertisers would probably not use them. I think, though, that this would mostly apply to characters that were created for advertising, or that were outside characters that were not very significant to the public.

If the Michelin Man were used to pitch donuts, for example, I'd find it weird, because I only associate the Michelin Man with Michelin tires.

However, for characters that had significant public interest before they were used in advertising, I don't think exclusivity is very important. For instance, Michael Phelps (yes, I know he is a real person, not a character, but that doesn't change the point) has done ads for Subway Sandwiches and for Speedo, and I don't think either diminishes the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been following this case for a while and I love this, especially the part where they have to pay the plaintiff's legal fees. The Doyle Estate fabricated a line of reasoning that is clearly not part of copyright law.</comment>


Hacky for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackyapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Edit: App is back up now. Love the design, agree with others that a Reeder- style preview would be awesome, but even without it's great.

Love the concept -- just bought the app and it's just a blank window. I assume the server you're using to serve the news feed is down.

Might want to fix that before charging $3 for an app, just a tip.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wish it had Readability. HackerNode for iPhone finally came full circle -for me at least- with Readability support in their latest update.

Although, I'm not sure how much I'd use this since I mainly read HN in the browser. Beautiful app though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great stuff. Some kind of in-app view of links (think Reeder), and upvote, and it's my new go-to-app for Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does it have Google Reader integration for read/unread tracking? I read HN on many different devices.

</comment><comment><USER6> Would love Pocket integration, and native Twitter/Facebook sharing.

<comment><USER6> Also:

-Display URL in each post (at least domain name)

-Easy way to mark as read each item (example: if you highlight item, it should be marked as read)

-Vim keyboard navigation (hjkl)

-Menubar icon with unread count (optional)

-Preferences panel with options like: refresh period, mute specific words, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice idea, embedding the actual HN feed in the 'screenshot'.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks great! Shame I don't have a Mac...just yet.</comment>


53 Percent of Californians want to leave the state, according to new survey - <AUTHOR> https://m.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-out-of-bay-area-california-where-to-go-cost-13614119.php <comment><USER2> I was contacted by a Cupertino recently that wanted to interview me. I knew their product and have used it before, but I ended up turning it down.

I was torn because I'd like to live in warmer climates and the area around The Bay has some great public transport (although it's lacking when you get out towards Cupertino) and I could be closer to the parts of my family I get along with, but the cost of living is just insane. I feel like I'd just move there to get a tiny as I can share-room and save up for 3 ~ 4 years with no plans to stay (unless the bottom of the market collapses an suddenly houses drop to $150k .. which I don't see happening unless Facebook implodes).</comment>