Smear campaign against Wikileaks begins - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/8/21/smear-campaign-against-wikileaks-assange-begins/

<comment><USER2> How convenient.

Translation of this article in nu.nl:

[http://www.nu.nl/tech/2316742/voorman-wikileaks-gezocht- verk...](http://www.nu.nl/tech/2316742/voorman-wikileaks-gezocht- verkrachting.html)

STOCKHOLM - Julian Assange, the leader of whistleblower website wikileaks is since Friday even in Sweden a fugitive in two rape caes. This has been reported by the public prosecutor on Saturday morning according to the Swedish media.

Two women, aged twenty and thirty have gone to the police on Friday evening to relate their stories.

Against the one Assange is reported to have used sexual violence last weekend in the South of Sweden, the other was reportedly raped on Tuesday morning in the nearby town of Enköping.

According to the justice ministry in Stockholm the reports by the women contain enough substance to issue a warrant. For the moment it is unclear where Julian Assange is right now.

Wikileaks, a website that is running on computers in a safe house in Solna near Stockholm, was recently in the news. The whistleblowers site published tens of thousands of pages of secret American military documents about the war in Afghanistan.

\--

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/7957665/Wiki...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/7957665/Wikileaks- founder-Julian-Assange-facing-arrest-over-rape-claim.html)

<http://twitter.com/wikileaks>

"Julian Assange: the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, could be a smear. Could also be true. Let's not have senstional titles on HN.

<comment><USER2> Assange is more than likely aware that he is a 'target of opportunity' to many institutions, which would make him very circumspect about doing stuff that could endanger either his reputation or the reputation of wikileaks.

The timing of this is just too convenient to ignore.

For now, until there is some hard evidence I'm in the 'smear' corner. But I still agree with you about the title, that's an opinion.

<comment><USER4> One thing i have learned in my job is this; generally coincidences happen all the time. The real conspiracies etc. Are much much more infrequent.

Occams razor

<comment><USER2> Even the paranoid have enemies.

And Assange has more enemies than most, both corporate and governmental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, that certainly sounds _convenient_ at the very least. Two women in two towns, with Assange charged in absentia.

Of course it could be true, but somehow that doesn't seem the most reasonable explanation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is the Google translate link for the original article in Swedish. [http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&act=url&u=http://www.expressen.se/Nyheter/1.2104976/wikileaks- grundare-anhallen-for-valdtakt&sl=sv&tl=en)

</comment><comment><USER4> I reckon this is a Wikileaks "cookup" to prove how hounded and persecuted they are.

But then, what do I know.

I don't think we can jump to any conclusions yet

Edit: for the down voters, thie point being made is - we have no idea of thetruth, take care speculating. Grr

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you got downvoted for this. Many seem to be happy with the idea that an unfriendly government paid these women to smear Assange's name.

It seems to me equally credible that Assange or a friend set up these false allegations, which once easily dismissed, will indeed show the world how "persecuted" Wikileaks is.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the point wasn't so much i think that's the case - it was just to show how, hours after this has occured, we can hardly figure out the truth.

I honestly expected better of hn :-(

<comment><USER7> Given the amount of sympathy these charges have garnered for Assange, it seems he'd have been quite smart if he'd chosen to pay these women to make false claims against him.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but if _that_ would come out as the truth he's really shot himself in the foot. He might as well pack up then, after that nobody is ever going to believe him.

Scenario 16: Some women get paid to make eyes at Assange, he falls for it, they have sex, they go and accuse him of rape.

Then hope he pulls a Clinton and ends up having to define the meaning of 'is'.

If I was Julian Assange at this point I'd blow the whole thing wide open and document each and every little bit of what happened if anything, even if it makes him look less saintly. That's the best defense against a smear campaign, if anything at all happened he'll look a lot worse if he tries to cover it up.

And he may have to step down from Wikileaks pending the investigation, which is another easy win for the opposition, it would be the prudent thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's hope we remember innocence until proven guilty. The timing is suspect though.

<comment><USER9> Of course if you want a smear campaign, you choose a charge that ensures that the innocence before proven guilty principle is immediately dropped.

I wonder why it's not child pornography, that would allow the authorities to go after every data system he ever touched, and it's way easier to make up stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, surprised that it's not child porn. Wikileaks hosts quite a lot of pointers to child porn resources in the form of country-wise website banlists.

<comment><USER8> There is a bunch of CIA guys going "Damnit." right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would caution commentators not to make false dichotomies here. It is not necessarily a choice between Assange committing a crime and Assange being framed. Both may be true. Neither may be true.

I understand that this fits a narrative, and perhaps it turns out he was framed. Or perhaps it turns out he is has criminal tendencies and the west used those tendencies to frame him. Or he's innocent. Or he's innocent and nobody framed him.

Simply because it fits easily into a narrative does not mean that the most likely scenario is the narrative. You could make a case that having a criminal trial would be a terrible thing for intelligence agencies. It'd just give him a bigger microphone and also put the agencies at risk of being discovered. In fact, if it is a setup, it's one of the most bone-headed setups I've ever seen. Better to just kill him. If this is discovered as a frame-job, it'd be a god-awful PR disaster. The risks don't merit the rewards.

<comment><USER2> > If this is discovered as a frame-job, it'd be a god-awful PR disaster. The > risks don't merit the rewards.

That's the strongest argument against this being a frame-up so far. On the other hand breaking in to the Democratic party's offices wasn't very smart either and that definitely happened, and I can think of a few more cases like that.

Government agencies are definitely not above doing really stupid things that turn in to PR disasters.

<comment><USER10> Which is the strongest counter-argument. :)

But really, trying to frame some guy that a hundred-million people think is some super-hero? It's crazy. They certainly may be doing it, but it's really beyond-stupid crazy.

I'd just shoot him. Easy enough to whack somebody, and without evidence people can spend their lifetimes pointing fingers at each other. Might even make a great series of books and a movie. But with real, live people making criminal allegations that aren't true? Lots of little loose ends dangling around. Too many.

In fact, I'd bet you that even if he was guilty and was not framed, there'll be a series of investigative articles and blogs "proving" he was framed anyway. The narrative is simply too hard to ignore.

Which -- if you think about it -- would give him a free hand to commit any crime he wants. After all, no matter what he was accused of, he was framed, right?

Welcome to the hall of mirrors.

<comment><USER11> A hundred-million people don't think he is a super hero. I doubt a hundred million know him by name. And the fact is, it won't be too hard to convert most of the people who do know of him and like him into disliking him.

This could be the first part of it. Combine it with the first solider to die which is linked to the information released, and any goodwill the public feels towards him is going bye-bye.

In the next year, he can probably look forward to going from a modern day Robin Hood to some weirdo, introverted, odd male hacker who is trying to disrupt our ordinary lives.

<comment><USER2> > I doubt a hundred million know him by name.

They do now.

> And the fact is, it won't be too hard to convert most of the people who do > know of him and like him into disliking him.

That has probably happened in the last 48 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This could just be a stunt pulled by the tabloid that reported it:

Assange said "Jag har inte blivit kontaktad av polisen."[0]

Translates from Swedish as "I have not been contacted by the police."

0: [http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/anklagelserna-skakar- wikile...](http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/anklagelserna-skakar- wikileaks-1.1157157)

<comment><USER13> Although the arrest warrant has now been withdrawn:

 _"The warrant was issued late on Friday, said Karin Rosander, communications head at Sweden's prosecutors' office.

Swedish police have been trying to contact Mr Assange, but have not yet been able to, she told the BBC."_

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047025>

The initial article from the "tabloid" also contained quotes from a prosecutor confirming the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One cannot really make the judgment on this being a "smear" or not at this point: to include it in the title is irresponsible at best.

The circumstances seem a bit odd (two assaults so close to eachother without a previous history) which could suggest framing either by an external entity or the women involved.

According to <http://expressen.se>, _the women apparently do know eachother_ and have at some point been reluctant to co-operate with the investigators expressing either "being scared to death" or "being in fear for their lives" because of Assange's high status (the meaning being a bit unclear from the context).

Still, the accusations are serious and need to be investigated - which should have happened without publicity but that tends to be utopic when a public figure is concerned.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, but "being scared to death" and "being in fear for their lives" are your words, and has not appeared in any news reports so far.

The Swedish word "livrädd" just means "terrified", not that you are in fear for your life.

<comment><USER14> That is what I intended to convey with "scared to death" which in English is used colloquially to mean "terrified". I appreciate that translation is likely the intended meaning.

I gave both translations because the term used _was_ "livrädd", not merely "rädd". This could be an intentional obfuscation of the sentiment behind the words - thus, it could be read to state they said they were "scared to death" (or "terrified" if you prefer) or actually in fear for their lives. Implications with plausible deniability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the CIA wants to get you, they will when you least expect it. Note the case Viktor Bout who was set up in a sting in Thailand. And even though most certainly Viktor Bout was working on behalf of the Russian government, he crossed the line by supplying arms to Afghanistan. And now he is literally behind bars: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/asia/21thai.html>

<comment><USER17> True. _If_ , however, this is indeed a smear campaign - think about what options are open that wouldn't make him a free-speech (or 'whatever') martyr - extradition / assassination would have that effect - this wouldn't. Judgement needs to be reserved (as in all such cases of rape accusation) until the facts are in. The facts, however, may not be in for a very long time (months, maybe a year). In the meantime, the media is now free to start every news update on Wikileaks / Assange with 'Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, and accused of rape in Sweden...'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To all those wondering why he was not framed for possessing child pornography instead, the answer is simple. In order to "catch" him with CP, it would have to be unencrypted. And anyone can see that the only plausible explanation for unencrypted child pornography in the possession of someone as paranoid and encryption-savvy as Assange, is that it was planted there deliberately.

</comment><comment><USER19> I suspect WikiLeaks would have a plan in place if Assange was removed. WikiLeaks should live on and continue to do it's work.

<comment><USER20> You mean like that encrypted "Insurance" file that's on there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Local usually is the best source for Swedish news in English. <http://www.thelocal.se/28496/20100821/>

Isn't wikileaks hosted in Sweden btw? I don't think it would be affected, but still a thing to keep in mind.

</comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps the ladies were dumped and got pissed, or changed their mind a bit into the act, or perhaps Julian is not quite familiar with the expectations of a Swedish woman in bed heheh we will defend our female rights and expectations!). When the ladies happened to meet (quite interestingly) after a lecture by Julian, they changed information and decided to go to the police. They only gave info and the police decided to make a case (the police are more aware than Julian about correctness with feminist and human values at this point in Swedish rape case history)..then one thing led to the other. The Pentagon is not amused. This "untouchable" guy keeps farting on their faces for years, then they're accused of doing a really ridiculous framing job.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting that Assagne dismisses Expressen as a "tabloid" when he has signed up to be a columnist for their main competitor Aftonbladet. While I don't read either of them and would agree with the labeling, both papers also do a great deal of real investigative journalism (Expressen being right-wing and Aftonbladet left-wing, and this being Sweden "left-wing" and "right-wing" are both a great deal to the left of the american right-wing).

</comment><comment><USER23> Irregardless of whether it is false or true, this is clearly a smear due to the timing and media involvement.

</comment><comment><USER24> The smart wikileaks-supporting and not-believing cyber warrior would not talk about it. Even by criticising like this, you are giving attention and spread the accusations.

<comment><USER2> That's the cowards way out, not the smart way out.

It's _all_ over the news, from China to the Netherlands and further.

The smart wikileaks supporting and _skeptical_ cyber warrior would do best to reserve judgement but to show that there is a reason why there is probably more than meets the eye here.

<comment><USER24> I missed that this was everywhere already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nothing like bad publicity...Julian soon to be more famous than MJ. Nothing like news with entertainment value! Add to this a weird but convincing sex appeal..

</comment><comment><USER25> FWIW:

1) I've done two college papers on date rape. In most cases, date rape involves alcohol (ie impaired judgment) and bad communication, often due to cross cultural misunderstandings.

2) I read once that if you ask a room full of (American?) women how many of them have been raped, half the hands go up. If you ask them how many of them said "No" and then had sex anyway, 90% of the hands go up. Given that the legal definition of rape hinges on consent, I think it's pretty clear that even women who haven't had completely consenting sex have difficulty figuring out whether or not they were raped. (On the flip side, I think there is a counterargument that sometimes, even when she initially said "no", maybe it wasn't really rape -- which muddies the water even further.)

My point: I think genuinely, unquestionably consenting sex is really a quite difficult standard to meet and there are many cases of less than ideal encounters where it ends up being a judgment call on the part of the woman as to a) how she views it in her own mind ("rape" or something else) and b) whether or not to publicly accuse/charge someone.

I will toss out the idea that a man who feels not only okay with but morally compelled to publish all kinds of stuff the American government doesn't want published (ie without their _consent_ and over their protests, with consent being the legal lynch-pin for the definition of rape) might well start applying that general thought pattern to other situations. People who are very morally self righteous frequently feel justified in treading on the will and rights of others and then pat themselves on the back for being "heroes". I can imagine someone who feels he knows what is best for others basically telling himself "these two women needed it and I'm just doing what is best for them".

<comment><USER2> Promoting government and corporate transparency is a service to humanity, raping people is a crime.

You can't equate the fact that the American government protests about having their secret stuff leaked to 'knowing what's best' for women that don't want sex with you.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable groupies that will jump out of the woodwork that they too have been accosted by Assange at some point in the past and only now dare to speak up.

It's bound to happen, even if it is true...

<comment><USER25> My experience with people is that a strong personality trait tends to influence all details of how they live their lives, not just what kind of work they do. Someone willing to take on the American government because of the strength of his convictions is someone I would say has an extremely strong personality trait.

Funny, though not really unexpected, that you would focus on that one remark when most of my post was basically sympathetic and outlined facts concerning how difficult it is to determine these things, _even for the people involved_ , much less outsiders who weren't there when whatever happened, happened.

<comment><USER26> If Assange truly is innocent, that's all well and good. But I for one am not okay with date rape apologists. There's no excuse, as a man, for ignoring when a woman says no.

This looks like a setup. But that's different from saying Assange is still an okay guy even if he did it.

<comment><USER25> I'm not an apologist and I'm not saying "he's an okay guy, even if he did it". I don't see how putting out statistics makes me an apologist. I think it makes me someone proposing an alternative to the dichotomies offered here of "Either he's a bad guy who goes around raping women" or "The government framed him". There is lots of room in life for other options.

<comment><USER26> >My point: I think genuinely, unquestionably consenting sex is really a quite difficult standard to meet and there are many cases of less than ideal encounters where it ends up being a judgment call on the part of the woman as to a) how she views it in her own mind ("rape" or something else) and b) whether or not to publicly accuse/charge someone.

That's what I was primarily responding to. You don't say it directly, but you're using very weaselly language to suggest that in some cases it isn't a terrible thing to ignore a woman when she says no. You're not just 'putting out statistics.'

<comment><USER25> _That's what I was primarily responding to. You don't say it directly, but you're using very weaselly language to suggest that in some cases it isn't a terrible thing to ignore a woman when she says no. You're not just 'putting out statistics.'_

No, not my point at all and I don't know how you are getting that. My point is that such situations are often not as cut and dried, black or white as people would like them to be. That doesn't make me an apologist and it isn't weasily language. It is just reality that life isn't always easily categorized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm really gobsmacked by the amount of fevered bullshit conspiracy-theorising being spouted by the vast majority of folk on this page! You should be ashamed of yourselves. Fucking laughable. Down-vote away.

</comment><comment><USER28> Smear campaign? Only according to the accused rapist.

Scenario 1: Two Swedish women really are pressing charges against Mr. Assange.

Scenario 2: The U.S. Pentagon is so upset by Wikileaks that they've convinced a Swedish prosecutor to file baseless rape charges, without actual victims, against the Wikileaks spokesman.

The simplest explanation is the most likely.

<comment><USER29> The simplest explanation is this: the US paid two Swedish women to accuse Mr. Assange of rape.

This isn't unusual - most rape accusations are false, since there are a lot of sociopaths out there (who have no shame), and the real victims are too ashamed to step forward.

<comment><USER2> > most rape accusations are false

That does a disservice to the very large number of rape victims out there.

Some rape accusations are false, but to claim the majority of them is false would require a citation I think.

For instance:

<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/166281.php>

reports that most of the 'good' (as in done in a scientific setting) studies report 8 to 10% of rape accusations are false.

See also:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2231012/>

<comment><USER30> _> most rape accusations are false

That does a disservice to the very large number of rape victims out there.

Some rape accusations are false, but to claim the majority of them is false would require a citation I think._

Indeed. I've often heard that claim from people who don't (or don't want to) believe that in most cases of rape the victim knows the perpetrator. According to statistics in Sweden, only one third of rapes are performed by someone unknown to the victim[1].

There was a case like this on TV here recently, where a young boy who has been found guilty of rape (twice!) gets a lot of sympathy from his community while the victims are trash-talked along the lines of "she actually wanted it and changed her mind later"[2].

1: (swedish pdf) [http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&...](http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&name=2008_13_V_ldt_kt_mot_personer_15__r_och__ldre_webb.pdf&url=/dynamaster/file_archive/090206/440830a000c40c402bf765c88ba70b5e/2008%255f13%255fV%255fldt%255fkt%255fmot%255fpersoner%255f15%255f%255fr%255foch%255f%255fldre%255fwebb.pdf)

2: (more swedish) [http://www.google.se/search?q=uppdrag+granskning+v%C3%A5ldt%...](http://www.google.se/search?q=uppdrag+granskning+v%C3%A5ldt%C3%A4kt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv- SE:official&client=firefox-a)

[edit, added]

Oh, I also forgot one very interesting question: _why_ would a woman falsely accuse someone of rape? In the case of a custody battle I can see the logic, but what would be the gain of accusing an acquaintance (who account for a third of reported rapes)? If it's a case of "did something she later regrets", wouldn't it be a lot easier to just deny that it ever happened?

<comment><USER31> She might hate that someone's guts, or just find it convenient for some other reason: [http://www.aolnews.com/story/biurny-peguero-recants-rape- cha...](http://www.aolnews.com/story/biurny-peguero-recants-rape- charges/617128)

Not that it happens often, but sometimes it really does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think he did have sex with those women. I think it was consent. The women realize they can make money out of this and charge him with rape. No government plots.

This I think this is the most likely scenario. Reference: Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryan, Mike Tyson.

<comment><USER2> Sweden is not the United States, you can't make money out of a rape case there in the same way.

Typically victim compensation is orders of magnitude lower than in the states. Also Europeans are not as litigious as Americans are in situations like this.

Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryan, Mike Tyson are all American cases and have very little if any bearing on this.

If he did have sex with those women and it was consensual then he has a real problem on his hands.

<comment><USER32> Well talking from what I know of cases involving celebs and being accused of rape, this seems most likely.

Yes it is an interesting situation if he did have consensual sex with those women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The amount of propagandish trolling in this thread is incredible. It is absolutely clear that this is a smear campaing.

C'mon, a man who knows is being watched by intelligence agencies because of the information he divulges, agencies which have covert and public disinformation programs, would actually go ahead and do such criminal behavior? Possible? Perhaps, but absolutely unlikely to the point where the notion is absolutely ridiculous.

I'm beginning to wonder how many of the posts claiming that it's a likely possibility are paid shills from the various disinformation services.

<comment><USER2> You're out of line I think.

The suggestion that people that have been here for _years_ are paid shills guilty of disinformation is beyond the pale.

I agree that this is _most likely_ a smear and at a minimum blown up, but evidence is where it is at and people that defend the 'other side' of the argument (especially ErrantX and DanielBMarkham) are for the most part just playing the devils advocate and cautioning you to think for yourself instead of following the herd.

<comment><USER33> General Motors hired prostitutes to solicit Ralph Nader because of his automobile safety activism (from Reddit): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader#Automobile_safety_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader#Automobile_safety_activism)

Believing that these claims, at this point in the affair, have any serious possibility of being real is to be ignorant of the history of the way power structures way. Discrediting dangerous figures which are too well-known to be dissuaded silently is common to the extreme.

And seriously, we're talking about the same power structure that has put dictators and thieves in places throughout the world when it was convenient. A smear campaign is about the least dishonest thing that they could do.

<comment><USER2> What's that got to do with the price of tea in China, that's just handwaving.

You accused a bunch of people and now you point outside of HN to bolster your non-existent case. Rubbish.

I'm not taking issue with your interpretation of the case against Julian Assange, I'm taking issue with your case of there being paid shills in this thread. Give HN some credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, he has gotten away with some seriously illegal and ridiculous shit with Wikileaks in the US, so maybe he thinks that he is REALLY above the law now that he's in Sweden.

This guy seems like a real creep to me anyway, and honestly I don't think Wikileaks has done much good in releasing all of these confidential documents.

I mean, all he has done is try to turn the American people against their government, on top of endangering them at the same time by releasing CONFIDENTIAL documents to the wrong people.

In my opinion, this guy deserves to be locked up, even if it has nothing to do with this alleged "smear campaign".

<comment><USER2> > In my opinion, this guy deserves to be locked up, even if it has nothing to > do with this alleged "smear campaign".

I think that if this is a smear campaign that is exactly the sentiment that it was aiming for.

<comment><USER35> He had that sentiment already which is encouraging.</comment></comment></comment>


Swarm.js and React – Real-time, offline-ready web apps - <AUTHOR> http://swarmjs.github.io/articles/todomvc/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I still think that the Flux (specifically Reflux) is the way to go with React. I know this solves a different issue, but I've been itching to build a truly unidrectional data flow application with something like a Rails REST API and an Elixir socket server with a Redis queue in between.

All requests go to a REST API which only returns head responses, and shoves the actual data response onto a queue. The websocket server reads off the queue and publishes the response to connected clients.

On the client side it's all actions and dispatchers and react components. Keep meaning to write an in depth blog post about that when I get the time.

<comment><USER3> > All requests go to a REST API which only returns head responses, and shoves > the actual data response onto a queue. The websocket server reads off the > queue and publishes the response to connected clients.

This reads very similar to how IMAP is defined (it's not a request/response protocol).

And Websocket seems like an overcomplication of the system as you need a WS- compatible server and broker, it would probably be simpler to use SSE[0][1]. See [http://matthiasnehlsen.com/blog/2013/06/23/angularjs-and- pla...](http://matthiasnehlsen.com/blog/2013/06/23/angularjs-and-play- framework/) for an example of SSE+occasional HTTP calls.

The big difference, of course, is that such a system is not really offlinable, the application is basically frozen as soon as the connection is lost.

[0] even if MSIE doesn't support them, they can be polyfilled even in IE7 and old android browsers

[1] plus SSE has native support for server-configured reconnection timeout, event-ids and custom event types, all that in an ASCII-based format

<comment><USER2> Nice. I hadn't played around or even heard of SSE.

I'm not _as_ worried about offlinable, to be honest. This post just tickled that part of my brain that had been thinking about React.

<comment><USER3> > Nice. I hadn't played around or even heard of SSE.

Yeah SSE is one of the most interesting APIs people have never heard about, everybody jumped on WS but for many use cases SSE is more than sufficient, much simpler to deploy and use and a much simpler upgrade path from polling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It always annoys me when SPAs don't allow me to do basic things when I lose my connection.

Webstorage has excellent browser support but isn't utilised enough ([http://caniuse.com/#search=webstorage](http://caniuse.com/#search=webstorage))

<comment><USER5> Webstorage is a bit handicapped for SPAs. There is a 5MB size cap, and you can only store strings. It's nice as a cookie replacement, but the limitations hurt for anything more advanced. IndexedDB resolves these issues while also being fairly well supported.

<comment><USER6> IndexedDB has terrible support. Sadly LocalStorage is the only reliably supported option right now. I really hope in 6 months this comment is wrong.

\--EDIT-- sorry @untog, I replied to the wrong comment and deleted before as you replied.

<comment><USER7> Use a library that uses IndexedDB and uses WebSQL as a fallback then.

<comment><USER6> The Web SQL Database specification is no longer being maintained and support may be dropped in future versions.

Also - these fallbacks are not exactly swappable. Its like swapping from a Database to a Filesystem as a fallback. Difficult to abstract into a single library/api.

And you still potentially leave out IE users if those are your options (depending on your IndexedDB needs).

IndexedDB to localStorage fallback might work - but again might not be an easy API abstraction.

<comment><USER8> I have had good luck with [https://github.com/mozilla/localForage](https://github.com/mozilla/localForage) as an API abstraction

<comment><USER9> PouchDB, ydn-db, IndexedDBShim, and Lawnchair will do this as well.

Web SQL may be "deprecated," but it's unlikely to be dropped by Apple or Google, since so many mobile web apps depend on it. Even the mobile version of Gmail uses Web SQL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really interesting ! I'm currently working in my company heavily with offline html5 features. The assumptions are not really the same as this framework on my case since on my case the app will probably be 95% of the time in an offline mode.

I've created a small library which is making the html5 manifest much easier to work with so I can put http headers like commands inside it. The client is checking with an interval to update the app and there is a built-in loading bar to show the download. This supports also an additional client-side api to make things easier.

Here is a gist of how it looks like currently : [https://gist.github.com/alex- min/1bbc304ad9b96bdf5c96](https://gist.github.com/alex- min/1bbc304ad9b96bdf5c96) I think I could see if I can open-source it if that's interesting for some people.

But this library seems really nice, I will have a look since the synchronization of objects seems really well done. (from the demo page).

</comment><comment><USER11> Great work. Eventually consistent state across sessions will be the norm rather than a novel feature in a few UIs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know how Swarm.js compares to ShareJS and other OT libraries?

<comment><USER13> The very general response is: Swarm.js is CRDT and thus more async-friendly. It may survive failures all along the chain (db to server, server to client, client to cache, etc). It may synchronize with multiple sources: WebSocket to the server, WebStorage to the cache, WebRTC to a peer -- all at the same time.

That flexibility is paid by (1) implementing Lamport timestamps and by (2) limited use of version vectors (on handshake). ShareJS versions are linear, for example, but those linear versions are specific to a replica, as far as I can tell. In OT, version 3 here and version 3 there are possibly different.

CRDT/CT is generally easier to reason about than OT, esp. considering various non-standard situations and implications. That is mostly because CRDT (this flavor) employs "partially ordered log of immutable operations" while OT operations are mutable. That is the formal difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks interesting but I wonder how it works if you have to filter or search for records when you have many records. I did not see any query language only iterating through all records and filtering in memory.

</comment><comment><USER15> Firebase is actually implementing an offline mode soon that isn't LWW.

</comment><comment><USER16> How does this deal with offline storage limits in various browsers?

<comment><USER13> TodoMVC hardly needs that, but otherwise we are working on an IndexedDB storage implementation. Our Storage interface is asynchronous anyway. So, no problem. Cache eviction is also applicable here.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, PouchDB [1] advertises itself as an in-browser implementation of CouchDB, but it also serves as a robust layer on top of IndexedDB & WebSQL that tries to smooth out a lot of the browser differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like their clocks/IDs are a combination of local timestamp and user ID? Is there technically anything in place to prevent duplicates?

<comment><USER13> There is a detailed post on timestamps at [http://swarmjs.github.io/articles/lamport/](http://swarmjs.github.io/articles/lamport/)

Lamport timestamps are "guaranteed" to be unique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How comprehensive are CRDTs?

<comment><USER13> There are CRDT implementations for:

* plain text

* rich text

* maps,sets

* by-column Last-Write-Wins objects

* vectors

* counters

...and many other useful things.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any links for the rich text implementations? That's one I've not seen yet…

<comment><USER13> There are some articles on plain text CRDTs on my academic homepage [1]. Causal Trees are the same family as WOOT, Logoot and TreeDoc.

Also, we did a RichText implementation for one-$10bn-company-that-forbids-to- mention-its-name-too-often. I did not publish that yet.

[1]: [http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/](http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/)

<comment><USER17> Love to see it when you've published! I've thought briefly what a rich-text implementation of causal trees might look like…but it hasn't bubbled to the top of my priority list yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Website is a complete mess. Hardly anything on it works.

<comment><USER17> Are you running HTTPS Everywhere? That seems to break the blog for me (on Firefox), and disabling it fixes it up.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, we'll check that.</comment></comment></comment>


April Fools' Day != Excuse to SPAM - <AUTHOR>

I get it, it's April Fools' Day.  I just received an email from RedBox about their "we now sell lunch meat" joke.  Really... I appreciate the creativity and even chuckled a little, but I get enough crap in my inbox and don't want to unsubscribe from future emails just because the RedBox marketing department can't help themselves.<p>Sorry, had to vent.  Rant is over now. <comment><USER2> I don't agree, it's just one day in a year and as long as they don't take it overboard I find it a great laugh. Besides if you're that annoyed by the email just send it to trash, it only takes a second.

<comment><USER3> You are re-stating the _exact_ argument that spammers use for all spam.

<comment><USER4> Except for the one day a year bit, which is key. In fact, to all spammers: you can send me all the spam you want before noon on April 1, if you in turn agree to not send me any spam any other day of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r And now we get meta-spam, spam about the spam i.e. this rant. I haven't seen any April Fools jokes on the front page of HN, the mods must be prepared for it. I suspect this page will go away soon as well.

It's one thing to put a joke up on a blog page, another thing entirely for it to come via email. I think most companies have more sense than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that's what annoyed me. At least with a blog or some other web-based joke, participation is optional and requires action from the audience. Email based jokes like this from a company I regularly receive "useful" emails from just doesn't seem like a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was looking for this post. Well, more specifically one that was ranting against the April Fools influx on HN. Yup, we get it, today is the day we can all have a laugh and post hoaxes and jokes everywhere. Thankfully, it is just for one day. Tomorrow I do not need to read every piece of information with dubiety.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is of a piece with all the articles on here talking about how spamming people is the best way to do business.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I have subscribed to receive their email I wouldn't mind receiving an Aprils Fools Joke once a year.</comment>


Amen Brother Cuban - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=574

<comment><USER2> Wrong, Matt (and Mark).

Entrepreneurs "have business to do" as Mark puts it because they stand to make some money from their efforts. The less money they stand to make, the less incentive. period.

Also, you state the following as if its fact:

"what capital gains taxes really do is favor the ultra-wealthy who live off of their investments, rather than those generating wealth directly"

No. In order for the ultra-rich person in your example to have accumulated $5M, he EARNED $6,750,000 and paid the government $1,750,000. So, by paying tax on his investment income, he's paying tax twice on the same money. That simple error aside, you're also missing the point that capital gains tax discourages investing in companies! Which has an impact on a company's cost of capital which has an impact on the price of goods and services which has an impact on you.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely correct! It's double taxation!

<comment><USER4> If you don't tax capital, then only the wealthy will own capital. Eventually the capital starts owning itself and then the people don't even own capital anymore.

Our tax system has to try and fix one of the fundamental flaws of capitalism -- the tendency for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Without a capital gains tax, this very worst aspect of capitalism becomes even more emphasized, as capital will last forever.

<comment><USER5> In what capitalist/mostly capitalist system have the poor gotten poorer?

Certainly, the rich may get rich faster than the poor, but that's far from the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of strawmanism going on. It's not that taxation prevents entry-level entrepreneurs from starting businesses. Rather, taxation represents a misallocation of capital. If a company or person loses an extra million dollars to the government, I _promise_ you that the money will be converted into dust [1], or handed out to failed businesses [2], or spent directly on tyrannical activity [3], or redistributed to pressure groups, or any company or foreign nation with a good lobbying firm or PAC, instead of being allocated responsibly.

[1] Literally, via TNT. [2] AIG, Goldman, Fannie, GM, Ford, etc [3] The TSA, the FCC, the CIA.

<comment><USER7> Umm, yeah, and unfettered capitalism does such a wonderful job of allocating resources. Government is terribly inefficient, but what other entity is going to maintain infrastructure, a social safety net, schools, and other basic services from which society benefits? I hate that so much money goes to DOD, TSA, farm subsidies, and the like, but reducing government revenues doesn't force the government to make tough choices, it simply causes it to run an even more unsustainable deficit.

By the way, if you lower taxes (and thus government revenue), it's not defense and corporate subsidies that suffer--they always get their piece--it's infrastructure and social programs. The "starve the beast" concept simply creates more suffering for those who can't afford things like private schools, expensive out-of-pocket health care, and jet time-shares.

<comment><USER8> federal government does not provide schools. propoerty taxes (state) provides schools. federal government does not provide infrastructure. gas tax provides roads, state funds and tolls go towards bridges and the like.

as for a social safety net? i'd be fine with it if it wasn't so obviously rotten. it needs to be gutted before any good can come of it.

look at yourtaxes sometime and see what percentage goes towards state vs. federal. ponder how state government can accomplish so much more with so much less.

<comment><USER9> > it needs to be gutted before any good can come of it.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a big Cuban fan, but I was surprised and a bit disappointed when he made this statement (and I'm also surprised to see Matt defending it). I agree that many entrepreneurs don't consider tax rates when starting up (at least not consciously), but for any given rate there is a _marginal_ entrepreneur who is just over the threshold for starting a company. Mark is so far over that threshold _for current rates_ that he reaches the erroneous conclusion that taxes don't matter in general. I guarantee that there is a rate---whether 90% or 99%---at which even Cuban would throw in the towel, by quitting the game or (more likely) fleeing the country.

Taxes hurt entrepreneurship; higher taxes hurt it more. Denying this just increases the likelihood of more taxes.

<comment><USER11> Depends also what you see as an entrepreneur.

What A lot of people see as entrepreneurship is a largely binary exercise: success/failure. Since tax rates do not really effect the venture in this way, they shouldn't effect the decisions of an entrepreneur.

A 'marginal entrepreneur' would need to be very marginal. Even if you consider complex effects (the effect of your uncle making $1m in the 80s vs $.75m on inspiring you). Cuban's talking about the 'within reason' limits based on practical choice a government is likely to make.

What might be affected by the tax situation is the flow of investment capital. Since Cuban is disregarding that as a factor, that has no effect.

<comment><USER10> You misunderstand the meaning of the term "marginal" in this context: it means not "mediocre" but rather "on the margin".

<comment><USER11> I don't think so. I meant marginal as in: Very close to the point where she is going to make a negative vs a positive decision. Or put another way, the number of entrepreneurs starting a business because of this effect is incredibly small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _When I started my first company I'd never even heard of capital gains taxes_

Granted, but I guarantee that the limited partners in the VC firms you might consider for funding are very familiar with the tax structure in the US. If you raise the taxes on investment income, you effectively reduce the return on venture capital funds, which reduces the amount of money VCs will be able to raise, which reduces the amount of money available to entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Precisely why you shouldn't have people who don't start businesses enacting policy for people who do... I make a general effort to vote for politicans who have eaten their own dog food on their policy platform, be it having spent time in the energy sector, run their own business, or whatever else...

<comment><USER14> Most politicians at the national level have law degrees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I too believe that this is wrong, but for a different reason than does timae. It breaks a simple economic axiom:

You Are Not the Marginal Case.

It is simply not valid to extrapolate (especially if you're MC, jeez!) from yourself to all entrepeneurs. You Are Not the Marginal Case.

Just because you and Bill Gates persevered, Mark frikkin' Cuban, doesn't mean that the marginal tax rate on entrepeneurs is unimportant.

Let's restate the argument this way: "Two of the most successful entrepeneurs of all time were undeterred by high marginal taxes on their fledgling businesses, therefore high marginal tax rates do not kill fledgling businesses". Sounds a bit different, eh?

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not just have income be considered the sum of all the money you've made in a year? 100k salary with 25k stock gains would give you an income of 125k and that's just taxed normally. Why should capital gains be treated differently at all?

Also, just simplify the entire thing and have a simpler tax rate. It may also be interesting to see what happens if the party responsible for what tax dollars are spent on is not the same party that decides the allocation of the money. Group 1 creates a list of priorities A, B, C but voters then get to choose the tax dollar allocation.

<comment><USER17> You'd penalize the investment gains with double taxation. The person already paid income taxes on the money that was used to generate the $25K. Why should government policy penalize savings and investment?

<comment><USER18> Because it's not necessarily in our interest to favor capital over labor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the case against capital gains is less about the entrepreneur and more about the investors. If the capital gains tax is raised so high that investors can get a better after tax return by putting their money into lower risk investments, then they're not going to want to bother funding new businesses. This may not be an issue if you're making a web app and your only capital outlay is living expenses and hosting fees, but this could seriously hurt innovation in fields where money is required up front to even get started (hardware, pharmaceuticals, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER20> A quote from Bill Gross, bond manager extraordinaire:

"That ol' Laffer Curve has a certain logic to it, but it only makes sense at the upper margin. People did work less at confiscatory tax rates imposed pre- Thatcher/Reagan but once they got down to 50 percent or lower, it was all gravy – promoting conspicuous consumption as opposed to higher productivity and overtime at the office."

[http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2...](http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2008/IO+July+2008.htm)

</comment><comment><USER9> Bzzzzzzt! Politics!

I think the most that can be said without much of anyone besides accountants disagreeing is that _simplifying_ the tax code would actually do a lot of good.

</comment><comment><USER21> _I doubt that any great business or invention started with a discussion or even a consideration of what the current or projected income or capital gains tax was or would be._

In the beginning, this is the whole point. It's not about the money. It's about doing the thing that you just _have_ to do.

0% of nothing is a lot less than x% of something. I still prefer the latter, whatever that may be.

</comment><comment><USER22> Papyrus!</comment>


The wide world of almost-actors: comparing Pony to BEAM languages [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0m0_qtfzLs <comment><USER2> This is a really great talk, I learned a lot from the clear, historic description of the actor model.</comment>


5 Steps to Landing 25+ Customer Interviews in 2 Weeks - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/21/case-study-how-i-got-25-customer-development-interviews-in-2-weeks/ <comment><USER2> I LOVE that you talked about the ethics of cold outreach here. We all hate getting mindless spam, so let's encourage people to keep that at a minimum.</comment>


New Paper Airplane Distance World Record - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/feb/28/joe-ayoob-paper-airplane-world-record

<comment><USER2> Wow, that was pretty cool. I wonder if the climb to a stall early on in the flight is part of the typical flight profile, and if the design of the aircraft is optimized to deliver that profile. Anyone know?</comment>


Native code is bad for you - <AUTHOR> http://developer.telerik.com/featured/native-code-is-bad-for-you/ <comment><USER2> Well you can also program in C++ and compile to Windows, iOS, Android and the Web.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thought of debugging other people's Javascript frightens me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Come back when your crappy monstrous javascript runs on my attiny85.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly an attiny85, but it's getting close: [https://tessel.io/](https://tessel.io/) :-)

<comment><USER4> It's very, very far from attiny85 or even things like PIC32 or ESP8266. 64Mb RAM, a 32bit MIPS and all that stuff. It's an order of magnitude larger than the minimum you'd need for javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would guess that this is as close as you get today: [http://www.espruino.com/EspruinoBoard](http://www.espruino.com/EspruinoBoard)

I get your point though. The real hardcore stuff still has to be done close to the metal. But it's pretty amazing how far you can get with just JavaScript today, with everything from server, browser, native and even hardware. Abstractions are powerful.

<comment><USER4> JavaScript is not particularly abstract and not that high level, so it's not surprising you can stuff it into some relatively low level environments.

But yet, you can go even further down with something like Lua or even Python, which are not nearly as bad as JavaScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will tell you what, he can keep writing his javascript and I will keep doing what I am doing and be happy.</comment>


Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/large-uber-block-trade-is-said-to-price-as-ipo-lockup-expires <comment><USER2> Is anyone really surprised? Years before the IPO we knew they were not profitable in the least. We knew VC cash was subsidizing rides. We knew that their future was purely dependent on a self-driving car fleet where they could ditch drivers (and their pay) completely. This on top of a horrible culture with pretty lousy ethics and morality.

This is how this was supposed to play out and everyone here (on HN) knew that. The only people suckered were public investors during the IPO roadshow.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but the same could be said of Tesla. Horrible employer, constant exec churn, unbelievable cash burn, what appears to be structural losses.... But Tesla still has a 56B mcap today. Uber is 46B. These VC/equity issue cash furnaces can go on longer than most can fathom if a subset of investors believe in the long term vision.

<comment><USER4> Tesla has arguably a more clear path to a profitable future. Uber's path to profitability is arguably much more speculative and dependent on risky technology advances.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Not only did Tesla have a clear path, but they had a product that could sell at much higher margins, better quality control, not-so dubious legal ways of selling them, paid their employees decent wages (Uber... does not), and they won't have technology that can be copied and repeated by a second year student at uni.

Uber and Tesla are not anywhere close to directly comparable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People are dumping Uber with over 79 million shares traded already. Compare that with an average of 10 million traded daily leading up to this.

Also weigh this against the fact that Uber had a relatively small float from its IPO compared to the shares coming free now. They had about 200 million shares available on their IPO and 4x that coming off restriction which is a huge ration.

They tried their best to boost their IPO at the expense of their employee's and the results are.... well not great.

I guess the good news is that with this lock up expiring 90% of the available Uber shares will now be available to trade so within the next week or so we'll find out what Uber's new price equilibrium will be.

Lots of open interest on the weekly $26 puts at the moment with nothing coming close on the call side, which indicates that not too many people expect a pop.

I guess the one silver lining is that Softbank probably won't be too active of a seller which should help employee's jumping ship.

Will be interesting to see the staff turnover at Uber in the next 6 months.

uber just had a big block trade one at a 4% discount, this is a pretty big discount from what a block trade would normally cross at which indicate that the buyer expects a larger drop to occur.

So looking at their cash position, they have about $12.5B in cash wich is good and total debt of $7.8 so lets call it $5B in cash on hand with free cash flow estimated at -$3.8B a year, so charitably 1.5 years of cash flow remain if the losses don't increase/decrease which isn't a very good assumption given that the losses have accelerated from 2017 and 2018

For something positive East is about 13% of revenue and "other" is 2.3% of revenue so they are starting to diversify their revenue, though at tremendous cost to their profitability.

Revenue is also pretty diversified by country with the US being only 53% of revenue which is a big accomplishment!!!

<comment><USER7> What's their cash on hand position, I believe I saw that there's 13B, after adding 8B in the IPO, that seems like a ton of cash on hand for a business that isn't showing any signs of turning of profit.

Could they not just without any further cash infusion continue to lose similar amounts for the next three years and be cash solvent. Does that then not give a big incentive to figure out how to become profitable in the near term?

<comment><USER8> The core business is very profitable. Loss-making is happening in their less mature product categories and expansion efforts.

<comment><USER6> > The core business is very profitable. Loss-making is happening in their less > mature product categories and expansion efforts.

Not really. It is true that in their non GAAP accounting they broker out revenue by segment and showed that "Rides" made a profit of $631M but they also include categories for eats, freight and other bets that lost money.

But the kicker is that they introduced a category called "Corporate G&A and Platform R&D" which lost $621. If you look at this category which includes

> "Corporate G&A also includes certain shared costs such as finance, > accounting, tax, human resources, information technology and legal costs. > Platform R&D also includes mapping and payment technologies and support and > development of the internal technology infrastructure. Our allocation > methodology is periodically evaluated and may change."

SO basically they are saying Rids is profitable if you don't need to have a business to run it, ie no lawyers, HR, execs, payment systems, cloud infrastructure or employees to develop code.

TL/DR rids is profitable if you ignore the cost of running the Rides business and only look at the income that it brings in, which is true for any business that has income.

<comment><USER9> ...what's $631M - $621M?

I agree that they're losing money overall. But just the ridesharing part is making enough profit to cover the entire Corporate G&A line item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always look for a discussion of "how much money does Uber need to make to cover all the fundraising" and I never see anyone doing that analysis. Instead it's just "they're not profitable" or "they turned a profit".

Uber took a few billion dollars of investor capital over the last decade. Let's assume we live in the world from the textbooks where the value of Ubers stock is actually the net present value of all its future earnings (hah!). What do those earnings need to look like for the investors to turn out to be right? As in, would they have done better investing in some other asset?

My theory for why you never see this kind of analysis is that it doesn't matter to anyone. Nobody is trying to actually build a business that will generate money with their investment. They're building hype machines they can use to sell their stake to someone else before it all explodes. It's speculation and manipulation all the way down.

<comment><USER11> Part of the misunderstanding, at least as I understand it, is that for a growing company the vast majority of the expected earnings come a very long time in the future.

Peter Thiel talks about this for Paypal in Zero to One, IIRC in 2001 their projections showed that like 75% or more of the net present value would come in 2011 and beyond.

I don't actually know how you make a model like that, clearly you need to assume a maximum size and a decline at some point in the future or else you would expect infinite future revenue? But obviously people are doing that, amonth other types of models for Uber and deciding it's still worth $45 Billion as of today. If not the stock price wouldn't be that high. I think the reason you don't see it is just that it's more advanced than what a regular journalist is going to do, and I assume you're not paying for the right specialist publications to have access to that level of reports.

If you still think it's completely crazy, then what are you waiting for get out there and short the stock, there's free money to be made!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So I think people may be misinterpreting this drop:

lock up expired today, so the sales today -- throughout the day -- are a result of the lock up expiry.

This pre-market drop is the result of people anticipating the drop and selling before the market opens.

It is also, partly, driven by the disappointing earnings from 3 days ago, and indeed the drops over the last few days have been about as large.

For what its worth, shares are slightly up from the open.

<comment><USER13> The post lockup sale was already "priced" into the share price a month ago (or even before). The market react only to NEW information.

In general, it is impossible to know what is priced in or not.

<comment><USER12> By your logic, it should have been priced in at IPO, since we knew back then that it would happen.

However, note that back then we also didn't know what else was going to happen. We didn't know if earnings would go up or down, or a lawsuit would emerge etc.

After earnings (a few days ago), we had a "purer" expression of the effect of the lockup expiry.

In other words, we had the information but there was also a lot of noise at IPO (or a month ago etc).

<comment><USER14> All timescales happen simultaneously on the market. So there is a slice of the market that's priced how you say: IPO plus many years. There's another slice that's priced on the day's expectations, another slice on the quarter, etc.

How big each slice is varies per company. But OP is correct that for all slices that contain yesterday, yesterday is priced in. Which includes all slices that were in the order book yesterday.

Some people did get out between IPO and yesterday, and they would not have priced yesterday at IPO.

<comment><USER12> I will just point out what I see as a contradiction in these statements:

If getting out of the stock after the IPO and before the lockup expiry allows you to "escape" the effect of the lockup expiry, then you are implicitly saying that the expiry was not priced in.

I don't know what it means for a "slice" of the market to be priced a certain way. Uber has a clearing price which reflects all the opinions at any point in time. What is a slice?

<comment><USER14> Basically, sort all shareholders by planned sale date. Then you can slice them into "bins". Let's say we want nine $5B bins. They will each have a median planned sale date.

Made up example numbers:

$0-$5B of market cap: plan to sell within 24h

$5-$10B: plan to sell within 30d

$10-$15B: plan to sell at the end of the quarter

etc...

For any given future event, it will only be implicated for some of those slices. So the cost of an event will only affect that part of today's order book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From Q3 results, it sounded like the company was profitable just on ride- sharing itself and was losing a ton of money on eats + cargo + autonomous vehicles R&D.

I wonder what a fair valuation would be for just the ride-sharing business if they were to spin off / shut down every other part of their business and essentially become Lyft.

<comment><USER16> I wonder how much cost offloading was done to make ridesharing look profitable and everything look like a loss. Uber needs a positive narrative of some kind

<comment><USER17> aka Uber is selling a $5 pizza for $10 and recording $7 as "disruptive tomato sauce" r&d.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some unsolicited advice for any Uber employees here on HN: You may want to seriously consider selling all vested shares. The price not be what you are expecting, but, from my own personal experience, and "most expert advice", it can be better to sell and diversify. Many one-time high-fliers, such as Zynga (where I previously worked), never got back to their IPO or lockup expiry price.

<comment><USER19> I was at Groupon at IPO. IPO'd at $20. Dropped to $3.50 by the time lockup ended. I sold because I needed the cash. 7 years later, it's trading at $2.90. The market isn't perfect, but shenanigans with private company valuations are usually worse.

Take granto's advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think Lyft and Uber hurt public transit. There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and accessible without adding additional car traffic.

Buses, denser house, better urban planning, metro rail and subway additions are the way we need to go like Asia and Europe. Uber and Lyft are not doing well in Europe and Asia because leaders realize they make traffic worse and are trying to focus on zoning and transit instead.

<comment><USER21> > There has gotta be a better way to make American cities more livable and > accessible without adding additional car traffic.

This problem and its solutions are not new. The solutions weren't implemented because there wasn't enough desire to implement them, and I doubt that has changed today.

American culture pushes the idea of personal vehicle ownership equaling success, and if you have a car you're going to drive it instead of taking the subway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Jeez. Maybe they should rename the company 'unter'.

On a more serious note, I'm not sad to see this. I hope companies trying to disavow all corporate responsibility by claiming they're only responsible for the technology behind their platform and not the effects of running the platform the way they do is only a fad. Their stock price obviously isn't a proper indicator of this trend bucking, but I'm glad that they, being the poster child for this sort of foolery, aren't the apple of every tech investor's eye anymore.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if lockup agreements will ever be made illegal.

I doubt it, since they're primarily there to ensure the original investors get an ROI, but they sure seem to be an overall negative incentive for the general public / retail traders to purchase stock with lockup agreements, given the earliest they can buy is right when the IPO pops.

<comment><USER24> > I doubt it, since they're primarily there to ensure the original investors > get an ROI, but they sure seem to be an overall negative incentive for the > general public / retail traders to purchase stock with lockup agreements, > given the earliest they can buy is right when the IPO pops.

That seems slightly backwards. The lockup protects buyers in the IPO more than sellers: it means you can be confident that the market isn't going to be flooded tomorrow. Anyone who bought in the IPO has now had plenty of time to get out, if they wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was hired at Uber with the promise of 49$ a share, and boosting that it will go up to 75 by the time of IPO. Naive me at the time didn't research more on it, but these were just some numbers thrown at me in 2015. I will never trust a recruiter offering me snake oil again. That said, I left after a year and a day, and this price makes my compensation close to less than new industry hire.

</comment><comment><USER26> With the layoffs, the quarterly earnings, and now this, it sounds like Uber's having a bit of a tough time. Sentiment about the viability of Uber long term is quite negative.

Can anybody at Uber talk about what the morale and culture is like right now? I've received a job offer and I'm struggling to reconcile what I'm observing externally with what I'm hearing from the small set of people I've spoken to.

<comment><USER27> Doesn't appear HN is particularly negative about Uber:

[https://hnprofile.com/compare?search=uber,lyft](https://hnprofile.com/compare?search=uber,lyft)

<comment><USER28> It marked Uber having a significant loss and slow growth as positive — seems like a bad signal based on an initial sanity check

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A quick reminder to everyone that buying all time lows on a stock is one of the worst equity strategies possible (statistically). Go ahead and run a backtest.

On the flip side, buying stocks at all time highs, while counter intuitive, is one of the best equity strategies available (with trailing stops).

Buying Uber stock here is borderline moronic until the trend turns around.

<comment><USER29> I'm curious, anywhere where I could read more about the high/low statistics?

<comment><USER3> For sure. Here are some links:

[https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/finread/trend.pdf](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/finread/trend.pdf)

[https://www.bauer.uh.edu/TGeorge/papers/gh4-paper.pdf](https://www.bauer.uh.edu/TGeorge/papers/gh4-paper.pdf)

[https://mebfaber.com/2007/05/30/buying-the-highs-vs- buying-t...](https://mebfaber.com/2007/05/30/buying-the-highs-vs-buying-the- lows/)

[https://allocatesmartly.com/buying-global-stocks-at-all- time...](https://allocatesmartly.com/buying-global-stocks-at-all-time-highs/)

[https://mebfaber.com/2019/11/04/is-buying-stocks-at-an- all-t...](https://mebfaber.com/2019/11/04/is-buying-stocks-at-an-all-time- high-a-good-idea/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What surprises me is that so many tech companies issue huge amounts of RSUs and their stock price hasn't tanked. Do people actually keep their RSUs in their employer? I sell asap, I'm not going to be Enron'd. One day this whole house of cards will collapse.

Would be great if anyone had some figures on how many employees sell vs keep their RSUs.

<comment><USER31> Which specific companies surprise you? Employees selling their RSUs is a drop in the bucket vs the market cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's not moving as much as I expected given the number of shares released from lockup.

</comment><comment><USER33> A good discretionary strategy for these sort of things is to do a long volatility options trade on the day lockups end. Either the market has overestimated the number of shares being sold or has underestimated it. Either way, you make money. Of course ATM options are almost always more expensive if they expire close after the lockup period ends. But even so, in my experience, you can make some money reliably using this signal and a little discretion.

</comment><comment><USER34> How much wealth was redistributed upwards? Who benefited from Uber other than the founders and maybe 1% of the entire business?

I find it highly unethical for such a business to be able to ignore so many laws most of which protect the have nots to build a system that moves most of the profits to the haves. Then dump the broken business to IPO for fools to buy up and loose as well.

<comment><USER35> Riders and drivers who got subsidized rides and income, were probably the largest beneficiaries.

Uber employees, VC partners, on the Silicon Valley side. A lot of other tech workers have benefited from the upward price pressure exerted on developer salaries not just in Silicon Valley but around the world.

Who got screwed, if Uber's valuation never recovers - late stage investors, companies doing similar things such as in food delivery.

<comment><USER29> I was a big fan of the $25 referral bonuses in the early days. Probably saved a few hundred dollars overall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Uber is the ubiquitous word for modern transport between 1 to 40kms in the western world. Ubering is a verb.

Thats a whole lot of mindshare and Uber is a whole lot better than a taxi. Future demand for taxis will go up. Uber is the verb for the software layer in the middle of getting from a to b.

Nobody can innovate enough in the space to displace Uber's brand lead. Running a server is cheaper than paying a dispatcher.

Like Coca cola there is an uber on every street corner of the western world and customers love uber. Uber doesn't need to buy syrup or warehousing.

Sounds like an opportunity to buy a profitable brand that successfully invested in becoming a verb.

I wonder what would be the minimum support cost if you kept the brand going and outsourced the server tech support. And what would be the minimum number of developers required to update the app for drones and air taxis.

I reckon 100 x 250k development 2000 x 100k server support 10 x 200k design 1000 x 100k driver/customer liasion Servers don't know say 10,000 x .5k

Equals about 400m a year in operating costs.

If they are serving more than 400m rides a year and growing that should be a buy because every ride past 400m is pure profit and the only depreciation is their servers which is a minuscule percentage of their costs.

I'm going to read up on this company. It's lower risk than Tesla because it only requires labour and the demand for getting from a to b is only going to increase. Lyft will never be a verb. Its definitely worth further investigation. I hope the shares sink further.

<comment><USER37> Hoovering is a verb, it didn't help them.

Edit: Xeroxing.

<comment><USER36> Hoovering and is a verb in the US from technically advanced hardware businesses while ubering is a verb globally from a taxi software company.

So uber doesn't have

Depreciating factories, Competing manufacturers, Supply chains Software R&D

And has expertise in establishing brand prescence and marketshare.

Uber = better taxi and demand for taxis will increase in future with or without driverless cars.

How easy is it for car manufacturers or software companies to build and displace what Uber has in operation in the transition to driverless cars? I think it's difficult.

Uber seems to have deep experience how this market will play out and they are actually spending the money on r&d to see how it will play out and should be able to position the Uber brand which everyone in the Western world associates with taxi to clip the ticket on an increasing number of taxi rides in the future.

Google and Apple are possibly the biggest threats but they have a whole lot of anti-trust, privacy and motivation issues to overcome. Possibly Tesla has a automotive technology edge but unlikely and Tesla is constrained by its capital intensive business model.

From a net cash flow perspective, clipping tickets on taxi rides seems a profitable growth business while R&D into driverless car tech is a bottomless well but if your the largest taxi ticketer in the world it's probably good to be at the edge of this field of knowledge.

At $26.00 a share uber needs to clip $1.00 per ride on 2.4 billion trips to get 12* earnings.

It did 10 billion rides/deliveries in 2018 and has 12 billion cash on hand presently.

It is a software business and owns the copyright to it's software stack so should have lower operating costs than it's smaller competitors licensing bits and pieces of their stack plus economies of scale plus one focus on getting people and things from a to b as easily as possible.

I hope it goes lower. At 26.00 - 7.00 for the cash on hand you are paying 19.00 for a verb that sells 6 tickets per day at $1.00 profit per ticket equals a 30% return on the core business which is being invested into R&D to secure brand prescence and network effects in emerging delivery technology.

That R&D can stop today and Uber will continue to print and clip the ticket for 10 billion rides per year now and for the forseeable future.

So it's just a question of whether the current manager is a genius at deploying capital into the driverless r&d space and can get dominant market share of air taxi's and delivery because the core of Uber (10 billion tickets per year) is a fantastic business and that definitely didn't happen by accident and with antitrust regulations the uber app should become more profitable and dominant.

I hope it goes lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Slightly tangential: Does anyone know how Uber was able to skirt Taxi regulation in the US? Did they actively lobby, or fight this in the courts? It's something that I've always been curious about, since this was a big problem for them in several European countries, and it's hard for me to imagine that in the US everybody just bought the "it's totally not a taxi" argument.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm not sure whether to interpret Uber's branching out into many different verticals (flying taxis, autonomy, food delivery, general logistics, scooters, payment etc) as an act of desperation or genius.

Generally, I'm fond of focus

<comment><USER40> I feel they have too much money so they desperately try to branch out. Google is a Little similar. A ton of cool experiments but almost nothing turns into a real business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's funny how Uber simultaneously says it's all about supporting drivers and treating them like family, and at the same time they want to fire them all so that robots can do the driving.

So which way is it?

<comment><USER42> it depends on whether you're trying to swindle regulators or investors, so it varies day by day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Time to buy the dip

<comment><USER17> What about buying stocks in companies trying to have a positive impact on the world and not managed by megalomaniacs ?

<comment><USER43> Like?

<comment><USER17> Any company supporting what you truly believe is good for this world instead of dumping $$$ with the sole purpose of making $$$ no matter the external costs. Sustainability, energy, education, medicine, the small business at the corner of your street &c. the world isn't running out of good companies.

<comment><USER43> i actually agree to that but companies are not available in the public market. Uber does provide _some_ value for people but it's mostly a gambling game pumped by a temporary wave in economies. i think it s time for some serious work in biotech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> a

<comment><USER32> Uber moved from stock options to RSUs in December 2014. People who got RSUs are OK. Those that got options in late 2014 are probably the worst off but unsure what the strike price was for those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> an acquaintance got recently hired to do CRUD there for half a mil total yearly. Sweet. And all that while making the world a better place, and sticking it to Saudis(Softbank) whose money seems to be the source of the compensation. I'm green with envy.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am long on Uber: taxis are dead, it will not go anywhere. The only problem is that the board made a strategic mistake that felt good short term. They tried to retain users by pushing the founder out, and hiring a diversity CEO. This failed long term as any populist board move does. But they still have a chance to have their NeXT moment and bring Travis back.

<comment><USER47> You are long on the new transportation model for taxi like rides but is Uber the right horse to bet on? I personally think not.

<comment><USER48> At the current share price, no, it's probably not. It's the weak version of WeWork. The company is wildly overvalued based on growth expectations it can't possibly meet after a history of investor-driven mania. But the business model is solid. Pervasive gig-sourced drivers across the world with a universal interface is absolutely what the market wants.

Uber the company may be in trouble, but Uber the _brand_ will be driving people around for decades to come.

I still wouldn't buy them right now, though.</comment></comment></comment>


This Apple-HTC Patent Thing - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/03/this_apple_htc_patent_thing

<comment><USER2> Gruber, almost alone in a sea of reporting, manages to mention Apple's action here may be related to Nokia's patent suit against Apple.

So rewind a bit, to put this in context:

\- Apple accuses HTC of iPhone tech theft (2 March 2010)

\- Kodak prompts ITC to consider iPhone ban (18 February 2010)

\- Motorola seeks ban on US BlackBerries (26 January 2010)

\- Nokia sues Apple, says iPhone infringes ten patents (22 October 2009)

One test for patents' validity is whether the company is enforcing them. With Kodak, Sony, Nokia, Motorola, RIM, and others suing one another as a business- as-usual step in licensing negotiations, the value of Apple's defensive patent portfolio at the licensing negotiation table depends in part on Apple's perceived willingness to stand behind the validity of their portfolio and enforce their patents.

I'd suppose this is a signal to the marketplace not that competitors should create their own original technology, but that if they want to copy, they should license or trade.

<comment><USER3> Could you point to a reference of patent validity tests which includes enforcement? The three tests, "utility, novelty, and non-obviousness", seem to be the standard ones.

Perhaps you are confusing patent law with trademark law, which does require enforcement?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I should have clarified that. I almost mentioned trademark law to compare and contrast. No, you don't lose the patent by not enforcing it. But you can lose the value of the patent both at the negotiating table and in the courts if there's a belief you won't enforce it or a belief you suspect it's unenforceable (e.g., if you seem to worry by using it aggressively, you could have it challenged, and lose it).

First, as alluded to in the article, note the word "need":

> _"Perhaps it's a by-product of the suit Apple is engaged in against (and > initiated by) Nokia. Apple's counter-suit against Nokia involves some of the > same patents at play here, and perhaps Apple's lawyers have concluded that > they need to enforce them against someone like HTC in order to use them in > their counter-suit against Nokia."_

Second, to quote a non-neutral party, note the phrase "lax attitude":

> _"But neglecting stick licensing has two problems. First, it results in a > loss of potential royalty and damages revenues from infringed patents. > Second, it undermines carrot licensing of both infringed and noninfringed > patents. If an industry perceives a lax attitude on the part of a university > in enforcing its patents, it will think it can infringe with impunity. Under > these circumstances, taking a license would be tantamount to making a > charitable gift, which few in this economic climate are inclined to do."_ > \-- Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corporation in > [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patent...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patents:+why+it+pays+to+protect+patent+...-a0209901861)

<comment><USER3> _But you can lose the value of the patent .. at the negotiating table_

True, it comes down to people and what they think you will do, not what you can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to admit; I find myself agreeing vehemently with Gruber, PG and everyone else Gruber cited. Patents are typically defense weaponry. Your attack weapons are moving fast, innovating and _implementing_ something.

Software patents _are_ broken, and Apple's decision to whip out it's massive portfolio and start smacking people with it stinks of the "We want no phone inspired by the iPhone's design to exist", which (in my mind) isn't what patents are for in the first place - not to mention doing this is just, well, wrong.

The iPhone's concept revolutionized the handheld industry - and sure, if someone blatantly ripped it off, Apple does have a right to go after that company - but the HTC phones are simply "inspired by" - they're not clones, and while they have a lot of "features" which smack of the iphone, they're not replicas.

I'm an avid Mac user, own an iPhone - and I'll probably buy an iPad (still), but I for one want to see this suit fail horribly, or for Apple to withdraw it.

<comment><USER5> "I'm an avid Mac user, own an iPhone - and I'll probably buy an iPad (still), but I for one want to see this suit fail horribly, or for Apple to withdraw it."

Again, this is the reason why Apple will not change its ways. I wish people who speak out against Apple would back up their words with action.

<comment><USER6> It's painful, but I intend to -- I was planning on getting a new macbook pro soon (not to mention a bigger ipod), but while I love their hardware I think I've bought my last piece for some time now.

<comment><USER7> I'm in the same situation. I was waiting for the next generation macbook pro, but now I don't want to buy it.

Unfortunately, buying a windows laptop and supporting Microsoft doesn't appeal to me either. Now I have to decide if I am unhappy enough with Apple to justify the effort that a linux laptop would entail.

<comment><USER8> You may want to reconsider Ubuntu (the new LTS release will come out end of april). My apple owning colleagues were suprised how easy it is nowadays. Granted, i customized it a lot to match exactly with my workflow, but i guess i'm around 30% faster then i could be on a mac or windows, in terms of organizing tasks, tracking information/time, getting different tasks done.

Also, if you haven't tried linux for some time: gnomes' apps integrate quite well nowadays (contacts, mail, calendar on the desktop and if you use it, with google mail/contacts/calendar). In conjunction with an android phone it makes up for a pretty good and efficient working environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."_

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

You know this whole business of patents, and IP as a whole, is fundamentally flawed in that there is no objective way to decide what is influence and what is blatant copying/theft. The Justice route simply doesn't work. And because patents are public documents, you are basically inviting competitors to _modify_ your inventions.

I can think of two better ways to protect your IP. One is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself. Up to now nobody can crack their search black box. And two, keep innovating. If you do those 2 things in conjunction, I doubt you'd have to worry about people "stealing" your IP.

 _I believe that it's good business, in the long run, for a company's acts of aggression to take place in the market, not in the courts. My concern regarding this litigation against HTC is that it looks like an act of competitive aggression, not defense._

I completely agree. The sad part is it maybe too late for them to reverse course.

<comment><USER10> _One is to do what Google does and keep the knowledge of your best stuff to yourself._

Any suggestions on how to do that with a product as opposed to a service?

<comment><USER11> Google also sell search as a product - Enterprises can buy "google black boxes" that index their corporate network and make it easier to find stuff (supposedly... I haven't seen one at work yet, but the bar is pretty low, considering how shitty most enterprise search engines are).

<comment><USER12> These are basically rack-mounted boxes (the one I worked with was bright yellow and looked pretty awesome) that quite literally are, under contract, not allowed to be tampered with besides providing power and plugging in cables.

They do work, though I wonder whether it is worth the cost. I can't recall exactly, but I think it cost in the region of $10,000/yr. There's also a baby version for significantly cheaper that indexes less docs.

<comment><USER13> I'm sure their search technology is significantly different as well. A large part of Google's success is being able to crawl well (their index is incredibly fresh), sort through spam and SEO gaming and then raw speed over many billions of documents. It's a lot easier to efficiently crawl and search an intranet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has Amazon's enforcing of their one click patent really affected them negatively? Certainly their customers have no idea about the whole ordeal. Have great hackers refused to work there because of it? Would some percentage of hackers refusing to work at a big company like Amazon really make a difference to them? Somehow I doubt it...

I think the same is true of this HTC suit. I'm not sure why everyone is making such a huge deal out of it. The patents probably won't hold up in court, or some of them will and HTC will have to pay Apple N million dollars (like Adobe vs. Macromedia). Everyone will forget about the suit within the year. The only affected people (as one of the Tim Bray quotes suggests) will be the lawyers, who collect their entropy-like tax.

Why would Apple do it if it's truly pointless, you ask? Well, Gruber has a few solid bits of speculation in his penultimate paragraph, any of which might be true, but only Apple knows the real reason.

<comment><USER15> This is an apples to oranges comparison though because Amazon and Apple do very different things. The thing is that unlike Amazon, Apple is primarily selling a platform. To some real extent, hackers are their competitive edge. (This is somewhat true of Amazon now that they're in cloud services I suppose, but that's still a negligible part of their overall business and has been great PR for them in the hacker community.)

The iPhone before the App Store was either a middling failure or a middling success, depending on your viewpoint, but it certainly wasn't a slam dunk. It was on track to undersell the 10 million projected handsets by the end of the calendar year (about 18 months after launch) even after severe price cuts. See this chart for unit counts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_simple.svg)

The green bar marks where apps came in. The app store is most, if not all, of what made it the slam dunk it is today. It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.

So alienate the people who make the apps, and you lose a lot of the reason for customers to purchase an iPhone. Hence I'd argue that Apple's image among developers is a lot more important to their success than Amazon's.

<comment><USER10> _It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT &T customers._

Many them weren't AT&T customers. That green bar also coincides with the release of the iPhone in 22 countries (as opposed to only 6 for the original model), expanding by another 48 by the end of the year.

[http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/the-lucky-22-countries- re...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/the-lucky-22-countries-receiving- iphone-3g-on-july-11th/)

<comment><USER15> That's true, I wonder if what % of sales were international though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _"Where I disagree with Jonathan is on what's known as "business-method" patents: one-click ordering, per-employee pricing. I'm having trouble seeing the benefit to society in granting patents on something that could never possibly be done secretly."_

That I think should always be the type of reasoning involved. It's not the whole story (some things that couldn't be done in private would still stay uninvited if patents didn't exist) I can't get my head around IP moralising. The bottom line is that patents are intended to be an instrument to encourage innovation to the benefit of society.

I really think there is no sane way out of all this. We tend to act as if there must be some hard definition that will include all novel innovations that wouldn't be worth developing in a patent-less world and exclude those obvious derivative things that would be invented anyway and really need to be freely built upon. There probably isn't such a definition. Even if we do find some complex and inelegant way of mostly accomplishing that it wont last forever.

Making a morality around _that_ seems absurd.

</comment><comment><USER17> _I'm not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are)._

I'm not aware of RMS claiming that the patent system should be abolished for all fields. I'd love to be corrected on this point, but it's my understanding that Stallman is against software patents only. You can actually read Stallman's own words on the subject in "Free Software, Free Society", Chapter 16. And yes, you can legally download the entire book for free.

<http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society/>

<comment><USER18> _I'm not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are)_

I think the context of that quote refers to software patents. In particular, his two preceding Tim Bray quotes are clearly with regards to software patents.

<comment><USER17> He's referring to the patent system in general. The context is pretty clear:

 _I'm not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are). And I think in many fields, the system has and continues to work well.

But for software the system, in practice, is undeniably broken._

At the beginning of the second paragraph he makes a distinction between the system in general and the system as it applies to software. Therefore, in the first paragraph he was referring to the system in general. Maybe that's not what the author meant, but that's what the words say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"The iPhone introduced a new model. A true great leap forward in the state of the art. Not a small screen that shows you things which you manipulate indirectly using buttons and trackballs occupying half the device's surface area, but instead a touchscreen that occupies almost the entirety of the surface area, showing things you manipulate directly."_

Nokia's N770 was close to this in 2005, and the N800 even closer by 2007. It didn't have phone hardware, but it's not a great stretch for anyone to see that phone hardware would be a useful addition at that point.

<comment><USER20> I owned one of the first Nokia 770s through their open source developer program, and it was a useful handheld computer but it was no iPhone.

iPhone features that the 770 anticipated well:

\- Full-featured web browser.

\- On-screen keyboard.

\- App development based on a full-featured desktop toolkit adapted to a handheld screen.

Things that make it a strikingly different experience:

\- Not a touch interface. The resistive touch screen on the 770 was really only usable with the stylus, and their interface designs reflected this. This didn't really start changing until after the iPhone was released.

\- Not actually pocketable. To deliver a full-featured browser, Nokia used a screen with almost twice the area of the iPhone's. They didn't figure out the tricks Apple used to get a near-desktop-class web experience on a truly pocketable screen.

\- UI conventions. The original Maemo tablets had a fairly desktop-like interface. Menus, dialogs, a Windows-like task bar. Plenty of hardware buttons. In contrast, the iPhone made a much cleaner break with previous UIs, popularizing things like multitouch gestures and momentum scrolling.

<comment><USER21> Not only that, but the web browser (Opera) on the 770 didn't really zoom well at all. Nothing like Mobile Safari's double-tap zooming. It is actually quite painful to use now. I occasionally break mine out but it is quickly replaced with my iPhone. It really wasn't much of a mobile platform and quite underpowered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why can't Apple continue to out-innovate Nexus One and Android instead of suing them?

Reading from the overall situation and his quote, Steve Jobs might feel that the current iPhone UI is 'perfect' as a whole. Apart from nitty-gritty details, he does not see a way to drastically improve it. (That's why he chose it for the iPad UI as well.) So he might figure that the only way to stop competitors from getting too close is to sue them.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Copying ideas is how progress is made. It's copying implementations that is wrong (and illegal)."

Distinction between ideas and implementations in software? Impossible. In my opinion it is one of the reasons why software patents will always be broken.

<comment><USER24> Tim Bray cites a pretty good example; compare and contrast one-click shopping with PGP.

One is a broad concept that needs no further explanation in order to be implemented by a seasoned developer — the other is a genius implementation that isn't anywhere near self-explanatory.

Not saying software patents are sometimes good, just saying that there _can be_ a difference between ideas and implementations in software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> John pull together a number of ideas and commentary about software patents and patent law from a variety of industry commentaries.

An interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER26> With the iPhone Apple's innovation is in the implementation, not the concept/idea. Can design be patented?

</comment><comment><USER27> For a sample of Gruber-pretentiousness, check out the last sentence (while picturing him wearing a monocle):

 _I say it's worrisome not because I think it's evil, or foolish, or unreasonable, but because it is unwise, shortsighted, and unnecessary._

Oh do say Gruber ol' lad! Your taste is so _precisely_ exquisite.

<comment><USER28> What's wrong with that sentence?

<comment><USER29> I believe he's trying to use "unnecessary" to mean Gruber finds it unnecessary because Apple products are so superior and always will be. This is used to:

      1. Nullify all the arguments in the post because people
         imagined wearing monocles must be wrong.
      2. Point out the fact that it is wrong for anybody to hold
         an opinion on anything.

<comment><USER27> That wasn't at all my meaning.</comment></comment></comment></comment>