Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/inventor-says-google-is-patenting-work-he-put-in-the-public-domain/ <comment><USER2> Reading through the linked 2014 email exchange is somewhat amusing. I love how the first two responses to his ideas are uninformed cynicism regarding increased hardware memory costs.

Then things start to make a bit more sense with another engineer interested in coders actually digging in and verifying / debugging his work.

And then of course it takes a dark turn at the end with Google applying to patent his ideas which he so generously offered to them.

<comment><USER3> It reminds me of one person here on HN describing their interaction with Google w.r.t. their startup's novel idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it would be useful if there was a patent type for "free for anyone to use", something like the MIT License in open source. This would make it easier for patent officers to discover and reject applications conflicting with prior free to use patents and offload the burden of keeping track of this from the inventor to the patent office.

<comment><USER5> Well it used to be that no action was necessary to prevent someone from patenting something you've already invented and released publicly: The first person to invent it had the right to patent or not patent it, and nobody else.

A few years ago we switched to a "first-to-file" system and this is a direct consequence of that. Someone who didn't invent something can now file a patent. Doing so is a lengthy, expensive process, so the immediate consequence is there is no more "public domain" inventing.

This needs to be reversed.

<comment><USER6> I'm not saying the system is perfect, but there is a reason we switched to the current system.

If I've invented widgets (or think that I've invented widgets), I should be able to know if I can patent and sell them, without years later getting sued because someone once did it in their basement and left it at that.

<comment><USER7> First to invent doesn't automatically mean they can sue when you file your own patent and intend to sell - they have to file their own patent first, and if you've already published enough of the invention before they even filed, then that only means _neither side_ gets a patent (original inventor because they can't wait until after publication to file, second inventor because they were late).

Also, first to file has the same problem you mention. You can invent something, never publish, and get sued by somebody who reinvented it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish more of the world would take New Zealand's stance. Software patents are banned in that country. The US/EU should really go a similar route.

<comment><USER9> It's probably too late. Too many entrenched interests and public interest groups don't have resources.

<comment><USER10> It will probably only change if non-software-patent countries start kicking our economic butts. THEN policy makers will take notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is the relative advantage of putting something into the public domain versus releasing under an Apache 2 or MIT license? The latter doesn't restrict anyone's use AND establishes a public record to refute what Google is trying to do. Additionally, communications by email could be via GitHub issues and open to all to see.

<comment><USER12> enedil is correct.

To expand on that: MIT and Apache2 grant a licence to copyrightable expression. But the literal code is not what is patented, the idea is. Granting a license to the code doesn't automatically prevent someone else from patenting the idea.

MIT doesn't say anything about patents. Apache2 additionally grants a licence to any patents which the author has which cover the work, and also tries to prevent someone using the work and then suing other people for patent infringement. But it does so by saying " any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed." Which is a null threat in this case, as the idea is to try to prevent there being a patent in the first place.

You could argue that the author should have patented the idea, and then freely licensed it. But since patents cost thousands each, that's a bit much to ask.

<comment><USER13> That sounds backwards if I'm reading you right. An idea can't be patented (well... in theory), but a new invention based on an idea can. Google apparently thinks they've got a new, non-obvious invention based on Duda's public domain work, which may itself have been patentable but wasn't.

That's one reason why companies rich enough to spam the patent office tend to do so. Company A invents X. If they don't patent it, then Company B can invent X+1, a minor improvement on X, and patent X+1 themselves. Now Invention X can't compete with X+1, so Company A invents X+2, an improvement on X+1, but now they have to pay license fees to Company B even though they invented the original thing! Solution: just try to patent every stupid thing.

<comment><USER14> No, the way to protect yourself is to disclose anything you don't want to patent, but don't want patented against yourself. IBM had a great system for several decades[0]:

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin)

<comment><USER13> That establishes prior art for X, but X+2 would still potentially infringe on X+1 and they'd have no leverage for negotiating a license. Except they're still one of the biggest patent spammers, so they probably do have leverage in the portfolio somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kyle-rb This reminds me of the "pull to refresh" patent that Twitter owns, but has promised to only use defensively.

Optimistically, Google wants a similar thing so they can defend the use of this technique if someone tries to seek royalties for use of this video encoding technique.

A little less optimistically, Google wants it so they can pull the license from a specific party if that party tries to sue them for an unrelated patent.

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by defensively then Isn't patent war a bit like Risk in that whoever has more patents (no matter how related) used by the other party wins?

<comment><USER16> More like MUD. The cost of litigating a patent war between companies at the scale of Google is so high, that it's generally not in anyone's interest.

<comment><USER17> I think you mean MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. Although a patent-war MUD (multi-user dungeon/domain) might be an interesting premise.

<comment><USER16> Oh, yes, definitely meant that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Read this reaction from xiphmont: [https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html](https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html)

It paints a quite different picture.

<comment><USER19> This comes off as rather dismissive. Xiphmont simultaneously claims that Jarek's work is useless ("the performance claims just don't hold up") and that Google needs a defensive patent on it.

As someone on encode.ru pointed out, "if Google genuinely wanted this as a defensive patent, then the right approach is to work with Jarek and pay for him to file a patent on ANS itself blocking as many of the spin-off patents as possible." They didn't even talk to him before patenting his work.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't sound like the right approach. Google has the resources to actually defend the patent. While ideally/ethically Jarek should be the one with the patent, if the patent is only being used defensively, Jarek probably isn't the right entity to actually defend it.

<comment><USER19> Google could also buy the patent from Jarek. At minimum, they should have talked with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another example why software patents don't really work. Because most thing software patents cover are not really inventions but ideas. Also the written code is already protected via copyright. That is the difference to a eg. wind mill, the blue prints are only protected by a patent, not by copyright. And it effects only the implementation.

<comment><USER22> What's the difference between an invention and an idea?

<comment><USER23> An invention is the implementation of an idea, it can in theory be made. An idea can't be made.

A faster than light drive is an idea. A detailed description of a working physical device that can propel a vehicle faster than light; with sufficient detail that experts can make the device from the description is a potentially patentable invention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "a view largely endorsed by a preliminary ruling in February by European patent authorities"

If one clicks through, you discover it says literally nothing of the sort, it just says they will include that email exchange as a possible prior art reference (along with a lot of other things).

It actually doesn't express any opinions at all, except on the priority claim, which is not related to this part.

It is literally a notification that says "we will consider these two additional things as possible prior art references"

This part is very shoddy reporting.

<comment><USER19> I think you missed the other seven pages. Page 2 paragraph 6:

> The present application does not meet the criteria of Article 33(1) PCT, > because the subject-matter of claim 1 does not involve an inventive step in > the sense of Article 33(3) PCT.

<comment><USER24> The PDF it gives you on mobile is indeed one page. But reading all the other pages it still doesn't change my view.

The part you cite is about whether that claim is patentable at all in view of the paper, it's unrelated to the prior art emails. If that is upheld it would mean the person complaining here could not get a patent either. They've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything that I can see. It would also be par for the course since examination tends to take a while.

<comment><USER19> > it's unrelated to the prior art... they've made no determination that what > is in the emails is relevant to anything that I can see

Paragraph 6.1: "The author of D1 [Jarek] provided in January 2014 in an on- line discussion forum information that would allow a skilled person to reach the invention without having to apply any inventive skills."

Paragraph 6.2: "In particular, it has been proposed in the on-line discussion forum to use ANS in video compression "like VP9" (D5)..."

The patent court is saying that Google's patent on ANS in video compression is invalid in light of Jarek's prior art, exactly as Jarek claims. The report cites Jarek's emails (documents D5 and D6) as prior art over and over.

<comment><USER24> You are confusing a whole bunch of things

(sorry, i can't edit my original response on mobile fast enough to correct a few errors. I think you took the wrong thing away from the "unrelated to the prior art" sentence).

1\. This is not a court :)

In fact, the rejection is specifically not binding.

"(1) The objective of the international preliminary examination is to formulate a preliminary and non-binding opinion on the questions whether the claimed invention appears to be novel, to involve an inventive step (to be non-obvious), and to be industrially applicable."

2\. As i said, they are saying claim 1 is not inventive, regardless of those references anyway. See 6.13.4

D1 is Jarek's original paper, a reference _Google_ gave, not Jarek.

You are right that they have a long discussion of these emails, but then decide they don't matter anyway to claim 1 in 6.13.4. Perhaps you missed that. They even explicitly say that D5/D6 do not matter in practice. The rest is just random examiner prognostication.

You'll also see they are not cited in reference to any other claims.

Jarek (and the author's) claim was the emails are important and that he told them what they patented. As you can see, the preliminary ruling was in fact, that they are not really relevant or important to the patentability of the claim. In this case, they so far have explicitly decided it would be unpatentable regardless of whether he had ever sent the emails at all!

(The claim they are patenting ANS, i have no opinion on. I highlighted a fairly small portion of the article i believe is shoddy reporting, and i still believe that)

<comment><USER19> > I highlighted a fairly small portion of the article i believe is shoddy > reporting

> Jarek (and the author's) claim was the emails are important

The claim is: "Duda says he suggested the exact technique Google is trying to patent in a 2014 email exchange with Google engineers".

Which is true. Neither Jarek nor the reporter claim that these emails were the _first_ instance of prior art. They emphasize the emails to show that Jarek was working with Google engineers before they stole his work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> But this is a bit of a dark area. Even if Google stopped pursuing the patent, who is to say that someone else wouldn't?

<comment><USER26> A court ruling against someone patenting this would strongly discourage anyone else from trying.

<comment><USER27> Thank you. Sounds like a win win scenario for Google. If the courts decide Google can't patent it, it probably means nobody else can either.

<comment><USER28> How is this a win-win scenario for Google? They're attempting to do something that is strictly against the interest of the inventor and abusing the patent system in order to achieve a commerical advantage at the cost of the rest of humanity. This is totally evil in my view.

<comment><USER29> Their main goal is to not get sued. As long as no one else is granted the patent they probably won't be too unhappy.

As a large tech firm just not patenting anything doesn't seem practical given the current patent law even if you don't plan on suing people for them. Once you get a patent another company can't get a patent for the same thing (and if they do it's easy to invalidate) and also the more patents you have the less likely you are to be sued for patent infringement as you could always sue them back for your patents.

<comment><USER30> > Their main goal is to not get sued.

So there's no practical way to demonstrate prior art without filing a patent?

<comment><USER31> Your question suggests their goal is to win when sued. That can be expensive. The goal is not to be sued in the first place.

<comment><USER32> Not sure why a patent is a better guard against a lawsuit than clear prior art. If everyone knows you'll win if sued it doesn't matter if the reason you would win is because you hold the patent or if you demonstrated prior art.

I think the actual advantage is "mutually assured destruction"; big companies accumulate large patent portfolios so that they can (among other things) have enough stuff patented that they have the option to counter sue or if they get sued they can find some way that the suing company is violating something else in their portfolio and threaten to sue over that.

<comment><USER33> I live in a different jurisdiction, but based on what I've read on these discussions in the Internet, it appears that in the USA the loser doesn't pay the winner's court and lawyer costs. Having a stronger defense could allow the court case to finish on an earlier step, saving a large amount of the costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If he can prove he published it, then he should file his prior art with the patent office. In fact, if he notifies Google of his prior art then Google is obligated to tell the patent office about it.

<comment><USER24> He did, they include it as a reference, but haven't made any determination at all

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you watch "American Genius" (documentary show about inventors) you will see how some of the most important inventors of the 20th century wasted decades of their life in patent related litigations rather than working in more inventions.

This stupid scent marking bullshit needs to stop.

</comment><comment><USER36> Google's new motto: Be Evil.

</comment><comment><USER37> Isn't it already published then?

<comment><USER38> Yup. And if I had a nickel for every time a patent was granted despite the existence of prior art...

<comment><USER39> did we switch from prior art to first to patent a few years back?

<comment><USER34> We switched from "first to invent" to "first to file," but published prior art still invalidates a patent.

The change just means that if two people try to patent something that they've invented privately, then the one with priority is the one who filed first.

<comment><USER39> Oh ok thanks, I honestly got mixed up in concepts. Glad to clear this up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a reason for using [L]GPL: explicit patent protection.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why- gplv3.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.en.html)

[https://fsfe.org/campaigns/gplv3/patents-and- gplv3.en.html#E...](https://fsfe.org/campaigns/gplv3/patents-and- gplv3.en.html#Explicit-patent-grant)

<comment><USER41> Had Duda released his code under GPLv3, he would have quit his own patent claims, not prevented Google from asserting theirs.

In general, there is no way to prevent patent claims on your work other than to defensively patent every conceivable application of it. That is why all major corporations have large portfolios of such patents.

<comment><USER42> In theory one should not need to defensively patent anything that is published openly since the patent office should not grant any patents for ideas which has already been published. It is only if we accept that the patent office is utterly broken and do not check for prior art that defensively patent every conceivable application of public released work is a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Doesn't really fit into Google's primary revenue streams so can't imagine that's their motivation

</comment><comment><USER44> It therefore fails the criteria to be Patentable..

If he informs the Patent Office, the Patent should be voided.

</comment><comment><USER45> If the patent is granted (unlikely), here's hoping they uphold that "don't be evil" thing.

Oh, boy...

</comment><comment><USER46> >A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers.

and this is how you do it, children. You patent a straightforward implementation and application ("additional work by engineers") of the idea, and thus you effectively prevent anybody from _implementing_ and _applying_ the same idea while the idea itself is supposedly still patent-free (an additional bonus is that you don't even have to pay to the author of the idea :).

<comment><USER47> You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea.

<comment><USER48> While that may technically he the case, the USPTO has allowed the "application" of ideas to be so broad as to effectively be just a patent on ideas.

There are a million different ways you could implement a "one click checkout" yet the USPTO granted a "one click checkout" patent to Amazon. And countless similar parents exist today. (podcast patent, online shopping cart patent, a patent on making 'toast' and on and on)

<comment><USER49> Having a patent doesn't mean the patent is valid. I think something like 50% of patents are declared invalid during litigation. (This obviously doesn't mean 50% of patents are invalid, since you probably don't go to trial unless you think you have a reasonable chance of winning).

Plus, a lot of those software patents are not valid[0]. The validity of software patents in general and what qualifies as patentable with regards to software is still an open question.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> intellectual property shouldn't exist.

<comment><USER51> Intellectual property done right puts bread on the table of many researchers and engineers and is arguably a protection agains't direct Chinese theft.

That being said, Google is really turning into a monster at this point with all their patents on random algorithms.

<comment><USER52> If I take a Range Rover, reserse engineer it and sell it for a lower price who is harmed? The society at large or a special interest group involved in the manufacturing of the original Range Rover? If you want to make money off manufacturing you should invest in novel things. Not things that rely on the IP system to generate wealth for you. China is booming because they disregard Western IP. IP is a construction that benefits wealthy countries for the benefit of the wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> That was discussed on HN almost a year ago, with me being slapped either for my use of colourful rhetorics, ... or possibly divulging on their correspondence.

Basically things were like that: Google's side said something to the effect of "you are free to sue us, if you can" and a colourful comment on his income level. And after leaving a mail address of their attorney, they went incommunicado.

</comment><comment><USER54> The US used to have a great First-To-Invent patent system. It disappointingly switched to First-To-File in 2013 and these patents you are seeing are the result. With FTI Google could use the compression technique without filing because if someone else later filed Google could show that they had reduced it to practice first.

However with FTF, any technology Google might potentially use in the future, they must file a patent for - this compression tech, or one of the DNN techs they've recently developed. Otherwise they could start using the technology and another company could copy the technology, file a patent, and be granted the patent because of FTF. They could then pursue Google for patent infringement.

In FTI they could develop and use tech without patenting it. in FTF they have to patent it because if they don't they'll lose the ability to use the tech to the first copycat who files.

FTF is just continuing the trend in the US of making it harder and harder for IP to be in the public domain - moving more towards the privatization of IP.

<comment><USER55> This is not how FTF works. Prior art still trumps the patent filing.

<comment><USER56> Prior art is a legal defense. Patents are lawsuit prevention. Even with prior art it's cheaper to just patent.

<comment><USER55> Sure. But it's untrue that someone can simply file a patent for an existing invention and effectively steal it from the inventor. Filing the patent can minimize legal headaches, though.

(To the extent that a bad actor _can_ "steal" an invention, FTF vs FTI is irrelevant.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter CEO On Google+: It's Complicated - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/08/twitter-ceo-on-google-its-complicated/

<comment><USER2> Adding two huge features like your own URL shortener and a photo sharing service is looking for things you "can edit out?" Even when the market is flooded with third-party services that do the exact same things? Color me skeptical.</comment>


WHO reports nearly 300k new Covid-19 cases worldwide, largest single-day rise - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/510035-who-reports-nearly-300000-new-coronavirus-cases <comment><USER2> Today over 224,000 cases worldwide were reported as recovered since yesterday, the second largest single day rise.

Data is good.</comment>


How to increase subscription sales of SAAS with zero money? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Apart from growth hacking, is there any other proven way to do this?</comment>


ICANN Begins Accepting Applications For New TLDs Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/information-for-governments-18aug11-en.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Note: I'm not sure yet if it's encouraged/discouraged to link to PDFs on HN, as I know there is inconsistent browser support for them (although I think progress has been made in recent years). Overall I thought it best to link to the source document rather than any number of the mostly generic and/or completely speculative tech news articles appearing today (unless you find a really good one).

</comment><comment><USER2> Can someone give a technical reason why we can't have an empty TLD which all sites looked up via DNS would default go to? So if you don't enter a TLD the DNS would assume you mean the empty TLD so it would give you the IP of the machine belonging to just the word.</comment>


How RIM BlackBerry works with loyal app developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.im-possible.com/2011/07/how-rim-blackberry-works-with-loyal-app.html

<comment><USER2> An app is stuck in approval purgatory, and a customer service rep rattles off a canned response about why there aren't any IM apps on the Playbook yet.

That's a long way from solid evidence of anti-competitive behavior. These guys have a right to be upset, since it's been two months since they first submitted, but they should remember Hanlon's razor when trying to explain things.

Rather than trying to cover things up, chances are that the customer service rep honestly has no idea about the IM+ app submission. It's probably not his department.

Likewise, rather than RIM deliberately trying to block IM+, the two month delay is probably due to lack of staff, bad prioritization of tasks, or things otherwise falling through the cracks,

<comment><USER3> I'd say it's intentional due to Hanlon's razor in upper management.

Perhaps some logic like this: we can't lose "our" BBM users but blocking IM apps would drive users and developers away. Let's quietly block IM apps at the approval stage!

Also, "anti-competitive" is the wrong description - unless you count killing your own company. :D

<comment><USER4> I can corroborate with the author's story. I'm developing the BB app for a cross-platform group messaging app and I've also hit a wall of silence from RIM. I can confirm that they are deliberately not giving us access to certain parts of RIM's infrastructure that would make things a lot easier for us. Oh well, guess we'll have to engineer our way around those roadblocks and then open source it!

<comment><USER3> I'd love to hear your history, reasons and current attitude to developing BB apps.

The stories* tell me that the RIM/BB developer experience is so much worse than iOS and Android that it's not worth bothering with (as developers and hence as a viable platform).

* the big ones: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263882> ("You Win, RIM!") and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2714270> ("Open letter to BlackBerry bosses")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't really blame RIM for being slow on IM apps given they are suing Kik with one patent claim around IM on mobile devices (I wonder if they will sue Apple with iMessage). Most other IM apps on BB were on there before the lawsuit and you have to bet no one at RIM wants to come down on the wrong side of the legal department.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the whole platform-specific app development issue is going to cause increasing headaches for the mobile platform developers over the next year or two. All these rigid policies and semi-arbitrary and unaccountable decisions to reject apps and locked up technical details just make it hard for serious businesses to justify committing the resources required to write native apps worth more than an iFart toy.

Maybe some will and they'll get away with it, just as right now Zynga are doing pretty well even though they're almost completely dependent on Facebook, but the average app developer doesn't have the highly valuable and almost symbiotic relationship that evolved in that case. Meanwhile, much of what apps do could also be done almost as well using web-based software, which can run quite happily on any modern mobile, can be developed at a fraction of the cost of targeting each platform with a native app, and doesn't carry any risk of lock-in or summary execution by random platform developer/app store employee.

</comment><comment><USER7> We are about to do a test run of our loyalty application RewardCard.mobi, and it will only support iPhone and Androids. (Oh the test is at the RIM plaza)</comment>


Show HN: Fitbay – A simple way to find out what clothing brands will fit you - <AUTHOR> https://www.fitbay.com

<comment><USER2> Might be great, but I'm not going to sign up just to find out.</comment>


Rental Attacks Mean Blockchains Must Evolve or Die - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techcrunch.com/2018/07/22/rental-attacks-mean-that-blockchains-must-evolve-or-die/amp/ <comment><USER2> Can the URL of this be changed to a non-AMP page?

<comment><AUTHOR> what's the difference? here is the techcrunch url

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/22/rental-attacks-mean- that-b...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/22/rental-attacks-mean-that- blockchains-must-evolve-or-die/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article has it completely backwards. As is often the case, (just as Paul Krugman gets basic tech facts wrong) tech people often don't understand economics.

This has ALWAYS been the problem with "ASIC resistant" coins. "ASIC Resistant" just means that you can rent an AWS instance to attack the coin because any generic CPU or GPU will work.

Bitcoin isn't safe just because it's big. It's safe because Bitcoin mining hardware has no purpose other than to mine Bitcoin. Which means the economics are such that Bitcoin mining is only profitable on the fully amortized lifetime cost of the miner, not on the marginal rental cost.

(That's because competition between miners drives the difficulty so high that marginal revenues fall until they equal long-term marginal costs, which are (land rent + labor + fully amortized hardware + electricity))

ASIC driven Proof-of-Work is fine as long as your coin's POW is unique. Only by forcing miners to make a 3-5 year investment in mining hardware can you align the long term incentives of miners and end-users.

<comment><USER4> So much work and waste. By design it tends towards a specialized group controlling the system. Large miners just replace bankers and it cost more to do anything.

Whats the point of this stuff again?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's an alternative currency, it's point is exactly the same as any other currency. What's the point of euros ? why can't they just use dollars like we do.

<comment><USER4> The point of Euros and Dollars is so a nation or group of nations has democratic power over their own monetary policy. Bitcoin originally presented the idea of a never changing monetary policy but as forks have come and gone and power is beginning to concentrate in career miners that no longer seems to be the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> power doesn't concentrate in miners any more than power concentrates in those who create the paper to make euros or dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny, that they mention PoS as a solution, when in PoS there's no incentive whatsoever for participants to not mine whatever forks they are offered to.

<comment><AUTHOR> slashing conditions</comment></comment>


When Is It Legal to Lie in Negotiations? (1991) - <AUTHOR> http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-is-it-legal-to-lie-in-negotiations/ <comment><USER2> Negotiations or market research?

When Staples started, the founder proved the concept of an office-oriented superstore meticulously with a single store in the northeast. He picked a neighborhood, mapped every business around it, knew exactly how many accountants and offices were around his area through a survey, you get the idea. With the evidence, he talked to a number of investors. One investor gave him a pretty high valuation. In a meeting with another investor soon after, the investor asked a number of questions, hmm-ed the answers and escorted the founder out the door. In investor then promptly returned to his desk, opened up his rolodex and called the best retail exec on the list to start what is now Office Depot - in a different part of the country, to avoid a direct clash, because chains such as these expand geographically.

While this is an extreme case, it is not uncommon. Many investors who like a business idea from one startup, look up and talk to every competitor in order to pick their best bet for the race to that market. If the research surfaces a better competitor, the firm doesn't invest or choses the competitor. If it didn't it is useful as "market research" to help the startup. Either way, the entrepreneurs share plenty of information to appear attractive, and probably feel good about the VC attention they are getting. The "ideas are worth nothing" mantra is out there for a reason - execution is everything at the end of the entrepreneurial race.

The really sleazy negotiations happen when the competing firm starts applying "cloning" tactics to misinform or undercut its opponent. For example, having multiple uninterested parties call the seller with really low prices to create the impression the item for sale is worth little. Then the actual buyer comes in with a low offer that looks lush in comparison. Prepare for the worst and do your due diligence thoroughly if you are worried about this kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> "And companies selling their securities are required to disclose important adverse facts about their business to prospective buyers."

Does this include prospective employee stock options? It would be great to know that startups seeking to hire me have a legal obligation to tell me about financial troubles.

<comment><USER4> It's a red flag if the person making you an offer stumbles if you ask to see the cap table, or can't express the ISO part of the offer as a percentage.

<comment><USER5> It is strictly and empirically speaking _not_ a red flag if a prospective employer refuses to disclose the cap table, since most companies _will not_ do that. You can't reasonably call standard operating procedure among all professionally managed startups "a red flag".

On the other hand, I agree that it is a red flag to refuse to disclose the percentage an allocation represents.

<comment><USER4> I was imprecise. I meant that you need to know financing rounds, prices, classes, and financially relevant terms such as preferences and ratchets. You probably want to know who led each round, and a business should not have a problem disclosing that. The fact that uncle Lenny has 10,000 shares in the seed round is not neccessary.

<comment><USER6> Would you mind explaining preferences and ratchets?

<comment><USER5> Preferences define how investors take money out of the company when it liquidates. Investors might get 1-3x their money back if the company sells, or worse, get 1-3x _and_ their percentage share of the proceeds after that money is taken off the table. If a company succeeds but isn't a breakaway success, preference terms can have a big impact on how much common shareholders earn off the sale.

I'm assuming by "ratchets" he meant anti-dilution provisions, which often mean that if the company raises a new round on anything less than amazing terms, existing investors get topped up with new shares to maintain their ownership percentage, at the expense of common shareholders.

<comment><USER4> As long as we're being precise here I have to correct some minor issues:

A preference, strictly speaking can be with or without a ratchet. A preference means that, at a liquidity event, you get paid before another class of shares. A ratchet means that you get paid a specified minimum price before other shareholders get paid.

An anti-dilution provision usually is invoked in a "down round" and it does what it says: It compensates earlier investors for dilution in cases where the value of their shares don't go up. The details are often complex, and the circumstances where this happens are often where a company is in trouble, and holders of common and options on common are going to get massacred anyway. At which point, if the company wants to keep you, you'll get a new set of options. Which is a long way of saying "you got bigger problems."

<comment><USER7> IMO none of this really matters when you're picking whether or not to join a company. As an outsider, if a down round happens while negotiating, you should move on.

In virtually any case where a company has a down round, or fails to meet preferences in a sale, you want to leave anyway. Your stock being worthless is the least of your problems. The exception is if you're specifically part of a turnaround, in which case you'll have a newly negotiated package (unless you were a VERY early hire sitting on a bunch of still in the money options or something).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I learned something valuable here: that it would be illegal to use negotiation solely to harvest ideas.

I remember the story of a script writer who pitched his script, but then the studios rejected him. One studio just had their own similar script written. He never sold the script, and when the movie actually came out no one was interested because it was too similar to the (essentially stolen) version that had been produced. Could he have sued the studio if he could prove it was his idea? How similar would it have to be? Would he have to prove that they entered into negotiations just to get his idea?

\---

I wonder because I've had an idea brewing in my mind for the last 5+ years, but I have nowhere near the millions in capital required to get it going. The price tag is so high that I don't expect any ownership, but I just want to be involved and to make a fair amount if it succeeds.

A law class once taught me that "ideas cannot be patented," so I completely shleved the hope. I couldn't patent the implementation because it would be easy to implement the same idea a hundred different ways. I bring nothing more than an idea to the table, and then I'd be easy to cut out.

I'll talk to a lawyer before I do anything, but it sounds like I could take my idea into negotiations with a larger company. As long as I can prove that the idea was mine, they can't just take it and copy it. Maybe?

I'm feeling a glimmer of hope that my idea could someday get off the ground, but I worry that the modification loopholes that have held me back in the past are too large.

<comment><USER9> What I'm curious about is where the legal line lands on social proof arbitrage.

For example, lying about competing offers-- for jobs or funding-- is generally considered ethical, insofar as social status inflation and self-promotion fall into the "everyone does it, and most people have to" bucket. (Is it legal? No idea. But few consider it unethical.) If you know an employer does a lot of back-channel reference checks, you absolutely _should_ use a fake competing offer (if you don't have a real one) to put time pressure on them.

On the other hand, the article cites cases in which lying about a competing offer is illegal (and also, for those cases, unethical).

The weird, queasy line is that it seems to be illegal (and generally considered unethical) to lie about a product, whereas lying about yourself (i.e. "you are the product") is ethical, legal, garden-variety social status inflation-- except surrounding official, factual credentials where higher standards must be imposed (e.g., as in law and medicine).

<comment><USER10> Lying about yourself is generally considered unethical as well. It usually doesn't get you prosecuted (unless you lie to the government for a security clearance or something), but it can and probably will get you fired if your employer finds out, and there have been some high-profile firings in that regard.

I think your confusion comes from the difference between "lying about facts" vs. "telling a story". Facts are things that are independently verifiable - things like your dates & places of employment, degrees conferred, job titles, salary, etc. There are varying degrees of consequences for lying about these - typically, lying about your salary gets at most a little distrust, while lying about your degrees can get you fired - and you can always simply refuse to answer or provide those facts, but lying about them is almost always considered unethical.

However, _how_ you tell the facts is your story, and you can and should paint that in the most positive light. For example, "founder" of a product is usually a complicated title because of the twists and turns all ideas go through. It could legitimately be used to refer to the person who came up with the idea, the person who did the first workable implementation of the idea, the person who first realized an idea was a viable business, the person who contributed the bulk of the money toward making the idea a viable business, the founder of another organization that merged early on into the business in question, etc. And there are famous people who fit into all of those categories - Elon Musk, for example, basically never did the work of reducing an idea to a workable implementation, but he is credited with founding multiple companies where the heavy engineering lifting is done by others. Steve Jobs mostly contributed money and cheerleading to Pixar, but is widely considered a founder of that company.

<comment><USER11> "There are varying degrees of consequences for lying about these - typically, lying about your salary gets at most a little distrust"

Because it is an incredibly gray area. For example I currently get 6 weeks annual leave and very generous medical. If I'm applying at a place that only offers 2 weeks annual leave and limited medical then when they ask my current salary I'm going to add these benefits based on their equivalent cash value.

For example I earn ~$2k/wk and so the extra annual leave is worth $8k/year. And to get the equivalent medical would cost me around $10k/year. So I'm going to happily add $18k to my current salary.

Likewise I don't feel it is unethical to adjust for cost of living differences between countries and cities. For example if moving to San Francisco for work I would need to be paid about 20% more just to maintain my current income.

I don't think talking in purchasing power instead of nominal is unethical. Etc etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is important to always consider, as a reason that having someone with a legal background can sometimes contradict entrepreneurship:

"Note that such lies are not always illegal. Rather, the law is content to leave the ultimate question of liability to a jury, with all the expense and risk of a full trial. Of course, victims of such conduct may decide that litigation is not worth the trouble."

The reason is is that this is not strictly a legal question but also a strategy questions as well as probabilities. Also the dollar amount comes into play. A large negotiation by Boeing is the not same as a small startup or even 500 person business with a $100,000 transaction.

<comment><USER12> Another pattern I found is that CEOs with legal background tend to see contact negociations as an exercise in writing legally correct text (down to writing it themselves, even if they are not expert in that part of the law), which ends up taking far more time than negociating on the important facts and then having external lawyers formulate that out.

<comment><AUTHOR> "even if they are not expert in that part of the law"

Agree. And what's even more dangerous is someone with legal background but not years of experience that is able to weigh, on gut, the pros and the cons of adding that legally correct text. [1] It's like the paradox of system security. A trade off between being, say 100% secure but then either opening up other potential security issues or having usability problems caused by something with a extremely small chance of happening.

[1] Here's an example. You have a tenant. You want to be able to charge them for a certain thing upon move out. You can add the exact item or you can be vague. Both come with risks. The risk of adding the text is that you bring it to their attention and they nix it. The risk of not adding it is that you may not be able to charge for it upon move out. What do you do? It's not a legal question (legal wise you would add it) it's a strategy question.

<comment><USER12> That's an interesting one. I have a another example: trying to put codify in a contract. For example, I recently had a client asking me for on-call duty on a weekend. So I quoted that and put it in the offer. (fixed fee for being on call, + a bonus for every hour worked)

Now, they were asking me whether it shouldn't be included that if I build the stuff, I would feel obliged to make sure it runs well. Sure, I do, and if the team I am working with is firefighting, I will be a good colleague. But if someone wants the right to call me at any time, they shouldn't be surprised that this has a price.

<comment><USER13> What you're selling by codifying it is the choice. You can choose, at the cost of alienating the team, to take off of any weekend firefighting. This is a valuable choice if you do something like make plans that are expensive to cancel.

If you don't have the choice, you can't make plans that are expensive to cancel, which is a real economic loss.

<comment><USER12> Sure. But the problem in that case is that the client wanted the goodwill route and wanted it codified, which doesn't work ;).

<comment><USER13> Yeah, you can either negotiate/decide on it on a vague, case-by-case basis - or you can negotiate beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it legal to lie to get around paywalls?

<comment><USER15> Don't lie then, just search google and click through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone alter the link so that it's no longer a paywall?

</comment><comment><USER9> You can also break the law while telling the truth in negotiations.

For example, if you condition a lawful but harmful action on an unrelated demand (and "unrelated" is very subjective here) from another party you are, in many jurisdictions, committing extortion. (If the adverse action and condition are related, e.g. "I'll sue you if you wrong me", then it's not extortion. "I'll expose your affair unless you give me $100,000" is extortion because there's no connection between the affair and demand for payment, and because the extortionist derives no benefit from exposing the affair.) It's not illegal to write bad reviews of a restaurant, but if you demand a price discount and threaten a bad review, you can be found guilty of extortion. So "I'll write a bad review if you don't give me a discount" might be truthful-- you can lawfully do so, and even have this intent (intent being impossible to prove)-- but you still can't say it.

This comes up in severance negotiations. If you say, "I'll [legal adverse action X, such as disparaging the company] unless given $Y", it's very easy to end up on the wrong side of the law. You probably won't end up in jail, but you lose all leverage as soon as you make a mistake, which is easy to do. If you're negotiating for severance, you should always let a lawyer do it. It's also a lot easier to get "soft" terms (positive reference, right to represent oneself as employed, possibly without pay) because those are connected to adverse actions. If you're getting a bad reference, you do have cause to get out in front of the smear and disparage the company. ("We have to get our stories straight. It's best for both of us. Here's what I want, and here's what you get.") But if it's about cash severance, the payment and your disparagement are unrelated enough that it's best avoided.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paywall - To get this full article use the google link:

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsloanreview.mit.edu%2Farticle%2Fwhen- is-it-legal-to-lie-in- negotiations%2F&ei=RsCtU4arKu21sATJr4Aw&usg=AFQjCNFZfFW3Y7a7i5MKut6R0vx2CfcLzQ&bvm=bv.69837884,d.cWc&cad=rja)

(Or Google "when is it legal to lie in negotiations")

<comment><USER17> Paywalled again even on the google link.

<comment><USER18> try opening in private/incognito.

apropos nothing, congrats the the NYT for convincing my parents to do general browsing with cookies off.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, my wife now keeps Google Chrome on her iPhone solely to open NYT links in incognito mode.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Importing with ctypes in Python: preventing overflows - <AUTHOR> https://www.cossacklabs.com/blog/fighting-ctypes-overflows.html <comment><USER2> Even being a happy Themis user myself, I wonder how irregular style in some languages (like Python) is.</comment>


Show HN: OneQstn iMessage App - <AUTHOR> https://www.oneqstn.com/imessageapp <comment><AUTHOR> I've run OneQstn.com for a few years now and always wanted to make an app for it. Simply porting the site to an app didn't make much sense but with iMessage extensions launched last year it seemed like a better fit, it's been in beta for a while but officially available on the App Store from today.</comment>


Hackers penetrated Nasdaq's network - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/05/technology/nasdaq_hacked/index.htm

<comment><USER2> The original story is on WSJ; <http://on.wsj.com/emLNyH> Might wanna read their instead. ;)

This has been long suspected!

<comment><USER3> I prefer the WSJ version. I wonder what the suspects story will be? "I just wanted to look around!", "I wanted to setup my own high-frequency trading system, figured I'd reduce the latency some..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Think I would have chosen a better word to use than 'penetrated' in the story title. Not the best choice in my opinion. Just doesn't flow or sound good to say at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone help me build a basic autonomous tool carrying ag platform? - <AUTHOR> it doesnt have to be fancy. agtech and VCs are not going to build anything meaningful for food producing farmers.
guaranteeed, the thousands of vulnerable farm workers are going to succumb to this pandemic. they already have compromised immune system form pesticides and pollution and no insurance.
even if they remain healthy, they deserve technology to keep them safe and healthy. as a farmer, i want to be able to continue farming without sacrificing econommically vulnerable populations. i want affordable technology that makes farming easy on smaller acreage for local food security.
it will be a changed world when these next four weeks of quarantine ends. we still have to grow food. small acreage farmers need help.
i am not a technical person, but i know every single ag platform out there and that has been out there for the past five years. i have seen them in action. i know how they work and i know how they will fail. i know their strengths and weaknesses. farming is my domain. tech isnt.
any input or thoughts also helpful. <comment><USER2> I'm sorry I don't fully understand what you are trying to build. Is this a physical platform form moving farming tools?

Are you able to elaborate more into the problem and how this will solve it?

<comment><AUTHOR> An autonomous universal tool carrier platform but for minimal/no till farming systems.

Last year, an 110 acre farm closed...farmer leased it from the park system..we can make it farmland again to grow local food but to be able to hire locally and teach people from scratch, the platform should learn as well as teach new farmers.

We educate everyone now. This isn't 1920s. How to attract them ..an educated workforce..back to farming?

I doubt we will ever go back to where we were with food supply and production when shelter in place is lifted in may.

I can talk to the city and the park systems..but I need to be able to show that it is a jobs generator as well as a local food security solution.

We are not going to get farm labour back and they won't be working in urban farms in expensive Bay Area.</comment></comment>


Smalltalk image persistence – definitive developer advantage - <AUTHOR> http://damirhorvat.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/smalltalk-image-persistence-definitive-developer-advantage/

<comment><USER2> _With every update to SQL schema, you need to restart the database server_

I know there are some RDBMS haters on the Internet but this is just plain ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Despite this overstatement, you did get the point didn't you?</comment></comment>


Do you still use Sublime Text 2 for coding? - <AUTHOR>

It is still in Alpha mode and has not been updated since Feb. Will it goes the route of Textmate? Not sure if it is worth to purchase it. <comment><USER2> I only recently started using but I'm still using it in it's "trial" mode, was planning to purchase later but your point actually makes me wonder. So far tho, it's been excellent and for my needs - amazing replacement for my previous IDEs, yes I know, technically ST2 isn't a "full IDE" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in the same position where I planned to purchase it to support to the developer. I am worried that there is no further development.

<comment><USER3> You can see the development progress here (<http://www.sublimetext.com/dev>). It still very active development.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am aware of the dev build. But latest stable version is still in Feb 2012.

<comment><USER3> The dev version work just fine for me and I use it almost everyday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm using Sublime Text 2 dev version (<http://www.sublimetext.com/dev>), [2203] release date - 19 June 201 and I love it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, a nice balance between full IDE and text editor</comment>


MIT shows DIY cell phone - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57422062-1/awesome-diy-cell-phone-has-universal-appeal/

<comment><AUTHOR> would be interesting to see this one out in the wild ;)</comment>


Tutorial for manipulating rendering of a game when you only have the binary - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PeterTh/GameManipTutorial <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't mine, I found it posted on a gaming forum and thought it would be interesting to others here.</comment>


Page load fail makes it difficult to cook cornbread in the woodstove - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=773619

<comment><USER3> [http://joey.hess.usesthis.com/](http://joey.hess.usesthis.com/)

"This place is nicely remote, and off the grid, relying on solar power. I only get 50 amp-hours of juice on a sunny day, and often less than 15 amp-hours on a bad day. So the whole house runs on 12 volt DC power to avoid the overhead of an inverter; my laptop is powered through a succession of cheap vehicle power adapters, and my home server runs on 5 volt power provided by a USB adapter.

"When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light"

<comment><USER4> That whole usesthis was a joy to read, but I have this exact dream as well:

>I dream of a ARM-based netbook with exceptionally good battery life, an E-ink display, and fully open and non-proprietary hardware

<comment><USER5> After digging into things like this for awhile, it seems like the hardest part would be getting a big e-ink display. There are dozens of low cost/low power arm based Linux computers out there, but hobby e-ink displays over 3" are hard to find.

<comment><USER6> Are there even e-ink displays with characteristics suitable for hacker/developer use? Their application has been so greatly limited to e-readers that I'm unclear how well current displays would function in a general-purpose system.

Likewise, the impression I've gotten is that that e-ink has been kind of stuck behind the dominance of LCD (and OLED to a lesser extent), both in perceived desirability and in resources being put into R&D.

<comment><USER7> Pixel Qi had some pretty interesting products being developed including reflective LCD displays. I am not sure how readable they are in low light conditions, but I always thought it would be cool to have one of these for programming.

<comment><USER8> Pixel Qis are not e-ink but still amazing. As you said they are reflective LCD, and can also be backlit, thus readable in low light just like a regular LCD. Their market is also small devices, so the size problem is still there (Last time I checked I think there max size was 10.1 inches)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Only crazy people put sugar in cornbread:

10" round (iron) skillet

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup cooking oil

3/4 teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons baking powder (not baking soda)

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 cup unbleached white flour (or 1/2 whole wheat + 1/2 white)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees: In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, oil and salt until well blended. Sift in the baking powder and whisk until foamy. Quickly mix in the cornmeal and flour. Beat until the batter is smooth. Pour into an oiled 10" round cast iron skillet. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. (Okay to freeze the leftovers.)

Once cooled, crumble into bowl, add milk for a breakfast-type cereal.

<comment> shawn-butler Amen, but I prefer high butterfat butter to vegetable oils: [http://www.ansonmills.com/recipes/464](http://www.ansonmills.com/recipes/464)

A serious argument [0] can be made that sugar crept in due to the switch from stone milling to steel rollers circa 1900 which greatly affected the flavor of corn meal due to the amount of the kernel being lost but also the heat generated.

Kind of a double whammy... the heat robs it of flavor which is made up for by adding sugar and also decreases the nutrient value of the meal by milling out the germ.

[0]: [http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/08/why-southern-cornbread- sh...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/08/why-southern-cornbread-shouldnt- have-sugar.html)

<comment><USER10> If you haven't already try lard.

<comment><USER11> But understand that typically, American grocery store lard (the sort that comes in shelf-stable buckets) uses partially hydrogenated oils containing trans fats; After destroying the lard industry in a slanderous PR war early last century ("It's digestible!"), eventually the vegetable shortening / margarine industry (Crisco et al) decided they needed something to sell to very poor people and people following an insistent recipe, so they applied their hydrogenation tech to porkfat feedstocks, creating a product that did not need to be refrigerated.

According to current nutritional doctrine, you should not buy unrefrigerated pork fat products because of trans fats, even if pork fat itself is no longer vilified.

<comment><USER12> Lard renders it non-vegetarian, which can be a significant change.

<comment><USER10> And the eggs don't?

<comment><USER12> No, eggs make it non-vegan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another classic funny bug report, this time from Linus Torvalds to Fedora's flash plugin: [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858)

      Description of problem:
      youtube no workee - fedora 9 not usable for wife
      How reproducible:
      I didn't try a lot of videos, but I couldn't find a single one
      that actually worked. And what's the internet without the rick-roll?

</comment><comment><USER14> This indeed is the pathological case of awful pattern of modal notifications stealing focus. Here the "notification" that connection has failed indeed destroys the whole page you have been working on (by replacing the content you care about, with some message about which you could care less).

The browser (or application, or desktop environment) should be smart enough to allow enqueuing such notification and presenting it via some facility that respects users task and only shows the message via some non-focus-stealing approach. Such as growl.

The bug means loss of user information. We as developers should be treating the user's information as sancrosanct. Such as never presenting question "Do you want to save?". Instead, save everything implicitly. Don't steal focus to ask for confirmation: instead offer unobtrusive undo. Allow user to delete when he wishes so. (Like Gmail does.) Never lose user-entered information. Never destroy user's flow. Never destroy user's view (workspace).

<comment><USER15> The danger, of course, is that presenting a half finished page and someone missing the growl message. They continue using the page, but miss out on critical information that would have otherwise informed their current actions.

In this case, presenting an overlay saying the page did not finish loading, and you can continue reading if you want with the caveat that the last part of the recipe, perhaps the most critical part, is not present.

After all, if you don't give that cornbread a minute or two to settle and cool, you'll burn your tongue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not to distract from the corn bread recipes (which, in all serious, actually led me down some interesting links to some things I intend to have a closer look at later), but what is the mechanism behind the described failure of the browser? Is it when the original page doesn't fully load? Is it a certain type of resource that half-loads? It's happened to me a couple of very inconvenient times (though not quite to that level) and I'd be interested in any possible mitigation strategies.

<comment><USER17> if the net connection dies while page resources (but not the actual html) are still loading, the already-loaded-partial-page is replaced with an error message

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> While we're sharing cornbread recipes, here's mine.

This is a different kind of cornbread, not highly sweetened, low in fat and high in fiber, but very tasty.

Utensils:

9.5" Pyrex pie pan (a fairly deep one, not one of the really shallow ones)

Two large bowls

Wire whisk

Dry ingredients:

1 cup cornmeal, or half cornmeal and half polenta (a coarser cornmeal)

1 cup oat bran

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:

1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt (I use Trader Joe's French Village, or Nancy's plain nonfat - it's the same yogurt under either name)

1/2 cup orange or apple juice

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 large egg or two small

Other ingredients:

Butter to grease the pie pan

Process:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Generously grease the pie pan with butter.

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl with the wire whisk.

Mix wet ingredients in the other bowl (a large one) with the wire whisk.

Pour dry ingredients into wet and mix together.

Pour the batter into the pie pan.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve hot, with maple syrup or good quality (not too sweet) jam or fruit spread.

</comment><comment><USER19> Mobile Safari on iOS behaves similarly. Trying to scroll, I sometimes I click on a link accidentally. When network is slow, going back to the original page does a reload and takes ages or even fails.

<comment><USER20> On the iPad I can have a tab fully loaded, switch to a different tab, switch back and inexplicably it will try to reload the first tab and barf if it can't. So forget loading a page to read later if later happens to be on a plane or train...

Or worse, it is impossible to fill in a form by cutting and pasting between two tabs. Because at some point it will just decide for no particular reason to reload the form and you lose everything.

<comment> nezza-_- Which iPad are you using? For me it improved a lot after upgrading from the iPad Mini to the retina iPad Mini... I still hate the behaviour and it still occasionally happens.

<comment><USER20> The Air (1)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A cornbread recipe without eggs, milk or sugar, very wholesome:

400g cornflour

200g wheat flour

250ml water (add gradually, moisture depends on relative humidity)

Teaspoon of baking powder

Teaspoon of salt

Mix.

Form into balls.

Heat an iron pan, gently. Press balls into desired shape and place on pan.

Cook, covered. If uncovered, turn to roast both sides.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've seen that problem in chrome before with images; I was trying to read a massive flowchart; the part I was interested in was on the top, and I was busy tracing it with my finger and getting what I needed, when the entire image vanished and was replaced with a placeholder because it timed out while downloading.

This is not just a problem with HTML renderers; JPEG renderers do it too.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ha! I knew this had to be Joeyh before reading the article.

<comment><USER24> Yup. Mr Hess has a whimsical style which I find amusing.

I won't be able to reproduce this bug until February, and even then it will be Parkin (a form of cake made with oats) rather than Cornbread.

Seriously, if I found myself on dialup right now (or more likely a very slow mobile connection) I'd ssh into the shell account and use links from there at least for initial searching and text based information.

I'm wondering if there is some form of directive in the html of the requested page that forces a page refresh every now and again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> FWIW, the statement about the superiority of Chromium does not match my experience. I certainly recall reading a page on mobile Chrome (iOS) under poor radio coverage and having the whole page replaced after a few minutes with an error about the page being not available.

<comment><USER26> It's sad that after 20 years of the web, it still doesn't work properly. These kinds of bugs should have been solved years ago.

<comment><USER27> This is actually a relatively new "feature" of web browsers. When I was a kid, if a page didn't load completely it would just make do with whatever assets it could grab. Images would be replaced with a stand-in icon and some descriptive text.

<comment> undrcvr-lagggal 4realz are you serious? What is the actual downside of that? As a kid, it made perfect sense to me, and I often would right click the image and press reload or just refresh the whole page. Now whenever images don't load (which is often these days, since cloudfare blocks tor 90% of the time until you load the image in a separate window and fill out their captcha, and even without tor, wireless networks tend to be extremely unreliable), it's not easy to tell whether the page is broken, since it just collapses the spaces where the images would have been.

Further, if you directly view an image and it breaks half way, the browser will hide it and say it's corrupt (and have no "show anyway" button), unless the size wasn't provided, then the browser just thinks it's valid, despite that it could parse the JPEG file and find out that lines of pixels are missing. Calling either of these cases a feature seems very biased.

We aren't even talking about one of the worse problems, which is when a page fails to load, the browser doesn't try to reload it - you have to come back and press reload yourself. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours doing this.

<comment><USER28> Apparently there are people who think it's "aesthetically unpleasing", which doesn't make much sense to me either: [http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63343&star...](http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63343&start=0)

There's also this related bug which contains over a decade of discussion:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41924](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41924)

I agree that it makes more sense to give the indication "here is an image but it couldn't be displayed" than to have them disappear completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Besides all the jokes - which are funny - this is something I posted a bug about before, when working on slow unreliable networks this can happen. You end up reading half the page, and then it tells you it can be displayed.

</comment><comment><USER30> Suggestion: turn off "call waiting".

</comment><comment><USER31> Weird title change by mods. Used to match the page and gave proper context: "page load fail makes it difficult to cook cornbread in the woodstove"

<comment><USER32> I think the title change was in poor taste here. Most people don't really care about this issue for a browser in of itself, but the mailing list dialogue made the link interesting.

<comment><USER18> And as a practical matter, I believe the title change led directly to downvotes for my cornbread recipe and perhaps the recipes that other people posted last night. Mine was at +4 last night, now down to +2.

I try not to worry much about downvotes, but I do use them as a signal to help me understand what kinds of comments are appreciated or not.

I often read the HN threads before looking at the original article, and I can easily imagine reading these comments after the title change and thinking, "Why are these people talking about _cornbread recipes_? What does this have to do with page loads or Iceweasel? Downvote!"

In this case, though, "cornbread" was right there in the title when we started sharing our recipes last night, and the original article talks about baking cornbread and links to a recipe. So the recipes weren't entirely irrelevant at the time we posted them - and the initial upvotes seemed to confirm that - <USER2> the title change sure makes them look off-topic.

<comment><USER32> I actually meant to mention this in my original post but forgot: the first comment I saw when I opened this last night was your recipe. I thought that was a good indicator of where the discussion was going before the title change altered the tone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you don't bake your cornbread in a cast iron skillet, you're Doing It Wrong™.</comment>


I'm a fucking webmaster - <AUTHOR> https://justinjackson.ca/webmaster/ <comment><USER3> I love nostalgia posts. I think all of us who were "webmasters" all have a differed "what we are now", but if everything didn't start this way for me, I don't think I'd be doing what I am doing today regardless.

I remember making a ball bounce in Flash with some elasticity and people wanted it on their website no matter what their website was about. The 90's were such strange times. "Can you put that bouncing ball on my site?" I guess, but I'm not sure what it has to do with carpet cleaning....

I still get asked to disable the right mouse button, add background music, a counter, or make something blink or scroll, and every now and then... an animated gif (usually of a U.S. flag).

Luckily I've been doing this long enough now to say, no, please don't do this to yourself or your business. You've spent too much money and too much time to throw it all away with a tiny design disaster. But they insist. Ohhhh they insist.

<comment><USER4> Remember huge Flash intros to sites? I overheard someone trying to add that to a site in 2015 and being adamant that it's what people need to see because they don't know what the site is about until they have a pretty intro.

I've noticed the people that insist on micromanaging everything like that with web technologies tend to not stay in business very long or don't want to do much besides pay for the website like people pay for refrigerators. Great for the web hosting companies that will take $30 / mo on a site that gets 1000 hits / month but terrible for web designers that need repeat business once in a while.

<comment><USER5> Today we have a huge generic image with one-three words not really stating much and sometimes an indication that you need to start scrolling to actually read something.

Or was that last year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OP here. This is a follow-up to my original essay: "This is a web page."

[https://justinjackson.ca/words.html](https://justinjackson.ca/words.html)

<comment><USER7> Plx 2 add firstname.lastname@example.com in footer khtnxbye

Seriously though, I loved reading this. Thank you!

<comment><USER6> Hahaha. A few other folks have mentioned that too. Updated!

Have you seen [http://tomstrucking.net](http://tomstrucking.net) yet? ;)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I find the lack of under construction signs and badly alpha blended gifs disturbing! ;o)

(By which I mean: it's a thing of beauty!)

<comment><USER6> Oooh. I definitely need to add an under construction gif.

<comment><USER7> Loving the sign! ;o)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you have noticed that the most responsive web pages are sites without the CSS styles(or with just few rules)? I can run such web pages even on 10 year old mobile phone and also load a whole HTML document with a throttled connection to 10KB/s quiet quick. The sad thing is that modern webdevelopers tends to forget about it. Long time ago I realized the really good way of developing a webpage is just writing down some bare HTML (maybe just a grid and typography CSS) with only grayscale colors applied - if it will look bad then it is a bad design.

If we are speaking of memories of the "old-ways" of developing websites I remind mostly one thing - rounded corners. I remember how many web devs were trying to make a table (3x3) and put content in the center cell, and fill corners with some gifs. Nevertheless, it was not the only one method which some webmasters were using - a hacky VML file [1]

[1] [https://code.google.com/archive/p/curved- corner/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/curved-corner/)

</comment><comment><USER9> _> And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.

>The world still needs some fucking webmasters. We might not all be making websites professionally anymore. But we should keep making websites. The passion, the freedom, the joy: we need to pass this on._

I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to empower people but the technology (e.g. simpler format of HTML, or open standards instead of walled gardens, etc) is not really the issue even though it looks that way. I've commented on this illusion before[1].

The underlying issue is the asymmetry between active participants and passive spectators. Most people _don 't care_ to make an HTML web page. On the other hand... Uploading a photo of a cat or plate of food to facebook or twitter? Or type a short response comment to a niece saying "love your new dress!"? Yes, a good percentage of people will conquer the threshold of complexity to do that... but it's still not the majority of users.

Even though I don't like it, I've come to terms with the fact that the human race is "wired" to make easy posts on Facebook rather than maintain an HTML web page on a server they control. Most people don't want to be "webmasters".

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010540)

<comment><USER10> But if web sites were easier to make, more people would make them.

In the 1990s I had friends who literally knew nothing at all about computers but still managed to hack together their own sites with a text editor and some persistence.

It was so easy anyone of average and above IQ could do it.

Often the results were - let's say - not that great as graphic design. But they got the job done well enough to be useful.

So I don't think it's an illusion at all. I think the barriers to entry have become way too high. There's certainly

If the barriers were lower, I'm not convinced we'd need FB and Tumblr and the rest _at all._

<comment><USER11> > But if web sites were easier to make, more people would make them.

Websites are as easy to make now as they ever were. HTML from the 1990s still works fine. The barriers to entry haven't actually moved at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >We need to remember that at its core a web page is simple. That's the beauty of it. And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that.

I absolutely agree.

People seem to forget that the fundamental nature of the web hasn't changed. Facebook hasn't destroyed the web, javascript and that framework you hate haven't destroyed the web, advertising hasn't destroyed the web (arguably, the web has destroyed advertising), the NSA hasn't destroyed the web (yet.) You can still open up the text editor of your choice and write some HTML and put it on a server. That still works, and it will probably always work - <USER2> readable, human writable, human accessible content. You can still write it all by hand if you want, you don't have to know how to code, you're not forced to conform to arbitrary standards, or use proprietary software.

In the end, no matter how much abstraction modern developers pile on to make it look and act like "legitimate" application programming, the web is just HTML, CSS, javascript and some embedded content, probably images, possibly of cats. Sometimes, in the midst of how homogeneous and corporatized the web can appear, I think it helps to be reminded of how revolutionary it still is because of its fundamental simplicity and accessibility.

</comment><comment><USER12> A fun read and trip down memory lane, of the times sitting with an HTML book open on my lap and trying to write code that would display what I wanted. Being one of those artsy-fartsy types meant that I could experiment with design. Seamless frames! Links to other pages that actually work and reference each other! Hitting the 'Preview' screen from the editor to test things...over and over...

...and of course, the ever lovely habit of "View Source" which leads to interesting things. Like finding the large "Never Forget" at the top of the linked page. Fun times.

But for sure, there _was_ a certain aura and power around being able to not only navigate the web (OMG .WAV SOUNDS FROM MOVIES!) but put up a sign that other people could see. Then get good enough to get paid for work doing such things. A good reminder type essay methinks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some people want to be left alone in their html `pages` club where they check for errors in the w3c validator. Some people want to make the browser usurp native applications and become the baseline for user interactions.

I don't look back at the 90's with rose-colored glasses. Web was often overlooked and we were considered 2nd rate citizens among `real` software developers. These days, the browser is a competitive alternative to native and it was years of struggle to get here. Over taking a decade of "web" understanding and convincing people that "web" is capable of more than just html.

The web is made up of people's decisions and their technology choices they choose to use. Which is basically written in every alistapart article since 1999. So let's not sit in nostalgia. Push forward with better technology because this thinking only makes it harder for those that invent and struggling for adoption from `thought leaders` who wish the world was just a series of hyperlinked XML pages.

</comment><comment><USER14> The link to the "Sporks" website is hilarious, it even has an order form for "sporks gear":

> Do not do this. There are no shirts. This site is 20 years old. What's wrong > with you?

[https://www.spork.org/spork-gear.shtml](https://www.spork.org/spork- gear.shtml)

And this anti-IE site has some nice badges we can still add to our websites:

[http://toastytech.com/evil/buttons.html](http://toastytech.com/evil/buttons.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Well now blogs and feed based websites have mostly replaced the end-user need to craft their own websites.

The convenience does not come at zero cost, though. This is putting power in too few hands. A few people decide how the web looks like, what is possible and what is not.

Facebook is now the new Internet Explorer, an unavoidable entity that dictates what the web experience is like.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's so refreshing to see good 'ol blue links, that are underlined and stand out accordingly from the rest of the copy. So many sites try to get too fancy with links nowadays and you can't even tell what is a link and what isn't.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool, but disappointed his name at the end links to Twitter - he just undid everything he just said.

His name should link to his homepage or about page, of which he has no links to from the article. These pages are IMHO a million times more interesting than the frankly awful mess Twitter has made of profile homepages. What with the big fonts on some tweets - I don't know why some tweets have large fonts. A good interface would instantly make it clear why.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is exactly the reason I created minni - [https://github.com/jyotiska/minni](https://github.com/jyotiska/minni), a static site generator I use to host my own blog. Link to the blog - [http://jyotiska.github.io/blog/](http://jyotiska.github.io/blog/). Simple, clean and content only.

<comment><USER19> The link you wanted was [https://github.com/jyotiska/minni](https://github.com/jyotiska/minni) as the one you provided links to a different github user :)

<comment><USER18> Oops! Fixed it. Thanks for pointing out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember when bandwidth was at a premium and 1200 baud was fast. There were pleas everywhere to use simple html, white text on black. Images were links to download if you wanted to view them and encouraged only if they added to the content. Nobody was trying to make the web into television.

<comment><USER21> When 1200 baud was fast there were no pleas to use simple html - there was no html!

You might have had me with 56k or even 28.8kbps (V.92!), but 1200 baud. When 1200 baud was fast - yes, everywhere was simple text on the screen (maybe ANSI colors), but more along the lines of Compuserve or a BBS. And yes, you had to download images. The best were the progressive scan ones where you could view the incomplete images as they downloaded.

Ah, the memories...

<comment><USER22> I had a 28.8k modem.

But my internet connection was rural, and 1200 baud. It was possible.

<comment><USER21> I believe it, but that wasn't considered fast at the time. And your point is definitely valid - there were web page size optimizations done with dial-up users in mind. I even remember programs that simulated loading time at different download speeds.

But around 1980, 1200 baud was considered lightning fast! Imagine the jump from 300 to 1200 baud. But back then, HTML wasn't even a consideration and network connections were completely text-based sessions. If you were lucky, you had some control over colors. _If_ you were lucky...

<comment><USER22> All I'm saying is that when there were 28.8 modems, people in rural areas didn't always see those. In 1995. When you could do simple tables, images, and font colors. I remember it well because I worked with a rural ISP to make their web page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ahh the good old day's of shoving images into tables to create a layout.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wanted to check out his root site. Not really sure if he is walking the walk [https://justinjackson.ca/](https://justinjackson.ca/)

<comment><USER25> Wordpress, 3+ plugins, 55kb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can empathize with the message of this essay because I feel like it reflects the roots of my career, but I wouldn't share this with anyone I know because there is so much unnecessary cursing in this that gives it a really immature feel. You can totally get the message of this across without the crass language. It only detracts, not helps, in my opinion.

I'm saying this as someone who swears a lot, too.

<comment><USER27> Disagree. For emphasis on the power of being a "webmaster" AND to capture what that meant in the cultural vernacular of various pipsqueaks who claimed that title when it was a thing, you could do little better than a qualifier like "fucking" or "motherfucking" or "goddamn". You could for instance, write this with a theme embodied like, "I am webmaster, hear me roar" or "webmaster of my domain or something", but I think you are simply sanitizing the ego-boosting high and kind of crass thinking that often came with discovering that particular power, at that particular time. For an ancient courtier who discovered how he can manipulate the realm, you could probably expect a much more refined if still ego-laden expression of that power.

<comment><USER26> It doesn't read that way to me, it just reads as an adjective to make the article more "shocking" and illustrate the role of a webmaster to appear more against the grain of our little IT/startup world.

I think the rest of the essay does a great job of explaining why and how webmasters were so important and how they were/are the ultimate problem solver. No ego boosting qualifiers necessary.

<comment><USER28> Mainly those who are indeed somewhat shocked (usually due to some still active puritan heritage) actually think that such words were meant to "make the article more 'shocking'".

The rest don't even blink when we see them -- especially from countries without a history of a prudish outlook on things.

One can see people getting slashed with knives and shot in the head on PG13 movies -- words like these are nothing compared to that.

<comment><USER26> The primary use of cursing is when one is frustrated or angry and wants to draw attention to an issue. I think it's safe to say that adding a swear word to a title is going to draw attention to the title simply because the use of the swear word.

I'm not shocked, I'm just bored of the "I'm a fucking <nostalgic or out of style thing>" or "This fucking <nostalgic or out of style thing>" trend. Just because swearing hasn't become so blasé to a person doesn't mean they have an "active puritan heritage".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think this needs to be in a nostalgia webring.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome :)

<comment><USER31> correction: it is fucking awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why do I need to make a website? I've got a Twitter feed and a Facebook page.

</comment><comment><USER33> Reminds me of this

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

I wonder if it is the same guy.

Edit: Nope, @thebarrytone made mfw.com

<comment><USER34> See also: [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com)

<comment><USER35> Ugh, more of this low-contrast nonsense. Give me black text or give me death.

<comment><USER36> This one is obviously for you: [https://bestmotherfucking.website/](https://bestmotherfucking.website/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are the profanities really necessary? I guess they are, considering you're using them as a crutch for the lack of anything interesting to say.

<comment><USER38> I suppose you should've used some yourself.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Browser Session Record and Replay - <AUTHOR> I would like to be able to record and replay some simple browser interaction. Like registering a domain on Godaddy. But the web automation tools I had seen are too complex or not open source. Are there open source libraries that can be used for browser automation that could trigger record and reply in a browser? <comment><USER2> Not exactly what you asked for, but if you can code you can use any integration testing framework for any language and program the browser to fill out fields, click buttons, read HTML content, etc.</comment>


Show HN: har, a fast, random access replacement for tar - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/acg/har A proof-of-concept thing I threw together yesterday. Let me know what you think! <comment><AUTHOR> This is a little proof-of-concept thing I threw together yesterday. The har(1) and unhar(1) programs are both 54 line shell scripts.

Let me know what you think!</comment>


Ian M. Ross, a President at Bell Labs, Dies at 85 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/ian-ross-who-led-bell-labs-dies-at-85.html

<comment><USER2> Dup: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5388382></comment>


Building Momentum in Your Business | Ketchup Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.ketchupweek.com/2008/business-momentum <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to also add that Ketchup Week is a really great time of year to kick start your app.

Got a Twitter url this year as well <https://twitter.com/ketchupweek></comment>


How actual users feel about your cumbersome password policies - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3fzg1u/websites_should_post_their_password_requirements/

<comment><USER2> My answer on the headline, without reading: "annoyed"

<comment><USER3> Word too short, at least 8 letters required

/s ;)</comment></comment>


FCC gives ISPs another $563M to build rural-broadband networks - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/fcc-gives-isps-another-563-million-to-build-rural-broadband-networks/ <comment><USER2> Good luck. I would be happy with even two nines of reliability and 5mb down and 1.5 up. But here I am, a whole hour outside a top 30 metro area, with only one internet option that isn't broadband or hughesnet. Rural people are the forgoten population in the tech progress.

</comment><comment><USER3> Again?

They did this regularly with the telecoms, too.

At this point it's just a gift to the corporations, no one anywhere believes they'll actually build rural broadband with it.

<comment><USER4> In northwestern Kansas, we got gigabit fiber laid everywhere, thanks to a rider to the hurricane Katrina relief bill.

<comment><USER3> So you're saying the solution to this problem is political pork?

<comment><USER4> The rider was available for any telecommunications company in the US to apply for grants. Our local one did a bunch of homework and got several hundred million on their grant. Of course, they also used the money to lay the fiber, instead of paying CEO bonuses or shareholder dividends.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you translate your site? - <AUTHOR>

How do you get your website translated on the cheap?  In other words, after you create your string table in English, how do you get the actual translations in other languages?  My hope is there's something more cost-effective than using an expensive translation firm yet less work than using Mechanical Turk or crowdsourcing to your users.  Is there a happy medium I'm not seeing? <comment><USER2> I have some experience in this area. At work we often have to translate (or have translated) bid documents, contracts, documentation, training materials and software menus. Further, my wife does contract work proof-reading translations.

Summary: Translating well is very, very hard. Most translations are poor. Good translations are usually very expensive.

You will get what you pay for, with some margin of error. If someone is cheap, I most strongly recommend you do some additional work getting the results checked. Make sure you have a method of evaluating the translations.

We assess the quality required, then use professional translators in the appropriate prices range. Poor translations will noticeably affect your users' perceptions of your product.

And no, I don't think there is a happy meduim you've missed. I would also advise you to be careful using the Mechanical Turk without an independent method of assessing the result.

Sorry to be so negative, but we've had some bad experiences through over- optimism. Learn caution from our mistakes.

<comment><USER3> You are right, particularly about legal documents, but there are ways to go about it. Translating the text of a web site is not a huge amount of work. One important thing is to use a native speaker conversant with current usage in your target country and s/he should have some knowledge of the problem domain, law, medicine, as appropriate. A good place to look for translators is at a local university with a lqrge population of foreigners.

<comment><USER2> We have had very bad experiences with such _ad hoc_ arrangements. One customer - fortunately a good one who effectively counts as a friend - was reduced to tears of laughter by one translation, and it was one that we'd had checked by two independent methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Give <http://translationcreation.com> a try. I worked for this startup a couple years ago, I saw recently that it was finally launched, looking good.</comment>


Ask HN: Data sources for large scale real estate analysis? - <AUTHOR>

I'm dabbling in real estate investments, especially in vacation destinations. I'd love to be able to do some targeted analysis on these markets, like average appreciation in value over a period of years and so on. However, access to this type of data is exceedingly difficult to find. I know that Zillow does have (sometimes) past sale prices, and if that's all I have to work with, I suppose I can try scraping that site. However, are there other sources of information out there you are aware of?
Again, I'm not making a business out of the data...it's for personal use. I'm just trying to make educated decisions.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Best source would probably be the county appraisers office. Usually most have it online. But also many have bulk data you can request for analysis.

Since you mention it's for specific areas you should be able to do this easy enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://inyocloud.com/features.html](http://inyocloud.com/features.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this a data source?</comment></comment>