Patent troll Lodsys now after apps with 'More Apps' links - <AUTHOR> http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=100387

<comment><USER2> The only difference between Lodsys and large software/hardware companies like Microsoft and Oracle is the size of their litigation targets.

I'm beyond convinced that the entire software patent systems needs to be abolished.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that Microsoft hates software patents (at least when BillG was CEO), has only registered them out of necessity, has historically only sued relatively few other companies, and only done so with either real patents (non-obvious, read beyond the patent title) or as a retaliation of being sued itself. I'm sure there are a few exceptions here as there are always.

<comment><USER2> They aren't suing every Android OEM out of necessity. Microsoft has converted to patent troll in lieu of innovating in the mobile space.

<comment><USER4> That's not exactly true- they are innovating, but they're also a patent troll. There's no reason why they can't be both.

<comment><USER5> You can't be a patent troll if you're actually making a product. The entire "business model" of a patent troll is to make money off of lawsuits, not from actually selling things.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Though of course, if a big company that was actually making things, bought a patent troll and just let the get on with their business, I'd still be inclined to call the new subsidiary a patent troll.

<comment><USER5> This is true. I probably should have said "companies that make products related to their patents cannot be patent trolls".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The act of writing software can be summarized as generating ideas and writing down these ideas in a language computers can understand and execute. Software programmers are in the business of writing ideas all day. This combined with the fact that the bar for ideas being patentable is very low means that programmers probably generate and write down multiple patentable ideas per day. From the get go they are inevitably setting up a huge patent minefield.

I don't know if anyone has ever calculated the average density of patentable ideas in code, but if you consider, for example, that performing an online transaction with the last entered customer data (the infamous 1-Click patent) is patentable, I would very roughly estimate that there is a patentable idea every 20 to 50 lines of code. As an example, the Linux kernel (just the very core of Linux) contains more that 10 millions lines of code. If you consider a complete Linux distribution (by adding the graphical user interface and a bunch of utilities) you get at least ten times that amount, that is more than 100 millions lines of code. Using the rough estimate above, we can calculate that there are more than 2 millions patentable ideas in a consumer operating system. That is an incredible amount of complexity. In fact, it is a testament to human ingenuity that we can (sometimes) get all this code to work together.

Now code is not used side by side like an infantry of little computer processes working in parallel to make computers or phones go. It is rather organised and packaged in a huge network of building blocks, a pyramid of hundreds of thousands of libraries, APIs or functions heavily inter-dependent on each other. What's more, the building blocks are usually not all written by the same people or organisations and their consistent and stable behavior is critical for enabling compatibility (remember, often between millions of parts made by thousands of developers).

This hierarchical and networked architecture is inevitable and the best way to organise complex information, however the stability it requires at the bottom of the pyramid means that some building blocks cannot be changed once the pyramid is built. Someone claiming ownership of the shape of a bottom block after the pyramid is built, someone having the power to force a bottom block to be removed and replaced with a different shaped one, no matter how simple and obvious this bloc is, does not have power over just this block but over the whole structure above it and all the components that depend on it. This means patent holders have a disproportionately large amount of power when they target such a bloc. They know that changing it would require tearing down, redesigning and replacing often thousands of dependent projects and probably break compatibility for millions of users of these projects. It is usually simply not an option.

</comment><comment><USER8> This annoys me because it is scaring off people from developing for smart phones. This patent is so vague that even if I did know every patent ever made then I would not even associate it with what patent he is claiming he has violated.

Bring back Lulzsec for a day, get them to hack their systems and delete all their patents.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had a patent for people communicating over the internet and we are all about to be sued.

<comment><USER9> Not just SmartPhones. This kind of insanity makes me question whether I should write another line of code for anything.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Opening a bar instead is looking better all the time.

<comment><USER11> Heck, run for Congress.

Then you are one the receiving end of all the bribes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How is something this vague "directed to systems and methods for providers of products and/or services to interact with users of those products and services to gather information from those users and transmit that information to the provider" patentable?!

<comment><USER12> It involves a computer -- and the examiners employed by the PTO just don't have the time or training to properly understand computer patents. That's the only explanation.

If examiners can't figure out whether something is patentable, they err on the side of good faith on the part of the applicant, and leave the question to the courts.

<comment><USER13> _It involves a computer -- and the examiners employed by the PTO just don't have the time or training to properly understand computer patents. That's the only explanation._

That's the only explanation? Doubtful.

I know someone at the patent office, an examiner who handles tech patents. When I asked about certain patents she explained that you need to look at the complete patent application and the specific behavior or items in the claim. Titles are often very broad for convenience. Also, patent applications tend to start broad and go narrow, with the overly broad requests (usually) denied.

 _If examiners can't figure out whether something is patentable, they err on the side of good faith on the part of the applicant, and leave the question to the courts._

Where did you get this information from?

As it was explained to me if a patent is not clear or what is being claimed not readily understood by the examiner then it gets sent back for revision. There does not appear to be any "good faith" involved.

Some patent holders like to claim that one of their narrowly defined patents applies to much broader behavior, and then threaten people with legal action. In this case it is quite possible for a non-tech judge to decide that a patent applies to things it really shouldn't.

I don't doubt there are bullshit patents or that some patent examiners aren't as educated as they should be, but I also don't see any reason to think the examiners are just so harried and untrained that they just shrug their shoulders and assume everything is legit.

There are two problems with the current patent system. One is that patents are granted where they shouldn't be. The other is that legitimate patents on specific, narrow, precise items or behavior are later used to extort money from people because untrained lawyers and judges will decide that a very narrow patent should, incorrectly, apply to more broader cases.

<comment><USER14> I don't see how any variation on these claims is patentable. Everything there would have been obvious 25 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was in DC yesterday, walking by the patent office and saw this quote from Lincoln over the door: "The Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity"

I wonder what Lincoln would think of Lodsys.

</comment><comment><USER16> The things what Lodsys is doing right now is actually very good. There are more copy-cat trolls coming to the market based on the same idea "buy some patents and let sue many private proprietors and ask them $1000 to drop suite".

Eventually, it will be obvious even to our representatives in Washington that something is broken and they will be forced to fix it.

As they say, our representatives will try doing the right thing but only after they try all the wrong things first.

<comment><USER17> So then, there is an important free market niche for "douchebags who are smart enough to exploit X, but too stupid and greedy to avoid outraging the wrong people."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems Lodsys was able to successfully patent the hyperlink, U.S. patent system has some serious problems. Patent trolling is not the only problem, the patent office granting patents, where the is no merit, is another big problem.

<comment><USER19> I'm not a lawyer, but I did read through all four of their patents. There's no way Lodsys can claim patenting the hyperlink. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> yeah, but that's what they are claiming, the app has a link to another app and they want to sue over that. There is not in app purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What did Lodsys get that patent in the first place!? Who were the idiots that approved the patent?

</comment><comment><USER21> My question is, if you just provide an external "Buy Me" or "More Apps" link to the App Store you would have no idea who or how many people actually use that link, and of those who use the link you would have no idea what they did once they got to the store. They could buy someone else's app, they could browse some more, they could leave a comment.

So how does that qualify as a "survey" in Lodsys's eyes?

</comment><comment><USER22> Where are all of the internet's vigilante hackers when it comes to things like this?

<comment><USER17> Lodsys might actually be an easier target than a large company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a feeling that Lodsys will continue to iterate on this theme until they get shut down. Given they have signed a licensing agreement, I'm not sure what Apple can do, but they should take as active as a role as they can from here on out. It certainly raises doubts in my mind as to what kind of "buy this app" link I can put, if anything, in any apps for myself or my clients.

</comment><comment><USER24> What someone needs to do is get a business process patent on "Patent Trolling".

<comment><USER25> IBM has got that covered: [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220070244837%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20070244837&RS=DN/20070244837)

<comment><USER26> Nice. They beat Haliburton by a full year. [http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...](http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080270152&OS=20080270152&RS=20080270152)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was planning on developing a few paid apps to test the market over the next few months, but this combined with the other mobile patent lawsuits has made me seriously reconsider it.

It's a pity the app store servers reside in the US. Otherwise i wouldn't have to worry about these things!

<comment><USER10> You're not really any safer building any other kind of software, although you may be subject to less patent troll scrutiny with a web app or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Patent law reform is a must.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any business model which can limit the damages from a patent troll?

</comment><comment><USER29> This isn't new news if you've been following this business since the start: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552563>

</comment><comment><USER30> if i was you,i'd honorably ask mr.snodgrass to eat shit and die!

</comment><comment><USER31> Silly patents. TIL it's possible to patent cross-selling methods.</comment>


Tutorials as a band-aid - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tutorialize.me/post/50577667984/tutorials-as-a-band-aid

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope you guys enjoy my blog post! Love to hear your thoughts.</comment>


Google gets green light to access five years of NHS patient data - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220344-google-gets-green-light-to-access-five-years-of-nhs-patient-data/ <comment><USER2> I assume that I have no right over my personal medical data as recorded by the NHS and can't deny the NHS the right to sell my personal data?

Of course not.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks like it was tactically timed to coincide when the British parliament and media are tied up with Brexit debates

Typical.

</comment><comment><USER4> an article without paywall:

[http://healthmedicinentral.com/health-news/google-gets- five-...](http://healthmedicinentral.com/health-news/google-gets-five-years- worth-of-sensitive-patient-data-from-nhs/)</comment>


Even the CIA is struggling to deal with the volume of real-time social data - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/even-the-cia-is-struggling-to-deal-with-the-volume-of-real-time-social-data/

<comment><AUTHOR> Complete video of Structure Data Conference talk today.</comment>


Chandrayaan-2: Stage set for India's own Moon landing - <AUTHOR> https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/chandrayaan-2-stage-set-for-indias-own-moon-landing/articleshow/70215010.cms <comment><AUTHOR> Live stream starts at 21:00 GMT - [https://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-mk- iii-m1-chandrayaan-2-mission...](https://www.isro.gov.in/gslv-mk- iii-m1-chandrayaan-2-mission/watch-live-launch-of-gslv- mkiii-m1-chandrayaan2-july-15-2019)</comment>


A Tour of Standard ML - <AUTHOR> https://saityi.github.io/sml-tour/tour/00-00-welcome.html <comment><USER2> I love Standard ML. As an undergrad, I wrote a compiler in it (through Zhong Shao's course at Yale), and it remains the most fun I've had using a programming language, let alone a functional programming language. The syntax is so simple yet it is extremely expressive. Hindley-Milner types are great, and the pattern matching is slick. SML also strikes a logical balance between purity and practicality.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dan Grossman's "Programming Languages, Part A" (In Coursera) made me fall in love with SML. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER4> This course finally made me understand the WHY of FP. Comparing and Contrasting the major programming paradigms at a high level, but also actually writing code was a great combination. Before that I just thought it was only used for people doing math and finance (which wasn't even close to right, lol)

SML is kind of like the lisp of FP. It's just the minimal core of parametric polymorphism and hindley-milner type inference, so as a beginner you don't spend thought cycles language-specific features (that would make it more useful as a general purpose language) - you just learn and understand the core concepts and techniques (such as building intuition for how to replace different kinds of loops with recursion and pattern matching) that will apply to all FP/HM languages.

<comment><USER5> > SML is kind of like the lisp of FP.

Lisp is the Lisp of FP.

SML is more the SML of FP. Alternatively, SML can be viewed as the Lisp of _statically-typed_ FP, in that, loosely, SML : Static FP :: Lisp : DynamicFP

<comment><USER6> Scheme is the lisp of FP. My understanding is that idiomatic lisp is quite imperative.

<comment><USER7> So is scheme quite often. It appears functional looking at idiomatic scheme code relying on tail-recursive programming for loops, it appears procedural/imperative if you look at all the mutation used in scheme code (fun fact: the Scheme standards R*RS do not speak of functions but of procedures). Higher-order functions aren't used all that much in many scheme code bases which is odd from the perspective of a Haskell dev.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the info. My knowledge of the lisp family is quite limited outside of emacs lisp (which usually has a quite imperative feeling).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you'd like to see more Standard ML, there's a small community on Reddit.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sml/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sml/)

</comment><comment><USER9> At [https://saityi.github.io/sml- tour/tour/02-05-recursion.html](https://saityi.github.io/sml- tour/tour/02-05-recursion.html) the claim that "This is safe [...]; it will not explode the stack" is fishy. The function as written is not "syntactically" tail-recursive. A sufficiently heroic compiler could rewrite this example into a tail-recursive accumulator-based one, but is that really required by the specification and commonly implemented in ML compilers?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct, and I will fix it. The goal here was to encourage recursion and assuage fears of recursion coming from other languages: if I remember correctly, Standard ML does define semantics around 'expansive expressions' which make them /safer/ than I think most imperative programmers (my targeted audience) would expect, but this particular example would throw an exception.

To fix it, I will rewrite this section to say that the standard requires optimising /tail-recursive/ calls away, and modify the example to be iteratively recursive, but I'd still like to assuage fears of recursion in the tour. The 'while' loop in SML is actually just a derived form, and is rewritten to recursion; there is no looping in the language. Do you have any suggestions for rewording?

This is a work in progress that I was looking for feedback on :) Thank you! If you see anything else fishy, please let me know.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for your answer! I don't have any specific wording suggestions. If you're willing to add a specific section on tail recursion, I think you might leave this example in place (with the first paragraph of the current text) and then show a tail-recursive version in the next step (with a slightly modified version of the second paragraph of the current text).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ocaml seems to get more buzz, but about 20 years ago I tried my hand at both OCaml and SML/NJ and found that I actually far preferred the latter. SML is a very nice, consistent, and practical language.

Here's a pretty thorough comparison of the two [http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/](http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/)

<comment><USER11> Today's there's also F#, which is the "" to Ocaml's ";;" and to SML's ";".

Concurrent ML is definitely worth looking at.

<comment><USER12> ConcurrentML has a outgrown its name. It is available in many different languages. I recall hearing Mike Sperber saying that his company usually just re-implemened it in whatever language they happened to work in that week.

It is a really nice system that is similar to go, but the primitives it gives you are in a way a generalisation of go's concurrency primitives.

<comment><USER13> Can you point me in the direction of any reading on this, I'd be interested to hear about it.

<comment><USER14> The canonical source is John Reppy's book:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/302685.Concurrent_Progra...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/302685.Concurrent_Programming_in_ML)

Intro article:

[https://medium.com/@asolove/synchronizable-abstractions- for-...](https://medium.com/@asolove/synchronizable-abstractions-for- understandable-concurrency-64ae57cd61d1)

There's an interesting series of blogs by Andy Wingo on comparing CML with Go and implementing it in Guile Scheme:

[https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/09/20/concurrent-ml- versu...](https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/09/20/concurrent-ml-versus-go) [https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/09/21/is-go-an- acceptable...](https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/09/21/is-go-an-acceptable- cml) [https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/10/12/an-incomplete- histo...](https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/10/12/an-incomplete-history-of- language-facilities-for-concurrency) [https://wingolog.org/archives/2017/06/29/a-new-concurrent- ml](https://wingolog.org/archives/2017/06/29/a-new-concurrent-ml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is neat, and I didn't spot any mistakes in my first very light skim through.

One practical nit is that the position of the "forward" button moves around depending on how long the section title is, so you have to keep chasing it. Possibly it could move to the left of the section title, so back and forward buttons are clustered together in a fixed place?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! I will get that fixed. Thank you for the feedback!

If you find anything else, issues and feedback are also welcome on the issue tracking @ [https://github.com/Saityi/a-tour-of-standard- ml/issues](https://github.com/Saityi/a-tour-of-standard-ml/issues) \-- I'm primarily a backend engineer, and this is my first foray into frontend; even nitpicks like this are very welcome. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very clearly written, easy to consume, easy to navigate. Thank you for this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for checking it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know how fast MLton (whole-program optimization) programs run in comparison to other languages?

<comment><USER17> When I converted a CPU-intensive program from OCaml to MLton-compiled SML, without changing any of the algorithms, I got a 30% speedup. That was more than 10 years ago though, and both compilers have seen some improvement since.

<comment> c-cube OCaml now has flambda, which is a significant improvement on its baseline optimizer. I think the difference wouldn't be that wide today :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The automatic currying of functions is awesome, even if the declaration syntax would take some time to get used to, although it's quite similar to the new JS anonymous fn declaration (x => x + 1), or maybe the inspiration is reversed.

I had the same problem getting used to Nim with it's Pascal inspired syntax. But being different is rarely a bad thing as long as it works.

<comment><USER19> > it's quite similar to the new JS anonymous fn declaration (x => x + 1), or > maybe the inspiration is reversed.

Yup, that family of syntax descends from Standard ML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> SML is a great language, but the tooling around it wasn't so hot the last time I checked (admittedly more than a decade ago. With a medium sized ( a few ten thousand lines) project I had weird build errors and in the end wrote a makefile. Not fun).

</comment><comment><USER21> To this day, I don't understand why Google made Go instead of working off of SML. While the go ecosystem is better due to the millions of man-hours poured into it, the language is inferior in every way.

To elaborate, CML is better than golang's channels and isn't broken (requiring mutexes over channels to avoid breaking qualifies as broken). SML syntax is simpler to learn, but still offers much more powerful abstractions with pattern matching. SML uses options instead of null pointer exceptions. Hindley-Milner types are clearly superior to Golang's type system (especially things like empty interface). SML has had generics for almost 25 years now while go languishes. SML has immutable data structures and they are the default for almost everything. Golang has implicit types, but SML's implicit types are much better -- especially structurally-typed records. SML's modules are amazing and simply have no comparison in go. Finally, SuccessorML is doing work toward adding a few new features to the language (for example, module type classes), but the language has an actual specification that anyone can implement (and many have) rather than the implementation effectively being the spec.

<comment><USER22> PL theoretic superiority was not the design goal. Golang was intended to be a pragmatic, bread-and-butter language for large teams with churn. Bad code needs to be screamingly obvious. It also needs to be very easy to learn. FP langs can never fill this role because it's fundamentally more difficult to think in FP terms than imperative terms. Maybe for small internal projects. (But if it's successful, it'll get rewritten in Go/Java/C++; people simply can't handle FP.)

<comment><AUTHOR> 'A Tour of Go' inspired this. The format and some of the material come from there. I think it ended up shorter than the Go tour, and I was hoping it would be very easy to learn Standard ML from it, as I do consider it to be very easy to learn. You can pull up the CML examples next to the Go ones, and other than syntax, they should be the same:

[https://tour.golang.org/concurrency/1](https://tour.golang.org/concurrency/1)

[https://saityi.github.io/sml- tour/tour/03-01-spawn.html](https://saityi.github.io/sml- tour/tour/03-01-spawn.html)

There are differences, but once you get to that point in either tour, the differences shouldn't make it hard to read; if it is hard to read or understand, that would be welcome feedback, as I have failed in my attempt to present Standard ML well. :)

(I originally posted this as a 'Show HN', hoping for feedback, so it is totally welcome.)

<comment><USER22> It is very readable. Helped me get over my initial prejudice after I actually looked at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Once and for all, What Entity and What State is best for incorporating - <AUTHOR>

I have gotten so many different answers over the years. For a web startup, in what state is it best to incorporate and what type of corporate filing is best (C, S LLC, LLP).<p>I have heard Delaware and C Corp, but I wanted to know how YC does it. <comment><USER2> The paperwork that YC uses is for a Delaware C Corp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You may have heard different answers because it really depends on the goals & circumstances of the startup. I have a few companies at the moment, and they each are set up differently.

Short answer. If you might eventually want outside investment or to go public or to have a lot of employees with stock options, you should be a corporation, though you can elect to be an S corp at first (as opposed to a C corp). If you never plan on doing any of this, you might want to be an LLC because it is easier to deal with. If you are only going to be in one state, it is easiest to just create the legal entity there.

<comment><USER4> Our lawyer recommended a Delaware S-corp, given that our idea is fairly pie- in-the-sky at the moment, and is setting us up as one.

One thing I didn't realize when researching these corp types: an S-corp converts to a C-corp _automatically_ as soon as they take outside investment (outside investment = preferred shares. In theory, they can issue common and keep their S-election). There's no additional legal paperwork required, and no complicated reincorporation. That makes S-corps fairly attractive to businesses that might want to take outside investment if they take off, but have no idea if they're going to take off.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and an LLC doesn't make the possibility of outside investment easy. The S-Corp is basically a bare-bones C-Corp that can "grow up" whenever you need it to.</comment></comment></comment>


Jack Dorsey Wants to Decentralize Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/14386/jack-dorsey-wants-to-decentralize-twitter. <comment><USER2> The actual twitter thread is more interesting IMHO: [https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106)

<comment><USER3> here is it's discussion thread, maybe worth joining the threads [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21762510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21762510)

how do you ping admin here?

<comment><USER4> @dang is the only one I think?

<comment><USER5> Theres also Scott I think with a username that starts with s and then a combination of b,c and t or something that I never manage to get right :-)

Easiest way may be to shoot them a mail, see the footer for address.

<comment><USER6> sctb. But yes, they say email is the surest contact method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discussion on the Tweet itself: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21762510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21762510)

<comment><USER8> Comments moved thither. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm incredibly wary of this

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> JackFest!!

<comment><USER12> Is the Russ character in SV based on Jack?

<comment><USER13> Pretty sure he is based on Mark Cuban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> After pay-walling medium, and wit the state of state-controlled twitter-bot networks.

Jack Dorsey's horsey-moves/initiatives can go to hell

Long Live ActivityPub

<comment><USER15> Wrong Twitter co-founder. Evan Williams started Medium, not Jack Dorsey.

<comment><USER14> Oh sorry my bad, I just dislike the guy's ventures in general I guess

<comment><USER8> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Especially not dyspeptic unsubstantive comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Denied Trademark for Multi-Touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/26/apple-denied-trademark-for-multi-touch/

<comment><USER2> Hope the same logic is applied for terms like app. Too generic for it to be trademarked.

<comment><USER3> Apple never attempted to trademark "app". They're trying to trademark "App Store", which is a completely different beast.</comment></comment>


How A $19 Million Movie Makes $150 Million - And Still Isn't Profitable - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollywood-accounting-how-19-million-movie-makes-150-million-still-isnt-profitable.shtml <comment><USER2> This is exactly how record deals work as well, I can tell you first hand. The added kick in the nuts which isn't even mentioned is that if the project starts to come close to the level of profit where the artists would get payment - all the studio/label has to do is spend more money on additional, marked-up promotion and the project goes deeper into "debt."

Why would they bother paying the artists, when instead they can invest that same money on a 2nd round of advertising? From their perspective it doesn't make sense to ever pay the artist. The only time they do is if the artist gets really pissed off, has some clout and the studio/label wants to keep them happy. If all three of those things happen then maybe they'll get some crumbs.

The moral of the story is, unless you have the kind of clout to make your own deal, make sure you get a satisfactory amount of money from your advance (up- front payment).

<comment><USER3> I truly look forward to the day when supporting (by paying real money) individual creators and independent teams for music, movies, animation, games, and books will be commonplace in the general public. In tandem, I hope that this will spur great creations to come forth that are not bound by the traditional red tape and truly messed up business models of today's media businesses.

Such a world will require a lot more independence and proactivity from us the consumers (which we are frankly not accustomed to at all right now), from the extra effort needed to engage in "discovery" and in realizing how much of an impact each consumption & purchasing decision can have on the lives of each creative person we choose to support; but such a world will have far more diversity and niche options than we currently see today, which would be a truly amazing future.

<comment><USER4> I can see things starting to go in that direction - the tech industry is always on the bleeding edge, and things like kickstarter is only going to become more and more mainstream.

For example, a band could kickstart their own record/tour by asking for crowd funding. These sorts of funding means that they aren't somehow tied up by commercial record companie's business tactics which would obviously benefit the record company, and not the actual person/group making the creative work. This way is the way forward, as surely as water falls off a waterfall.

<comment><USER5> You mean going BACK in that direction. All (or most?) art used to be directly commissioned.

<comment><USER6> All or most _commercial_ art, certainly. I wouldn't be surprised if most art has always been done by amateurs.

<comment><USER5> Oh well yeah, that was implied.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I just thought it worth calling out explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No that different from Google's, Facebook's, Apple's, et al. methods employed in Europe to avoid paying taxes.

<comment><USER8> For those that are unaware, parent is referring to the "Double Irish" strategy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement>).

<comment><USER7> Not really. I'm referring to the operating companies acting as cost centres, rather than profit centres. Avoiding taxes at the HoldCo is another ball game i.e. double Irish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I don't understand is, why would anyone accept terms that had any relation to profits at this point? Surely this is well-known by now?

I can understand this working for a while, but it's amazing how long it's been going on.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure about this specific example, but I could see a couple of reasons:

* One really wants the movie to be made, like a Clint Eastwood figure director who likes the script, regardless of the cost to self

* Director is new and potentially naive; agent is no good

* Director is new, not naive, and wants to make a brand for him- or herself in the movie world (and knows the movie isn't bound for a Saturday Syfy special... /snark)

<comment><USER9> The thing is, people who are that new and naive can't demand much in the first place. People who are in a position to take a slice worth worrying about would presumably know better.

I guess that's not completely true, going by the Scott Derrickson example, but it still seems strange to me.

<comment><USER11> He had done a direct to video movie before Emily Rose, a Hellraiser thing with a budget of about $2 million. For that he likely made around $100k salary and if he had any net, it was worth nothing.

But that project proved he could direct an acceptable film, which isn't as common a skill as you might imagine.

So once he'd done that, he had the chance to move up to the next budget range, $20ish million, plus or minus. For that, as I mentioned above, he probably got in the neighborhood of $500k. Maybe a little more, but certainly less than $1 million.

Then when _that_ movie did extremely well, he went on to do The Day The Earth Stood Still, an $80 million dollar project. Whatever he got paid for that is highly variable, but it was likely a million or two.

As he mentions in the podcast, TDTESS did 80 million domestic, total of 240 global. Which made it a success in terms of money, but since the domestic was so low it wasn't perceived as such in the industry.

So he didn't move to the A list after that. He said he got offers for things like big franchise sequels, but his own dream projects weren't able to get the greenlight. If he'd taken the hired gun route on studio sequels, he said he'd probably make a couple million per.

So what he did instead was go and make his own film, cheap. He made the current movie Sinister for $3 million. Again he's back in the few hundred thousand range at most for salary. But this time, since it was his movie and he made it cheap, he's got real gross participation.

As he says in the podcast, after the movie hits a certain breakeven point (which it likely is very close to doing if it hasn't already), the money starts rolling in for him and he'll be "rich". From the podcast, it seems likely his deal on this project will let him get what would be called FU Money here.

It's not a terrible system, really. Directors aren't completely screwed, they do ok for themselves.

The real secret is to own the property yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems like the people with real leverage (i.e. movie stars) demand a cut of the gross (pre-expenses) instead of the net.

<comment><USER13> I was going to say: He should have fired his agent for agreeing to _any_ cut of the net. I thought everyone at this point knew that you always demand points on the gross just because no one every makes net points.

<comment><USER8> Incidentally, even outside of the movie business, never take net points on _anything_ , for exactly this reason.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, it's so easy to get screwed over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nothing special here, tax shelters work by generating artificial tax losses that are written off, or by using indefinite deferments.

In this artificial losses are generated by the movie theater piling each shell company up with faux "service charges".

<comment><USER16> The difference is that tax shelters usually aren't used to deprive your staff of salary, they're used to deprive the government of tax revenue. This is both.

<comment><USER17> Except that it doesn't work for avoiding taxes. If you charge ten million in internal advertising to an account, you're advertising division is still making a profit.

There are lots of other tricks for avoiding taxes, but what is described is purely for screwing the artists.

<comment><USER18> But you don't charge your own company, you buy services from a seemingly external company (that is actually operated by you). That's one way to generate a loss while actually just moving money around.

<comment><USER19> You generate a loss for one company, but income for another company. I don't see how this avoids taxes, just moves them from one entity to another. (so if the second entity is in a tax-friendly jurisdiction, it's obvious how that helps, but it doesn't simply generate a loss and that's the end of the story.)

<comment><USER4> But then the shell company could just be collapsed, and all its debt obligations (which is really to yourself) could be all moot. Thus, you avoid paying tax like that as well?

<comment><USER20> Such tax loopholes might exist (I am not a tax person), but generally the answer is no:

If you take a loan, and don't return it for whatever reason (e.g. because the person to whom you owe it has died and has no heirs; or the bank that gave you the loan decides not to collect), the loan you previously received is instantly converted for tax purposes into your income, and you have to pay income tax on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of the method used by Starbucks to avoid paying tax in the UK [1]. They set up their UK operations as a separate legal entity, and then charge it considerable licensing fees for the use of the Starbucks brand. This way, the UK branch appears to be making a loss on paper, when it is actually generating considerable revenue.

[1]. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19967397>

</comment><comment><USER22> This is as good a time as any to suggest Kevin Smith's "Smoviemakers" podcast for anyone who is interested in the art and business of movie production. It's really a great listen, even when he's talking to people I'm not a huge fan of (such as Scott Derrickson --nothing against him, but I just haven't seen any of his movies)

<http://smodcast.com/channels/smoviemakers/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Meanwhile this industry is complaining it's being strangled by piracy?

<comment><USER24> Well, when you're paying loan-shark interest rates on loans you've made against yourself, it's kinda pricey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just want to know what part of "Everybody knows" does everybody not actually know. The director of a film I have actually heard of, took 5% of net.

But everyone knows you want a percentage of gross. When was this not known to people working in the industry?

This also adds to my totally unsubstantiated belief that a large portion of fortune 500 would be unprofitable without tax dodges

<comment><USER26> "Give me 5% of gross"

"No. We'll look for another director, there are thousands"

"Okay, I'll take 5% of net"

<comment><USER27> "Okay, I'll take 2% of gross".

"Net" should never be a part of such negotiations.

<comment><USER28> Only a handful of people have that kind of clout. Everyone else is getting part of the net, realizing they're getting screwed, and hoping the current project will be so successful they join the powerful handful.

<comment><USER27> If all non-important participants are getting part of the net, that guarantees that net would be negative.

Why even bother asking for it and putting it on a contract? Ask for tiny gross part or for small hourly raise, but treat net share exactly as zero.

<comment><USER28> Most of the "talent" gets a fixed amount. The net percentage is like getting stock options as a programmer - if the stars align just right you might get something. Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Shouldn't this say, how a $19 million movie that spends $50 million in advertising and $250 million in distribution can make $150 million and not be profitable?

Your marketing and distribution costs are real costs aren't they? I don't get how this is "Hollywood Accounting", it sounds like actual accounting.

<comment><USER30> The point is a lot of those "figures" aren't real or objectively driven, they're just numbers being shuffled around within the company to make the movie seem more expensive. There's a wikipedia article on it that may make the concept more clear.

<comment><USER29> Thank you, it did seem a little more clear after reading that. Basically, no one is claiming the movie didn't "spend" $50 million on advertising, the claim is that the studio is inflating the $50 million advertising expense while hardly providing anything close to that value in return.

Wouldn't that be caught in an audit? Aren't there (shouldn't there?) be laws prohibiting corporate-to-corporate transfers that are just money dumps not tied to legitimate verifiable expenses? I am ridiculously naive about this topic, but it seems the directors of these movies could sue if the studio were lying and exaggerating expenses?

<comment><USER31> There's no lying or fraud. Company B (the production company) agrees to pay Company A (the studio) $X for services. Done, price agreed. Of course, both companies are owned by the studio, so it is just transfer pricing as far as the studio is concerned. But it is a real cost for the production company so that that there is no profit for residuals. Intentionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's called "Hollywood accounting":

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

<comment><USER33> Did you click the link? "Hollywood Accounting" is the article title and the subject of the first sentence.

<comment><USER34> So someone's article is just a rephrasing of a Wikipedia article plus some specifics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So, as someone who's never been involved or close to the sale of a heavily funded startup, this sounds on the face of it similar to taking equity in a startup that then raised more money and diluted that equity and then was sold in a deal where that equity ended up turning into nothing—I've read a fair number of stories on here that toss around terms like "preferred stock" or whatnot, but still don't really know how the sausage is made. It sounds an awful lot like this, though: the people who put in the most money also have tricks of making sure they get paid, while most of the people doing the work don't have the clout to get in on it.

</comment><comment><USER36> <http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html>

</comment><comment><USER37> While the general idea of this is obviously gross and greedy, this part makes perfect sense:

>with some of the big studios, some of this money involves paying itself for advertising on its own properties.

The idea of opportunity cost applies to advertising; any advertising they do on their own properties is advertising they could have sold to somebody else. So it's clearly legitimate to count that as a cost.

<comment><USER38> Not necessarily: If an advertizing slot was unsold and filled with self- advertizing, then the opportunity cost was zero.

<comment><USER37> If it was unsold, that just means the price was too high. No advertising slot has an actual value of zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Similar thing happened to a friend of mine who worked at a game development startup. A company was set up for that game, and the whole crew of developers were hired by it, while the two "founders" held the parent company. Everyone worked for low-to-no wages under the promise that they would see bonuses based on sales.

When the game released, all the sales revenue went to the parent company and the only ones receiving bonuses were the two founders.

<comment><USER40> Well they certainly got the the expected value of "promises".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How is it that Hollywood Accounting is legal? The US has its problems, but people's leal rights is one thing the US is usually pretty good about.

</comment><comment><USER42> This seems like the opposite of performance-based compensation. No wonder Hollywood sucks- no one cares how much their movie makes!

<comment><USER40> Wait I thought the profit motive driving studios to produce safe sequels the mass market say they want is why movies were are so bad.

Which is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I cringe every time a movie or event is reported as having "made" its gross ticket sales number. Typically 1/2 off the top goes to theaters themselves, and then all these accounting games begin. Maybe the top line is the only relatively non-fictional number but they could at least report it for what it is: ticket sales.

<comment><USER44> I've read that these days many theaters only get 10% of the ticket sales for the first week or so at least on major films, (before dropping substantially, combined with much shorter runs. So the theaters get less than they used to as far as i know, especially that first week or so.

<comment><USER43> Interesting, that's a pretty harsh deal considering how extravagant movie theaters are expected to be these days. Considering whom they're buying from, I guess I'm not surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why isn't this stuff outlawed? To me it doesn't sound like accounting tricks at all, it sounds like outright fraud.

<comment><USER46> "Outlawed" is a difficult concept at this level. All justice above "street level" is simply politics.

The executive summary is that if you did it, it would be fraud because you haven't made enough campaign contributions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> My favourite example of this classic accounting practice is MF DOOM simply warning listeners right off the bat to pirate his Venomous Villain album because his contract for it blows:

"Dub it off your man/Don't spend that ten bucks/I did it for the advance/The back end sucks."

</comment><comment><USER48> On a related note; if you've not seen "Monsters" then you should track it down, a great film! (it should have had a BAFTA but had the misfortune to be released the same year as the even better "Four Lions").

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's amusing that the movie industry complains of piracy hurting the artists, while at the same time charging the artists exorbitantly for things (promotion, distribution) which piracy helps with.

</comment><comment><USER49> Sigh. Yes, we know. Hollywood Accounting.

</comment><comment><USER50> Why don't you just take a percentage of the gross revenue instead of the net?

</comment><comment><USER51> One of the most egregious examples of this is David Prowse not getting any residuals for Return of The Jedi, as it also apparently hasn't made any profits yet. - [http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that- re...](http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of- the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Is there any effect on taxes?

Yes, the shell company makes $0 thanks to phantom expenses, but the main company gets all that money and that is profit.

So the shell has 0 tax liability and the main company faces all the tax liability.

It may screw the crew, but it doesn't matter for tax reasons. Correct?

<comment><USER53> The larger company will have losses from unsuccessful ventures, which will offset the profits.

<comment><USER20> But that's not a tax cheat - that's how the tax system is supposed to work. If the total sum of losses is greater or equal to the sum of profits, they haven't actually made any money, and shouldn't be taxed.

It's just people who are promised "net points" that get screwed, not the tax man.</comment></comment></comment>


Video Killed the Broadband Buffet - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/01/17/video-killed-the-broadband-buffet/

<comment><USER2> Welcome to the stone age! Metered Internet is what I had in 1997 in Russia. So much for predicted death of desktop applications and "keeping everything in the clowd" computing model, that so many tech journalists are predicting for everybody.

How can I expect to keep my ~200GB of data "in the clowd" if there is greedy Time Warner, Comcast and AT&T between me and my data? One is going to charge me more for pushing gigabytes monthly, another will throttle my not-so-good connection even further and another will spy on what I keep in my cloud?

</comment><comment><USER3> This would certainly damage my bottom line, but the fact is there are a lot of people who pay 30/month for their connections (the same as myself) but literally download 1/100,000th as much. It's hard to justify other people subsidizing me except for the fact that they're the losers in the transaction.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just don't get it. Has no one ever heard of linux and tc??? NetBSD?? Its a damn 3 line bash script to faily share the bandwidth among users and give the power users any excess at any time. Instead, they wait until you hit the "magic number" of gigabytes and then just cut you off?!

Of all of the problems facing broadband carriers, this ones is the simplest to solve.

Try hooking up the 10s of thousnds of users who are still on dialup after a decade of being on the "waiting list" for broadband. Now that would be worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER5> ISPs act like miserly pricks, pundits blame it on paying customers and new web services. Yawn.</comment>


Transit Detection of a Starshade at the Inner Lagrange Point of an Exoplanet - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01285 <comment><USER2> Here I was hoping that Kepler had found a star shade.

Interesting point that at some point your observing apparatus gets good enough that you can 'see' the structures built by sufficiently advanced civilizations (sure they cloak their ships in orbit but you can see how they make their home world comfy!)

At one of the SETI seminars there was a discussion about when would be the "right" time to alert a newly discovered intelligent species that they aren't alone in the universe. There was a lot of back and forth about indigenous tribes in the Amazon, some of who learned of other tribes by the arrival of missionaries, some by loggers, and some who were out walkabout and came upon the strangers. How you meet outsiders has a different impact on how it affects you.

So if you were aliens and you didn't want to 'alarm' or 'damage' humans, what would you use as a signal that it was probably a good time to say "Hello" ? I've always felt that once you could detect they were having conversations on other planets you would now "know" we weren't alone and someone could appear in orbit and say Hi. Others felt it would only be safe if humans felt reasonably confident in their own ability to meet them at their level (so perhaps at least colonies on other solar system bodies). One person at our table was firmly in the only when it is unavoidable, which is to say they are about to send a probe to an inhabited planet or come across a construction like a station that is not easily concealed or moved.

<comment><USER3> Star Trek had its solution: no contact or interference with civilizations that didn't develop warp drive yet. The goal of the rule was to not contaminate the development of another civilization. In today's terms, you could generalize it to: no contact with a civilization until it's about to, or already did, figure out that there are others in the universe.

Which is kind of in between of the positions you described in the comment.

<comment><USER2> Which they violated whenever the script required it :-)

It's the 'figure out there are others' bit that made something like the Prime Directive problematic. Given our advances in sensing and observing technology we are much more likely to 'see' an advanced civilization before we can actually fly out to meet them. If you _know_ that there is intelligent star faring people living on a 'nearby' star, and they happen to have been observing your progress, do they introduce themselves or wait for you to figure out how to reach them?

<comment><USER4> >Given our advances in sensing and observing technology we are much more likely to 'see' an advanced civilization before we can actually fly out to meet them.

I don't think this is really true (though I could be wrong, I am not an astronomer). Sure, we may be able to "see" evidence of an advanced civilization, but without warp drive, we won't have real proof. All we'll have is some observational data showing that, for instance, the light from their host star dims in a really weird way that's unlike anything we've seen before in our observations, or that there's some object sitting in their L1 spot, etc. We can hypothesize that this data indicates artificial structures, because what natural phenomenon could possibly cause such things? But that's not proof; there really could be some natural thing causing those readings.

So the ETs don't really have to establish contact until we have warp drive and the actual ability to go see these artificial structures up-close. They can just leave us to sit around our planet wondering what these observations mean, and slowly come to grips with the idea that there may very well be some intelligent ETs out there with starshades, and argue over it for a few centuries as we'd surely do. They have no obligation to come visit us and clear up the matter. And considering how backwards, irrational, and violent a species we are, there's no good argument I see for the ETs to rush first contact with us, and every reason to delay it as long as possible.

<comment><USER5> We'll be able to see the spectra from distant planets soon. That will amount to "seeing" advanced civs.

Going to them with warp drive without landing and talking to them would be equivalent. What would you be able to do? Basically sense EM radiation from there with better resolution, but it's essentially the same thing, "seeing".

<comment><USER4> You'll have to explain how seeing spectra from distant planets conclusively proves intelligent life. I don't see how it does. Spectra will tell you that a planet has molecular oxygen, for instance, carbon dioxide, etc., which would indicate an atmosphere like ours, which would indicate life similar to ours (doing photosynthesis), but you'd get that on a world occupied solely by plants, or with only non-intelligent life. Anyone looking at Earth before about 2M years ago (or anyone looking at it now, but more than 2M ly away) will see exactly this: a life-bearing planet with no life intelligent enough to build a civilization.

Finally, even if we could conclusively detect a civilization on a distant planet, that still doesn't explain why they have any obligation to contact us. They can easily just ignore us, and I for one can see why they would. The only time they'd really need to strongly consider establishing contact is when we have sufficient capability to visit them, and that's never going to happen the way we're going. It'd probably by prudent on their part to spy on us though, since we're a potential threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article calculates that solar-radiation reducing shields for earth-sized exoplanets (like some propose for mitigating climate change) will be detectable by the next generation of astronomical telescopes.

<comment><USER7> I'm confused... Does this mean we are looking for life sufficiently intelligent to build these radiation-reducing shields? Or are we looking for natural shields (i.e., a moon?) that might make a planet naturally resistant to climate change?

<comment><USER8> The L1 point is a saddle point in the local effective potential: it is therefore not stable enough for an object to stay there without station- keeping.

So yes, the goal here would indeed be to detect life capable of creating large structures and keeping them actively in orbit. There is some tongue-in- cheekness to this sort of research, but as the abstract notes, also some seriousness. The tongue-in-cheekness is that we're nowhere near being able to build something this large between Earth and the Sun; as the abstract notes, it has to be around as large as the Earth in order to usefully eclipse the Sun; that's a very very large structure, and we're certainly able to get into space right now: and yet we have no prospects even in the next many thousand years for engineering anything at that scale, unless folks are right about an impending technological singularity.

The seriousness, on the other hand, comes from one consideration: blotting out the Sun is probably easier than fleeing to nearby star-systems. It's very hard to say exactly how much energy it takes to flee to a nearby star-system, but a lower limit for the technology that I can presently envision is maybe 10^20 J of kinetic energy; my imagination might not be very good though, but I think that's reasonably conservative. Now the solar power irradiating a disk-that- blots-out-the-Sun is known to be 10^17 W or so. So the claim is, to even harvest the level of energy that is required to try and scout out neighboring star systems, one needs Sun-blotting scales of energy-harvesting technology; the length scale could maybe be smaller by a couple orders of magnitude to scout, but one can imagine that the energy needs of billions of entities fleeing their home planet would be several orders of magnitude larger, too.

<comment><USER9> > blotting out the Sun is probably easier than fleeing to nearby star-systems

If we want to later use the sun-blotter as a solar panel to power our interstellar exploits, then yeah.

If we just want to make the Earth a little cooler, we'd be far better off seeding the stratosphere with some dust, creating a mini 'nuclear winter' / 'Krakatoa effect' in a controllable way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is some interesting speculation, and I applaud the researchers who think of things like this to look for.

I still estimate that by the time a civilization has planetary-scale engineering capability, that they won't need to make things like starshades.

If you have molecular nanotechnology, you can either adapt yourselves to whatever location you find, or just skip the biological body business, and directly upload your consciousness to a computer network.

The 2nd option is far more mass and energy efficient to support large numbers of sophonts, and I expect that any civilization to endure long enough will have the majority of its population living online instead of offline. If that even ends up being a thing, and they all don't just merge into a single entity (going in the direction of Star Trek's borg).

<comment><USER11> I always think of the "they're made of meat" story when considering this [1].

How do we even know what life looks like out there? Or what it has turned itself into in order to survive, travel and spread? Or even what it started out as?

We can't even talk with dolphins, even though we have a very recent evolutionary common ancestor. They're sentient life, tool-users, do we think they'd build a starshade to solve this problem? Shame we can't ask them, or understand their answer.

We know trees are alive, we know they communicate with each other. We don't think they're sentient. But how would we know? What would a sentient tree do differently from a non-sentient tree? What would a sentient tree do about the sun getting hotter?

Even if they started out like us, the evolutionary responses to living on other planets will change them. We're adapted to the conditions on Earth. If we live on other planets with different conditions then we will adapt, because that's what we do. We don't know how far those changes will go, because all the life we've ever seen has been adapted to Earth. Maybe high-gravity humans are less like sci-fi dwarves and more like Pratchett trolls.

We seem to be expecting sentient life out there to resemble us and have similar solutions for their problems. This seems dumb to me.

1: [http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html)

<comment><USER12> Maybe, but this conversation _always_ inevitably ends up in this territory ("But what if aliens are _crystals_?"). And sure, we can't know. But we're going to have to make some assumptions, and we all do live in one universe, with a common constituent set of physical laws. Aliens that build spaceships probably also have airplanes and an internet. I don't think it's dumb to speculate with some reasonable assumptions, and while I appreciate that this conclusion always comes up and is not wrong, it's uninteresting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paper doesn't address what measures the aliens might use to disguise any obvious signature of the starshade.

You'd think that the aliens might not be too keen to create huge beacon advertising their presence to all and sundry...

<comment><USER14> One cannot assume that an alien can think in a fashion similar to Earth animals.

Humans have the ability to imagine a possibility for which no supporting evidence currently exists--that species alien to our solar system might exist. That ability might not be shared by the species we can imagine. That is, humans can imagine a species that cannot imagine humans. Such aliens would not even realize that building a planet-sized object that cannot be explained by natural processes might present an existential risk.

We, of course, are afraid of hypervelocity impact weaponry, even while having no evidence whatsoever that any such weapon exists anywhere in the universe.

Of course, that just means that any species that did fear annihilation by near-c rocks smashing into their planet would simply disguise their star shade so well that we could not detect it. Meaning that any solar shade we can detect was not likely built by any species able to think like us.

We could clean up by selling them insurance.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure how you propose a species that can't imagine things that don't exist would advance technologically to space travel.

<comment><USER14> Investigation of serendipitous results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know, this sounds like a great idea.

Maybe we should be building ourselves one of these...

<comment><USER17> But then they could find us.

<comment><USER18> Doesn't matter, still had planet supporting life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So why has ET not used something like a Dyson sphere or a starshade to send us light signals as a form of "Hello"?

Maybe because by the time a planet is able to send such signals, they have discovered better means, faster than light speed, communications.

So, the "Hello" communications have been coming to us for maybe millions of years, but like our planet before we understood radio, we can't detect their communications.

<comment><USER20> We may even misinterpret the "Hello" signals because we don't understand their mathematics. They could very easily be sending a "Hungry" signal, because they are a race of locust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking for umbrellas in space. What _will_ we think of next?

</comment><comment><USER21> I know I'm gonna get downvoted for saying this, but this is kinda dumb. Might as well look for Dyson spheres by looking for gravitational lensing around dark spots in the sky.</comment>


New AI can predict exact moment a protest will turn violent from Twitter posts - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/news/428277-algorithm-protest-twitter-violent/ <comment> crooked-v So how long until police start using this as a new justification for kettling and mass arrests?</comment>


New YouTube Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6OVAw4kwRM&feature=c4-overview&list=UU5W31_-UrSe8LjsHxpz551g

<comment><USER2> Maybe not the bset HN submission type -- I'd rather skim a blog post than watch a YT video at work.</comment>


The effects of cannabis use on short term memory loss - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/01/marijuana-might-not-be-the-culprit-in-adolescent-iq-decline/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> Weed may not have an effect on IQ or memory (which I still don't completely believe), but it sure has an effect on ambition.

I've seen so many smart people over the years sitting at home after work and smoking out almost every day. When they weren't smoking, they were talking about smoking.

I actually didn't mind it too much, because it gave me a competitive advantage. I got better pay, better jobs, and the time they spent smoking, I spent on my startup (which is now a company with employees). It's also a time and money sink.

I knew a guy that could barely afford rent, had almost 100k in student debt, and worked a job barely over minimum wage. Yet, he always had the money to spend on weed (nearly $1000/month). I should have been a dealer.

I even tried to start a business with a friend of mine that I knew smoked every day. We are still friends, but never got our business off the ground. I was always waiting for him to complete something.

Anything in moderation is fine. With weed, it just seems to be one extreme to the other.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Being an engineer, and a moderate, daily consumer of cannabis, I can attest to having little to no short term memory loss. At least as far as I can remember...."</comment>


HTC and Sharp unveil devices with next-generation screens - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19989754

<comment><USER2> So, just to review some previous discussion here when the retina iPad came out, the retina iPad uses more power than the iPad 2 because its backlight needs to be brighter to counteract the light-blocking effect of all the extra transistors and wires in the LCD panel.

According to the OP, Sharp claims to have a retina display that blocks less light than Apple's retina displays, reducing the power needed by the backlight (to achieve the same display brightness).

An industry analyst quoted in the OP says that "screens are the biggest power drain on mobile devices".

</comment><comment><USER3> So if the naked eye cannot perceive detail greater than the retina display why is this needed? The article does not talk about the power consumption of the screen, but outside of that is it worth increasing the resolution?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I had that question too. ~300ppi I thought was "retina" for handheld devices held at normal distances. I could see marginally increasing it above that threshold so pixels remained indiscernible at almost all distances, but a 440ppi density is surely superfluous.

<comment><USER5> The term "retina" is just marketing.

I can see the pixels on my ~300ppi phone at "normal" distance... and the very smallest fonts it uses (in mass dictionary lookups) are so small that there's still discernible shape distortion in complicated kanji. This only really affects usability in a few cases—distinguishing between very similar, extremely complicated, kanji, in an unusually small font used for a specialized application—but these cases _do_ occur.

There's also some room for improvement in font-rendering of Japanese at the somewhat larger sizes used for displaying email or such, where they're still using hand-tuned fonts even on ~300ppi displays.

So at least in Japan, a 440ppi display could be put to good use.

[And really, even once pixels are truly not individually discernible, higher resolutions can _still_ be useful. For instance, although text printed on a 600dpi laser printer is usually very readable, it doesn't look so good when compared to something typeset at 1200/2400/etc dpi...]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Much more detailed article, with magnified view: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/17/3515158/htc-shows-off- stu...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/17/3515158/htc-shows-off- stunning-5-inch-1080p-j-butterfly-phone-in-japan)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd rather see these panels in the Oculus Rift than a 'Phablet'. As mentioned in the article, these screens can be held much closer to the eye, so why not put them as close as possible?

<comment><USER8> I just realized I'm very excited about a cheap VR headset. I don't even care about gaming, but I imagine it won't be terribly hard to get a window manager to display on it. I would be able to fill my field of vision with windows, switch any one by looking at it (while getting some neck exercise), put them nearer or farther, reducing eyesight strain, and not need a desk at all!

I could just have the keyboard on my lap while on my easy chair and stare at the ceiling, lie down, whatever. Why is this thing geared towards games? It sounds like a revolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So bigger screens and higher resolution. That's what the smartphone/phablet/tablet market is going for?</comment>