The Supreme Court Should Invalidate Software Patents - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-court-should-invalidate-software-patents/ <comment><USER3> It's not up to Justice Scalia to do the right thing. It's up to Congress. As Scalia is so fond of saying, garbage law in, garbage decision out. Just because Congress is incompetent doesn't mean we should put it on SCOTUS to fix our problems for us.

I'll preempt the constitutional argument by saying that hasn't been made yet. You underestimate how strong such an argument has to be to succeed. What SCOTUS could clarify is Diamond v. Diehr. That still wouldn't be the end of our patent problems though.

<comment><USER4> "Just because Congress is incompetent doesn't mean we should put it on SCOTUS to fix our problems for us."

Actually, that's exactly how the system works. Check and balances.

<comment><USER5> Not really. The court interprets the law as written by the congress. There are always some checks and balances while interpretation but that's not what the court is for.

<comment><USER6> Is that accurate in this case? My understanding is that the majority of the time, SCOTUS interprets the constitutionality of laws.

<comment><USER5> In many cases the any court (in almost any country influenced by the French law) interprets the laws and confirms if the 'new laws' is consistent with the 'old laws/ more basic laws' and not in violation with the basic premise of the constitutions. Of course this is a over-simplification but this is at the most basic the function of the courts.

<comment><USER7> But I believe the US uses Common Law (English) and not Civil law (France and many other places) system for these matters. So judge can in the US (btw IANAL) decide if a law is valid or not based on constitutionality and previous laws.

<comment><USER5> This is absolutely correct and is an important distinction and I do confess that my statements were not very precise from that regards. However, I had a long discussion with a law professor at Berkeley where she did agree that the US Common Law is highly influenced by the French Civil Law, though many law academic in US will take an exception at the statement. Also, IANAL either but am taking a few law courses here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does it have to be the supreme court? Why can't the industry tell Congress "This sucks, fix it", the way the military did with Don't ask, don't tell?

VCs just aren't as good at that whole "leadership" thing as much as generals I guess? (yes, I'm trying to goad someone to action.)

<comment><USER9> > Why can't the industry tell Congress "This sucks, fix it"

Because the part of the industry which has money and congressional ear either protected (by a huge patent portfolio) or in the game of using their patent portfolio aggressively.

> the way the military did with Don't ask, don't tell?

1\. the military is a major reason why DADT was introduced in the first place

2\. apart from Mullen (who mostly punted the responsibility to congress), the military (active, retired officers really don't count) did not do anything until well into BO's term, even though repealing DADT was one of BO's campaign issues

the military and DADT really is not a good example of "this sucks, fix it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a software programmer I don't agree with this view that software patents are wrong in principle. There I said it!

Software just as much as hardware can be used to "express" something new. I.e. to invent something.

An patentable invention is a novel "solution to a problem which is NON-OBVIOUS to someone skilled in the art".

The real issue with software patents is that they are granted far too easily. The test that seems to be applied by the patent examiners is "is that new?". However, they should be asking "given the problem the inventor is trying to solve is the solution (the invention) really non-obvious to some one skilled in the art?".

However, even though I think that software patents, with the proper examination standards are just as valid as hardware patents I think there is a case for limiting (or even banning) ALL patents - NOT just software patents.

One idea would be the requirement that a working prototype has to be produced and seen to be working. That, along with a proper non-obviousness test, would limit companies going for patent "land grabs".

<comment><USER11> As the article points out, software is also protected by copyright, and the article doesn't mention that it's covered by trade secret protection as well. The key difference is that patent protection applies to people who independently create something, whereas the other two protection methods don't.

So when I hear engineers say they like patents, first of all I assume that they've never worked for a company that's been sued for patent infringement (and that they optimistically assume it only happens to other people), but then I try to find out why they don't think copyright protection is enough. Someone still can't legally steal your code without patent protection, because it'll be protected by copyright and trade secret protections. Even if they didn't copy your code, but they looked at it prior to implementing their own version, that would violate trade secret protections.

In that respect, software is protected the same way that authors and musicians are protected. Authors invent characters, plots, worlds, objects, even words, but they don't get to patent them. And yet they're still protected from theft by copyright protections; you also can't just go and make a movie out of someone else's book without permission, though you can certainly make one that's similar. If it's good enough for authors and musicians, why isn't that good enough for software developers?

So to sum that up: software development involves a creative act that deserves protection, but that's different than saying that the creative act deserves _patent protection_ , which legally enjoins anyone else from independently developing the same thing, and which gives person A the legal right to take away the work that person B has done completely independently (or at least take away any money they've made from it and prevent them from selling it in the future). To justify taking away someone's work like that, you have to either be sure that the work is a copy or derivation of the original, which is almost never the case with software patent lawsuits, or you have to argue that even though it's unfair to deprive people of their work like that, that the benefits of the overall system are positive to society. That's an easier argument to make if 1% of patent lawsuits deprive people of the product of their independent work, but it's a pretty hard argument to make when 99% of them do.

<comment><USER10> akeefer. I find it arrogant when someone assumes that disagreement means that the other person just don't understand. Ok. That aside. Let me go back to the actual issues here as I see them.

You seem to be arguing that writing software is basically a creative process which is the same as producing literature and music but software is fundamentally different in that it goes beyond aesthetics. Software is not normally used to produce an expression / statement about life / culture or someone's emotional state etc but is used to process data in such a way as to have a functional and measureable impact.

Here's a question for you. Your competitor has patented a "solution" which basically the same as yours and is now sueing you for infringement how would copyright and / or trade secrets help?"?

Here's another question. Why is a software patent special? As opposed to one based on expression of a solution to a problem in terms of, say, electronic circuitry?

Let's say that your wish is granted and software patents are made illegally but hardware patents are still legal how would we stop companies like Apple and HTC "gaming" the system by tying the software to physical devices so that they become hardware patents?

I'm not sure I have all the answers but making software patents a special case just feels wrong and is likely to have so many legal loopholes as to be worthless ?

The patent system as currently practiced is broken. That much is clear. It was supposed to be about promoting innovation and the spread of knowledge. Instead it seems to really be about granting monopolies. But until the law is changed companies have to apply for patents if only to protect themselves against attack.

We need fundamental changes to the patent system which applies to ALL patents.

<comment><USER12> It's possible that we need reform for other types of patents as well. I don't know enough about patent abuses in other fields to say. But in software at least, it seems like the system is clearly broken. Invalidating all software patents would be a drastic step, but it also might be the cleanest and most direct way out of the current morass. Of course, many companies would try to redefine their software patents as some other type of patent, perhaps by linking them to the hardware, as you suggested. There would need to be some legal jousting until precedents had been set to determine the outlines of how the law would be applied. That's what the courts are for. However, it seems quite likely that the resulting system would be less biased against innovation, more transparent, and less wasteful than the current system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of all the supreme court decisions, I wouldn't expect this to be drawn mostly on partisan lines. Yet the author makes a good case that the liberal judges would invalidate the patents and conservative judges (with Scalia an open question) would not. Why are conservative judges more likely to support software patents?

<comment><USER14> They'll tend to see them as protecting the interests of business, which has, for whatever reason, become part and parcel of supporting the "free market" in contemporary American political culture.

<comment><USER15> and that's the biggest hypocrisy... what they are really supporting are the interests of _existing_ businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find this argument unconvincing: _Second, writing software is an individual, expressive activity at least as much as it is an engineering discipline._

The implicit argument is that creating software is inherently more _creative_ than, say, creating a mechanical device. Yes, I take enjoyment in crafting my code so that its model is no more complex than it has to be, and in refactoring the code so that it is as clear as aesthetically pleasing as possible. But I imagine that people who design physical items feel the same way about their work.

Please note that I am not disagreeing with conclusions - I have said nothing about his conclusions. But I think the overall argument is stronger without this one. With it, it feels like he started with a conclusion, and used whatever arguments lead to that conclusion.

<comment><USER17> Actually, you can sort of formalize the argument: Software is eligible for copyright. Therefore, the law _already_ recognizes that it is an expressive activity.

A mechanical device is _already_ not eligible for copyright.

Software is the only thing I know covered by both patents and copyright. Sometimes people deny this to me when I say this online, but I haven't yet heard anybody come up with a concrete example that stood up to scrutiny. Is it really so stunning that two systems never designed to mesh, patents and copyright, turn out to in fact _not_ mesh and produce a big mess? Is it really so horrible that software be only copyrightable and not patentable? Very few people are arguing that software should not be covered by any sort of IP protection, and I suspect the non-zero set of such people would be further shrunk if patents were removed from the equation. (Though I also guarantee, not eliminated.)

<comment><USER16> Regarding my initial point, I think software falls under copyright solely because its written - I don't know if that's the argument now, but I imagine that was at least the initial reason for granting copyrights. Personally, I can find no meaningful difference between designing software and designing a mechanical device. For that reason, I don't like that argument.

Your main point is interesting, but I'm not sure if I can completely go along with it. Consider, say, a mechanical latch. The design schematics for it fall under copyright. The latch itself falls under patent. The process for making the latch is to look at its design, and change your tools around to produce something of that design. Looking at it this way, I can see how software could be considered its own design schematic - yes, I'm aware that external documentation exists, so it's not a perfect analogy. But with software, there's no separation between "thing used to describe what should happen" and "thing that happens."

I want to agree with your argument because it would provide a clean solution to the problem, but I don't think I can. Rather, I think the solution to the problem may require a results-oriented approach. That is, it may require us (as a society) to say, "The current patent scheme regarding software is harming innovation. We are going to change how patents apply to software to avoid this harm."

<comment><USER17> "Regarding my initial point, I think software falls under copyright solely because its written"

No. That's a degree of misconception that I can't fix in an HN post. Copyright has little to nothing to do with the medium in which an expression is fixed. And with all due respect, the rest of your post is so muddled w.r.t. what copyrights really are that it's hard to even address what's there. (I truly mean "with all due respect", but I also truly mean that it is very muddled.) You really ought to spend some more time studying the topic, including such basics as what exactly copyrights are and what, _exactly_ , they cover, and why.

<comment><USER16> What I meant was, "it's fixed _somehow_ ". I assume the original reasoning for why code is copyrightable is that when I write, say, a book, that is copyrightable. Code is written down just like a book is, so it follows that copyright will apply. I'm not saying that's the legal reasoning. I'm saying that was probably the initial gut-reaction to why copyright should apply to code, and the legal reasoning came afterwards.

I have spent time with the various forms of IP, and I feel I have a pretty good grasp of what copyright is. I can't correct any misconceptions unless you point them out - although I have a feeling it's more that I did a poor job of expressing myself.

Attempt the second: with non-software inventions, you can have a copyright on the documents that explain how to build the invention. You can have a patent on the invention itself. Software can be both copyrighted and patented. You object to this because it's the only instance we have of something that can be both copyrighted and patented - it's a unique exception. I responded to this objection by pointing out that software is also unique in that what you use to describe exactly how to make the invention is the invention itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Software patents are a policy issue, not a constitutional question. This needs to get fixed in Congress.

<comment><USER19> I'm not so sure this isn't a constitutional question.

In Article I, section 8, the U.S. Constitution:

 _Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries._

Note that Congress is only given this power in order to promote the progress of science and useful arts. If one can effectively argue that software patents have the opposite effect, and in fact hinder the progress of science and useful arts - and I think such an argument can be made - then it seems reasonable that the courts should strike down software patents as unconstitutional.

<comment><USER20> The Supreme Court does not evaluate the _intention_ of a law. Remember, the very process of judicial review was introduced _after_ the Constitution was written, so the parts of the Constitution where it explains why it is written the way it is are rather clearly not policies.

That said, Title 35 of the United States Code states:

>Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.

It is difficult to see how software patents could really fall under this. I don't know of any software patent describing a "process" which is not simply a mathematical algorithm (unpatentable), and they certainly don't describe a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.

The patent described in _Diamond v. Diehr_ is really not at all what we would today consider a software patent; it's not really similar to the patents on, say, wavelet compression in any sense beyond "there's silicon involved". It was a process of molding synthetic rubber, not pushing bits around.

<comment><USER21> Any process is arguably a mathematical algorithm. The process by which I sanitize water can be expressed as a mathematical algorithm, where the various components play the role of various mathematical constructs.

And therein lies the problem. If you read SW patents they're usually pitched as processes over a computer device. This makes it hard to untangle from any other process that acts over some matter.

With that said maybe we get rid of processes altogether. I'd say get rid of everything except drug patents. But that would require congress to sign off.

<comment><USER20> >If you read SW patents they're usually pitched as processes over a computer device.

The problem is that a computer is _itself_ a mathematical construct. If the patents really wanted to describe a process on a device, they could not use as their "device" a Turing machine, because that is not a physical device in the sense of water sanitization. Whereas water sanitization requires the physical presence of water, a program can exist totally in theory as some bits in Wolfram's 2-state-3-symbol.

That is, unless you believe the mathematical universe hypothesis, but I don't think the Court's job is to decide whether the Universe exists!

I am also not a lawyer, nor formally educated in the field of law. I do know a bit about theoretical CS, though.

<comment><USER21> Computers aren't mathematical constructs. They're simply devices, like a water bottle. But what they can compute, at least as best we understand it, is bound by what is computable by mathematical constructs, such as the lambda calculus.

But with things such as DNA computers and nanotechnology, could one argue that the universe is a computer? Can everything just be described as a construction of objects in the real world with stimuli applied to it?

To me it just feels like a really slippery slope. Just say "medical drugs" and leave it at that.

<comment><USER20> >Computers aren't mathematical constructs.

A _particular_ computer is not a mathematical construct. The _concept of a computer_ , however, is a mathematical construct; there are no physical characteristics necessary to identify something as a "computer" for the purposes of e.g. arithmetic coding. I could perform arithmetic coding with nothing but a pen and an extremely large amount of paper.

<comment><USER21> _I could perform arithmetic coding with nothing but a pen and an extremely large amount of paper._

BUT a pen and paper. A patent wouldn't be just the algorithm, but also a writing device and paper.

Everything is a theoretical until you do it in practice. You can't patent a cool 3D rendering algorithm. But you can patent a device that uses it and renders the output to a computer screen. This is how patents are written.

<comment><USER20> > A patent wouldn't be just the algorithm, but also a writing device and > paper.

Well, yes, and if the patent says "a writing device and paper" it might be valid, because paper is a specific construct, and the patent obviously does not cover such things as e.g. a piece of cloth.

Why do you use bzip2 and not bzip? Well, because arithmetic coding is covered by a supposedly valid patent. However, bzip can be executed by hand, or on any multitude of devices satisfying the requirements for Turing-completeness. The idea that a patent should preclude the writing of bzip, a purely mathematical construct, is absurd. bzip runs on an abstract device.

You could, for instance, specify a specific processor in the patent, but this is not done. You could not, however, specify a processor architecture, because this is also a mathematical construct, which can be carried out on paper.

Let me give you an example: My uncle knows that a cell phone is a computer. How? Well, I told him, and I'm a researcher. How do I know? Well, originally, some professor told me, and he's a professor. How does he know? Well, he or his colleague studied the literature indicating that an ARM processor is Turing-complete... which, at the end of the day, is a totally mathematical consideration, independent of the physical world except perhaps the brains which analyze it.

>But you can patent a device that uses it and renders the output to a computer screen.

No, because each independent part of this is some prior art. The representation of data on silicon is long since public domain, the display of silicon data on a screen is long since public domain, the x86 architecture and the GPU architecture are mathematical, and the algorithm itself is mathematical, and the combination of these is not itself novel or interesting: it is not even performed except by the end user, who must merely double-click a game icon and shuffle some bits around with a mouse.

<comment><USER21> _Let me give you an example: My uncle knows that a cell phone is a computer. How? Well, I told him, and I'm a researcher. How do I know? Well, originally, some professor told me, and he's a professor. How does he know? Well, he or his colleague studied the literature indicating that an ARM processor is Turing-complete... which, at the end of the day, is a totally mathematical consideration, independent of the physical world except perhaps the brains which analyze it._

Actually I don't think its technically "Turing Complete". it doesn't have unbounded tape. In fact any given ARM processor will have a fixed addressable limit. I can certainly compute a class of things in theory that the ARM processor can't compute. There are real HW considerations that you need make when you deal with an actual physical processor that don't exist in the theoretical model.

And this sidesteps questions of complexity.

But this is similar to a patent on a new wing design. You can say it is simply a mathematical model of airflow and such. But the pudding is the creation, not the mathematical model of the wing.

<comment><USER20> >Actually I don't think its technically "Turing Complete". it doesn't have unbounded tape. In fact any given ARM processor will have a fixed addressable limit. I can certainly compute a class of things in theory that the ARM processor can't compute. There are real HW considerations that you need make when you deal with an actual physical processor that don't exist in the theoretical model.

Obviously -- it is a finite state machine, but this doesn't mean any less that it is a theoretical model.

>But this is similar to a patent on a new wing design. You can say it is simply a mathematical model of airflow and such. But the pudding is the creation, not the mathematical model of the wing.

No -- the wing is a physical object. I can hold a wing in my hand. Conversely, a patent on a wing design does not mean that I cannot use that wing design in a computer simulation of an airfoil. But a patent on bzip does mean, supposedly, that I cannot run bzip on a virtual machine. In other words, the wing design is the point, here: you could patent a specific device for running bzip, but you cannot patent bzip on all computing devices. Which, I suppose, might help to explain my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The bottom line: Supreme Court will never invalidate software patent.

Image this if Supreme Court does invalidate software patent.

A big sticker will be on the US map and shows, "Welcome to take all software inventions you want. All my software inventions are yours. Oh. BTW, yours in your country are still yours!" You see how this affects global competitions in software and finance industries.

However, the current patent system still has room for improvements.

1\. Software innovation changes too fast. The patent length should cut to 5 years (excluding the waiting time to get the patent). I have discussed this previously, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2409917>

2\. Patent non-practicing entities (excluding public research institutions and schools) should be banned to sue anyone. However, even so Patent Trolls still know how to get around this. This just increases difficulty, but definitely won't stop them.

3\. Claim description has many ways to interpret. This is where the money is spent in litigation. If a standard structure and a list of words are allowed to be used in the software claim description, this probably makes easier and faster to find out if a software patent is valid. But I have to admit this is a hard problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER23> Big companies are interested in getting rid of patent trolls, because the defense against trolls is asymmetric. They would like a system that allows them to attack or defend against other large companies, while they remain immune from trolls, such as Intellectual Ventures and its off-springs, like LodSys. One solution would be a 2 year expiration on software patents. Another idea would be to demonstrate "substantial" sales for renewals.

</comment><comment><USER24> That would be nice, but I think that when there are big companies and billions of dollars at stake, things aren't so easy.

<comment><USER25> That's the whole point of the article: the SCOTUS members don't have to be re- elected and are not going to be lobbyists after leaving the bench - <USER2> actually _can_ do such a thing on principle, that's their whole role. Please read the article.

<comment><USER26> However, that's not their job. The supreme Court's job is to make a decision based on the laws set on the books. They can't say, "Well, this version of the law would be better, so we'll go with that, but rather "Thus is what he law says".

We need to educate Congress. Better yet, we need educated people in Congress.

<comment><USER25> I would argue that that is in practice their job, especially given the amount of ambiguity, both unavoidable and superfluous, in the legislation-as-written. I actually have a very strong dislike for Scalia because I think that his legal 'originalist' philosophy is pretty much like biblical 'literalism' - it's an interpretation that is (a) convenient to him and (b) denies the validity of all other interpretations in an underhanded way.

<comment><USER18> I find originalism to be the only reasonable way to interpret the document. If the constitution doesn't say what you want it to say, then change it. Once you start changing the meaning of the words you defeat the purpose of having a written constitution.

<comment><USER25> Don't look now, but language, culture, and technology all change. Change right out from under the most carefully-written of legislation, in fact. Adapting to the now is what I think is the "only reasonable way" to come at the document - and has the advantage of admitting that it's an interpretation, instead of attempting to sneakily de-legitimatize all other interpretations.

But you go ahead and ask James Madison what he thinks about LulzSec.

<comment><USER18> >Don't look now, but language, culture, and technology all change. Change right out from under the most carefully-written of legislation, in fact.

Yes, and so what? There's a huge gulf between legislation, which is meant to be crafted for the needs of the day and can be easily modified, and a constitution, which is a blueprint for how the government functions. Human nature hasn't changed in the last 300 years. Not one bit.

>Adapting to the now is what I think is the "only reasonable way" to come at the document - and has the advantage of admitting that it's an interpretation, instead of attempting to sneakily de-legitimatize all other interpretations.

The other interpretations _are_ illegitimate - there's nothing sneaky about it. They're nothing more than cruft added by people who didn't have the votes to actually change the document. "Adapting to the now" is _precisely_ the purpose of legislation and also the reason the constitution places boundaries on that legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Read Bilski people. Overall it was 5-4, but if you read the majority and the dissent, it was 9-0 on this sub-point: that State Street (not a Supreme Court decision) is bad precedent, and Benson, Flook and Diehr are good precedent.

Diehr is only muddied because people choose to muddy it. I'm working on an essay that details this now.

</comment><comment><USER28> The SCOTUS ruled against the patentability of an algorithm which codified a certain hedging strategy in the Bilski case in 2010. This was believed to reinforce the invalidity of many software patents.

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

<comment><USER29> As the article discussed, Bilski was decided on very narrow grounds; and it relates to business model patents, not software patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously. - Benjamin Franklin

</comment><comment><USER31> I think that it will be very difficult to have serious patent reform for the software industry without having significant effects on other industries. So while it seems like the software industry is generally behind getting rid of patents, the changes will be very difficult to isolate to software and companies outside the field will likely oppose any significant changes. FWIW, I hope they make significant changes for software patents soon.

<comment><USER32> Can you speculate some companies who would take issue to the abolishment of software patents?

<comment><USER33> I would imagine it would be anyone, or industry, who has a significant patent portfolio who worries that invalidating software patents would weaken their patent position.

Both in dollar terms and legal terms.

<comment><USER31> Yes so there are likely some software companies that might have issues (depending on what the changes looked like) such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM (not sure if these companies would object or not, just citing companies with large portfolios). Some non-software companies like pharmaceuticals almost certainly would oppose changes that would affect their ability to exercise their patents.

Edit: A better example might be a company like Intel that has a lot of hardware patents. It is potentially difficult to change the patent laws to prohibit software patents without affecting hardware patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "How to define personhood is a legislative issue, and in the U.S. system, of course, laws are made by the Supreme Court."

\-- Brad Templeton, speaking of Artificial Intelligence

</comment><comment><USER35> In India we don't have the concept of software patents, unless some sort of hardware is involved. I am guessing that this is way better than the system where all business methods are patentable. This kills innovation. We should all just petition for change.

</comment><comment><USER36> >Only if this fact becomes common knowledge, in the way that everyone knows doctors hate malpractice lawsuits, will we have any hope of the Supreme Court—and specifically Justice Scalia—doing the right thing.

Yet we still seems to have malpractice lawsuits all the time.

</comment><comment><USER37> Someone should just patent the patent: "conferring a right or title, esp. the sole right to make, use, or sell some invention" _Joke_

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been thinking this a lot recently. You can't patent software in the UK and it seems ridiculous that you can in the US.

</comment><comment><USER39> A simpler solution would involve giving the defendant of patent litigation the option of making their suit winner takes all.(All of the court fees within reason are paid by the loser) This would keep software patents but reduce frivolous lawsuits.

<comment><USER40> And make it impossible for the little guy to, for example, sue Microsoft due to the potential huge legal fees.

The issue here is that patents are being used for extortion, and none of these cases ever end up going to court.

Maybe what would fix this would be to not allow private entities to pursue patent infringement cases with their own lawyers. Create a Bureau of patent infringement.

Make it so that when a patent is infringed, you file a claim with the Bureau, and they asses validity of patent and assign damages. No litigation, no settlement, no patent lawyers involved.

Perhaps we can defeat bureaucratic inefficiency with more bureaucratic inefficiency.

<comment><USER39> How would that change make it any more difficult for a little guy to sue a big corporation? I think you have missed the part of within reason, Microsoft wouldn't be able to put an individual on the hook for all of their court fees just those that a judge deems valid to pay for the suit. This change would make the patent holder vet the validity of their patent before they can automatically sue, which is the goal we are looking for. A defendant would only exercise the option if they believed the claim to be frivolous for fear of losing in court. For legitimate cases the parties either go to court or settle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> ...and stop the software cost by transactions/servers/CPU's.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here, I'll predict the vote: 5-4 not in favor.

</comment><comment><USER43> This will never happen.

Consider a mechanical timer in a washing machine. A timer that produces a novel washing cycle is certainly patentable.

Consider a chain of electromechanical relays that produces the same cycle. Clearly it is just as patentable, and could be covered by a well-written version of the preceding patent.

Consider the transistorized version of the preceding, with the relays replaced by transistors. Patentability: ditto.

Consider a mask-programmed processor that produces the same cycle. (Mask- programmed means the program is hardwired into a metal pattern.) Patentability: ditto.

Consider a flash-programmed version of the preceding that produces the same cycle. Patentability: ditto.

Consider a volatile memory version of the preceding that produces the same cycle. Patentability: ditto.

Why does this matter? Because in the coming age of nanomachines, "software" will frequently be embodied in custom mechanical machines, chemical reactions, interference patterns of light, and so forth. If software is unpatentable, then neither can you patent the special sauce that turns dirt into nanomachines.

<comment><USER44> Your contrived chain of analogies ends in a total strawman. I think you intended the last item on your list to be pure software, but it's not. It's just an electronic version of the first item.

No one is arguing that a complete electronic timer should not be patentable. The argument is whether the software alone should be patentable.

The software by itself is NOT a timer. The timer's software is only the idea of the timer; it is the instructions, the observation of which allow the physical timer to function. There must still be a physical timer -- an assembly of physical parts that follows programmed instructions to provide a function. That entire assembly is what should be patented.

The bare idea of the timer -- the steps that the timer takes while it's working, should not be patentable. That's what the article is proposing. Nowhere in your analogies is bare software addressed.

<comment><USER43> _I think you intended the last item on your list to be pure software, but it's not._

You have hit the crux of the discussion. I am defining software as a tangible thing, existing as a pattern of matter and fields. It is not abstract, virtual, or ineffable. What you are talking about ("pure software") are ideas about the software's principles of operation. The mathematical and logical ideas by which we understand a process are not patentable, but their tangible embodiment (software) is patentable.

Consider an example of the difference. Prime numbers are abstract ideas that can be used to create difficult-to-solve problems, and thereby used for cryptography. As abstract ideas, they are not patentable. Someone could embody those ideas in a logic machine (like the RSA algorithm) and patent that. But somebody else could embody those ideas in an analog laser interferometer and patent that, without conflict with the other patent.

 _No one is arguing that a complete electronic timer should not be patentable._

And that is exactly what is covered by a valid software patent. Such patents claim something like "Claim 1: A stored-program logic machine, configured to provide the process described in claim 2." The configuration of the logic machine is the software.

A well-written patent will cover all variations of the software that are "obvious" to "a person skilled in the art". This generality is why all patents are so painful to evade, not just software patents.

<comment><USER44> > "I am defining software as a tangible thing, existing as a pattern of matter > and fields."

Ok, but that means you're not talking about software patents any more. The U.S. patent office currently cares nothing about patterns of matter and fields.

> "And that [a complete physical timer] is exactly what is covered by a valid > software patent."

No, wrong. That's how it _should_ be, but it's not, and that's the problem. Officially, patent law isn't supposed to allow patents on "abstract ideas", but due to incomplete guidance from the courts, the requirements have been diluted to nothing. Right now in the U.S., a software patent application can satisfy the requirements by specifying any trivial physical step. Most software patents specify only a "computing device" on which the software is used. Well gee whiz, guess what that covers? You got it, everything! It's useless language; there's no narrowing, no added specificity. It would be just as usefull to specify "software in Her Majesty the Queen's service". As a result, for the past 20 years the USPTO has essentially been granting patents on pure software.

A patent on a laser interferometer that encodes instructions is no longer a software patent; that would be covered by a mechanical patent. And this patent certainly would be in conflict with any software patents that covered the software encoded thereby, if the interferometer were ever put to use in a product.

<comment><USER43> _The U.S. patent office currently cares nothing about patterns of matter and fields._

 _Right now in the U.S., a software patent application can satisfy the requirements by specifying any trivial physical step. Most software patents specify only a "computing device" on which the software is used._

So which is it? Physical embodiment = not abstract.

 _A patent on a laser interferometer that encodes instructions is no longer a software patent; ..._

I was talking about interference machines that use the wave properties of light to do computation _without the use of digital logic_. With these machines, abstract mathematical approaches are reduced to practice by means other than software. The software patent does not somehow magically fence off an area of abstract thought. What it fences off is a particularly convenient and valuable area of concrete machinery.

<comment><USER44> > "So which is it? Physical embodiment = not abstract."

No, the point is that there effectively is no "physical embodiment" requirement. Adding magic words like "computing device" or "system and method" to a patent application has no real effect, because ALL software is run on a "computing device" or a "system". This does nothing to narrow the scope of a patent, or to tie it to any distinct physical implementation. The ONLY distinct entity in such a patent is the algorithm.

This will become immediately clear to you if you read any number of software or business method patents. You seem to have created your own alternate reality here, where software patents are necessarily like mechanical patents. They are not.

> "I was talking about interference machines that use the wave properties of > light to do computation without the use of digital logic."

Fine, whatever. Any patent that covers your thingamajig in its physical manifestation will have to be a proper mechanical patent, complete with design drawings. As a separate matter, the computation performed by the machine can be expressed algorithmically, and that algorithm is what could be covered by a software patent, completely apart from whatever machine implements it. That patent can then be asserted against any other use of that algorithm regardless of the physical system that uses it.

> "The software patent does not somehow magically fence off an area of > abstract thought. What it fences off is a particularly convenient and > valuable area of concrete machinery."

No, again, that would be a mechanical patent. Have you really not ever read a software patent? Go look one up; maybe start with one of the patents on LZW, or maybe amazon's 1-click patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yes, please.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a simple minded piece. It is so riddled with half digested bs I don't even know where to start with it. I guess I'll just pick on something so blindingly obvious that anyone with more than one braincell (which apparently does not include the author) would already find beyond question.

Copyright protects the expression of an idea. This is an absolutely excellent form of protection when the expression of the idea is a huge part of its value. A piece of music, or a novel IS its expression. If you rewrite James Joyce's Ulysses in your own words you have lost Joyce's expression which is precisely what people value in the reading. Hence a work in which the expression is critical to its value is well protected by copyright.

Software is not such a work. If someone spends years refining an invention and someone else reverse engineers it and yet changes the expression of the work copyright is no protection whatsoever because no-one using the work gives a rat's ass about the underlying expression.

The idea that copyright is a meaningful protection for software is so laughable that anyone daft enough to take the idea seriously is clearly so appallingly badly informed that they don't deserve to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER12> What if I was the first person to write a murder mystery in which the butler did it? Could I patent that plot device so no one else could use it?

The point of copywriting code is not because people care so much about great coding style or variable names - it's to prevent the laziest forms of copying. If someone wants to invest the time and effort to reverse-engineer and rewrite a piece of software without copying any of the original code, the cost of doing so is sufficiently prohibitive that it might be easier just to rewrite it from scratch.</comment></comment>


Linux and FreeBSD Kernel: Multiple TCP-Based Remote DoS Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Netflix/security-bulletins/blob/master/advisories/third-party/2019-001.md <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the main thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205566)</comment>


The least you need to know to experience the joy of better brewed coffee - <AUTHOR> https://joshrichards.net/2013/08/16/the-least-you-need-to-know-to-experience-the-joy-of-better-brewed-coffee/ <comment><USER2> This is an excellent list, and it absolutely mirrors the advice I give to people.

> Use the same amount of coffee grounds in your maker regardless of whether > you're making a full pot or not.

This is a tip that is missed way too often, and I love sharing it with people because it seems counter-intuitive. Always prefer to use more coffee than less. If you use too little, as you approach the end of the brew, you're going to start extracting bitter compounds. I think this is probably the _easiest_ way to improve your coffee (though not the best; a grinder and fresh, whole beans is the single biggest improvement one can make -- I consider that one upgrade, not two).

This is why otherwise terrible coffee from the gas station still tastes "strong." It's not strong, it's just really bitter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Regarding 4. Store the beans sealed as tightly as possible (exposure to oxygen/air speeds up their deterioration)

I'm always wondering if i did a great ghetto-style hack, or just deluding myself? What is a tight seal in the context of outgasing co²? When you buy beans in bags they have to have a kind of vent/seal, because otherwise they would burst. So i used a leftover 500g can from a protein shake, and the clear plastic protecting lid from a 500g yoghurt which sits over the aluminum foil, and fastened the clip with the use before date from a toast/sandwich bag as handle to pull it out with adhesive tape to it. The idea being: when i insert the clear plastic lid into the can over the coffee, it makes a DOUBLE seal with a buffer of co² between the cans loose lid and the inner plastic lid. It is sitting so tight that i can see it slowly glide down on the air cushion which it replaces, the more empty the can gets. Anyways, just four always availabe leftover parts. Am i ingenious, or what? :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Be mindful of where you get your coffee. Intensive coffee farming is environmentally destructive: [https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/64/5/416/2754235](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/64/5/416/2754235)

Absent urgent climate action wild coffee will likely be extinct by 2080 and farming will likely have to move regions or move indoors: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coffee- cou...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coffee-could-be- extinct-by-2080-due-to-climate-change-destroying-areas-suitable-for-growing- beans-a7222241.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent list.

As an additional reason to buy whole beans, consider this:

Researches who work often with cockroaches tend to develop an allergy to them, over time; requiring them to wear heaving gloves to handle the creatures. These individuals also become allergic to pre-ground coffee at the same time.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't the takeaway there be to not do research with cockroaches?

<comment><USER7> Don't use ground coffee or you'll become allergic to cockroaches?

<comment><USER8> I've always wondered what the black bits in my steel cut porridge oats are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are good tips but I find it incomplete without at least a few words about the freshness of the beans at the time you buy them. If you're using stale beans the other steps aren't really going to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. It does mention using them promptly after acquisition. I suppose I overlooked some folks might not realize beans have a shelf life. And not all beans on the shelf are sealed.

Fortunately, most beans in my experience are sealed such that prior to the consumer purchasing them they'll at least be in a reasonable state. Not roasted within the past few days fresh, but good enough for many folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A striking omission is the importance of grinder type (Burr vs. blade).

<comment><AUTHOR> For espresso, absolutely. For brewed coffee, debatable.

The post was about the _least_ so some corners were cut, albeit quite deliberately.</comment></comment>


Drive through cities in the browser while listening to local radio stations - <AUTHOR> https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER4> I absolutely love this.

As the creator of Dream Catalogue once wrote:

"I spent a lot of 2013 listening to spacey drum & bass mixes while watching Hong Kong and Tokyo night driving videos on YouTube and drinking beer, just because the combination of it all created such a weird feeling I have never experienced before."

I love these kinds of videos. Pairing it with a local radio station gives me the kind of feeling that you get whenever you first arrive in a new city.

You're gawking out of the window of the taxi/bus/train as the city and landscape goes whizzing past. Just drinking it allll in

In those moments you feel there is a whole world of opportunity that awaits you. You don't know what you'll find there. You get lost going over the possibilities that await. Will you find friendship? Opportunities? Love? Enlightenment? Anything could happen.

But in that moment, those are all just possibilities. So you sit. And you watch. And you think.

And then you snap back to reality when you reach your destination. You step outside, are briefly assaulted by the heat and moisture - or lack of it - <USER3> sometimes you see or smell things you've never encountered before.

You blink, breathe in, and take your first steps in this new place that you will be calling home.

<comment><USER4> In case the author reads this, it would be nice to have a 'night mode' option.

<comment><USER5> And night+rain mode.

<comment><USER6> Yep! Definitely that for London :)

<comment><USER7> When I eventually leave London, I feel like some of my favourite memories are going to be sitting in the back of an Uber driving from Sth to Nth London at 5am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Coincidentally, I'm updating the companion Spotify playlist for my online port of the 2005 procedural driving demo, Drivey:

[https://rezmason.github.io/drivey](https://rezmason.github.io/drivey)

Playlist: [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ukrs3cTKjTbLoFcxqssXi](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ukrs3cTKjTbLoFcxqssXi)

Slightly different vibe, equally free of charge, feedback always welcome :)

<comment><USER9> That's really cool, thank you for sharing that! Only feedback I have is that it feels like I'm going around in circles somehow. I guess it's because the frequency of right turns seems to be a lot higher than the frequency of left turns, for some reason. Not sure if this is just my imagination, but after 2 minutes of watching it I started feeling like I'm going in circles.

<comment><USER10> If you click the "camera" option a few times you get to satellite view - <USER3> you are correct, it seems we are driving in a big loop

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I find interesting is that cities everywhere seem to be roughly at the same level of development. The GDP of a country may be different, GDP per capita might be wildly different, but in most places on earth there are still roads, cars or motorcycles at least, reasonably well built structures, and so on.

If you look at the different architecture, you might be able to figure out roughly where you are, but you would also be able to tell WHEN you with similar accuracy.

<comment><USER12> The internet has sped up pretty much everything in modern society. I would say in the last 20 years, it wasn't the earth shaping the internet, it was the internet shaping the earth.

<comment><USER13> 20 years ago, and even 40 years ago, it was also true that urban communities arguably[1] had more in common with each other than with their surrounding rural communities.

(the future was there, it just wasn't evenly distributed yet)

[1] Jane Jacob's "The Economy of Cities" argues that cities resembling each other has been true for at least 5'000 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is amazing. I love going through the youtube videos like this where its just people driving through a city. Feels like traveling, and if you are traveling to a city it can be a good way to familiarize yourself with it before you go.

The addition of the radio station just makes it feel that much more immersive.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for making this. I didn't realize how much I miss visiting London. If the creator is reading this - can you please add Dublin as well? If this is on github, happy to send a PR with this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX8bD5tpQWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX8bD5tpQWQ)

<comment><USER16> What is the London radio sound to your ears? I would have thought Radio 3 or 4 would be iconic London but they're not on here!

<comment><USER15> I have little to no experience with London radio, I spend most of time chatting with cabbies when I'm in a black cab. What I miss is seeing pub, pret, pub, pret, pub, pret :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an absolutely fabulous idea, great job.

Some observations:

* I chose 'Berlin' and when I selected the 'street noise' it played music. Viewing the video, I see the YouTube video has music rather than street sounds, so selecting videos that have actual street sounds might be good.

* I would like a 'night' mode where I can toggle whether I'm driving around in the day or night. Bonus points for different weather (I would prefer rain or overcast personally).

* It would be great to have a 360/VR video to be able to scroll around or use in VR.

Do you run into any licensing issues with the radio or video? I didn't see any free/libre licenses on the YouTube videos so presumably you're a take-down notice away from not being able to use these videos.

<comment><USER18> > I didn't see any free/libre licenses on the YouTube videos so presumably > you're a take-down notice away from not being able to use these videos.

If the videos are being embedded from YouTube (as they appear to be), then there are potentially two different concerns here:

1\. Whether the video owner is okay with their content being shown on another site. This is already controllable via whether they choose to enable embedding or not, and the YouTube TOS talk about licensing for embeds, so this seems okay. [https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms#fb098d3e34](https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms#fb098d3e34)

2\. Whether the embedding is being done in compliance with the YouTube API Terms of Service. There could be some issues here. [https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/api-services- ter...](https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/api-services-terms-of- service) ; [https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/required- minimum...](https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/required-minimum- functionality) (see "Overlays" section).

<comment><USER17> I think this gets at the licensing issues and the "non-commercial" sentiment of that type of usage, whether it's explicitly CC-NC or otherwise.

Notice the "Buy me a coffee" link. Is this considered "for profit" now? This person is asking for donations and is effectively monetizing the videos, at least is a very weak sense.

And thanks for that 'overlays' link. It's clear these types of sites only exist at the discretion of YouTube. That's unfortunate and all the more reason to try to enrich the commons with more CC0/CC-BY/CC-BY-SA work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is a great way to teach young children about the world in a way that resonates with them. So much of their observation of the outside world occurs from the seat of a car (for better or for worse). It's a big part of their universe; they often pay such close attention to every little detail, so the differences around the world should be immediately obvious to them.

<comment><USER20> I love finding ways to talk about the world with my son, when i travel for work i get a small souvenir just so i have a physical object we can talk about from the place i've just been. Regarding your comment and after watching the London video it reminded me of our first trip as a family to London. We took electric black taxis all around the different sites in central London. I hadn't planned on doing that but we had a tough stretch on the central line so the taxi was a welcome upgrade. Anyway my son loved the taxi, it is silent, has huge windows, glass roof and you really get to see London from inside. We did day time trips and ones at night. It was so good i tried to game taxi ranks to keep getting them. I think its good for children to have a worldview which is easy with youtube today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a distinct lack of rap music stations. I thought you would at least have the big ones like WQHT/Hot 97 (NYC) and KPWR/Power 106 (LA). There are many other major stations around the world as well, like BBC Radio 1Xtra and Rinse FM in UK.

Could you do more to add rap stations? I love the site, just think it still has a few oversights and blind spots for some cities and genres.

[https://www.cision.com/us/2014/08/top-10-hip-hop-and-rb- radi...](https://www.cision.com/us/2014/08/top-10-hip-hop-and-rb-radio- stations-2/)

</comment><comment><USER22> cool experience, but small gripe : the grimier parts of Los Angeles are a million times more fun to drive through than a loop through 'the Hills', Malibu, or Beverly Hills.

I'd hate foreigners to think that's what LA is like, not by a long shot. Driving through LA is a lot more like driving through a huge industrial area with a small metropolitan ultra-lux oasis every few miles.

If someone wants to get the real feel for Los Angeles, in my opinion of course, jump on Google Earth, start at El Segundo and Crenshaw Blvd. and 'drive' south until you hit San Pedro.

THAT's a true Los Angeles drive. (imo, of course).

For an even fuller 'California' experience, drive up PCH afterwards and have dinner on the coast somewhere nice.

<comment><USER23> > THAT's a true Los Angeles drive. (imo, of course).

It's also wholly outside the Los Angeles city limits

<comment><USER24> So are Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, but I'd argue most would call them LA.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Los+Angeles,+email@example.com...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Los+Angeles,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-118.5695702,10.3z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c2c75ddc27da13:0xe22fdf6f254608f4!8m2!3d34.0522342!4d-118.2436849)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm already hooked. It's wonderful revisiting old travels and dreaming about life elsewhere. I've confirmed I have a preference for places where people drive fast, just a little crazy, and sunny and hot.

My requests would be: Bali, Jakarta, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Cairo, Adis Ababa, Lima, Bogota, Trinidad, Kingston, Puerto Rico

<comment><USER26> Incidentally, "drive fast, just a little crazy, and sunny and hot." sounds like hell to me :-)

<comment><USER9> I'm originally from a country where people drive slow, never crazy and it's dark and cold. I also love places where people drive fast, a little bit crazy and it's sunny and warm. Guess you want what you didn't have growing up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is brilliant. Reminds me of the stressful time I had in Paris trying to drive with all of the crazy motorcyclists darting around all over the place. Also, good job on providing KEXP radio in Seattle.

</comment><comment><USER28> Neat! But I can't say I'm a fan of the analog TV static. That's mixing the metaphor.

Reminds me of the Truck Simulator games that had support for streaming local stations over Internet radio in game.

<comment><USER29> A lot of FM radios produce noise when scanning between stations.

<comment><USER30> Yes, but a different noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, this is just wonderful. Such a simple idea so well executed! Having just shown it around at the office, the consensus is that it's fascinating and very engaging. I hope more videos are forthcoming.

A minor fix would be to prevent the audio tracks from restarting at the beginning. Instead, start from a random point, or resume from the last location. Considering the video appears to be crowdsourced, it might also help to include a "suggest video" function.

</comment><comment><USER32> There is something about this that evokes a real visceral feeling from deep within, a familiar feeling of being in a new place and taking it all in.

With that being said, I hope I never have to give up this flexible remote working setup we all find ourselves in. Not until driving is more automated and efficient. The feelings of being in virtual traffic still makes me cringe and irrationally angry when someone cuts me off.

</comment><comment><USER33> The Havana stream is pretty cool if you're into classic cars. Quite a few just on the streets, since the embargo basically stopped US car imports after 1960.

</comment><comment><USER34> My first thought was "I absolutely love this" and sure enough it's the first comment that pops up.

I remember a 24/7 livestream that ran on Youtube some time ago that only played drive-throughs of Tokyo videos while cheesy 80s japanese city-pop played in the background. It was pretty fun, but of course it was shut down, probably because of copyright. I miss it, but this is a valid replacement. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER35> Holy Jesus, this is amazing. It took me back to moments in my life but I just going through the stories and the sounds of the radio.

Incredible artwork.

EDIT: I did notice that some switches didn't correctly switch some of the channels. I was in Antalya and definitely listening to some American channel and the same for Bombay because I am confident no one there talks about possums and drywall :D

EDIT 2: Also, lots of Turkey. Loving it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Please consider adding KCRW to Los Angeles.

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

<comment><USER37> I think its already in there

[https://puu.sh/FXajT/bce4ecc81c.png](https://puu.sh/FXajT/bce4ecc81c.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love this! Really captures that feeling of arriving in a new country for the first time, sitting in a cab on the way to your hostel/hotel with the driver playing the local radio.

My only feedback would be that the white noise in between radio station and city changes is jarringly loud, and I'd love to see more locations!

</comment><comment><USER39> This is incredible!

I noticed that if I try to change stations in Seoul (track forward or track backwards) that part of the interface freezes with a "loading..." message.

Tiny bug, probably easy fix.

Such a great experience overall. If you plan to keep building it up, would love even more cities, even "boring" ones, if adding them could be pretty well automated. Synching the time of the video to the time in that place would be an amazing feature, but would probably involve a lot of tagging, and not sure if there's that much content out there. Keyboard shortcuts, including one to hop to a new random city would be nice. (I guess ctrl+r technically does that already...).

EDIT: There's a whole genre of 4k city flyover videos with drones on YouTube too. I know it's off concept, but that might be worth remixing in a similar way (assuming you could give credit and get traffic back to the original producers).

Great stuff.

<comment><USER40> Same for Singapore -- radio didn't work. But I live here, and I absolutely despise the radio here, incredibly insipid, so it's fine that it was muted.

For background atmospherics, I sometimes enjoy listening to emergency scanner traffic on some of the sites that aggregate it from the big cities. Amazing to listen to the dispatcher flows in Chicago, for example. Non stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Logged in to say kudos. This is a fantastic idea. Driving around in Antalya now, and I am transported mentally.

</comment><comment><USER42> Street noise is way too loud.

<comment><USER43> In some cities. Sound volume normalization/tweaking is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is such a simple yet great idea, I love it. It was featured on Product Hunt as well: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/drive- listen](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/drive-listen)

</comment><comment><USER45> Love it! Really neat.

Even if landscapes are very urban, I like this feeling of driving that I don't really have anymore since I'm living in Paris. I'm often playing to Euro Truck Simulator just for getting out of the narrow streets and watching the horizon.

If you like videos like this, I recommend you this YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3HAx-5XIRrWzpFziOQY0Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3HAx-5XIRrWzpFziOQY0Q) The highways, the acceleration effect, and the acid jazz music will give Ridge Racer memories to some of you!

</comment><comment><USER46> Oh my goodness, it even has the UPS trucks and random Uber/Lyft drivers blocking the driving lanes in San Francisco. That's what I call realism, it's bringing back PTSD for me.

Fantastic project, works really well, almost too well!

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm personally very fond of train cab ride videos (e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9qiV7XlFs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9qiV7XlFs) ). You can find these on YouTube with music as well, but pairing them with local radio (in this case one of the SWR channels [https://www.swr.de/](https://www.swr.de/) ) could also be nice in this project as a non-car option.

</comment><comment><USER48> Super cool! If by some chance the creator of this is reading these comments, The Toronto drive brought up "WNED Classical" which isn't a Toronto station, it's out of Buffalo.

<comment><USER49> I guess that's even more realistic then. Can you actually hear the Buffalo station in Toronto?

<comment><USER50> I used to love getting the US ATCS tv stations out of NY state. Universal Sports was awesome, 24hr a day amateur sports, then NBC bought it and I moved.

<comment><USER51> For a time, free OTA Universal Sports was probably my most watched channel. Then, as you say, NBC bought it and most of the content moved to cable channels or behind online paywalls at NBCSports. The NBC Olympic Channel captures the vibe of the old station pretty well if it's available to you. I know YouTube TV has it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> A small recent thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22972812)

<comment><USER53> That's a shame.

I'd like to see some sort of mash-up between it and radio.garden.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477771)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I just pulled myself from the rabbit hole of Google _vs._ Zero Hedge to discover this. It brings back so many good memories of countless road trips.... Reminds me that much of the world ain't so bad, and someone just made it a little bit better. Thank you Erkam. [1]

[1]: [https://www.buymeacoffee.com/erkam](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/erkam)

</comment><comment><USER55> Driving in India seems so challenging compared to any other country :D. Being an Indian I think driving any where else will be so much more boring.

</comment><comment><USER56> What this has scammy popups when browsing on a phone?

<comment><USER57> Agreed. I got a popup about kitchen installation. What's happening with this app on mobile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is absolutely incredible. I will not be working all day because of this. Neat seeing the different forms of civic infrastructure around the world. E.g. in Spain, they have traffic lights that blink on green when about to change. Could be helpful. Also funny seeing the different cultures of driving aggression

</comment><comment><USER59> Love this, but please get rid of the pop-up malware. I am on Android and a pop-up appeared saying my OS is out of date and that there were updates to install. I could not dismiss it and it appears to hijack my screen and attempt to redirect me to norton security or something. Not sure if the video player is response for this or what is going on, but it felt very violative.

<comment><USER60> If you can't dismiss it, then you have malware on your phone. A website cannot hijack your screen in a way you can't simply back out of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is absolutely fantastic! I hope there will be a way to adjust video quality. It'd be pretty cool if there were a picture in picture trigger too. [https://css-tricks.com/an-introduction-to-the-picture-in-pic...](https://css- tricks.com/an-introduction-to-the-picture-in-picture-web-api)

</comment><comment><USER62> This is perfect to leave on the television.

One suggestion: looks like the radio stations for Beijing could use some alternatives. I only see 2 options, 1 for "Alxa Mongolian" and "BinChow". BinChow appears to be a Taiwanese radio station, and the Mongolian one appears to be speaking Mongolian.

</comment><comment><USER63> Great idea! I think you can you can add driving on the highways to the list, it looks quite nice when combined with a radio. Here's an example of something similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JXpMMmAp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JXpMMmAp4)

</comment><comment><USER64> I like to fly X-Plane's Cessna with radio.garden open in background, tuning it to nearby city on the ground below.

</comment><comment><USER65> How are they embedding youtube videos without any of the youtube branding? I've never (to my knowledge) seen this sort of thing before. Isn't the youtube team pretty relentless at ensuring their logo is in the bottom right corner no matter where you embed the video?

<comment><USER66> If you take a look at page source, you'll see that the YouTube videos are embedded with a few extra parameters that make the interface (what sometimes used to be called the "chrome" before the browser with this name became popular...) a lot more seamless.

Example video URL (the controls=0, showinfo=0 and playsinline=1 play a role in this):

[https://www.youtube.com/embed/ceEE_oYuzS4?autoplay=1&mute=1&...](https://www.youtube.com/embed/ceEE_oYuzS4?autoplay=1&mute=1&controls=0&start=40&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdriveandlisten.herokuapp.com&playsinline=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1&widgetid=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Wow, this is really amazing! And really cool idea and experience to just put on TV at home and chill.

But I always wanted to just get into the mood of Paris or NY or Havana or Tokyo when I hop on bicycle or motorcycle. And would love if You had a version with just stations and list of cities like this.

</comment><comment><USER68> That's great, really cool!

I wonder why it's deployed to Heroku. Isn't it just static html/css/js?

</comment><comment><USER69> a few clips that could be used for Bucharest: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQCRwK2XEzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQCRwK2XEzE) , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YseGSV0l6jQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YseGSV0l6jQ) , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenT0KTi7pw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenT0KTi7pw) , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQCRwK2XEzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQCRwK2XEzE)

</comment><comment><USER70> There was a similar website trending here last month, where the videos involved walking (instead of driving). Does anyone remember it / can anyone point me to it?

Unrelated: How do you search for old HN posts when you can't think of exact keywords?

<comment><USER71> google:

news.ycombinator.com your search term

Also if you google for hn search there are some sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> So good! It's a more immersive version of radio.garden that popped up this week on HN.

</comment><comment><USER73> I wish this didn't have pop ups to download and install things. That gives it a phishing vibe. Which prevents me from sharing it with people. Who will likely install whatever this promotes.

</comment><comment><USER74> This is great - wonderful sense of presence, especially with the road noise mixed in. It would be really fantastic in VR.

(Also, 50 different cities and a couple stations for each? That's no small amount of work!)

</comment><comment><USER75> This is really neat, though I wish I could listen to AM / news channels rather than just FM which tends to be more music.

Also, I think the bike/moped driver in Wuhan runs a red about a minute or two in!

</comment><comment><USER76> This is so cool! Feature request: a toggle to hide the right bar.

<comment><USER77> The toggle is already there - click top right on the eye logo

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> This is awesome.

My first thought was to visit all the places I've traveled to that I love.

Enjoying it a lot.

Feels like being in a local taxi again, and it's jogging all kinds of memories, what a great experience.

</comment><comment><USER79> Really kool, i can just relax, watch and listen especially when i want to get some positive distractions.Great selection of cities and radio stations.

</comment><comment><USER80> This makes me smile so much, thanks for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER71> Click the city repeatedly to get alternate scenes for a given city (didn't see anyone else mention that yet).

</comment><comment><USER81> Going into fullscreen(F11) causes the video to zoom(i would say 50%) and causes a degradation in quality and a loss of field of view.

<comment><USER82> Came here to type this. Mine zoomed in much farther, but I would have liked to eliminate the browser mess.

Otherwise, this is very, very cool. Thank you to the author.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> This is amazing! Fantastic work! Can we please please please get a VR option? Pretty please?

</comment><comment><USER84> I tried to get out of the car and steal another one. Then I realized this is not GTA Vice city...

Congratulations for the great work!

</comment><comment><USER85> A side question:One thing I'd love to see is a live camera in a marshalling yard. Any chance we have one already?

</comment><comment><USER86> Ok, consider me impressed! I really like the simplicity, creativity, and execution. Good Job.

I would love to see this for every city.

</comment><comment><USER87> At least Madrid is not Madrid. It's actually Paracuellos del Jarama, a village (20k pop.) ~20km east of Madrid.

</comment><comment><USER88> Feels kinda relaxing in these tough times. Thank you for creating this :-)

</comment><comment><USER89> I clicked play on mobile and I immediately got an advertisement to get a quote for a new kitchen?

Immediately closed. Disappointing.

<comment><USER57> Got the same here. Something is up on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Absolutely love this. Great opportunity to see again all those places visited in the past. It feels so real.

</comment><comment><USER91> Lovely. I especially like the Stockholm dystopian winter drive. Pick Star FM for 80's tunes.

</comment><comment><USER92> I find it absolutely fantastic that Wuhan is in the list of cities! Who would have thought.

</comment><comment><USER93> This is neat, but I find it irresponsible they don't blur faces and license plates.

Once upon a time you asked people for their permission before you took their photo; much less before you posted it somewhere for the world to see.

EDIT: The videos are from popular Youtube videos, so the footage is already public (though I still can't help feeling like it's propagating a problem).

</comment><comment><USER94> Full screen seems to broken. F11 doesn't work for that. Any idea how to full screen?

</comment><comment><USER95> This is so cool. I just loaded up the Seattle one to get a feel for the city pre-COVID.

</comment><comment><USER96> Nice! I moved ~5years ago to the US from Moscow - was nice to get back virtually :)

</comment><comment><USER97> So the videos are repeated over and over and radio stations are played live.

</comment><comment><USER98> amazing, love it. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to play on a big TV, or project onto a full wall, and leave going in the background.

A map would be awesome, but I realize that data probably isn't easily available.

<comment><USER99> The Mumbai video has a map

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> This is really brilliant! Reminds me of my time traveling in those cities.

</comment><comment><USER101> congrats. Just one thing: in Barcelona the official language is Catalan, so if you look for a local station try not to put "Latino" music (that's latino america -> south America

</comment><comment><USER102> Why does my Firefox focus block thousands of connections on this site?

</comment><comment><USER103> Didn't expect to see my city here (Yekaterinburg)

Beautiful project, love this!

</comment><comment><USER104> It's really awesome, congrats!

However, at least for European cities you'll run into trouble regarding GDPR, if you do not mask out the license plates [1]:

" _An easy example of information that could be used to indirectly identify someone is an individual's license plate number. The police (a third party) can quickly match a name to a license plate number._ "

At least here in Germany, there has been one case where a Youtuber got a fine because of showing license plates in his videos [2]. And because your website is accessible in the European Union, these rules apply.

[1]: [https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr-personal-data/](https://gdpr.eu/eu-gdpr- personal-data/)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFBrgJIkDwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFBrgJIkDwI) [Obv. german source, sorry]

</comment><comment><USER105> Such a nice reminder of the simplicity and beauty of the web

</comment><comment><USER106> This is amazing. Where does the driving footage come from?

<comment><USER107> Video sources are linked on the right. Seems to be random youtube videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Better yet, mute those local stations and put some Moby on

<comment><USER109> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBIRHlKYG2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBIRHlKYG2o)

Makes me want to do a version where the video has a filter applied to it to make it more ethereal..

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> Any chance you could add the radio station m2o for Rome?

</comment><comment><USER111> Nitpick: the city is Honolulu. Hawaii is the state.

</comment><comment><USER112> Fantastic! Would love to see Bengaluru, India :)

<comment><USER70> Lol with all the traffic?

<comment><USER112> Because of COVID-19, I assume there should be less traffic. With traffic it will give taste of 3D driving experience of Bengaluru to all our global friends :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> A lot of these look like it'd be hard to pick out the location from without a bit of time to look around, but then I clicked on Switzerland.

</comment><comment><USER114> Great job! Are the radio stations live?

<comment><USER115> Seems so. I pulled up a radio stations stream in NYC and they were playing the same song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> My brain really needed this. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER117> Didn't see anything in Africa?

<comment><USER118> That was quite pronounced. Of the 7, only one wasn't featured: Africa. Difficult to make any conclusion on that, but it's hard to ignore

<comment><USER51> This site is using videos pulled from Youtube. The lack of African cities most likely results from few available options. Certainly biases could play a role but a more charitable view is simply that those videos don't exist or are harder to find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> This is so fun. Add more cities! :D

</comment><comment><USER120> This is really unique

</comment><comment><USER121> I just tried Wuhan

</comment><comment><USER122> Amazing idea!

</comment><comment><USER123> This is amazing !! thank you for creating it

</comment><comment><USER124> that's really cool. nice job

</comment><comment><USER125> brilliant

</comment><comment><USER126> This is brilliant</comment>


The School of Athens: A detail hidden in a masterpiece - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200910-the-school-of-athens-a-detail-hidden-in-a-masterpiece <comment><USER2> _> a simple ink pot teeters precariously on the corner of a large marble block, an elbow-twitch away from falling, shattering, and opening a black hole at the heart of Raphael's work. That unassuming object, and it alone, transforms Raphael's fresco from being a two-dimensional tribute to rational thought into a far deeper and more mercurial meditation on the mysteries of existence._

Er, no...? It doesn't look in a dangerous position to me.

What it really does, combined with the human figure, is hiding the desk border, dispensing the artist from dealing with a few awkward issues of perspective. The composition is a late addition, after all, and its front perspective is already suspect.

This seems the sort of critique that gives the art world a bad name.

<comment><USER3> This colorful language is also used by artists to describe their own works. e.g. the artists description of the Tilted Arc ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc)):

"The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step, the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes."

The only thing the "viewers" were aware of was the fact that a large rusty slab of scrap metal had blocked free movement and become an eye sore. Art is a strange thing. Not every vision or idea will be apparent to the observer.

Though I do agree that this kind of language comes off as condescending, as if the author has some form of superior artistic analysis and introspect. It's almost as if they are on the same level as conspiracy theorists, proud of the fact that they "understand" some arcane idea or fact that doesn't exist or isn't true.

<comment><USER4> You have to realize the metagame being played here. The game that art collectors are playing is tax evasion. They want to buy something for $100 from a depressed cigarette smoker in tight jeans, then 20 years later say that it's worth $100 million and donate it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a mega tax writeoff. If they buy a 1 inch cube of 18/10 stainless steel, they can never claim that it's worth $100 million because the IRS would just say "you can buy that off McMaster Carr for $100." But with the above paragraphs attached, they get to claim that it's unique and not replaceable and therefore worth whatever they say it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Remove the ink pot from the epicentre of Raphael's fresco, and the work > dissolves into a fiasco of confused and confusing forms. Heraclitus's > profound, if overlooked, ink pot is the very well-spring from which the > elastic energy of Raphael's masterpiece endlessly emanates.

:-/ I don't really buy putting this much on the ink pot. If the ink pot were missing, no one would notice. As is, most reproductions of SoA just show Plato and Aristotle and cut everyone else out. I think a better statement would be "the pen in Heraclitus's hand adds unity to the picture by showing that the anachronistic crew are united in their literary ambition."

<comment><USER6> _If the ink pot were missing, no one would notice._

Mystery in the Masterpiece: Raphael and the case of the missing inkpot

[...]

Far from being a careless omission, the missing inkpot is a metaphor for the mystery of the creative process, whereby the artist extracts the image, stroke by masterful stroke, from beyond the veil of imagination. When the viewer has become so absorbed in the reality of the painting that the missing inkpot stands out, it is as if Raphael silently announces his own creative divinity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen photographies of this fresco dozens of times, even studied it (superficially) in some art history class, but for the first time I've realized that ancient Greeks did not have paper, much less books.

I imagine Raphael and his contemporaries didn't know as much about ancient Greece as we do today. OTOH the printing press was still fairly recent so Raphael must have been conscious that books were not commonly available centuries before him.

My point is that this depiction of ancient Greece might have been deliberately fantastic which is something I had never thought before about Renaissance art.

</comment><comment><USER8> I actually enjoyed the artistic summary (although it does go a bit long) but I wish the writer would have stated the factual point earlier: the figure with the ink pot is Heraclitus

</comment><comment><USER9> Kind of clickbaity. I was waiting for some huge delivery about (spoiler alert!) there being an inkpot, but it never really materialized.

Like they said, the figure didn't appear in previous drafts. Some student probably made the observation "hey, where's Pen Man getting his ink from?" and it wound up squeaked in on the edge of the desk.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to find things hidden in masterpieces get Charles Bouleau's _The Painter 's Secret Geometry_ and learn about the scaffolding which gives imagery its underlying structure and guides the eye around it.

</comment><comment><USER10> For some reason the entire article reminds me of the artwork descriptions in Rimworld. For example:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/byYi9](https://imgur.com/gallery/byYi9)</comment>


How come PHP seems so much faster than Rust? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/d9zfa6/how_come_php_seems_so_much_faster_than_rust/ <comment><USER2> While this discussion boils down to the efficiency of the underlying regex engines for PHP and Rust, it does highlight (to me) why PHP is so popular: in the hands of average programmers, PHP is quick to write and fast (enough) to execute.

I personally believe it's ubiquity is well-deserved, and I actually like it as a language despite all its quirks (which exist in almost every language I've come across)!

<comment><USER3> PHP isn't popular because it's easy, it's popular because for a long while it was the only viable language for developing web applications.

<comment><USER4> _> for a long while [PHP] was the only viable language for developing web applications._

That is not what I remember. CGI existed before PHP (1994), and was used extensively for web apps (ebay still appears to use it to this day). Also, mod_perl and Java Servlets were introduced around the same time, circa 1996, so I don't think it's correct to say PHP had a monopoly on web apps "for a long while".

<comment><USER5> The friction involved in getting those other technologies up and running was not trivial though. That played a role in php's initial success, because it was trivial to get up and running.

<comment><USER6> How so? As someone that's set them all up - with Apache the setup for mod_perl, php, and cgi are like the same right - they are all essentially cgi.

<comment><USER7> No, they are not the same as CGI. You can run PHP as a CGI, as many cheap hosts do, but for performance PHP is run as either Apache mod_php or php-fpm with Nginx. Mod_perl is not CGI and requires much more discipline to prevent shared memory leaks. Mod_perl allows content negotiation which CGI does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a little silly. The two programs are so simple that it's probably just testing the speed of the regex engines used by the two languages. Since PHP uses PCRE (a C library that has been around for quite a long time), you'd expect it to be fast. I'm impressed that marshaling back and forth across the FFI boundary isn't causing more slowness, but perhaps it is, and the real issue is that rust's regex engine is just painfully slow.

The only way to know for sure would be to profile each bit to see what dominates: the file I/O? The regex matching? The FFI? The printing to stdout?

Also, looks like there is a rust wrapper for PCRE[0]; might be interesting to try it to get a more apples-to-apples comparison.

[0] [https://github.com/cadencemarseille/rust- pcre](https://github.com/cadencemarseille/rust-pcre)

<comment><USER9> > This is a little silly.

Is it though? I interpreted question the following way.

"Rust is a tool in my tool box, when the reason for picking it over other tools isn't demonstrably true, what am i doing wrong?"

I agree with the rest of your comment, just not with calling the OP or their question silly.

<comment><USER10> The reason for picking it is for memory safety as well as performance. If your problem involves a lot of regex and memory safety isn't as critical, then feel free to pick a language with good regular expression libraries. If regular expressions are a smaller part of your problem you're solving, looking at overall performance is better than benchmarks like this.

<comment><USER11> I'd never know that if this post didn't exist, so I don't think the investigation is silly at all.

<comment><USER12> Your conclusion is correct, but the reason I take issue is that that's not the thesis of OP. OP's original subject/headline suggests that, or questions why, Rust is generally slow vs PHP, and uses a regex example as the "proof". A person who didn't read the Reddit comments, or who is less versed in critical thinking, may accept the example as a valid proof of the thesis, instead of simply noting the fact that Rust may not be as good at regex as it is at other things. If the Reddit subject was "Rust is worse than PHP at regex", nobody would bat an eyelid and the resulting conversational threads would have a different tenor (and your conclusion would and should be the same).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The top reply says "Don't underestimate PHP when regexes are involved." and linked a benchmark [1].

But in that benchmark apparently Rust is faster than PHP (The slowest "Rust #2" is 2.45 sec. while PHP is 2.80 sec. He also mentioned "PCRE", but the ones with Perl in name are even much more slower [the fastest being 14.95 sec.]).

Did I miss his point by linking that benchmark, or did I interpret the benchmark wrong?

[1]: [https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/regexredux.html)

<comment><USER14> I guess the poster didnt saw Rust being faster, only that PHP is pretty fast, or at least not slow (so it should be underestimated).

Id take that slowdown any day just not having to touch Rust though :^)

<comment><USER15> To be fair, the benchmarks game PHP script does quite more work that just matching a regexp, like forking into multiple interpreters (which can't be that fast) and communicating through a message queue.

So any speed difference between Rust's and PCRE/PHP gets lost among the noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I believe the Rust Regex Unicode support is opt-out, where as in PHP it is opt-in. Might make a significant difference.

<comment><USER17> Cool. Never really noticed the non-Unicode variant would be faster. Here's some more info:

[https://docs.rs/regex/1.3.1/regex/#opt-out-of-unicode- suppor...](https://docs.rs/regex/1.3.1/regex/#opt-out-of-unicode-support)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Random guess:

There will be some difference in the regex engine speed, because PCRE is very fast in common cases.

But doing a single regex match is not that much work, so it probably boils down to I/O.

And PHP might use extra buffering to get better throughput for the common "stream a file" scenario.

Similar question with Python being faster than C++:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9371238/why-is- reading-l...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9371238/why-is-reading- lines-from-stdin-much-slower-in-c-than-python)

<comment><USER19> > And PHP _might_ …

The program source code is shown.

<comment><USER20> Not the source code for PHP itself, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Obviously, because the PHP regex engine is written in C, not in PHP. It's more like Rust's regex crate vs C PCRE rather than PHP, or who calls system call faster. While Rust's IO is locked[1] and doesn't buffer (which is slower than buffered, unsynchronized IO like other languages). And regex crate is slow when capturing, which is used on the "benchmark".

Reference: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/5zit0e/regex_captures...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/5zit0e/regex_captures_slow_compared_to_python/) 2 years ago, but it's still valid to me, I've just tested it and it's much slower as I expected. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong :)

[1]: [https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/fn.stdout.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/io/fn.stdout.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> When you use any functions or classes any of the PHP standard library, the underlying implementation is usually in C.

</comment><comment> UK-Al05 I maybe wrong but rust uses a dfa regex engine, while pcre uses backtracking. So in theory rust's regex engine should be faster...

<comment><USER23> Seems like the flamegraph he took of his Rust program shows it using backtracking, maybe for the specific regexp he is using it's unable to use a DFA: [https://i.imgur.com/9lx42Tu.png](https://i.imgur.com/9lx42Tu.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This code is mostly just testing the regex engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the Rust regex engine slow because it's written in Rust?

<comment><USER25> Not really, it's mainly because it hasn't been optimized over many many years yet. Also, everything in Rust is implemented in Rust. Unlike interpreted languages like PHP, it's self-hosted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Theory.

The php script and the log in question are probably in the kernel's aggressive block layer cache. The new files created by rust are potentially new and uncached, mean that it must be loaded from disk. Therefore the rust version is probably just losing time on disk access.

Quick test: review whether or not the rust version runs faster on the second execution.

Also or alternatively: use a profiler or copy the rust program to an in-memory block device (ramdisk) prior to access.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting discussion. It seems that it's possible for i/o to be slow in Rust, and the PHP regex engine may be very good....

</comment><comment><USER27> Rust doesn't make an average code implementation fast. Even naive mistakes like buffering / allocation make things really slow.

</comment><comment><USER28> In regard to all bad criticisms PHP receives, I believe the language and ecosystem influence the way developers think. A bad language/ecosystem can dictate bad practices and bad design choices because that's what the language encourages them to do. I remember every PHP-4/5 training course starting by mixing PHP and HTML.

Majority of developers write crappy code even on a decent environment. But there is so much old and bad PHP code out there as a result of many years of teaching how to right bad PHP code that nothing can stop these bad criticisms forever.

I don't write PHP at this moment but I know PHP7 made major improvements. PHP is still a very good choice for rapid web development and fits for many startups, small, and medium size business, and there are many successful examples to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER29> Regarding the slowness of Go in the benchmarks linked in the article, [https://medium.com/@dgryski/speeding-up-regexp-matching- with...](https://medium.com/@dgryski/speeding-up-regexp-matching-with- ragel-4727f1c16027).

There are tradeoffs with PCRE vs RE2 instead of just raw speed.</comment>


Airbnb hosts can kick you out after you've checked in - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/22/airbnb-hosts-can-kick-you-out-after-youve-checked-in/ <comment><USER2> >an age of non-traditional services ... as it stands now, anyone has the right to kick you out

"Let the market decide" is the new "Every generation thinks they invented sex". We did decide on these things and we wound up with rental agreements, leases, etc. There's definitely a grey area here about what constitutes a "visit" (like a hotel booking) and what is a "rental" (like a month-to-month or longer lease) that needs to get settled. But the current governmental climate in the US is all for market disruptors, so YMMV. All that said,

>requests he was making, such as to change the layout of the refrigerator and install different lights

Assuming he's painting himself in the best possible light, I'd be considering giving him the boot too. You can move the shelves around in the fridge while you're there if you move them back, but figure out a way to live with the lights.

</comment><comment><USER3> He sounds like kind of an ass. Whenever I stay at an Airbnb I try to minimize any disruption as if I were staying at a friend's house. Is it this guy? [https://www.logankugler.com/](https://www.logankugler.com/)</comment>