Apple Never Invented Anything - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/09/02/apple-never-invented-anything/ <comment><USER2> One interesting point is he brought up Einstein's invention of relativity. Notice that in the scientific community, humanity has been building upon previous work for centuries with no copyright or patent protection, and nothing more than honor, citation, and shame against plagiarists.

The fundamental defense made by many is that without patent protection for software, people would not put much effort into innovating.

1) If you look at science, open source, fashion, food, and other areas where humans continually build on culture, you see plenty of continued innovation without insane legal protection.

2) The amount of effort pales in comparison to the monopoly granted. You could make the argument for say, pharmaceuticals, that if it takes 10 years from lab through human trials and hundreds of millions of dollars, that a 2-decade long protection period might be needed. But there is no FDA for software, and Apple actually spends far less on R&D than other companies, and with $100 billion in the bank, you can't claim that haven't gotten an incredibly good return in their investment.

Therefore, it is insane to grant 20 year protection to Apple for stuff like pinch gestures. 2 years maybe. But 20? It's absurd.

<comment><USER3> > But 20? It's absurd.

If pinch and zoom is such a trivial thing then invent some other thing to use instead.

The patent system by-and-large doesn't pick and choose patent durations based on the kind of patent.

Theoretical physics and patentable technology are quite different things and the comparison is not helpful. Before patents we had a guild system where people who made almost anything -- pottery, telescopes, pots and pans -- would obfuscate their techniques and if possible their products. Knowledge of key manufacturing processes was a trade secret. This is the world that we'd be in without patent protections.

<comment><USER2> Trivial doesn't mean valueless. A "1 click buy" patent is trivial, but forcing everyone to "invent something else instead" (e.g. 2 clicks) is stupid. And what if 2-click is patented? Then the next guy to come along has to have a 3-click system, or some obfuscation that convinces a jury.

Pretty soon, consumers are confused, because every website they go to has a radically different user interface brought on by patents on ideas that should be _basic commodities_.

When we had the guild system, we also didn't have universal public education, and instantaneous near zero cost publication of ideas.

Plus, you analogy makes pinch-zoom patents look even worse. You can keep how it is implemented a complete trade secret, and from looking at it for a few seconds, I can produce an equivalent implementation.

Apple has already obfuscated their techniques anyway. Why not release iOS as open source then, if it's protected by patents? The reality is, these patents are read by no one except lawyers, and in many cases, they under specify the implementation by being very abstract.

I really don't see how anyone who writes software for a living can defend these things and defend the status quo of not even supporting reform. You are asserting that something like an XOR-cursor (another dumb patent) is equivalent to a manufacturing process deserving 20 year protection?

<comment><USER3> > I really don't see how anyone who writes software for a living can defend > these things and defend the status quo of not even supporting reform.

I agree that it seems like things are a bit screwy right now, but I don't claim to know what the solution is, and I'm not sure that things haven't always been a bit screwy (Alexander Graham Bell got the telephone patent because he was ahead of some other guy in line, Farnsworth died poor having invented TV).

Abolishing software patents is -- in my opinion -- not the solution since -- given the direction technology is headed -- this is going to be disturbingly similar to abolishing patents altogether. Most suggested "reforms" of the patent system seem to satisfy Mencken's criteria ("neat, simple, and wrong")

Note that genetic and chemical-engineering patents are pretty close to software too.

1-click is one of my least favorite patents, but it really comes down to an argument about obviousness -- an argument it appears to have lost in Europe (where the patent was never granted). The patent has been challenged, most of its claims thrown out, and its remaining claims narrowed:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click>

I'd suggest that in the end its a question of application not theory. In this case the Europeans have arguably done a better job of applying patent law than the US.

<comment><USER4> The solution already exists, in parallel with patents. If the whole goal is to "incentive innovation", then there are many ways of doing this. And we've been doing it already. If all you wanna do is incentive innovation then just give innovators what they need to innovate. That's what angel investors, angel groups, startup incubators, accelerators and even kickstarter backers do.

There's absolutely nothing about the concept of "incentive innovation" that says you must punish other innovators by giving monopolies to each individual. Of all ideas for promoting innovation you can think of, granting monopolies are among the worst ones. If before the invention of Intellectual Property, if you asked people to come up with new ideas to incentive innovation, no one would come up with "let's promote innovation by punishing innovators to pay fees to a select few". And in fact, no one did, that's not how IP was invented, it was the other way around. It started with UK monarchy monopolies with the explicit goal to make money for the monarchy. The excuse that IP protects innovation was made up later by those who were profiting from it when the monarchy fell.

Solutions to replace patents always existed, still exist and are working great. YCombinator is a great example of that. If you think it's the government who should grant some kind of incentives. I don't know about the US, but in my country we have many government programs for innovative startups. Many high tech and bio tech startups only exist because of government granted funding, incubation and mentorship.

Humans will always innovate. Solutions already exist and are working. Patents just need to stay out of our way and the rest will keep working fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the article is right in what it says but is wrong because of what it doesn't say. Apple succeeded where others had failed, and that is certainly commendable, but now we have a problem: Apple doesn't have a patent on "an iPad" meaning a device with all the individual characteristics that make an iPad an iPad and make it successful, instead they have individual patents on all the individual features.

But the individual features are the things that Apple _didn't_ do. Yet that's what they sue over because that's how patent law is set up.

So now we see Samsung lose big in court and popular reaction is split, and here's why: People looking at the actual facts of the case are outraged that Apple could win that way because the actual grounds of the win had nothing to do with copying or Samsung's actions and everything to do with the fact that anyone with a million over-broad patents on obvious "inventions" and laws of nature and mathematics can win in court against anyone who produces a computing device, arguing that any actual copying on the part of Samsung is irrelevant. On the other hand, we have the people who look at the result and the fact that Samsung's devices do actually look entirely too much like Apple's and think Samsung got what was coming to them, ignoring that in order to do it Apple had to adopt a long list of bully tactics that they've now demonstrated that they or anyone else with a sufficient patent arsenal can successfully use against their competitors (including those whose devices aren't intentionally copied, because there are too many patents to possibly even attempt to avoid them all).

Nobody seems willing to say that Apple should potentially have some remedy against Samsung for actual copying but that what they got is the wrong remedy in the wrong way, not least which because the same tactics can be used against _anyone_ whether they've done anything wrong or not.

<comment><USER6> Agreed entirely. To make the metaphor accurate, the chef would then have to sue someone else who was making mayonnaise by a similar recipe.

<comment><USER7> If no one else could make mayonnaise successfully and a chef came up with the process for making it, that chef should damn well get some kind of protection from the IP system for his innovation, invention, or whatever the hell you wanna call it.

That is, after all, what will make him want to share his methods instead of keeping them a secret. That's the fundamental principle of the patent system: you share, and we give you a temporary monopoly defended by law.

This patent system is obviously broken, but in the mayonnaise case it wouldn't be.

<comment><USER8> Mayo: Its a trade secret, not a patent.[1,2]

 _The law of protection of confidential information effectively allows a perpetual monopoly in secret information - it does not expire as would a patent. The lack of formal protection, however, means that a third party is not prevented from independently duplicating and using the secret information once it is discovered._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret>

[1] Like Coke. Ingredients and technique are, independenltly, common prior art.

[2] Also, this is not to be snarky: the protections are different.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and that's the bargain that patents give. Either you keep it a trade secret, and live in constant fear that someone will leak it someday, or you get a patent, publish all the details, and get a government-supported monopoly so that you _know_ that for 28 years no one else can make mayonnaise like you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I made this case last week.

"Apple products are like a good classy restaurant or hotel chain. They take ingredients everyone has and put a lot of work into fit and finish, they make the customer feel special for a slightly higher price."[1]

And I stand by it. I'll go even further actually, I think Apple is one of the _least_ innovative big companies. Look at all the big research labs at Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM or Google. Anyone who seriously follows this stuff knows a) Apple doesn't have a profile in the academic world and b) knows enough computer history to know Apple is claiming things invented _decades_ ago.

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435504>

<comment><USER10> UI and UX _are_ innovations. The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten _everyone's_ lunch up till now.

"Fit and finish" is as innovative as a new algorithm, it's shocking how much of the industry still treats it as a footnote and a detail, despite the _entire_ history of the tech world since iPhone 1 would indicate.

<comment><USER11> > The silly notion that only hard, technical inventions with academic papers > attached are innovative is the reason why Apple has eaten everyone's lunch > up till now.

No, the reason why Apple has eaten's everyone's lunch up till now is because they're interested in being profitable, not innovative. The GP is correct in stating that Apple isn't innovative - they just take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up and running effective ad campaigns to gain marketshare among the masses. And there's nothing at all wrong with that - if your primary interest is making money.

<comment><USER10> > _"take other people's innovations and monetize them by polishing things up"_

The devil is in the polishing up, evidently.

Your post is almost scarily indicative of the industry attitude that has allowed Apple to take over to the degree they have. Only hard, technical inventions are given any respect, and when we talk about UX we call it "polishing up", almost spitting those words out of our mouths in condescension.

Are you seriously going to hold up a clickwheel and say it wasn't innovative? Or the iPhone? Or the iPad? The fact that these products look and behave _almost nothing_ like their progenitor technologies doesn't indicate innovation to you?

It really disturbs me how little respect us geeks have for the people who consume our products. When the general public votes with their wallet in a landslide victory for Apple, we blame them for being easily manipulable by slick ad campaigns and shiny baubles. The notion that Apple has actually satisfied a long-standing demand is somehow not allowed to enter this discourse.

<comment><USER12> I wholeheartedly agree that Apple's innovative in getting technology to actually work in a user friendly way and combining them with excellent design but is that process patent worthy is the real question at hand.

For example, how different is the homescreen of the iPhone from this? [http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI...](http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GIF) Compared to that, Windows Phone with Metro is much more innovative.

Another problem is that many people attribute things to being invented by Apple because they first hear of it from Apple(and because they don't use non Apple products). For example, I remember when Apple introduced hybrid graphics with a way to switch between the integrated Intel gpu and a discrete Nvidia/ATI GPU. Sony had that working before Apple, but a LOT of folks thought it was Apple that innovated it. Perhaps Apple added more polish to it, but they certainly were wrong.

Polishing and going the last mile is very tough(see OEMs with half baked software and hardware) but does it deserve patent protection? Apple innovated and got awarded with becoming the most valuable company in the world with more than 100 billion dollars in the bank with which they can invest further in innovation instead of indulging in petty patent extortion over petty things like the bounceback effect or linking phone numbers in emails to the dialer.

<comment><USER13> Design is not how it _looks_ , design is how it _works_. When you truly internalise that you'll see why that screenshot is irrelevant.

<comment><USER12> Design is both how it looks and how it works. If you take the Desktop WIMP UI, and try to come up with a way to redesign it work with only touch instead of mouse and keyboard, you'd roughly be already halfway to the iOS homescreen in terms of design. Instead of clicking on a icon, you touch it and the app opens, swipe to see multiple homescreens since desktop space is limited on a phone, add in a dock at the bottom. Contrast that with Metro. So that screenshot is NOT irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whenever I'm using "enterprise" software or some equally-awful tool that's sold using a feature checklist, I can't help but think about Steve Jobs's line about how innovation is saying no to 1000 things.

 _edit: Well, a feature checklist and $50,000 worth of sales dinners, games of golf and "gifts that do not violate the professional ethics rules of the company buying said tool."_

<comment><USER15> "Enterprise software" is about selling a $10,000,000 piece of software to one entity which requires specific features (and usually complex logic).

Apple's mantra is selling a $1 piece of software to 10,000,000 people who require a simple piece of software.

The two are perfectly valid. In fact the latter would not exist if it wasn't for enterprise software (such as CAD systems, inventory, supply chain management etc).

<comment><USER16> Have you purchased any "enterprise" software lately? The idea that it's customized, bespoke software addressing specific requirements of the customer couldn't be farther from the truth. Here's how it works at my company. Some "architect" decides we need to have an Identity Management System and consults his latest Gartner report. He looks for the packages in the Magic Quadrant, and contacts the vendors. Then we buy what's the safest, least threatening application we can, for an exorbitant price. Hire consultants to help deploy it, discovering that it's a pile of dung that doesn't do what it advertises, much less what we actually need to do.

This happens all the time in the "enterprise" world. Whether it's sold by IBM, BMC, etc etc.

Don't conflate "enterprise" software with anything complex or intelligent. It's typically some of the worst software you can find.

<comment><USER15> Actually I build enterprise software and am a enterprise architect at a large company :) Please don't tar us all with the same brush.

It's not all like that. You've been stung by a shitty purchasing and architecture team, probably put together from people who've ascended the ranks to the point they no longer understand the technology and want to suck up to management and wheel around the country in a company rollerskate with a ThinkPad and a caffiene problem. These are called ivory tower architects or as we call them: asshat-itects.

Enterprise should mean certain guarantees about scalability and reliability and ability to adapt to the organisation.

If it doesn't, you've bought a lemon, not a piece of enterprise software.

Note: there are more lemons than not so you have to be careful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its an old idea to remove everything until just the essence is left. Apple succeed in identifying markets that was making over complex products.

The silly part is that complexity goes in cycles. New products need to differential themselves with old ones, so they add new features. After a while, you end up with a car stereo with 20 buttons, and suddenly a "new" competitor comes out with a clean design with just 3 buttons and the 20 button design looks ill-designed in comparison.

Stereos is one of the earlier examples, but you can see the same phenomena in web-design with today's White and clean design vs the old dark and complex design.

<comment><USER18> I think simplicity isn't the only story, it's usable simplicity. If simple was the only game in town, Apple would only need the iPod shuffle and something like John's Phone (<http://johnsphones.org/>) to rule the world.

The iPod and iPhone has added lots and lots of functionality over the years, yet the interface has stayed simple. It's possible to add lots of new features in ways that doesn't make the interface more complex, however it's a big challenge.

<comment><USER17> You can add new features without adding interface complexity, but its harder to differential products if the user do not have any visible difference between ones old product now going for 15$, the competitors new 30-99$ products, and ones own new product going for 100$. Abstract arguments like "its faster!, more feature than before!" is much harder sell when the two devices look and feel the same.

One way is to sue all competitors and have the only store available presenting exclusive the new product, but that only goes so far.

As for the johnsphones, it has buttons. As interface goes, it still look complex compared to a smartphone. The most simplistic phone design is one with only one or zero buttons, like the Third generation iPod Shuffle if it had been a phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The iPaq was/is a fantastic device. You could attach peripherals. Try doing that with an iPad. I could put an entire OS on a CF Card and assuming I could boot from the card, the expanded functionality is limited only by the hardware specs. They are durable. I've seen consumer electronics businesses still using them to track inventory.

I wish HP would revive the iPaq.

My only imagined use for an iPad is as a portable display. I want the Retina quality, but I have a more powerful hardware to attach and I need a real keyboard. There's nothing the iPad can do that my open, unlocked hardware cannot do.

I believe it was even possible to attach a real keyboard to an iPaq. That's the kind of flexibility I want. I can get data into and out of the device in any number of ways, without hassle.

<comment><USER20> People like you are not a large market, unfortunately.

> There's nothing the iPad can do that my open, unlocked hardware cannot do. > Your open, unlocked hardware, cannot survive two days with my mother.

<comment><USER19> I understand the comment. Of course the thought has crossed my mind. But I'm not so sure there's any evidence to support it.

I actually test some of my ideas with people like your mother, and surprisingly (why should I be surprised?) they have little trouble catching on.

What's really amusing is that these things that I have them doing are things that many nerds cannot themsleves do. I've got them using systems and techniques that many nerds won't touch because they think it's too "hard core". It's hilarious.

There are lots and lots of unfounded assumptions about what users can and cannot do.

There are facts, supported by evidence. And then there are assumptions. One requires a bit of work. The other is effortless: you just hit "Submit".

<comment><USER20> Did they fully understand the reasoning behind the techniques you taught, or was it just memorization?

I have taught my mom how to do certain things, but she has no intuition. As soon as something is slightly wrong or different, she gets stuck and can't move on. The solution is always something simple, like relaunching the app, installing an update, power cycling the computer, jiggling the usb cord, modifying the permissions on a file... but there are only so many contingency plans I can teach her.

Maybe I just suck at teaching, but I think that technical people have an incredibly curiosity and comfort with troubleshooting that people like my mom don't. We are basically playing on our computers.

With the iPad, my mom is finally playing too. She is really adept at it. Sending photos, checking facebook, downloading new apps, she was never comfortable doing any of this on the computer. Too many choices and settings and things to potentially screw up that she would be paralyzed, unable to explore and try things.

Ultimately I think the home button is the most important thing in the iOS ecosystem. If all else fails, go home and everything will be fine*.

(Unless your battery dies, or there is lint in the charging port, or your screen shatters, or you muted it, or you turned on airplane mode... it's not perfect...)

<comment><USER19> Making your Mom deal with permissions? Yikes.

I think reasoning, in addition to basic instructions, is important even though some people might not care about it. By leaving it out you deny those who do care an opportunity to learn.

And to me it just seems more respectable when someone asks you to do something and tells you why you are doing it then if they just give you bare instructions. (That said, the bare instructions should be able tostand on their own. They had better work, every time.)

Moreover, providing reasoning forces you to demonstrate you know the subject matter well enough to be able to explain it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article is unintentionally an excellent argument against patent protection for Apple's products.

If Apple is a company that uniquely has the talent and taste of a good chef, the patent protection is unnecessary. They will be able to continually outdo other companies that don't have the same talent.

Arguing that a company has so much talent and is so successful that it needs legal protection seems absurd to me.

<comment><USER22> I think the point he was making was: once you see a master chef make mayonnaise you realize the reason you failed. You tried too hard. And now you can make mayonnaise.

Tablet makers (iPaq, MS, etc) tried too hard. Apple showed them don't try too hard. And now they can make tablets too.

So yes, the excellent chef can be the first to make mayonnaise, however, with out patents on mayonnaise so can everyone else now. The idea of a patent is that the master chef spent years learning to not mix the ingredients too hard, now that he has showed the world the way to make mayonnaise, the only thing stopping the world from stealing the fruits of his work are patents.

The point being if Apple never created the iPhone and iPad we would still have phones like the iPaq and the clunky MS tablets in the year 2012. I whole heartily agree with this.

If it wasn't for Apple, every other phone and tablet company today would not be making anything of the flavor of the iPhone or iPad. Android and Win Mobile Phone are of the flavor of Apple.

So why is it right for them to taste like "L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon" (Apple) in the year 2012 if they would still taste like "Taco Bell" (MS, iPaq, etc) in the year 2012 if it wasn't for Jobs' iphone and ipad. Obviously with out a parallel universe for us to visit together I can't prove this to you. However, I do feel the overwhelming facts of 20 years of failure by iPaq, MS, etc show the trajectory they were heading for and we can guess where they would be in the year 2012:

\- Stylus pen, or clunky touch screen that you have to press very hard.

\- Lots of ram, lots of CPU power.

\- Very heavy

\- Very large and thick

\- Poor quality materials

\- Mediocre software that does not come any where close to the current android software.

\- Buggy software

\- no App store, lots of viruses and other security issues.

\- Expensive and running full Windows 8, no RT version.

So if the products Samsung and MS were selling today fit the above recipe, I agree Apple shouldn't be suing them. But this isn't what is happening. Apple is being robbed blind. Every technique and recipe Apple created is being meticulously stolen and engineered into Android and windows phones. These are recipes that Jobs, Ive and the whole Apple company put years of effort into, they poured their heart and soul into these recipes.

The reason so much of the tech media don't see it this way is they have no taste buds. Most people have terrible taste buds. Well, they have great unconscious taste buds but their conscious taste buds are almost worth less. So they see things like the iPaq and those old MS Tablets and think "Well Gee golly, that food sure was tasty, sure android is tastier but not much tastier, apple doesn't really deserve much credit for androids improved taste."

As some one with excellent taste buds (I am a UX/Product designer, I have predicted the success and failure of almost all major tech product that have come out in the past 10 years, you can read the comments in my HN history as I defended the iPad to almost 99% of HN thinking it was stupid when it came out, I predicted the failure of the Zune, I predicted the success of Apple as whole back in 2004, and predicted MS' current decline) I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty how different iPaq and android taste.

What android and Win Phone are doing is sneaky. It is so sneaky you don't realize how many subtle but important details they have stolen. They can do this because you don't have the conscious taste buds necessary to notice it.

These details may be subtle but they are far from small. If you ever watch a grand master play chess. Every time he makes a great move you think to yourself "Gee golly that was an obvious move". No. No, it was not. Once you see a chess move you can no longer look at it objectively. The way to objectively judge a chess move is to try to figure it out on your own before some one shows it to you. After spending hours and hours and more hours looking for this move before finding it, you then fully appreciate the move.

The tech media is watching a chess game from the sidelines Apple is the grandmaster, Android and windows phone are the people building a database of the grandmaster's moves to beat people at chess.

Most people won't be able to comprehend or believe the next sentence: A non Expert Chef or food critic (Expert Product Designer) will never be able to appreciate the Gigantic chasm between the taste of Apples products and any of their competitors, however, on an unconscious level everyone will be drawn to Apples taste so strongly that if the competitors don't copy it, soon Apple will have no competitors still in business. This is the natural Monopoly the iPod almost had for a few years. In 2010 "The latest research by NPD Group claims that iPod had a 76 percent share of the MP3 player market in US in May this year."[0] This monopoly would have been true if Samsung, Google and Microsoft were not spending the past 5 years perfecting their ability to hire Expert Product designers to steal Apple's recipes. From 2001, when the first iPod came out, until about 2010 MS, Google and Samsung went through a phase of denial, trial (trying to steal ideas) and then finally some succes (actually stealing ideas). It took them about a decade just to get good at stealing ideas from Apple. The Zune was an example of how hard it is to steal ideas from apple. A non Expert Product Designer would think the Zune was good thievery, however, it was a sloppy job, it wasn't until windows phone and android, that these companies started to be good at stealing ideas.

[0] [http://www.ithinkdiff.com/the-ipod-has-76-percent-of- mp3-pla...](http://www.ithinkdiff.com/the-ipod-has-76-percent-of-mp3-player- market-in-us_7654/)

You are going to hate me for saying this, and you won't agree with me but the truth is that: you don't on a conscious level know what is going on. You are Unconsciously Incompetent. And Android and Win Phone are using this to their advantage. Its the same way Europeans stole land from Native americans. The native americans were Unconsciously Incompetent when it came to the idea of "Owning Land". They saw the land as owning them. Thus they signed documents that seemed to have little importance. This is what Android and Win Phone are doing. They are using you to steal from Apple.

That said Jiro [1] doesn't patent his Sushi, he simpley makes the best sushi. And he does quite well for him. If I was Apple I would spend a lot more of my time in the kitchen making the best Sushi in the world and a lot less time in the courtroom.

[1] <http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/>

Note: I am sorry if I come off as arrogant by calling myself an "Expert Product Designer" and claim most people won't understand what I understand, but I don't say this out of arrogance, rather out of fact.

I have spent more than a decade to be as competent as I am in Product Design. This is not small feat. In college I was a talented student when it came to Physics, in particular my introduction to Quantum Physics and special relativity class. If I had chosen to pursue the path of Quantum Physis I am quite confident I would be an Expert Quantum Physis today.

And if this was so, it would not be arrogant for me to say such things as: "light is both a particle and wave, most people will never appreciate how amazing this is, only expert Quantum Physis', such as my self, will come close to appreciating this statements full glory." This would not be arrogant, rather it would be a fact.

The sad fact is that "Product/UX Design" doesn't get the same respect as the hard sciences. From my point of view it should. I use just as much if not more of my brain power to wrap my head around design solutions when I am designing a product as I did when I studied the particle and wave form duality of light and the intricate details of space and time learned through special relativity.

<comment><USER23> So what's the takeaway here? Are you saying that apple deserves to own the concept of, essentially, not being shitty, just because they were the first to make a good tablet? yes, Steve jobs' vision inspired his competitors to make better products. That is the single most fundamental tenet of capitalism: Competition drives all the players in a market to do better. Apple does not have a legal right to remain the market leader: they've show the competition what competitors want, if they want to remain the leader it is their responsibility to continue to produce better products. If every market leader could sue their competition for making decent products, thugs would get pretty stagnant pretty fast.

<comment><USER22> I actually agree with you, this is why I said:

       That said Jiro [1] doesn't patent his Sushi,
       he simpley makes the best sushi. And he does
       quite well for him. If I was Apple I would
       spend a lot more of my time in the kitchen
       making the best Sushi in the world and a lot
       less time in the courtroom.

[1] <http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/>

What I don't agree with is people saying there was prior art. No. Sorry there was no prior art, for most of apples inventions. If you take the subtle details into account.

So how can I agree with you and the above statement? I think we need patent reform. I believe in capitalism. Our current patent laws are anti capitalism, they are pro corporateerism.

<comment><USER24> If you take the subtle details into account, no one is copying Apple's inventions either (just listen to any iOS enthusiast on Android scrolling, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Software is all zeroes and ones, after all. The quantity and order may vary, but that's about it. Hardware is just protons, neutrons, electrons and photons buzzing around, nothing original. Apple didn't "invent" anything, the iPad is simply their variation, their interpretation of the well-known tablet recipe.

You can make cookies and cakes from the same raw ingredients, doesn't mean that the person who invented cookies also invented cake.

Also the 'Software is all zeroes and ones' argument irks me. It's the bridge between an expensive paperweight and a practical device.

<comment><USER26> I don't suppose you made it to the next paragraph where the author says:

> "By this myopic logic, Einstein didn't invent the theory of relativity..."

i.e. he agrees with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There was a clear before and after when they launched the iPhone

By NAILING it apple managed to popularize existing tech like the modern touch- screen interface, the app develeper economy & handheld computing.

So enough with this apple hasnt done anything bs, the reason they print money is they keep making future tech accessible, I hope the iPhone 5 (6?) lives up to their record.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think this article makes some good points but overlooks the crucial question - what inventions are patentable? Like a great chef that combines known ingredients, apple has made excellent products, but apple has not produced new innovation that is worthy of patent protection. Apple's path to success should be winning customers, just like the chefs he describes, not through patent litigation.

The examples given by the OP actually support this point. It's true that Einstein didnt discover relativity first - both lorentz and poincare had worked out the mathematics, but Einstein articulated the concepts best. I often use this case study as an example of how innovations often arise independently from different inventors simultaneously because the conditions are right. The other famous and illustrative example is newton and leibniz inventing calculus independently.

As a VC, I see this all the time - the market conditions are right for a new idea, and suddenly 4 or 5 companies appear doing variations on the same thing, none aware of the others. Let good execution and the market decide which one is best, not the date on a patent filing for something each came up with on their own.

<comment><USER29> Einstein understood the meaning. Poincare and Lorentz just understood the machinery. That is a fundamental difference that let Einstein go beyond special relativity to general relativity. Big, big difference. The difference between friendster and facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was under the same opinion as the author. While the Apple Vs Sammy was going many ppl said every feature iphone existed before. But, iphone has the right mix of them in right proportions and that has made it Tick. W.r.t Patenting rects with round corners etc, I too disagree with Apple. Violating Trade dress by Sammy is not acceptable either.

</comment><comment><USER31> Got to love HN, if someone copies a startup pixel by pixel and business modell, hulla, the lynch mob readies it's pitchforks. If someone copies a freelancers design, website or logo, woha, people run amok. If someone copies Apples UI, hardware, apps and app market it's "Apple Never Invented Anything."

<comment><USER32> Did you even _read_ the article?!

<comment><USER31> My comment was about the HN comments not the article. Did you even read my comment?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Apple invented the ability to take geeky stuff and turn it into cool stuff for normal people.

That's a pretty big feat in itself.

<comment><USER34> That's called "marketing". It's not really new.

<comment><USER20> You are right, but Apple's definition of marketing doesnt end with the billboards or the tv commercials.

Every time you see someone wearing those white earbuds, that's marketing. When your mom is always on her ipad, despite 20 years of lessons from you on how to use a computer, that's marketing. When you are sitting in an airport and you notice the glow of the Apple logo on the back of someone's Macbook Air, that's marketing. When the same dude is still using his macbook, 6 hours into a flight without a powercord, that's marketing. When you walk into an Apple store, and you feel the aluminum unibody... when you unwrap the sturdy yet smooth packaging and the bottom slides out to reveal the device... when computer boots directly to a gray apple logo on a white screen, instead of a DOS prompt for a few seconds, that's marketing.

It takes a lot of work to do Apple style marketing.

<comment><USER34> I completely agree. Apple's marketing is genius. But, the comment I was replying to seems to think that Apple invented effective marketing, and that's just not true. They do it really, really well, but you gotta be chugging the kool-aid to think that they invented the concept of using their products to advertise their brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Most people here seem to argue whether or not Apple have the rights to hold patents on what they did (and whether that should grand them protection). But where this argument is flawed, is that protection from being copied is not only centered around the patent system. There are multiple ways you can protect your inventions, through trade secrets, supply chain efficiency that nobody else can reproduce, through a software environment which is worth more in its whole than the sum of its parts.

We know Apple is already using all the above techniques to protect their business. They have an excellent supply chain, they obviously have preferential trade partners which enable them access the new technologies first before anyone else, and they have a iOS system which is well rounded for its purpose.

Net, they really do not need to leverage their patents protection. That could be an indication that they do not think they are going to be very innovative down the road, and therefore they just want to keep competitors as far as possible until they pull their act together again... or that they have too many lawyers with too much time on their hands to investigate how much harm they could do with claims based on air and smoke.

When a company resorts to such practices, it is usually not a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER36> God, this is depressing, lots of whiny fandroids who can't even f---ing read.

These morons have taken the article title as a literal synposis, it is being ironic (and yes, we know that Americans famously don't get irony).

The authors (one of whom is a former Apple exec) are arguing that what Apple did _was_ invention and does indeed deserve protection from the legion of lazy wannabes who would just otherwise simply copy from the smartest kid in class.

</comment><comment><USER37> A breath of fresh air.

</comment><comment><USER38> Right, because once that chef figured out just the right twist on those common ingredients no other chefs in the world were allowed to make mayonnaise any more and we would have no fine cuisine without extensive IP protection enforced by law.

Oh, wait...

<comment><USER32> It's a metaphor. You don't take them seriously. They're just there to tell a cute little story and you move on to the real thing. Certainly iPad involved a little more than a twist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> A better article on the Counternotions site, "Why Apple doesn't do 'Concept Products'"

"Concept products are like essays, musings in 3D. They are incomplete promises. Shipping products, by contrast, are brutally honest deliveries. You get what's delivered. They live and die by their own design constraints. To the extent they are successful, they do advance the art and science of design and manufacturing by exposing the balance between fantasy and capability."

<http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/>

</comment><comment><USER40> Of course Apple did not invent anything. Steve Jobs did.

</comment><comment><USER41> Note this: Apple spends substantially less (as a fraction of revenue) on R&D, and gets substantially more, in terms of outstanding products, compared to every other tech company. What is it that they're doing so well?

<comment><USER42> Nothing besides of polished systems and good hardware. But I do not like the type of signal this can show to the tech companies around the world: that their patents of new tech that are life changing for everyone are worth less than a pinch zoom on a touch screen, now I don't think it was a obvious gesture but I do not think it should be covered by a patent. There should be a better way to protect new UI elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is the same argument aimed at Microsoft in the 90's. next big tech company will get the same thing in 20 years. Meh.

</comment><comment><USER44> Slightly off topic, but I was under the impression that Ford didn't invent the automobile, Benz did.

</comment><comment><USER45> Come on. Shut up. I use Windows on a Dell laptop and I can tell you that's not true. (Pun intented)

</comment><comment><USER46> Patents apply to the recipe, though, not the actual mixture.

<comment><USER47> There are multiple types of patent. One of them is a design patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Do we to start another debate with an inflaming article?

<comment><USER49> Where's the inflaming part?

<comment><USER16> He probably didn't read the article and missed the irony of the title.

<comment><USER48> I did read the article. I 'm just tired of going through fanbois vs the world flamewar once again

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> yaaaaawn

so what's new

they did other stuff: made things better, connected in new ways, etc.

i still don't like their stuff - for aesthetical reasons

so what

get a life</comment>


Favorite Kanban board for *personal* productivity management? - <AUTHOR>

Been looking at Trello and others, not for work-related tasks, but managing personal ones.  Any experience, recommendations, suggestions? <comment><USER2> Can you do physical? I have found that carrying a pen, and a packet of sticky notes in my pocket at all times is the way to go. when I get home, Ill peel off the sticky, and organize it. I do it a little different though and organize things by "backlog", "Today", "tomorrow", "this weekend", "hold", because I find it suits the way I work as an individual (ie, I save stuff like washing the car for the weekend etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> i keep trying physical/written/etc to-do systems, they continuously fail me unfortunately... but thanks for sharing, it sounds like a great method!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've only played around with it for a few minutes, but it seems feature rich with a free account option. See [http://kanbanize.com/](http://kanbanize.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, will try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at kanbanery.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you do periodic perf/scalability test for your service. If so how? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yes, but we run them in production.

Kind of kidding. Our service is strongly seasonal, and there's a specific week every year when our traffic can double or triple compared to the low points of the year.

In the past, that week reliably revealed performance bottlenecks. We would then make it a priority to fix the most recently discovered bottleneck before the next year.

This past year, we finally had a crunch week with zero performance hit.

We've also in the past had trouble with bottlenecks when hit by ill-behaved bots. That problem is also finally solved - we haven't had a bot-related outage in several months.

Based on the load and performance profiles of our infrastructure at throughout levels that have caused outages in the past, and our current load at weekly peak, we now have room to grow traffic 10x without hitting another ceiling. And we're a slow growing business, so that gives us at least a few more years before it becomes a concern.

Note that this strategy is not an awesome one and is in fact VERY bad if you run a service with SLAs; with traffic patterns that include extreme spikes; or where high availability is critical. But it's worked out just fine for us.</comment>


We Called It Gutenberg for a Reason - <AUTHOR> https://ma.tt/2017/08/we-called-it-gutenberg-for-a-reason/ <comment><USER3> So this is just about some Wordpress thing, not about Project Gutenberg - <USER2> free ebook project.</comment>


The YouTube Music Disaster. Another Google Failure - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@myabstraction/the-youtube-music-disaster-d4fe0d0a09af <comment><USER2> > As it seems, blind, to the customers feedback.

I wonder how they gather feedback internally. Because either they don't even test some of their services by 50 employees, or ignore any feedback of coworkers too.

Even though the old app felt like it was build and tested by a team of 1, it feels like not even the single person either used it daily, or want allows to make a change after it was published.

It should take a elaborate company vision to build a service for people, who actually want to use the service

</comment><comment><USER3> The sad thing is they didn't had to do this. They could have literally just waited a while and released this. But I agree, reading the article, it feels like it was going to happen no matter what.</comment>


Network flaw causes scary Web error - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9D8EGD00&show_article=1 <comment><USER2> Much ado about what is most likely a misconfigured caching proxy. The only way to not constantly be scared and suprised by the Internet is to understand a little about how it works.

Yawn.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article calls people who break into computers and websites 'hackers'.

I wonder when (and if) the popular media is ever going to address them for what they are: 'crackers'; and use the word 'hackers' again for people who use technology to the max. At least Wikipedia gives some nuance. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker></comment>


Facebook Premium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-biz-stone-collection/47715441d0be

<comment><USER2> If he thinks 10% of an audience the size of Facebook's will sign up for $10 a month, he's crazy. They would be lucky to see a fraction of a percent.

Of course, that number goes way up if premium features are useful.</comment>


Kevin Rose rejects cash offer, begins demolition for his Portland retreat - <AUTHOR> http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2014/06/steve_duin_googles_kevin_rose_2.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much of a stir this would be causing if a wealthy "outsider" wasn't doing this but a local that deemed the house not suitable to their needs.

<comment><USER3> For my whole life Oregonians have had it in for Californians moving up there. We even called not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign a "California stop."

From my understanding there is a heightened sensitivity to housing in Portland. It doesn't have the natural urban boundary that San Francisco does but have a self imposed urban growth boundary that causes distortion in housing prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why was the previous post of this story deleted?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940516)

<comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940927)

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Have you considered differentiating b/t user and moderator action with something like [Dead] and [Dead - User Flag]?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The New York Times digital subscription business model? - <AUTHOR> Hi folks, I just realized even after subscribing to digital NYTimes (https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015852367-Digital-subscriptions), they continue to show ads both on mobile and web.
On web, the ads are especially super annoying. While trying to read a long article, you see the same half-screen filling ad over and over after every two paragraphs. Sometimes it's like 10x shaver ads for me per article.
So I naturally cancelled my subscription. I am curious why/how they're able to sell this digital subscription. I can't seem to find any value adds. <comment><USER2> If you don't subscribe, they severely restrict the number of articles you can read per month (in my recent experience, as few as one).

If you try to get around this with Chrome incognito mode, you'll see a message like this: "Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode." Seems like they cannot currently detect Safari incognito mode though.

Notes:

1) I am a paying NYT digital subscriber. I am happy to pay for quality, fact- checked journalism.

2) I do run ad-blockers so that is part of the picture in my environment. Maybe the way this enforcement works is different for people that are not blocking ads. I haven't tested.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently the NYT are removing open marketplace programmatic ads on their mobile app due to their slow loading times.

[https://adexchanger.com/publishers/new-york-times-will- pull-...](https://adexchanger.com/publishers/new-york-times-will-pull- programmatic-ads-from-mobile-app-next-year/)

It's not clear if this includes ads only on NYT's own ad network or all third party ad exchanges.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly why I don't subscribe to any newspaper online. There's no guarantee they won't take your money _and_ show you ads or resell your information (which is worth more as it's browsing habits tied to _validated_ payment information you provided during signup).

<comment><USER5> Sell your information or infect your computer with malware from their advertising network partner.

Safari + reader view can view most articles except for the economist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm happy to subscribe to the NYT.

I care more about the quality of content rather than if I saw an advertisement.</comment>


Google, LG, are not choosing snapdragon 865 for flagships due to high price tag - <AUTHOR> https://wccftech.com/google-lg-snapdragon-865-flagships/ <comment><USER2> Given recent flagships from these manufacturers are priced around $1k, I wonder how this can be reconciled with Xiaomi releasing a phone with this chip for <$500: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/xiaomis- redmi-k30-pr...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/xiaomis- redmi-k30-pro-brings-snapdragon-865-phones-down-to-425/)

Are they looking to make more affordable flagships or are they upset their margins are being hurt?

<comment><USER3> A couple thoughts: Xiaomi probably builds an order of magnitude more phones than LG and Google. So there's volume discounting at play. Also, Xiaomi's affordable phones are missing important NA bands. I wonder how this omission influences the cost of the SOC.

<comment><USER4> Considering a lot of that cost is _licensing_ , probably a fair bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just a rehash of this article: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/reports-google-lg- do...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/reports-google-lg-dont-want- qualcomms-super-expensive-snapdragon-865/)

Maybe it would be better to link the original source.

</comment><comment><USER6> From an Ars comment, apparently all these phones have the 865:

$500: Xiaomi Mi 10

$500: Nubia Red Magic 5G

$500: iQOO 3

$550: OnePlus 8

$700: Sharp Aquos R5G

$800: Nokia 9.2

$800: LG V60 ThinQ 5G

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/reports-google-lg- do...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/reports-google-lg-dont-want- qualcomms-super-expensive-snapdragon-865/?comments=1&post=38745232)

Maybe these low-priced phones with a top-end SoC are making some bad tradeoffs to get that low price, but there's at least some evidence that Qualcomm isn't forcing phone prices over $1,000.

(And yeah, don't post WCCFTech.)

<comment><USER7> The last time I check Xiaomi ASP in still below $150. That is basically saying they dont sell their flagship model in any volume and are likely used as loss leader or at break even.

And yes, WCCFtech deserve no place on HN. Hence I have flag it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assuming that Apple releases the iPhone 9 with the latest A13 chip for $400 to $500 soon, what will be good Android alternative? Compact size, most powerful chip, affordable. I was eyeing S10e last year. Has anything better been released since?

<comment><USER9> Most powerful chip is hard to come by in small Android phones and often not really needed/warranted. I think you'll get poorer performance a couple years down the line (which is, I expect, the reason you're wanting the best chip) if you have to deal with Samsung touchwiz and bloatware vs. bare, unlocked Android.

The Motorola One lineup checks all my boxes right now: Stock Android with unlocked bootloader, uSD card, good displays, good battery, headphone jack, stays updated, and under $400. I'm mourning the loss of swappable batteries and small displays in the market, but it's the best option I've found.

<comment><USER10> They have atrocious support. Bricked a whole bunch of Moto G phones a couple of years ago - by breaking the charging functionality with a firmware update. Just straight up didn't fix it. Thousands of people affected. I'd never consider a Motorola device again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why would anyone ever post a wccftech unsubstantiated speculation piece anywhere on the internet, let alone here?

</comment><comment><USER12> I had an issue with the title but the article addresses the issue. It isn't _just_ the higher price tag. It's the thermals and power management that comes with having a separate modem as well as the price tag.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd also be interested if the required motherboard area is larger, and if the TDP is higher, too. Both of those could decrease battery life.

</comment><comment><USER14> tldr: "Google and LG are opting for the Snapdragon 765G, but not because it's just saving them money. It's Qualcomm's first SoC to sport an embedded 5G modem saving manufacturers a ton of design hassles"

Good news to pick a lower power chip as Google has been putting wimpy batteries into their phones.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the phone they think is the next Google flagship is actually the 4a budget device.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wireless communication has hit its limits, mmWave won't save it.

<comment><USER17> I'm confused as to what you mean by "hit its limits", considering there's still a lot of room for improvement - just go anywhere that's not a major urban centre. Are we at a point where we can't possibly improve as the laws of physics won't allow it? I find that doubtful.

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's why about the only things the industry can do are denser basestations and higher frequencies.

Think about it as your home wifi, it's essentially the same, how do you increase its capacity?

If the industry doesn't have to factor in ROI, then your argument is valid, but it's a business.

<comment><USER17> So you're ruling out a change in tech? We're stuck here because there's no reason we could conceive of something better due to the ROI? I'm confused as to why you believe now would be that moment, as opposed to something earlier.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Erlang & Single Assignment: You're Doing It Wrong  - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.hypotheticalabs.com/?p=281 <comment><USER2> Ehh I disagree with point number 2. I've been writing a big app in Erlang lately and SA has actually made my program longer. i.e.

      rec(Lst) ->
        case Cond of
          pattern1 ->
            rec(Lst);
          pattern2 ->
            Lst2 = ...
            rec(Lst2);
        ...

I'd like to rebind Lst in pattern2's clause and then just call rec(Lst) at the end of the case. (Of course there can be many more than 2 clauses and all the rec/1 calls really add up.)</comment>


Motorola Droid hands on - <AUTHOR> http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/10/19/motorola-droid-hands-on/ <comment><USER2> It really hope it does well and I love the direct marketing blitz attack on the iPhone... It's about time Apple had some real competition and Google is really the only company that can give them that..

I just feel bad for the established players.. They're going to have to watch as their core markets erode even further.

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of the comments here seem to be about how ugly the device is. While I agree that they could have done a better job to make it more aesthetically pleasing, it's the hardware and software that are important. It could be a bright pink Hello Kitty phone, and I'd still want it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you get a version that doesn't have 5 logos from 3 different companies on it?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's funny how the iPhone has no logo whatsoever on the front, and a subtle, elegant one on the back.

If it's a great piece of design, you don't need to stick labels all over it.

<comment><USER6> It's on the back so everyone can see it.

It's a fashion statement to have an iSomething. Even here on HN you never (or rarely) read I have booted up my Asus or Dell or whatever BUT there's always "my Macbook" or similar.

I like the underdog companies and I appreciate their effort and technology and I'm not buying into the iXXX hysteria. Apple was clever as it is being paid for being advertised. People pay sh%%loads for their products and they never ever forget to mention it in their discussions that they have one.

Geeks are a very small percentage of the market so unless the phone is not a "fashion accessory" there won't be massive commercial success with it...but it will be a great thing I hope.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your last point. It's too bad the Apple brand has been reduced to that of a designer fashion by the masses, or some kind of status symbol.

It's like some people want a BMW just to impress the neighbors with a badge, while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went into the precision you can feel when you are driving it.

I like to make purchasing decisions based on the competency of the company in making what they make, but unfortunately most people don't think that way so a phone like this doesn't even get a chance.

<comment><USER8> "while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went into the precision you can feel when you are driving it."

I'd like to see a blind test for that. And who cares anyway if an expert can detect a certain "feel", other than for status?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just need to look at this picture ([http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/handsets/motorola- dro...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/handsets/motorola- droid/?pid=3582#picture_nav)) to know that it's going to be another flop. Two things I believe someone should tell these companies:

1\. Don't save on your casing

2\. Girls don't like slide-out keyboards.

The killer android phone will look like the razr and be pretty expensive.

<comment><USER10> The thing about Android is that eventually, there will probably never be a phone that is as beautiful as whatever iPhone's doing, but that there can models for everyone's tastes. Something like this for the geeks, a slick, slim clamshell like you say, and all kinds of others.

<comment><USER11> Which is/was the same philosophy behind Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Suffice to say, that flexibility comes at non-trivial cost.

<comment><USER12> First, Android is _already_ light-years ahead of Windows Mobile.

Second, from what I've seen of the SDKs, Google is doing quite a bit (most notably with their manifests) to maximize the reach of the platform (e.g. netbooks, automotive systems, set-top boxes) without unduly burdening cross- device portability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> well it kinda looks ugly...

<comment><USER14> What's about that golden thing in the center of the cursor pad?

<comment><USER15> I believe it's the fingerprint scanner.

<comment><USER14> I imagined a blood-sampler for foolproof biometric authentication.

I had a couple HP desktops in the late 80's that required blood to be shed in order for them to let a technician open their cases. Except for that, they were really fine computers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Up: tool for writing Linux pipes in a terminal-based UI interactively - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/akavel/up#up---the-ultimate-plumber <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18291302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18291302).

</comment><comment><USER3> show HN earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18291302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18291302)

<comment><USER4> What's strange is this re-post has more upvotes than the original post by the software developer.

<comment><USER3> HN is fairly random in that, since a lot fewer people upvote things from /new than look at the front page.

It appears the mods just moved all comments over from this.</comment></comment></comment>


Chart of the Milky Way Includes More Than 1B Stars - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stellar-effort-chart-of-the-milky-way-includes-more-than-1-billion-stars/ <comment><USER2> I love thinking about the sheer scale of it all. This is a billion stars of the ~200-400 billion stars in our galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy (the closest to us) has ~1 trillion stars.

There's an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way alone, and who knows how many in the Andromeda galaxy.

There could be another satellite somewhere in this galaxy charting space just like this and we'd just be a bright dot to them among billions of other bright dots.

<comment><USER3> Have you seen Hubble's high-res Andromeda image? It's amazing for sense of scale [1]. Zoom in - every bit of "noise" is a star.

It's also downloadable in full res [2]. Maybe use the torrent option to save their poor servers.

[1] [https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable](https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable)

[2] [https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a](https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a)

<comment><USER4> There could be a google maps for this, like there is [https://www.google.com/moon/](https://www.google.com/moon/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since the article seemed to neglect actually linking to the data, it is publicly available here: [https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/](https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's an incredible decade-old map that shows space around the centre of Earth on a logarithmic scale - it's detailed enough to show the core, mantle, and crust at the bottom, and the Great Walls at the top:

[https://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/](https://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/)

I finally got round to printing a two metre tall version of this to hang in my hall a couple of weeks ago!

</comment><comment><USER7> It makes me sooo sad that (whoever) introduced this stupid light speed limit so we can't visit those places. Ever. Maybe in the next reality.

<comment><USER8> If you can invent a way to continuously accelerate at 1G, you can reach anywhere in the known universe within a human lifetime.

<comment><USER9> Within _your_ lifetime, rather than that of an arbitrary human on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Superb stuff. On a more mundane level I hope we'll soon also have a chart of all the asteroids in our solar system (to the most realistic extent possible).

<comment><USER11> Here's a video showing the discovery of 600,000 asteroids in the inner solar system - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k2vkLEE4ko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k2vkLEE4ko)

<comment><USER10> Thanks! Took me a minute to work out which planet was which (Jupiter being the one just outside the 'belt').

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This may sound odd, but does anyone know of a public dataset that provides the positions of stars and their relationship to other stars? I'd be curious to see this type of data.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that there must be many more than 1bn though? The area of the disk is roughly 3.14^10 light years, and it must be 10K light years thick on average so 3.14^14 cubic ly... stars seem to be much more densely packed on average than 1 per cubic ly but if we assume that Sol is the measure then the nearest star is not in a 16 cubic ly volume - so we could say 3.14^13 ish stars as an estimate. So I'd be guessing many more than 300 bn stars in the galaxy?

Google says 250 +/\- 150 bn. I think low...

<comment><USER14> "... contains a representative sample of 1 percent of the Milky Way's orbs ..."</comment></comment>


Mark C. Miller: Science Reveals Women Who Wear Less Clothing Live Longer - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-c-miller/science-reveals-women-who_b_914511.html <comment><USER2> This was obviously fake. It came from a tabloid and I don't know why Huffington Post would publish it.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=bfMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA14...](http://books.google.com/books?id=bfMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=Philomena+Bushfield&source=bl&ots=HUYK1hey1o&sig=JyMjoAKGpRlxNcw1Gtqf9J-bf5Q&hl=en&ei=Mb44ToWxH6m30AHwoPzIAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Philomena%20Bushfield&f=false)</comment>


Ads in front of things - <AUTHOR> https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2013/10/15/Ads-In-Front-of-Things

<comment><USER2> I agree with this, along with sites that throw up a questionnaire as soon as you load up a page. No, I will not fill in your questionnaire before I have looked at the page that might or might not have the information I want!</comment>


I have completely recoded my regex testing service. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://regex101.com/

<comment><USER2> This is brilliant! I've been using "refiddle.com" for the last few months and I am blown away by how much better this is.

The only thing I could think of improving is including VB code generation as I tend to use that a lot for scripting MS Office.</comment>


New Low Cost EC2 Instances with Burstable Performance - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/low-cost-burstable-ec2-instances/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7969824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7969824).</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for cofounders, I'll pay the bills - <AUTHOR>

Summary: I am looking to create a team of three to live and work together in preparation for the next round of YC. Launching prior to YC or applying to other similar programs are also options but, think the benefits of YC are worth the extra work.
Details: After researching the pros and cons of hiring, Angel investing, and finding cofounders have decided the last option is best. I will be looking for two cofounders over the next couple of months to begin work on a minimum viable product. This product will be used in our application to the next round of Y-Combinator. During this time I am offering to pay all standard expenses (rent, food, internet, development costs) as this is the most common objection to starting in my experience. I currently live in San Diego walking distance from UCSD. I would be willing to relocate to the Bay area to build the right team. I have a couple of ideas (and prototypes) for the project I will present but, I would also like to hear your ideas and decide as a team which is the best opportunity. Understand some time will need to be given to getting to know each other and expect to try working a couple small projects ahead of time. Suggestions are welcome... please contact me at omni158 (gmail)
end <comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for folks that love to code like I do. I primarily use Python right now but, it is just a tool and I think using whatever tool is best for the job is the way to go. I am more concerned with finding people I can trust and get along with / enjoy being around. I have no problem learning a new technology if it means creating a great product. E.g. if the rest of the team believed Ruby or Clojure would give us an advantage I would pick up a few books and go into a cave for a couple weeks and learn to use it. This philosophy has served me well in the past and allowed me to do things that my competitors (and leadership) thought impossible.

The idea I am most excited about involves solving the problem of finding something to do on any giving day. As an example I moved to San Diego and have to look in a dozen different places to find out what is going on in my area. Often I miss something I would be interested in because I didn't know how to find out about it. So aggregating and presenting that information in a simple way that is easy to search would be of great value to me.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm curious, and I bet others are as well, as to what your skill set is and what skills you are looking for in a co-founder?</comment>


Creators Admit Unix, C Hoax - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/unix-hoax.html

<comment><USER2> I remember reading this several times over my computing career/life and it never stops being funny. I can laugh because I love C and Unix :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> In related news, C++ was invented to increase programmers' salaries: <http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention_of_Cplusplus.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do people post such bs? Ever tried writing anything larger in assembly? C was a huge step and they got most of it right.

<comment><USER5> I think you missed this line:

"COMPUTERWORLD 1 April"

<comment><AUTHOR> Even without that line, it is pretty clear that this text is not meant seriously. Although I personally like that kind of humor very much, I guess this is not true for everyone.</comment></comment></comment>


Dear Apple, We Need an Affordable and Upgradable Mac - <AUTHOR> https://namityadav.com/post/177983417975/dear-apple-we-need-an-affordable-and-upgradable <comment><USER2> I hate to play the devil's advocate here, but why would Apple make an upgradeable machine? Having everything built in drives sales and they've obviously done the math and come up with the right numbers. They believe they won't get enough new purchases due to upgradability to offset the loss in sales.

The people who are most in favor of this either go PC, Linux or Hackintosh.

<comment><USER3> There will be a price to pay that's hard to be felt in the early numbers.

I am for the first time considering switching away from Mac simply because getting a relatively powerful machine on mac is how prohibitively expensive.

Remember that Mac/OSX get it's underlying impetus from a vast number of individuals who are not working for big tech etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dear Apple, please change your economic models that made you the biggest company in the world on account of my blog post.

<comment><USER5> One component of what made Apple the richest company in the world was a willingness to uphold their reputation, even if it meant leaving money on the table. They've now spent over five years burning through that capital.

For developers, Apple has turned in Comcast. Developers used to evangelize Apple. Now it's "I wish I could switch, but I need MacOS, so they're the only game in town."

<comment><USER6> Developers tend to overstate how much their love or hatred of apple matters to both Apple themselves and the general public.

<comment><USER5> It isn't possible to overstate the importance of developers to the health of Apple. There are so many reasons. Maybe the most significant: without love from the developer community, Apple can't hire and retain "A players"

<comment><USER4> It seems as if in this thread 'developers' means multiple things: 1. developers who make apps? 2. developers who work for Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Been looking at a cheap alternative to my MacBook when traveling. Bought a 2 year old Thinkpad for under $400. Replacing keyboard - pleasantly surprised at how serviceable this machine is. Upgrading RAM and storage is actually doable, and took about 10 minutes. Dual batteries, up to 32gb of ram (2 years ago!), and supported LTE more nice touches.

<comment><USER8> That sounds like a sweetheart of a deal! I managed to get a 2014 Dell for about that price (after RAM upgrade to 16gb). One SSD and one spinning disk. But the thing was great for popping off the back and plugging and unplugging things. I'd have killed for a Thinkpad though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like tomorrow is only going to be about iPhone and Apple Watch. iPad Pro and Macs are going to be announced at a later October event.

[[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple- to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple-to-kick-off- product-blitz-with-iphone-xs-line-new- watches\]\(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple-to-kick- off-product-blitz-with-iphone-xs-line-new-watches\))

</comment><comment><USER10> Dear Louis Vuitton, I want a sustainable and inexpensive handbag.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would love to see Apple embark on an OEM program similar to the old clone license of yore.

As an OEM partner (Clevo, Asrock or the like), I can purchase T3 chips (or whatever they'll be called) or whatever silicon IP it takes to bless OEMs to help the Mac platform flourish.

The whole widget philosophy has arguably worked well for macOS, but not so much for the user.

Keep the standards high, but jeez Tim, enable partners to serve the market if you don't care to.

Enthusiasm helps sustain platforms. Ask any Windows user whether they have 'voided their warranty'.

These customers don't buy Apple Care and they don't need the slick retail experience. What they will do is breathe fresh life into a fading platform and bring more people under the tent.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dear Apple, I want the machine you already said you were working on that will come next year

<comment><USER7> They haven't even released the charger they announced last year

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So in the last 5 years I went from full time Linux at work, over full time Windows (Linux on servers), to full time OSX (and again, Linux on servers). I have dual boot Windows and Linux on my personal rig. I see the pros and cons of all, but to be honest, I can't find something that really makes me dependant on any of them (especially on OSX). I just find it a bit sad to have to beg vendors (hardware and software) for anything. Don't buy their gear for a generation or two and look at them listen for the next ten.

<comment><USER14> The days we needed to buy hardware every three years are gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Switching to Linux isn't an option due to all the design, legal, and other > such documents I need to work with frequently for my startup. I can't risk > using alternative open source tools to edit such important documents because > the professionals in those areas, are set in their ways and are not going > change just for me.

Excuse me, what? Since when editing such important documents can be done only on Mac? That's the dumbest thing I've read all day.

<comment><USER14> When the software doesn't exist on Linux?

<comment><USER16> Name one filetype you can open on OSX that you can't open on linux. I'll wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> LMFAO, have you met Apple before? I'm not holding out for them to change their ways anytime soon. They seem to have made every effort to avoid having a general mac box.

> "The smallness or thinness of the machine is absolutely irrelevant for me > because it'll sit under the desk."

It's relevant to apple and a top design consideration. Practicality almost always takes a back seat to shininess and size at Apple.

> If I can get a good Windows desktop for $600 ... I can maybe angrily even > pay $1000. But, I can't justify paying $3000 for it

This is why I can't imagine anyone buying a desktop from these people. Is that something people are still doing? I guess some industries are very apple centric. Baffling to me.

> Why should Apple care?

Let me stop you there, they don't. They never have. There's nothing they care less about than what the user _thinks_ they want. Sometimes this leads to good designs, other times it just adds cost or inconvenience to the customer. This is Apple's MO. Don't like it, buy a Windows or Linux box.

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly the best situation for someone like this is to buy a nice $800 Windows machine and do your development in a Linux VM. For years now developers not in the Mac ecosystem have used this approach.

I prefer developing on Mac myself, but have used the other approach too with good success. It works, just maybe not as seamlessly.

<comment><USER19> In the post they specifically say they can't use Linux due to legal reasons. I imagine this would apply to a VM, also.

<comment><USER18> They were talking about editing documents that require licensed / non-open source software, no? Not the actual development?

Edit your docs in windows, write your code on the Linux VM.

<comment><USER20> Why not run Linux with Windows in the VM? Is there a reason?

<comment><USER18> Potato potato.

For instance for my current dev station I have a Mac and whenever I need Windows for something I use a Windows VM. It works pretty well for me.

The bottom line is that the guy needs cheap hardware that allows for a modern dev environment and also access to windows. Some flavor of linux + windows will check the boxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Dear Blogger, The thing you want is called a Hackintosh. (MacOS running on standard PC hardware)

The trick is to select hardware that is known to have valid Mac drivers.

[https://www.tonymacx86.com](https://www.tonymacx86.com)

<comment><USER22> It seems to suck if you are a professional though? Losing a days work over a broken upgrade is hundreds of dollars in lost income.

<comment><USER21> Why would you apply an update on day one with an OS that still gives the user total control over update behavior?

On a productive machine, waiting a few days to see if a new update causes problems for others is standard advice for any platform.

If you choose to run MacOS in a virtual machine on standard PC hardware, backing up the machine state before applying an update is as simple as duplicating your virtual system disk before applying the update.

<comment><USER22> A hackintosh is quite different from running macOS in a VM. And even if you wait "a few days" you are part of such a small group of users that you know very little about how you might be affected.

<comment><USER21> The blogger in question wanted to be able to run MacOS on cheap standard hardware.

A Hackintosh on bare metal and running in a virtual machine both allow them to do exactly that.

If you visit the link to the Hackintosh community provided above you will find plenty of information from Hackintosh users who have already installed the various system updates and even beta OS releases.

<comment><USER22> I've done the hackintosh thing, and I might do it again someday, but as far as I can tell it is nowhere near as smooth as running officially sanctioned hardware.

And regarding running macOS in a VM, so you mean with PCI passthrough? Because AFAIK there are no drivers for virtualized graphics.

<comment><USER21> If you build a machine using components that leverage the drivers built into the OS you can bypass those problems.

That's why sites like the one given above are so helpful in the process.

They list the specific components that are known for worry free operation.

It's like building a Windows NT machine back in the day. You have to stick with components that are known to work with Apple's drivers, likely because Apple has used that same component in one of it's own computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't buy Apple products. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER24> You could go ala John Draper and buy a computer with coincidentally similar hardware...

[https://www.scan.co.uk](https://www.scan.co.uk)

</comment><comment><USER25> An affordable and upgradable Mac is known as a ThinkPad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dear Apple, we need a pear. Why?

<comment><USER27> Because "we" want it. It's free market capitalism, people have the right to express their opinions and push companies to build products they want to purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sorry, not gonna happen. Pick two.

</comment><comment><USER29> Dear Apple, I want a PC.

<comment><USER4> Dear Apple, I want a cross-platform Macos is probably nearer in what the author wants.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any startups taking on the big boys like Amazon? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed that a lot of recent startups seem to go for small niche markets. Quite curious to know if any startups are challenging the big boys and going after the big competitive markets - where its almost suicidal? <comment><USER2> In India flipkart.com and infibeam.com are similar to Amazon and it is rumored that amazon will launch services in India within 6 months or so. some background on this: [http://www.sundarsubramanian.com/post/9915856535/ecommerce-g...](http://www.sundarsubramanian.com/post/9915856535/ecommerce- gold-rush-in-india)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some competing with big companies such as DuckDuckGo vs Google (search engine) and there are others that are tackling big markets but not necessarily with giant leaders in them yet.</comment>


Generating MPEG-Dash Streams for Open Source Adaptive Streaming with GStreamer - <AUTHOR> https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/06/12/generating-mpeg-dash-streams-for-open-source-adaptive-streaming-with-gstreamer/ <comment> vertex-four A strong option for MPEG-DASH streaming with an open source toolchain is gpac[0] - especially in the 0.9 preview, which implements a "filter chain" concept.

The thing is, the "dasher" is only one component of a useful system - in order to do low-latency streaming (less than 6-20 seconds between source and viewer), you need a special HTTP server which can serve files as they're being generated, a solid low-latency connection to both your source and your clients (implying a CDN in many cases), and a few other bits and pieces. In production, you'll also want integration with things like connection bonding so your source can distribute to the server over a fallback connection when their main internet connection drops out, falling back to a "technical issues" screen when the source does drop out entirely, ensuring the source can come back again without starting a new stream, and so on. It's a lot of polish to build something of acceptable quality, and that's all _after_ you've actually got your stream to a server in the first place - the process of generating a production-quality stream to broadcast in the first place is even more work.

[0] [https://github.com/gpac/gpac/tree/filters](https://github.com/gpac/gpac/tree/filters)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've honestly had much better luck using ffmpeg, especially now that it can generate both HLS and DASH manifests for the same encoded content.

Next major release will support a zmq pub-sub source/destination which will make dynamic creation of multiple publishing streams from the same live MPEG- TS source be cake.

<comment><USER3> Do you have an example command line to do this?

<comment><USER4> The DASH-IF group just finished a work item with the FFMPEG maintainers to build in all the functionality necessary for low latency DASH streaming. The parameters necessary have been documented in the standing "Low Latency Modes for DASH" CR: [https://dashif.org/docs/CR-Low-Latency- Live-r8.pdf](https://dashif.org/docs/CR-Low-Latency-Live-r8.pdf)

Section 9.X.6.3.6 Example: FFmpeg Configuration will give you a full sample command.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to Shaka packager?</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for finding notes from books and other interesting things? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Please expand this ambiguous question, e.g. are you referencing book annotations, search of book contents, search of notebooks, ..?</comment>


How to pitch anything in 15 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/17/how-to-pitch-anything-in-15-seconds/

<comment><USER2> 4G is a mobile broadband technology that will change the way your department communicates, collaborates, and operates.

3G is a mobile broadband technology that will change the way your department communicates, collaborates, and operates.

GPRS is a mobile broadband technology that will change the way your department communicates, collaborates, and operates.

WiMax is a mobile broadband technology that will change the way your department communicates, collaborates, and operates.

So ... what are you pitching again?

<comment><USER3> I thought the same, it's a super 'businessy-corporate' message that says 'nothing'. Actually I snail-mail could be pitched with almost the same message (remove mobile broadband).

I stopped reading after that sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _"Instead we created a pitch that started with this sentence: 4G is a mobile > broadband technology that will change the way your department communicates, > collaborates, and operates. The audience got it in one sentence. The message > was so simple and effective..."_

Simple and effective perhaps, but also far too vague for my liking. Sure, make it bitesize and understandable, but telling me it something that will "change the way I communicate, collaborate and operate" doesn't actually say _anything_ about why or how the product is good.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Paper cups connected with string would arguably change the way your department communicated, collaborated and operated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Time is limited, so how do we use this scarce resource to our advantage? I think this is a great way to get the message across. I wouldn't buy anything this guy pitched to me, but the underlying technique is important. What is the most important piece of information you want the person buying your product to know and how do you support that one piece of information so that our minds will remember it with all of the other information out there.</comment>


Cheating Upwards: Smart kids may especially do it. But why? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/cheating-2012-9/

<comment><USER4> I recommend everyone read "The Cheating Culture", which explains in great detail why the author believes cheating is done the scale it is today:

"Callahan blames the dog-eat-dog economic climate of the past twenty years: An unfettered market and unprecedented economic inequality have corroded our values and threaten to corrupt the equal opportunity we cherish. Callahan's "Winning Class" has created a separate moral reality where it cheats without consequences-while the "Anxious Class" believes choosing not to cheat could cancel its only shot at success in a winner-take-all world."

The bottom line is if you create a system which makes it so that one terrible thing (like a job loss or medical emergency) can ruin your entire life, and are also told that you are easily replaceable - you get a culture like this. That unless you take lower wages, longer hours, and fewer benefits, that your job will be outsourced/offshored. That unless you get the right grades, and get into the right schools so you can get what's left of the jobs (in many fields, not everyone can be a dev, admin, business owner, etc.) that you'll wind up homeless, you will have this stuff happen. The more competitive and brutal things get (more unemployment, greater concentration of job opportunities), the worse this will get - and it's not likely to get better any time soon.

When you try to run societies - as many Social Darwinists think is good, healthy, and proper (where the weak die, and the strong prosper) people get an incentive to cheat on a massive scale.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheating_Culture>

<comment><USER5> I definitely agree that competitiveness has something to do with it, but I think you could have a highly competitive culture without as much cheating. I think it's the "winner take all" mentality along with "gateway by proxy" that creates such a toxic environment.

For instance, we decide who will become a physician largely by grades and MCAT scores. Many people who would have been good physicians will not be accepted to med school, and people who get into top schools are better positioned. Med school is hard, but the vast majority who get in make it through, so "getting in" is the most important thing. Unfortunately, we won't be deciding who will be a physician by seeing who is best at being a physician, it doesn't work that way. Instead, we use a GPA and exam as a stand in. This system can be malevolently cracked, with huge payoffs for the people who aren't caught, and potentially life altering consequences for those who don't cheat and fall short (I know a guy who was borderline and didn't get into med school - <USER2> two tries, he gave up on being a doctor).

Compare this with being a programmer. I'm not saying there's no cheating in CS classes, I'm sure there's plenty. But if you really want to be a programmer, there isn't a magic proxy that you can crack. And if you're at the 49%ile, it's not like you don't get to be a programmer the way some people don't get to become physicians.

But imagine if decided that every year, 50,000 people were allowed to study to become "programmers" (with fines and imprisonment for those who programmed without this credential), and we chose them them all based on a logic test that correlates pretty damn well with programming ability. Now I think you'd see really horrendous amounts of cheating. It isn't just the competitiveness, it's the added reliance on a crackable proxy.

Character matters, but we should also see widespread cheating as perhaps a sign of a deeply flawed system - and if it's clear that we can't stop the cheating, we should understand that the system is profoundly unfair to honest people who accept the results. If cheating on a single exam can make such a difference, and it's clear that we are unable to control the cheating, then maybe we should try to be less reliant on a single, mass produced exam.

One of my math professors in college said he figured he could assess a student's knowledge of an area of math after an hour of discussion. No "mass produced" exam needed, just take it where it goes, probe a bit, allow the student to consult the books of ask for a reminder if needed. It would be nearly impossible to cheat on such an exam.

I understand (and so did the professor) that this is idealistic - it wouldn't be the same for everybody, it wouldn't scale, and so forth. But it's still a direction some of these struggling institutions might want to investigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading Colin Powell's autobiography (many years ago). He wrote about how he was selected for a very elite training program meant to groom military upper management. When his cohort arrived, they told the room (I'm paraphrasing here) that the selectivity for this program was so intense, and that so many talented people were rejected, that if the plane carrying them crashed and everyone on it died, they could completely replace his cohort from the "reject" pile with absolutely no loss of quality.

Perhaps smart kids find themselves competing for this kind of thing more often than others? A 99%ile LSAT score actually does increase your chances of getting into Yale law school over a 97%ile LSAT. A 3.95 GPA in the sciences really does increase your changes of getting into UCSF med school over a 3.7.

It gets even worse when students are aware that their peers are cheating. I remember reading about a cyclist who admitted to doping and regretted it deeply. His discussion of why and how he came to cheat was interesting - <USER3> said that he could have accepted losing as a non-doper if he'd believed that the people besting him were competing honestly, but that when he realized they were going to win because they cheated and he didn't, he cracked and started doing it too. And of course, once he's doing it, then even more people realize they'll lose if they aren't doping. Eventually, it becomes endemic. Sure, that sounds like a rationalization, but it also provides a very clear illustration of how a large population can essentially corrupt and cheating can become widespread.

My guess is that cheating is less common in environments where the measured outcome of learning has little bearing on your opportunities afterwards. In other words, in environments where you need to meet a standard of competence to graduate, but people aren't especially interested in what your grades were, my guess would be that cheating is far less common.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some of the best GPA's in my college graduating class (class of 2012) were known cheaters. They went on to prestigious jobs at companies such as [large american aircraft manufacturer] and [large american defense contractor]. Those of us that left with less amazing GPA's (say 3.0-3.5/4.0) are working dead end jobs making minimum wage.

Though as far as immoral/unethical/illegal activities go, cheating was really the tip of the ice berg for my particular university.</comment>


Show HN: QuickReply – simplify your copy/paste experience in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quickreply/enngmhjfhandgjeccahinpmjfmllklki <comment><AUTHOR> QuickReply features really simplify your life and business.

\- Annoyed by copy/paste the same text from time to time?

\- Tired of storing notes in files and sticky notes?

\- Want to personalize messages quickly?

As a creator, I am really proud to share with you this extension.

It helped me (and I hope it will help you) to solve these issues once and for all.</comment>