System Bus Radio: Transmits AM radio on computers without transmitting hardware - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fulldecent/system-bus-radio <comment><USER2> I debugged a boot issue on the Apple Newton this way. The latest flash image was a brick on production hardware (no available LEDs, GPIOs, etc.) but not on development hardware. But I _could_ flash a new OS image.

So I wrote some small loops that did different stuff on the bus (so that they sounded different) and salted the boot path with them, then listened in on my portable AM radio. Found the problem inside of an hour by moving the loops further down the path.

There were probably other ways to do this (could have coaxed a hardware tech in the lab to solder in a GPIO), but this way was more fun. :-)

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the CHDK hackers trying to dump firmware off a Canon camera. They could get the altered firmware to activate and could read memory and control an LED, so... they blinked the firmware out through the LED, and read it with a ball mouse's optical sensor attached to a microphone cord. :-)

<comment><USER4> I half-remember reading that someone dumped the firmware of an older iPod by listening to hard disk noises.

Thinking back this doesn't make much sense.

EDIT: I was maybe ⅓ right [https://web.archive.org/web/20070613032334/http://www.ipodli...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070613032334/http://www.ipodlinux.org/stories/piezo/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back a couple of decades, my alphabetic pager was going off but the messages were gibberish. It turned out the CPU in the PC I'd been asked to look at was a Pentium running at 150 MHz. I'd set my pager directly on top of the case, and the nominal frequency for it was 150.5 MHz, frequency modulated.

The lines in the motherboard can be used as antennae and the CPU pins can produce a clock pulse and modulate it. There used to be a parallel port audio device for PCs which was mainly just different resistors. The driver for it just timed pulses to the different pins.

This software just shows a bit of a novel implementation to modulate the motherboard bus itself in an ordered way to produce a signal with useful data in it. I imagine FM may be easier to pull off cleanly than AM, actually.

This shows that an air gap has to be pretty large, and should probably be backed up by a Faraday cage if your data is that sensitive.

I don't suspect this will be used to get grandma's credit card number from her home desktop considering the logistics of the actual attack. Source code to something really important, military data, diplomatic dispatches, or something else of really high value would be the only sensible targets in a closed area. However, a university lab, Internet cafe, coffee shop, or public library might be easy enough. Most of the machines there will be on the network, and that's an easier way to exfiltrate. The main advantage of this in the common attacker's toolkit is it won't be seen by a host-based firewall. DNS, DHCP, or lots of other ways could be used to exfiltrate through most firewalls though.

This sort of thing is a great novelty for most of the computer-using world. It's kind of scary for people who are actually in need of an air gap, but I don't think it's unforeseen.

<comment><USER6> Years ago I was in the same building during the installation of a "NATO standard" (whatever that means) environment suitable for developing sensitive software, and the air gap was indeed pretty large, the entire 2 rooms were air gapped from the building (at 4th floor), enclosed in a Faraday cage and with special precautions (out of my clearance level) for electricity going in. It was very quiet inside (even cell phone did not have any signal, of course).

<comment><USER7> Hopefully cellphones weren't allowed? Otherwise it would be interesting to hack the phone to go to "record AM signals" if there's no cell/wifi/FM/GPS signals (if it were on a plane it would still see GPS signals). Or maybe to announce its presence using ultrasonic, so if there's also compromised machines/CPUs/hypervisor environments inside the secured environment, it would detect the "Hello" and start uploading data to it. Later when the phone user reconnects to the cell network, it can upload your secret data..

<comment><USER6> Of course they were forbidden, as it was every not authorized device. The physical security was tight. I just entered it during the building, before the certification (I was in a manager role in the building)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People had fanciful minds. They had expected the civilization to end in bio- warfare, or atomic bombs, or a blazing meteorite impact.

No such luck. The end of the civilization came, rather anticlimactically, when the humans discovered that side effects and timing attacks made any form of cyber-security a joke. Their computers screeched to a halt bogged down by nightmarish security patches.

By then, it was already too late to go back and live off the land.

<comment><USER9> This code is more fun and interesting than scary. The only way this could be used maliciously would be in the one-in-a-million environment where arbitrary code execution is possible but exfiltration is difficult and where the attacker has physical proximity to the machine. The other 999,999 times, if you have ACE then it's much simpler to just exfiltrate via the network or USB or etc.

<comment><USER10> Scenario: broadcasting out passwords and PINs

<comment><USER11> Solution: bluetooth transciever silicon is <5mm square when packaged

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're ever near Stuttgart, Germany, go and visit the university's computer museum!

[http://computermuseum.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/](http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/)

Klemens usually feeds punched cards into one of his treasures and puts a radio on top. Playing music.

So much to see!

[http://computermuseum.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/cm003.html](http://computermuseum.informatik.uni- stuttgart.de/cm003.html)

Including real core memory.

<comment><USER13> Living Computer Museums are fascinating.

Anyone who's in Seattle for any length of time owes it to themselves to check out the Living Computer Museum: [http://www.livingcomputers.org/Discover/At- The-Museum/Vintag...](http://www.livingcomputers.org/Discover/At-The- Museum/VintageComputers.aspx)

In addition to the working Alto, MITS Altair, etc. they have a dedicated cold room for working vintage mainframes. You can even request an account on one of 'em so you can remotely telnet in. You're also openly invited to interact with just about any of the microcomputers they have up and running that day.

That's just a small part of their collection. Neat stuff.

<comment><USER14> Also quite good is the Centre For Computing History in Cambridge.

[http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is so well-known there's even an _oeuvre_ appropriately titled "IBM 1401: A User's Manual" by Icelandic neoclassical composer Jóhann Jóhannsson that involves recording the noises made on a radio by running different code on an old mainframe.

[https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9583-ibm-1401-a-users-m...](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9583-ibm-1401-a-users- manual/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Alternative air gap bypasses:

badBIOS Sound: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/meet-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps- airgaps/)

Acoustical Mesh Network: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/12/scien...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using- inaudible-sound/)

DiskDrive Sound: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/new-a...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/new-air-gap-jumper-covertly-transmits-data-in-hard-drive- sounds/)

Survellance Cameras: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/09/attac...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/09/attackers-can-use-surveillance-cameras-to-grab-data-from- air-gapped-networks/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a program based on that:

[https://github.com/anfractuosity/musicplayer](https://github.com/anfractuosity/musicplayer)

Which plays .wav files (example with Taylor Swift) to a nearby radio

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSj5skknXWg&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSj5skknXWg&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER18> That's pretty damned clever.

In a far less sophisticated way, I was able to achieve audio transmission without any extra hardware except for a ~6 foot aux audio cable. This was back when I was maybe 14 years old and I was already building RF circuits with crystal oscillators and such. Learning that audio is sampled at specific frequencies, I was then lead to wonder if the same principles used to send and receive audio through proximal electromagnetism(since electrical current generate fields). While this is obvious to any adult with basic knowledge of science, it was quite novel for me to discover that my boom box radio, when set to auxiliary mode, could slightly pick up audio passing through an open- ended cable from my sound card. What I really didn't expect was that by upping the volume further, I could send a clear signal across several feet. Clearly, this wasn't just the force of magnetism but there was some radio activity happening. I never figured out what was going on, although I hypothesized that the transistors in the microphone input hardware of the boom box were configured in a way that was behaving like a transistor radio.

I would love to understand what was really happening there.

<comment><USER19> AM is basically and audio signal applied to a carrier wave, while FM is a whole different beast. Meaning that AM is quite similar to what pass down a speaker wire.

I am not a professional, but my impression is that AUX mode basically just pass the input audio signal directly to the speakers.

I am not quite sure what you mean by an open ended cable though, nor what end of the setup you upped the volume one (i suspect the PC).

<comment><USER18> Actually, you're correct since there's no one frequency that's being modulated. It must have been AM.

By open-ended cable, I meant that there was an audio cable coming out of my sound card but connected to nothing on the other end. That's how I remember it, anyway. Actually, I think I increased the volume output in my PC was well as the volume on my receiver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile Quite old trick actually.

At Cold War time, in USSR, American spy device was discovered that was placed on the street outside the wall of main frame computer installation nearby drum printers ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_(computing)#/media/Fil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_\(computing\)#/media/File:Drum- printer.jpg)). The device was recording signals from them and retransmitted recording in compressed form to satellite.

<comment><USER20> Do you have a link to more information about this?

<comment> c-smile We were told about this by our lecturer in university (USSR). Discipline was "data protection / security" ("Защита данных" in Russian).

The device was masqueraded as a canned "Килька черноморская в томате" (Canned fish: Black Sea sprat in tomato) and was transmitting short narrow beams upstream on schedule.

<comment><USER21> maybe something more like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_cryptanalysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_cryptanalysis) ?

I suppose it could be capturing EM emissions from the printers rather than acoustic, but that would make it fundamentally more like the other TEMPEST hacks as a way to exploit _unintentional_ emissions, rather than as a sneaky covert channel where you have control over the computer equipment, but don't have access to external interfaces to offload your stolen data.

Unless I'm misunderstanding some part of your description, anyway.

<comment><USER22> With the printers and mainframes of old being _big_ , couldn't it be just recording vibrations of the wall?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's also PiFM[1] which (iirc) modulates one of the GPIO pins fast enough on a Pi to produce an FM radio signal.

It's fun to play with, and is a great hack, but please don't try and use it for anything or any length of time; it puts out a tonne of horrible harmonics all over the radio spectrum.

[1] [https://github.com/rm-hull/pifm](https://github.com/rm-hull/pifm)

<comment><USER24> Or take the rails completely off (5 KHz-500 MHz // FM,AM,SSB,SSTV,FSQ): [https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx](https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx)

 _I have a "Hörmann" garage door opener. For a long time, I want to use my phone instead of the original sender. Therefore, I thought to run a raspberry and send the signal from there._

 _I recorded the signal with HackRF One as .wav, the problem here is that HackRF records with a sampling rate much higher than 48kHz (by default it is 10MHz!). So one has to downsample the recorded file, which I did with Matlab (downsample(signal, "fs_of_record /fs_for_rpitx")). The resulting .wav signal is now send at 433MHz (either my garage door listens their too, or 2nd harmonic works?!)_

src: [https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx/issues/50](https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx/issues/50)

<comment><USER25> For a really good time, I suggest [https://github.com/JamesP6000/WsprryPi](https://github.com/JamesP6000/WsprryPi) \- it is super fun run a signal into a long wire and see it picked up around the world!

(You do need an amateur radio license for this, but in the USA at least the technician one is very easy to get.)

<comment><USER24> For the semi-serious there is a pre-made filter "temporarily unavailable" (2018-01-15) for purchase: Raspberry Pi QRP TX Shield for WSPR | [https://www.tapr.org/kits_20M-wspr- pi.html](https://www.tapr.org/kits_20M-wspr-pi.html)

 _the harmonics are filtered by a LPF, and the broadband noise is filtered by a BPF [...] a buffer amp is provided for isolation. This also provides a boost to the TX signal_

And this project ties in an RTL-SDR for receiving: [https://github.com/ha7ilm/qtcsdr](https://github.com/ha7ilm/qtcsdr) mentioning _AM /NFM/WFM/LSB/USB [...] although NFM/WFM works as expected, the AM/SSB modes need a much higher level of filtering_

<comment><USER26> Building your own LPF is surprisingly easy and educational!

<comment><USER25> Specifically, I would recommend searching for "W3NQN CWAZ" filter. Look at [http://www.kitsandparts.com/](http://www.kitsandparts.com/) for the toroids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love how this person linked their amazon wishlist as their "project tip jar." That's a fun idea. We kind of get a sense of their personality as well through it - they obviously like tea, for example.

</comment><comment><USER28> System Bus Radio (github.com) 499 points by sssilver 687 days ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203951)

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know a way to _receive_ these signals without installing extra hardware? Then we need a name for it. DarkFi?

<comment><USER24> [http://microbit.org/guide/features/#light](http://microbit.org/guide/features/#light)

 _reversing the LEDs of the screen to become an input, the LED screen works as a basic light sensor_

(only the very tiniest bit related, for the BBC micro:bit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If I were to run this on a VM, would the host machine start transmitting AM, or would the hypervisor ruin the mechanism in which this works?

I rent a VPS at a nearby datacenter, and I could maybe ask for a tour. It would be interesting if I could pick up these signals from their server racks by running the code on my VM.

<comment><USER11> I thought about this for a minute, and my theory is that it wouldn't, because the hypervisor wasn't based on an RTOS. If it was RTOS-based, and the hypervisor's needed to use a known constant amount of time for its own housekeeping, you _might_ be able to find a frequently multiple that worked.

But as things are, I don't THINK so, due to indeterminate scheduling. The likelihood is very low. (Translation: I really do want this to work because it would be cool :P - but the VM world has already been turned upside down this year....)

If you have a spare machine lying around you could maybe spin up the same VM software on that and see if anything interesting happens. After establishing very very good radio transmissions off the bare metal (and finding all potential frequencies etc), of course.

The other good question is what sort of transmission frequency would be used by the hardware your VPS is running on. That would be fun to find out about...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember this from a few years back, but apparently this was ported to JS.

[https://fulldecent.github.io/system-bus- radio/](https://fulldecent.github.io/system-bus-radio/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Always a fun side effect that can be the catalyst for people becoming more interested in radio! I ported code written for the Altair 8800 that did this to my Cromemco S-100 system in high school, the MIT AI lab had a 'tunes' program on their KL-10 that could play music on a nearby radio. I even intentionally used this effect in my easter egg locator beacon system (the PIC chips can output their 1Mhz clock to a pin and it is easy to modulate it from there).

It will be a sad time when the AM bands are discontinued or moved to digital modes (where this technique will no longer work).

</comment><comment><USER33> Live demo at the Computer History Museum, of an IBM 1401 playing music via AM radio bus emissions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPk8MVEmiTI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPk8MVEmiTI)

You can see the 1401 demo'd on Wednesdays and Saturdays -- although they don't do this in the regular demo, just read cards and print on the line printer.

</comment><comment><USER34> I used to play BASIC games on my Dick Smith System 80 (a TRS-80 clone) with a radio next to it tuned to no station, for sound effects.

</comment><comment><USER35> It works for me, on a desktop enclosed in a metal case, using a small handheld radio with an internal AM antenna. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER36> See also (about ten years ago): [https://bellard.org/dvbt/](https://bellard.org/dvbt/) \- digital television broadcasting from a VGA card

</comment><comment><USER37> I stumbled upon this a long time ago: [http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/](http://www.erikyyy.de/tempest/)

Uses the monitor to generate an AM signal.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tangentially related: the singing Commodore 64 floppy drive.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o)

<comment><USER39> I remember that! I believe it did some small amount of damage to the drive. Head needed to be realigned or such.

<comment><USER40> You're right. It works because there's no protection against trying to send the drive head past where it's meant to be able to go, because nobody expected anyone would try to repeatedly ask it to move out of bounds, and the vibration can easily get the head out of alignment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Didn't work for me on a 2013 Mac Pro or a 2015 MacBook Pro. I have a handheld and I tried multiple antenna positions.

</comment><comment><USER42> This sounds like a modern-day equivalent of the classic "Fool on the Hill" played on the AM radio sitting on top of an Altair 8800 ( recreated in the video below ):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDigtF0dRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDigtF0dRQ)

</comment><comment><USER43> In the 1970s, I read about people doing this at MIT or some such, on real computers. Our high school had a Nova 1220 minicomputer, but we had no access to assembly for it, so all I could do was write programs in BASIC.

After a bit of experimentation, I was able to produce two or three distinct tones of discordant buzzing with loops.

Computer music!

<comment><USER44> I think you are referring to "Foot on the Hill" being played on that Altair 8800, which cunningly made use of the radio frequency interference/ static controlled by the timing loops by the program - created by Steve Dompier .

Bill Gates was confounded and astounded, and described it as, "the best demo program I've seen for the Altair…". He could not figure out how the computer could broadcast to the radio.

You can read more about it here => [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists)

<comment><USER43> I seem to recall reading about this running on minicomputers or mainframes, as described in another reply, and I also think this predated the Altair, as I first became smitten with computers around 1972.

Here's a video of a minicomputer generating AM radio music in 1971:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akvSE5Z474c&lc=D5Mdy7u7Cxwsk...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akvSE5Z474c&lc=D5Mdy7u7CxwskML7wm06K0-_TEHfmrxPlonoX60N9Ho)

<comment><USER45> I think that computer was built in 1971; the video mentions that the software used is Richard Wilson's player, which was written in 1975 (the DECUS entry is dated 2/11/1976).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Only half related, but it's kind of neat that we've used such a relatively simple standard of radio for so long. Modern modulation schemes are so complicated that they require dedicated functionality just to interpret. Wasn't always like that.

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't understand it. What determines the carrier frequency of the computer? How does he change the amplitude of the signal?

<comment><USER17> The signal appears on many different frequencies, so afaik they must be harmonics, I'm curious as to what is defining the base carrier frequency too as the code itself doesn't determine that really.

Edit: I just saw lovelearning's explanation - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168969)

"In this case, the copper traces connecting CPU to RAM on that particular computer are emitting EM radiation at a frequency of 1580 kHz."

I think 1580kHz could just be one of the harmonics.

I'm curious what defines the carrier, if it's a factor of the length of copper on the memory bus, clock frequencies etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Now if we could just have AM receivers in all our phones!

</comment><comment><USER49> side channel information leak for two, please

<comment><USER50> This is how you debug hardware.You put a oscilloscope on the bus and you decode the bytes. This is what people have been doing since the advent of the computer.

<comment><USER49> 'on the bus' is quite a bit different from '1 meter of drywall away' though...

<comment><USER50> Maxwells Law says a time varying electric field will radiate so maybe make sure people can't get near the computer.

<comment><USER51> Macbook Pro Lead Edition - blocks em radiation. Weights 50lbs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can you someone do a ELI5 on this project? Tried to read but couldn't move further.

<comment><USER53> Here's one.

This sentence from the linked paper is informative - "When data is exchanged between the CPU and the RAM, radio waves are emitted from the bus's long parallel circuits."

For some background:

Digital circuits like computer motherboards have components called oscillators that switch voltage on and off a number of times every second. This is what "clock speeds" refers to - 2.8 GHz CPU clock speed means voltage to CPU is being switched on and off 2.8x10^9 times per second.

All components like the processors, IO buses, RAM modules, etc. synchronize their actions to the rise and falls in these voltage levels. It's a way of synchronizing their actions.

One consequence of switching voltage on and off is that electrical fields build up and collapse (voltage is a measure of the electrical field), and cause magnetic fields to build up and collapse. We lay people call "oscillating electromagnetic fields" as "radio waves". This is the origin of radio waves from motherboards.

The missing link for transmission is that like any radio transmission, it requires an "antenna" \- that is a conductor of some length. There are conductors on a circuit board in the form of copper traces through which current passes. These start acting like antennas.

In this case, the copper traces connecting CPU to RAM on that particular computer are emitting EM radiation at a frequency of 1580 kHz.

So far, all there is is some EM radiation with certain frequency and an antenna to transmit it. This is just the "carrier wave". But for transmitting useful information, some kind of modulation is necessary to encode data over that carrier wave. This project uses an SSE2 CPU instruction called MOVNTDQ or _mm_stream_si128 to write to memory, with the data to be transmitted encoded as sequences of 1s and 0s with certain frequency (rate) and for a certain time period. This act of at writing at a certain rate for some time period results in switching on and off of voltages on the traces between CPU and RAM which in turn creates modulated EM radiation.

TBH, I didn't understand the details of how this project modulates the binary data over a square wave and how it gets treated as amplitude modulation by a regular radio receiver, and I request another ELI5 from somebody else to explain it to me :)

<comment><USER47> First realize the aptitude modulation in this radio is very crude. Unlike normal radio which has many amplitudes, this radio only has 2. On and off. Tone or no tone. This radio has no control over the exact amplitude.

Due to this limitation, this radio can only transfer a single tone at a time. Music must be monophonic.

To transfer a 60htz tone we just switch between the on and off state at 60htz. The On state will be at some random amplitude that we can't control.

What are these states? In the On state, we write to a memory address repeatedly very very fast (as fast as the computer allows). And in the off state we sleep.

<comment><USER17> Despite the fact you can only modulate the carrier on/off, you can still also output normal music with speech etc using pulse density modulation -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168317)

Which I don't think is monophonic, but I could be wrong?

<comment><USER47> How does a pulse density modulated audio signal sound to the human ear?

You may be right if that you tube clip is any indication. Neat!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Buzz Marketing: 4 Easy Ways to Generate Word of Mouth - <AUTHOR> http://www.graphicdefine.org/issue1/buzzmarketing <comment><USER2> I tend to think about this subject from time to time. The problem that I see, at least with user-driven sites, is the difficulty in the beginning. In order to get users, one should already have a decent amount of content on the site to begin with. However, due to the fact that the content is provided by the users, where does this initial content come from? Does it all just start with a small handful of users? I feel that even when creating a buzz, there should be some content on the site. This would give the users a reason to return.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds really hard to me.</comment>


Harvard study: racism best explanation for jail disparities in MA [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cjpp.law.harvard.edu/assets/Massachusetts-Racial-Disparity-Report-FINAL.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> From the executive summary:

> Our analysis shows that one factor—racial and ethnic differences in the type > and severity of initial charge—accounts for over 70 percent of the > disparities in sentence length. We explore several mechanisms by which > racial disparities in initial charging decisions lead to the substantial > average disparities we document. We find that:

\- Black and Latinx people are more likely to have their cases resolved in Superior Court where the available sentences are longer, both because they are more likely to receive charges for which the Superior Court exercises exclusive jurisdiction and because prosecutors are more likely to exercise their discretion to bring their cases in Superior Court instead of District Court when there is concurrent jurisdiction.

\- Black and Latinx people charged with drug offenses and weapons offenses are more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer incarceration sentences than White people charged with similar offenses. This difference persists after controlling for charge severity and additional factors.

\- Black and Latinx people charged with offenses carrying mandatory minimum sentences are substantially more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer sentences than White people facing charges carrying mandatory minimum incarceration sentences.

</comment><comment><USER2> 'Figure 1: Criminal System Pipeline' seems to me a really nice example of an explanatory chart summarizing a complex process.</comment>


Has a Hungarian physics lab found a new force of nature? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/has-a-hungarian-physics-lab-found-a-fifth-force-of-nature-1.19957 <comment><USER2> One of the difficult part of reading the press articles is to understand _what_ the scientific really saw in the experiment.

The original paper is [https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01527](https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01527) The important graph is figure 4 in page 4. I made a colored version: [http://imgur.com/Mya66KZ](http://imgur.com/Mya66KZ)

The black circles are the experimental data. That's what they really saw. (Actually, these measures are very indirect and noisy, so this is the data after a lot of processing, but let's assume that this is standard incontrovertible processing.)

Each measurement has an experimental error, that is marked by the + cross in each circle. So imagine that each circle is a bigger fuzzy ellipse that is 7 times wider and 3 times taller than the circles.

If they assume that there is no new particle, in their simulation they would get the dashed curve, that is always decreasing. It's dashed in the original graph and painted in gray in the "improved" version.

The problem is that the experimental data in the ellipses are too far from the theoretical curve of the simulation without a new particle, so something strange is happening. (A new particle, experimental error, other ...)

They assume that the difference is caused by a new unknown particle, with some properties. In particular, they have to guess the mass of the particle.

If they guess that the particle is very heavy, for example 17.6MeV, they get a curve that looks like an "U", it's dot-dashed in the original and painted in blue in the "improved" graph. It coincides with the "no particle" curve when the angle is less than 130°, but then it starts increasing. The new curve doesn't look like the experimental ellipses at all, so they have to keep trying.

If they guess that the particle is very light, for example 15.6MeV, they get a curve that is also decreasing, it's dotted in the original graph and painted in yellow in the "improved" graph. It coincides with the "no particle" curve when the angle is less than 110°, but then it is bigger. But comparing it with the experimental data, it is too big for 110°-130° and too small for 130°-160°. The new curve also doesn't look like the experimental ellipses at all, so they have to keep trying.

If they guess that the mass of the particle is 16.6MeV, they get a curve with a bump, it's solid in the original graph and painted in red in the "improved" graph. It coincides with the "no particle" curve when the angle is less than 110°, it's slighter bigger at 120° and has an interesting maximum near 140°. The new curve pass through all but the last ellipse, so it looks like a good fit. So the conclusion is that they probably have a new unknown particle with a mass of 16.6MeV!!!

Actually, they (obviously) tried with more possible masses, not only this three values. And compare the simulation with the data using statistics, not the drawings. The details are in figure 5. With 16.6MeV they got the better agreement with the experimental data.

The particles have other properties besides mass. Some of them can be calculated with theoretically, for example the charge. Others, like spin, have to be tested using simulations, because using other values produces different looking curves.

Obviously, the complete paper has more details, but I hope this is a good starting point to start reading it.

EDIT: Fixed "GeV" -> "MeV"

<comment><USER3> Great summary. To add to that:

1\. They see a bump (aka "resonance") which can generically be modeled as a new particle/state (whether it's a dark force particle, or a nuclear state or atomic state or whatever).

2\. (Small correction to the above post: the mass of the resonance is 16.6 MeV not GeV) Atomic physics operates at the eV scale, and the mass of a Be nucleus is roughly 10 GeV (10^9 eV). So, given that this bump fits the 16.6 MeV (10^7 eV) scale which between the other two scales, this might either be some detailed nuclear physics (eg: some Berellium resonance) or an honest-to-god new particle.

3\. Since the angular separation is roughly 135 degrees, it seems reasonable that the intermediate state is moving fast ("boosted") [1]. That means that it cannot be as heavy as a whole nucleus -- therefore, if this was a Berellium resonance then the angle between the electron-positron pair would leave back- to-back (180 degree separation). That is what pushes the interpretation towards a new particle/force.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_decay#From_two_differ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_decay#From_two_different_frames)

<comment><USER4> Good explanation from you two, but let me ask: how much does the article states that this is a new "fundamental force" as opposed to simply some new particle working within the known forces?

From what I understood the angle would imply that this force interacts with a given range but not outside of this range (so it might be strong nuclear? hidden dimensions? new forces?)

<comment><USER5> In quantum field theories the forces are the same as new bosons. (The exact relationship is a bit hard to explain, since particles enter the picture as a really cool trick to solve PDEs, not as a fundamental entity of the theory.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking quickly through the two papers mentioned [0, 1], there is a (statistically) very solid result that something is going on with 8Be, which is only very barely a nucleus and is probably better thought of as a bound state of two alpha particles. In [0] there is a experimental observation of some kind of effect which can be explained by a 17 MeV boson. [1] looks at other experiments and finds a way around current experimental bounds by building a "protophobic" model, that is a boson that does not interact with protons. Interestingly they find that in this model they can explain the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, if the parameters are somewhat close to already excluded limits. (Fig. 1 bottom panel in [1]) So the next generation of experiments should rule out or discover the X boson. (And actually there are many experiments which seem to have a shot at this.)

My take on this, it is probably a parametrization of something we do not understand in terms of a particle. This something may be a experimental effect or a theoretical lack of understanding or insufficient methods for calculation, or a new particle. The energy range is sort of interesting since it is close to the energy range of hadron spectroscopy, a field which is littered with 2-sigma 'tantalizing hints' of new physics. To end this, I believe it is a temptation to speculate (read I will claim I resisted the temptation until "told you so" is an appropriate response), that a heavy charged particle, _cough_ di-photon excess, could be involved in creating the different couplings to u and d quarks.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01527](https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01527)

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07411](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07411)

<comment><USER3> Aha! I'm currently at a conference where one of the authors of [1] gave a talk [2] about this and there was an interesting follow-up discussion. Never expected it to be on HN already!

Some thoughts from the thick of things:

1\. It's important to remember that nuclear physics backgrounds for such an experiment are hard to model (so that one can subtract them out). The field is littered with "anomalies" coming from systematics and backgrounds. This is why physicists are very cautious with this claim. The authors of the theoretical model claim that it should be easily testable (interesting signals in several different experiments) over the next 2-3 years, so that's one reason to be optimistic about knowing where this stands.

2\. This model goes against the grain of most of our theories for how the baryonic matter (essentially nuclei of all kinds) could be created in the universe! If you believe in this newly proposed model as truly another force of nature, then one might need a new paradigm for generating all the matter we see.

There are some theoretically intriguing aspects of the model, so I'm looking out for the follow-up paper by the authors (sometime in the next few weeks?) dealing with several of these aspects.

\--

Edited to add a link to the slides and elaborating on point #2 below

For more advanced readers (along with the caveat that I don't fully understand the details of their model): We understand very well the production of nuclei soon after the big-bang [3] and there's no room to modify that theory. So, any more fundamental model will have to produce baryons before that era of the universe. The Sakharov conditions [4] for producing baryons require a breaking of Baryon number (you can't have a net excess of baryons over anti-baryons unless you break the symmetry between the two). Usual models produce baryon number by using the fact that U(1) baryon number is anomalous in the presence of electroweak sphalerons [5]. However, in the newly proposed theory U(1) B-L [6] is gauged and hence cannot be anomalous (thereby invalidating the conventional paradigm for generating baryons). Maybe a spontaneous breaking of that symmetry happens early enough in the universe to not mess with the theory of nucleosynthesis but I'm not aware of work along such a paradigm.

\--

[2]: [https://indico.cern.ch/event/518614/contributions/1198831/at...](https://indico.cern.ch/event/518614/contributions/1198831/attachments/1277655/1896398/1605texasam.pdf)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis)

[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryogenesis#Sakharov_conditio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryogenesis#Sakharov_conditions)

[5]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaleron#Sphalerons_and_baryo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaleron#Sphalerons_and_baryogenesis)

[6]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_%E2%88%92_L](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_%E2%88%92_L)

<comment><USER5> Can you expand a bit on the 2. point? (Probably there are some implications for bariosynthesis, but I don't have a good feeling how they should look like.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone else find this article a bit jarring? Hungarians make the discovery but it isn't news until (reputable??) American academics glom onto it?

<comment><USER7> Were you expecting a virtuous "Build it and they will come" thing to happen in the community? I'd imagine a ton of reports coming out all the time, not everything of value bubbles to the top right away.

<comment><USER6> My point is not that it wasn't picked up right away -- it's that the discover only became news when Americans got hold of it. More, the reporting is more about the American confirmation and interpretation than the Hungarian discovery!

It's honestly a bit jarring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I understand this correctly, the search for another fundamental force is attempting to explain dark matter using the standard model? Are there any pools of thought that try to explain the universe without dark matter?

This may not be the right thread to ask this in but it's right enough I suppose.

<comment><USER9> > If I understand this correctly, the search for another fundamental force is > attempting to explain dark matter using the standard model?

No, the standard model is just three forces (electromagnetic, weak, and strong) plus gravity. A fifth force would be beyond the standard model.

<comment><USER10> What exactly does it take for a thing to count as a fundamental force?

I loosely associate forces with bosonic fields -- photons for EM, gluons for strong, and something confusing for weak. But then no one seems to want to call the Higgs field a "force".

<comment><USER9> This is an good question which I'm sure there is a good answer for, but which I haven't heard stated by particle physicists in a clean way that is widely accessible to other physicists. I believe the distinction generally hinges on whether the boson is a gauge boson, associated with some symmetry; this does not apply to the Higgs. But I don't really get why that makes it worthy of the intuitive label "force".

Here's one incomplete answer:

> Q: Why isn't Higgs coupling considered a fifth fundamental force?

> A: The Higgs exchange between matter particles can certainly be called a > force. Whether it can be viewed a fundamental force, is a matter of taste. > But there is one important distinction between the force due to the Higgs > exchange and the usual fundamental interactions. The strong and electroweak > interactions are described as gauge interactions. It means that they are not > put by hand but arise automatically when you require that the matter fields > be invariant under local certain internal transformations (phase rotations, > color transformations, etc.). In contrast to that, the "Higgs force" is put > into the model by hand, as its presence is not driven by any symmetry > consideration. You can equally nicely consider a model with zero Yukawa > coupling.

[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1080/why-isnt- hig...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1080/why-isnt-higgs- coupling-considered-a-fifth-fundamental-force)

<comment><USER11> What are the non-fundamental forces?

If they are not fundamental, does that mean physicists suspect they are complex interactions of other, fundamental forces?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Physicists will typically say "friction force", or "van der Waals force", or "centrifugal force" etc. when we talk about the interactions of ordinary things. These are all caused by the four fundamental forces (or they are ficticious, like the centrifugal force).

And yes, the non-fundamental forces (like friction) are complex interactions of fundamental forces. For friction it's the sum of electric forces between atoms. The important point is that an atomistic model of friction gives you an essentially unsolvable problem, while the effective macroscopic model of friction is high school stuff.

<comment><USER12> Unsolvable? Rubbish. I was under the impression with regards to the 4 forces that the only mystery was the mathematical relationship bewteen electricity and gravity. I'm sure it is not as big a mystery as popular science would have us believe.

<comment> semi-extrinsic When I say unsolvable, I mean that you can't solve for the speed of a brick sliding down an inlined plane by considering the electrostatic interactions between the ~10^17 pairs of interacting atoms per square centimetre of contact surface. It's just unsolvable in practice.

But the effective formula that the magnitude of the friction force equals a material constant times the magnitude of the normal force from the plane onto the brick gives you a very simple model (solvable with pen and paper).

<comment><USER12> I kind of figured no one would want such a crude result. That would be more like fluid friction dynamics. Thank you for elucidating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see how this really suggests a new fundamental force, but certainly it's known that everything about nuclear physics and radioactive decay are not fully understood. Hopefully this is a signpost to some of those answers.

<comment><USER14> Their point is: the experimental data is most easily explained in terms of a new boson, all (elementary) bosons currently known mediate a force.

A false sillogism, indeed, but that's how you make headlines. And btw doesn't make the discovery any less exciting.

<comment><USER15> The Higgs is an elementary boson, but it is generally not considered to mediate a force. If it were, it would be a better candidate for the 5th force.

<comment><USER16> IIRC, the Higgs field is a scalar field (same field strength at all points of space/time), whereas the other fundamental forces are vector fields (field strength varies with space/time).

Is this correct? And if so, does this fact matter in deciding whether to say Higgs == fundamental force?

<comment><USER17> It depends on the point of space-time, but at each point of space-time it is just a scalar value, unlike a vector for a vector field. Moreover in physics we classify fields by their Lorentz transformation properties/representation. So when we say scalar field we actually mean that is transforms in the "(0,0) representation" of the Lorentz group (although then it's not yet specified whether one means scalar or pseudoscalar).

If it were the same at all space time points it would be a constant, and rather boring (more like a cosmological constant).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Highly unlikely, but exciting nevertheless. A 17-MeV anomaly is rather large. It would be nice if it did shed insight into dark matter / energy, but the connection does seem to be a stretch.

<comment><USER19> Could it be explained if what we interpret as radioactive decay was in fact matter interacting with dark matter particles?

<comment><USER20> Observations of accelerated particles' decay follow relativity, they decay with slower frequency relative to the observer. If dark matter collisions were the cause we shouldn't be observing that.

<comment><USER19> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorite quote was "Perhaps we are seeing our first glimpse into physics beyond the visible Universe". This sounds very likely. Considering that the 'bump' occurred at a certain angle and only then. This reminds me of the science that purportedly exists when combing specific minerals with specific elements. God how I would love to be a mad scientist.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ok, so not a physics expert so this might sound stupid, but could this mean that radioactive decay is not truly random, just that we can't currently model it? If so, that could have some interesting implications for crypto systems that use radioactive decay as a random seed...

<comment><USER19> What if there's no such a thing as radioactive decay and we've been observing interactions with dark matter all along?

<comment><USER22> There is such a thing as radioactive decay. It's a very widely studied and replicated phenomenon, and is used in many practical applications (e.g. smoke detectors). It's about as close to objective fact as any scientific result can get, and that will not change.

Perhaps you mean that radioactive decay may have a causal mechanism involving dark matter? Possibly. For such a model to be taken seriously, it would need to agree with our (presumably very numerous and precise) existing observations, as well as either predict the outcome of some new, falsifiable experiment; and/or simplify/unify some disparate existing results into a common framework.

Even if such a model manages to overcome all of those filters, radioactive decay would still be a very real phenomenon. For example, discovering that light is an electromagnetic wave doesn't at all imply that "there's no such thing as light"; discovering that gravity is curvature of spacetime doesn't mean "there's no such thing as gravity"; etc. Like radioactive decay, those are _phenomena_ which we have very direct evidence for, and which theories and models must try to explain.

In comparison, some theories/models postulate the existence of entities which we have no direct evidence for, such as phlogiston, luminiferous aether, dark matter, etc. The only evidence for these is the success of the model that predicts them; that evidence may be undermined if a better model is discovered which doesn't require these entities (e.g. the kinetic theory of gases for phlogiston and special relativity for luminiferous aether).

Hence, if we discover a better model for predicting flat galactic rotation curves, gravitational lensing in excess of the visible matter, etc. which doesn't require an exotic form of matter, then we might claim "there's no such thing as dark matter".

However, even if that were to happen, we certainly _couldn 't_ claim that "there's no such thing as flat galactic rotation curves", "there's no such thing as gravitational lensing in excess of the visible matter", etc. since, like radioactive decay, those are phenomena we have observed.

If a theory disagrees with observed phenomena, or claims "there's no such thing" as the observed phenomena, then the _theory is wrong_. That's precisely what empirical falsification is about. We've observed the phenomena, so that theory cannot describe the world we live in.

<comment><USER19> You're taking it way too literally, I think it was clear what I meant. I meant if the decays of atoms could be the result of interactions with the particles of dark matter, rather than spontaneous decay caused by random quantum fluctuations. If it's true, we should be able to observe differing rates of decay depending on the concentration of dark matter in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is that not just a very energetic photon?

<comment><USER5> A photon would produce a different shape of the electron spectrum. (It would not produce a bump at 16 MeV, but some extra contribution to the entire shape, since it is massless.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At least it makes a nifty headline (like the faster-than-light neutrinos[1], but without the PR disaster) and encourages a lot more research.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than- light_neutrino_ano...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than- light_neutrino_anomaly)

<comment><USER25> Hi, what PR disaster are you talking about?

<comment><USER24> A decent review of the events: "The Data That Threatened to Break Physics"

[http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-data-that-threatened- to-...](http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-data-that-threatened-to-break- physics)

<comment><USER26> But that sounds more like bad science reporting rather than bad PR?

<comment><USER27> Some of each. It's hard to blame the media for thinking it could be important in light of the press conferences and press releases. The last section of this article gives some details.

[http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign- after-n...](http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign-after-no- confidence-vote-120404.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

I'll wager a pint (or suitable non-alcoholic equivalent) on it :) Win-win, since if I 'lose' I buy you a pint but something truly wonderful will have been discovered :)

<comment><USER29> I think it's ridiculous that you're being downvoted, it smacks of HN not wanting to admit they're susceptible to upvoting clickbait nonsense.

Just because your post is obvious doesn't mean it's not also the right response to this article.

<comment><USER30> People are not downvoting the comment because they believe that the headline is not clickbait, and the article is not nonsense. They are downvoting because the comment adds nothing that has not already been discussed many times already in other contexts. Headlines are often click-baity, now let's move on please.

<comment><USER31> To derail the discussion even further:

1.)The given audience in any form is always changing. He might have given new information to someone who hasn't seen it before(young,new english speaker, ect)

2.)We are talking about SCIENCE and whats great about SCIENCE is that to do it well requires SKEPTICISM. The article itself even says that the results haven't been confirmed by a different specialized lab. I would be floored if we discovered another fundamental force but like all things we should ANALYZE all points of a subject.

<comment><USER32> > 2.)We are talking about SCIENCE and whats great about SCIENCE is that to do > it well requires SKEPTICISM. The article itself even says that the results > haven't been confirmed by a different specialized lab. I would be floored if > we discovered another fundamental force but like all things we should > ANALYZE all points of a subject.

I think you're being too generous with regard to the OP's comment. That comment appeared to be mostly a throw-away attempt to reference Bettridge's law, rather than offering any substantiate thoughts on the potential discovery or its likelihood of being a spurious result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my opinion, it is unlikely to be a new force, but WELL worth pursuing to confirm the results and explore further because of that small chance that it revolutionizes physics in important ways.</comment>


Line-by-line memory usage of a Python program - <AUTHOR> http://fseoane.net/blog/2012/line-by-line-report-of-memory-usage/

<comment><USER2> Pretty sure forking a process every line is not the most efficient way to do this :) But nether the less, very cool

<comment><USER3> There are more efficient ways, but they are platform specific. Using ps is easier, as it's standard.

<comment><USER4> Not on my machine. :-)

       C:\>ps
       'ps' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
       operable program or batch file.

The guy why suggested using the psutil is onto something -- definitely a 3rd- party dependency, but rolls all the platform specific messiness into a library. And much faster and less fragile than forking a new process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool. I didn't know that you could get a representation of a function's code through func_name.func_code. That's pretty slick!

<comment><USER6> Yeap. I find it great for prototyping: I code in the IPython shell, and then I dump the code of the various functions I wrote to a file, using func_code.

        def makedumper(filen):
            def dumpfunc(func):
                with open(filen, 'a') as f:
                    file.write("\n\n{}".format(func.func_code))
            return dumpfunc

         #then to use it:
         dump = makedumper("sourcefile")
         dump(func1)
         dump(func2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really neat solution, useful for straightforward things. However, it's quite far from telling us the full truth. Python won't release memory instantly and there will be some free memory that can be reused but won't ever be reused (int arrays?)

</comment><comment><USER8> Another Python memory profiler: <http://guppy-pe.sourceforge.net/#Heapy></comment>


Human Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/recent-human-evolution-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29 <comment><USER2> It seems to me that natural selection is, for the most part, broken now for humans. Intelligence and other positive characteristics don't seem to get involved in whether they have surviving offspring today the way I imagine it did a few thousand years ago. Is it true that natural selection for humans is mostly dead? Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but it's something that interests and concerns me.

<comment><USER3> I can't stress enough how important it is to read Darwin's original work. Contemporary understanding of evolution outside of academia is _deeply flawed_.

There are two forces at work in evolution. Natural selection (survival of the fittest) and sexual selection (reproduction of the sexiest). Out of the two, natural selection is by far the _weaker_ force.

> Intelligence and other positive characteristics don't seem to get involved > in whether they have surviving offspring today the way I imagine it did a > few thousand years ago.

You're thinking very narrowly in the "survival of the fittest" mode.

You're ignoring sexual selection entirely.

It doesn't matter how hot, strong, or brilliant you are, if you have zero kids, from an evolutionary perspective ... it's the same as if you were killed and eaten by some wild animal.

And, of course, the quality of your offspring matters as well and is determined by mate choice.

There's plenty of evolutionary pressure around today. Actually, I would say it's far more extreme today than ever before, especially in our urban areas.

<comment><USER4> Would this then make the case even more pessimistic, considering there is an inverse correlation between family sizes and parental education levels.

I.e. smarter individuals have less (or no) kids.

<comment><USER5> Urbanization in general reduces family sizes. Something like free RISUG procedures for 13+ males, and the procedure being promoted during sex ed classes would probably reduce irresponsible pregnancies significantly. Even the US government would benefit significantly from reduced expenditures with a program like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate to sound unimpressed, but does biological evolution strike anyone else as rather irrelevant, now? I doubt we will be held hostage by these mortal coils for much longer.

<comment><USER7> Anyone that thinks their smartphone and self driving car will in any way impact the evolutionary pressures is very self deluded. Evolution will act on our species' population for many hundreds of centuries before any significant impact from technology is seen.

Also I am not sure you understand what "mortal coil" means:

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

<comment><USER8> > Evolution will act on our species' population for many hundreds of centuries > before any significant impact from technology is seen.

You don't think that, say, genetic engineering will change the genome? I'm betting we'll be primarily artificially designed by the end of the century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Talking about how we are going to evolve in the next thousands of years is a waste of time. Artificial interference is going to kick in long before that. I believe we will be very different 300 years from now.

<comment><USER10>
      > Artificial interference is going to kick in long
      > before that

If we're constantly 20 - 30 years away from a major break-through, it will eventually come true! ;-)

<comment><USER11> Since we're talking about human evolution, time-scales of 20-30 years are only 1 generation changes. Machine evolution may have a much shorter generational cycle - but for the moment, it doesn't seem too much to ask to be a little patient. Machines have come a long way in the last 4 human generations...

<comment><USER10> I was referring to the constant claims that we're X years away from a break- through for the last Y years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Akey specializes in what's known as rare variation, or changes in DNA that > are found in perhaps one in 100 people, or even fewer.

This classification of variations into "rare variations" and "common variation" is interesting (and new to me).

Any one knows resources that explain more about this?

Popular science depictions of "mutations" make them sound like "one lucky shot" kind of thing. This model never made sense to me. I figured these variations must be occurring constantly across the population.

It's interesting to me that even the variations which are considered "rare" actually occur at a rate that's around 1 in 100. Hell, even if it was 1 in a 1000, that's still quite a lot.

I need more resources about this topic!

</comment><comment><USER13> One advantage of this grand diversity of the gene pool is that if a worst-case scenario apocalyptic epidemic does happen (weaponization of pathogens, anyone?) there's more odds a small subgroup of us could be naturally resistant.

</comment><comment><USER14> At the rate biological research is progressing, anything beyond this century is impossible. In a couple of centuries, we'll have replaced carbon with silicon in our bodies and be living a couple millennia.

<comment><USER5> How would silicon avoid something like cancer? Why would that make any difference?

<comment><USER15> Backups. If you can backup someone's brain (which should be doable in silicon), then even if they contract cancer, you can simply back them up for a few hundred years (or however long it takes) until there's a cure.

<comment><USER5> Oh I thought you meant the more literal substance, not making a software simulation reproduction.

<comment><USER15> Either way. I imagine silicon hardware that we intelligently designed would be easier to backup than messy biology we hardly understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if there will be future speciation of humans. Will humanity become a big, homogenous melting pot or will some isolated humans (or Martian colonists) veer into a new genetic branch?

</comment><comment><USER17> Ctrl + F, "Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters"

0 Results

Pass.</comment>


Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" and Numenta startup - <AUTHOR> http://nerdwisdom.com/2007/08/21/on-intelligence-and-numenta/

<comment><USER2> I haven't read his book, but his ideas are interesting.

A little taste from TED: [<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125>]

Also a fascinating and much more technical talk Hawkins gave at IBM's Conference on Cognitive Computing, watch till the end for the grilling he gets from established Neuroscientists and Computing people: [<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2500845581503718756>]

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the IBM link!

What an awesome life Jeff has. Became oscenely rich through Palm and Handspring, and how he runs his own neuroscience institute. Seriously, in my mind I can't imagine anything better than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a better link: <http://www.onintelligence.org/>

Jeff's book is at the top of my list of things to read (it's been sitting on my self for a few weeks now.) What I've read about it so far sounds damn interesting though.</comment>


Gunicorn 0.17.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://gunicorn-docs.readthedocs.org/en/0.17.0/news.html#id1 New features: allows gunicorn to bind to multiple address add SSL support add syslog support add nworkers_changed hook add response arg for post_request hook parse command line with argparse (replace deprecated optparse) <comment><USER2> <https://gunicorn-docs.readthedocs.org/en/0.17.0/index.html>

_Gunicorn 'Green Unicorn' is a Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX. It's a pre- fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy._

<comment><USER3> What is a "pre-fork worker model"? I hear that term get thrown around, but I'm not sure what it means.

<comment><USER4> The Apache documentation has a nice overview:

<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/prefork.html>

essentially it forks before a request comes in, the master process pushes requests to an idle "pre-forked" worker process. Works pretty well under Linux with pretty light processes - pretty badly under windows nt where processes are much fatter than threads.

The main process tries to maintain a pool of idle workers so there is no need to wait for a fork before an incomming request is handled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Changelog: 0.17.0 / 2012-12-25

        - allows gunicorn to bind to multiple address
        - add SSL support
        - add syslog support
        - add nworkers_changed hook
        - add response arg for post_request hook
        - parse command line with argparse (replace deprecated optparse)
        - fix PWD detection in arbiter
        - miscellenaeous PEP8 fixes

SSL support is probably the big ticket item here but I imagine most people already have an SSL termination solution already.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't look like anything I'd need so no upgrade I guess. Although the syslog support might be useful.

edit: double checked the previous changelogs and the settings detection change might be useful. On another note, the removal of python2.5 so soon is welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know how the Python 3 support is coming along?

<comment><USER8> Added in 0.16 about a month ago: [https://gunicorn- docs.readthedocs.org/en/0.17.0/news.html#id...](https://gunicorn- docs.readthedocs.org/en/0.17.0/news.html#id3)</comment></comment>


Shrink or Package? Advanced packaging becoming mainstream option for chipmakers - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/shrink-or-package/ <comment><USER2> The era of one-size-fits-all is slowly over... I wonder if it can be temporarily prolonged with GlobalFoundries 7nm (planned in 2018) but it looks like we will have different processes for at least CPU / higher level caches / RAMs / SSDs in the future...

<comment><USER3> There have been different processes available at each node for a long time: special DRAM processes (as already noted here), low power, high performance (and then within those there's obviously still SVT, LVT, ULVT etc cells). What's special about the offering from GlobalFoundries vs TSMC vs whoever ?

<comment><USER4> >What's special about the offering from GlobalFoundries vs TSMC vs whoever ?

Price

TSMC is selling its capacity at a noticeable premium as the whole "contract fab" business has been evolving around TSMC for a very long time.

All other contract fabs used to offer service with few generations older equipment up until the "nanometre race" began to slow down.

As TSMC can't pull out a new process, they have to find out something new to retain clients. This is why they race to offer all juicy freebies like advanced packaging and so on.

There is not much complicated things here to explain</comment></comment></comment>


Judge Finds Apple in Violation of HTC's Newly Acquired Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/Judge+Finds+Apple+in+Violation+of+HTCs+Newly+Acquired+Patents/article22275.htm

<comment><USER2> Let's just stop the import of all computers and phones over Patent rulings. HTC and Apple should stick to their guns and deny imports of their products.

Once nobody can buy computers or phones in the U.S. anymore THEN, just MAYBE, Congress will decide to fix this Patent mess.

<comment><USER3> Considering the increasingly vocal outcry of rampant patent abuse, it's also possible that tech giants begin publicly stating their position towards US patent law: it needn't exist (or one of the many alternatives that have been proposed). If the market can metabolize that, patent law reform isn't far away.

<comment><USER4> I would agree except that a bunch of companies just bought some patents for $4.5 billion. If patents become ineffective, the value of that purchase is $0. Very few companies are going to look on this as a positive thing.

<comment><USER5> They already purchased those patents, though. It's kind of a sunk cost. They wouldn't be losing $4.5 billion cash if patents became worthless, they'd be losing ammunition for a type of fight that they wouldn't have to deal with anymore.

That's like saying, "We can't stop fighting this war, then all our guns would be worthless."

<comment><USER6> Bad analogy. The war isn't over patents, it's general competition. It's more like the UN pushing you to sign a treaty pledging not to use nukes just after you spent a pile acquiring them.

Now if patents were only used defensively (which they're obviously not in this case, since Apple went on the attack) the analogy would then be banning ballistic missiles right after acquiring a ballistic missile defense system, which would be easier to swallow.

<comment><USER5> You're inferring something that wasn't intended. Your peace-treaty example was exactly the type of situation my analogy was referring to.

Patents are being used aggressively because that's the nature of competition—if anyone is going to use them that way, everyone has to. But it could be in everyone's interest if that option were removed from the table, regardless how much each had previously spent amassing an arsenal simply to remain competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well isn't this a pickle, according to ars the two patents that the judge have been found infridged have been ruled invalid...

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/itc-judge-says- mac...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/itc-judge-says-macs- infringe-s3-patents-but-it-may-not-help-htc.ars)

... [Litigating Apple] noted that on the very same day that an ALJ ruled that Apple infringed two of S3's patents, the USPTO made initial determinations that the relevant claims of the two remaining patents are also invalid due to prior art. Apple can ask the ITC to review the infringement decision in light of the USPTO's invalidation of those patent claims as ipso facto an invalid patent claim cannot be infringed. ...

ars's source: [http://www.litigatingapple.com/blog/2011/7/24/why-htcs- court...](http://www.litigatingapple.com/blog/2011/7/24/why-htcs-courtship- of-s3-might-be-too-clever-by-half.html)

And the soap opera continues.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's pretty undeniable that the whole patents thing is now one giant clusterfuck.

The problem is, as technology advances, previously "genius" ideas become trivial due to more people being able to solve problems.

There was a time in history when things such as spoons were considered an amazing idea, but how utterly fucked would humanity's development have been if stone-age people allowed themselves to be crippled by greed and a the blind seeking of money.

<comment><USER9> We'd all be eating porridge with a spork.

<comment><USER10> The spork would undoubtedly have been found infringing and sued out of existence. We'd be eating it with a fork.

<comment><USER11> Or a paddle/spatula. They might have been able to argue that it wasn't a spoon because there were no raise edges.

<comment><USER12> Or chopsticks.

Assuming someone hasn't patented a stick.

(Or come to think about it, the chewing process.)

<comment><USER13> Sticks may be fine, as long as you don't use it to play fetch with your dog later: [http://www.google.com/patents?id=hhYJAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=hhYJAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The level of IP related discourse on HN is reminiscent of talking politics with people who spend all their time listening to talk radio. I mean of course Ronald Reagan singlehandedly killed communism and minorities caused the housing crisis but did you know that the entire patent and copyright system could be removed tomorrow and everything would be just hunky dory?

Fact: way too many obvious or stupid patents are granted.

The solution is not to abolish patents, the solution is to properly staff and fund the USPTO and/or change the system so that rubber stamping applications with approved is not incentivized.

You could fund it by taxing the patents themselves. Think your patent is worth $10 million? Ok, you owe the USPTO $100K and the legal damages you can claim from violation of that patent are capped at $10 million (this allows the competition to effectively public domain patents by buying them out).

<comment><USER15> Taxing a patent directly in the way you suggest is a terrible idea. Then smaller innovators who might benefit from patent protection are priced out by larger players directly! The value of the patent becomes proportional to the wealth of the patent holder, not the value of the innovation being protected.

<comment><USER16> He's not saying that small inventors couldn't profit. Just that their profits as a result of monopoly rights should be capped at a dollar amount. Patent rights are already capped in time: 20 years from the time of filing. After that, inventors no longer have the monopoly. The problem is that in high-tech fields, 20 years is too long. We don't want individual inventors to hold back progress for 20 years. Capping returns seems like a good solution. Inventors are still compensated, but within reason.

<comment><USER17> He isn't saying that, but it would be the result of his suggestion. It would be hugely lopsided in favor entities with lots of money, since the value of your invention _to you_ (but not to potential infringers) is bounded by your cash on hand. The cost of getting a patent is already a hardship on non- corporate inventors. They won't be able to afford a lot on top of that — the ROI would just not be there. If Joe Inventor patents his technique for creating geese that lay golden eggs but can only afford to pay $5000 on top of the filing fees, then I can rip it off and end up having to pay him fractional pennies out of every dollar I make off my infringement.

<comment><USER14> "It would be hugely lopsided in favor entities with lots of money"

Much less so then the current system. Much of the uncertainty and potential liability for small businesses would disappear. Unless your small business is a patent troll but then that's a feature not a bug.

"the value of your invention to you (but not to potential infringers) is bounded by your cash on hand."

This is both false (you are bounded by the cash on hand and the value of things you can use as collateral for loans or equity) and no different then the current case where you are bounded in the number of lawyer hours you can afford.

If I find an enormous diamond that is worth $20 million dollars but it costs more to have it properly appraised and marketed then I have cash on hand, trust me I will raise that money and sell it near full market price. I may not get 100% of the proceeds but you'll have a hard time convincing me that the apprisal system is incredibly biased against people that find diamonds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _This is actually a pretty favorable outcome for HTC, as the reported industry average for invalidations during IP review is around 90 percent._

This is one of the biggest problems with the modern patent system.

<comment><USER19> I was just going to comment on this quote. Glad someone beat me to it.

I wonder if it's actually one of the biggest problems, though? What are the average number of invalidations for other industries? Do other industries also suffer from "The Lodsys Problem" to the same extent as software? I'd also like to see a reference for that number!

My inclination is that, yes, software patents are terrible and should be abolished. Also, regardless of how 90% compares to other industries - it's a strong indicator that the way patents are granted in the first place is very broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the article:

      As NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) is a licensee, units with its GPUs are not in violation.
      However, models with graphics by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) or integrated
      graphics from Intel Corp.'s (INTC) (such as the newly refreshed MacBook Air
      lineup) are in violation.

Whoa. So this actually goes way beyond Apple. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

</comment><comment><USER21> Given this is a HW and SW patent, and my superficial reading leads me to believe that this may infringe on HW -- this isn't your typical SW patent issue. It's HW too. Are people ready to say that HW patents, such as those held by Intel and ARM, should also go bye-bye?

<comment><USER22> It annoys me that the tech community always focuses on software patents, as if hardware ones are automatically more legitimate.

The original purpose of the patent system was to improve consumers lives by:

a) Incentivizing innovations that would not otherwise be profitable.

b) Incentivizing disclosure of invention details that would otherwise be kept secret.

These are a pretty rare combination of circumstances for most inventions, whether software or hardware. a) is demonstrably rare since patents are constantly infringed, yet Apple (for example) still somehow manages to get by. b) does not apply to any technology that is distributed, since anyone can take it apart and see how it works.

On the other side, patents of any type actively harm consumers:

a) Products from large companies are driven up in cost due to litigation.

b) Potential innovation from small companies is stifled by fear of litigation.

I'm sure there's some use for a patent system, but it is very small. The US would be a far better place with no patent system than with the one we have now.

<comment><USER21> I think I'd keep drug patents. Not sure if much else. Drugs take a long time and a lot of money to create. But copying a drug is cheap is quick. But I'm not sure if anything else meets the bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's amusing that when there is a ruling in HTC's favor the headline is: "Judge Finds Apple in Violation of HTC's Newly Acquired Patents"...but when there was a ruling in Apple's favor it was: "Apple's Plot to Kill Top Android Maker HTC Nears Fruition With Win"

The latter being illustrated with a picture of Steve Jobs as the Emperor from Star Wars. Classy.

<comment><USER24> As others have noted, it's because Apple decided to get their hands dirty first claiming intellectual property with ridiculously broad patents. In that sense HTC is being perceived as defending itself to the bully on the playground by throwing back punches.

<comment><USER14> First, HTC didn't even have these patents until recently.

Second, Android clearly went with a strategy of cloning the iPhone, of course Apple struck first. Is Apple the bad guy for also wanting to close the fake Apple stores in China?

The question isn't who struck first, the question is whether each parties patents are valid or not and whether they are infringed or not. Defending poor journalism doesn't get us closer to that.

<comment><USER24> If you think that Android devices are just clones of the iPhone, and that it gives Apple just cause to strike first, I'm not even going to bother writing a real response.

<comment><USER14> Trust me, you didn't.

Android is not "just a clone" but it's clear that they decided to aggressively clone the iphone's features. If you don't think that's obvious, you missed what Android looked like 6 months before the iphone debut and 6 months after.

Now whether those features are protectable as IP or not is another matter but if they are it's no surprise that Apple would want to enforce such protections.

<comment><USER24> Aggressively clone as in...? A top statusbar? A touchscreen? A virtual keyboard? A grid layout of applications? Custom applications? Hate to break it to you, but iOS wasn't the first to do any of those, Android included most of them before the iPhone announcement (from the little that we know of its development at Google beginning in 2005), and the first Android phone (G1) didn't resemble the iPhone more than any other smartphone on the market. Most people that I knew were comparing it to the Sidekick when it first released.

<comment><USER14> "Aggressively clone as in...? "

As in completely overhauled the device from a blackberry knock off to an iphone knock off:

[http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android- looked-l...](http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-like- before-and-after-the-launch-of-iphone/)

"Hate to break it to you, but iOS wasn't the first to do any of those"

I'm not making any claim that (1) iOS was first for any of those or that (2) whatever claims Apple is making are protectable or not or (3) whether google violates those claims or not.

What I'm saying is that: (a) some claims and protections have been granted, (b) it's Apple's right to protect them until/unless these protections are overturned/invalidated, and (c) I have no sympathy for people violating legitimate claims. This whole sub-thread is about "striking first" makes Apple a bully which is total bullshit. They're striking first because they're the person getting copied, that's how the dynamic works.

"the first Android phone (G1) didn't resemble the iPhone more than any other smartphone on the market. Most people that I knew were comparing it to the Sidekick when it first released."

That's rich, every review of the G1 I can find compares it directly with the iphone. Custom time limit a google search.

<comment><USER24> Misleading image is misleading. This is what the first Android phone looked like: [http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2008/10/androi...](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2008/10/android1a.jpg)

Plenty of handsets had full touch-screens before the iPhone came out. The only difference being that the iPhone decided to ditch any hardware keyboard option. Oh wait, what's that on the knockoff? A hardware keyboard option, and almost every other button from the pre-release prototype as well.

Please. The arguments are childish now. Every manufacturer takes inspiration from devices on the current market. Apple included. Only they decided to go and start suing everyone left and right.

<comment><USER25> I'm curious why that image is "misleading." Is that not a photo of an early pre-release Android prototype?

<comment><USER24> The second image, not the first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just business as usual. Two giant corporations using the courts (or in this case the ITC) to set the price of a cross-license patent agreement.

These sorts of cases aren't usually very interesting. They almost always get settled with no disclosure of the final settlement.

</comment><comment><USER10> So if Apple is infringing because they used AMD hardware, aren't everyone who owns a machine with AMD hardware also infringing?

While the whole patent system is tending toward absurdity, it's _really_ absurd that you can be sued for infringement by using a product that infringes even if you have no idea or even a way of knowing that...

<comment><USER27> It might be the reason that Apple are infringing on the patent is that they are selling, not just using, a product which contains something which infringes the patent.

<comment><USER28> Using something with unlicensed patented technology exposes you to liability as well. Otherwise you could just make shell companies to add the final software piece to a product and cleanse the liability from all the other players.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> HTC has some leverage but I have a feeling, after seeing OS 10.7, that Apple cares less about the Mac then their iOS devices. Would they sacrifice the Macs for the chance to block Android?

<comment><USER30> More importantly, the same problem applies to anything not using nVidia GPUs, which is most low-end desktop PCs (Intel integrated GPUs) and a lot of high- end desktop PCs (anything with AMD).

So now we can't have a PC with the best GPU and CPU because Intel and nVidia are suing each other over IP, and we can't have a cheap PC because Intel is infringing on S3 patents, and we can't even give up and get a top-of-the-line AMD/ATI CPU.

Argh.

<comment><USER31> Not to nitpick, but while Intel owns the high end CPU market, the current ATI/AMD top end GPUs are much better than nVidia's offering. Unless, that is, I missed a major nVidia release lately...

<comment><USER30> You're right, modulo whether your favorite GPGPU API is supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is it still a sign of a broken system even if it means the guy I wanted to lose actually loses?

 _Shakes magic 8-ball_ Signs point to yes.

</comment><comment><USER33> I find this comment in the article to be very interesting:

"the reported industry average for invalidations during IP review is around 90 percent."

It would be very interesting to have a look at stats on patent invalidation reviews. If there's solid data showing that the invalidation rate is around 90% this might be useful as evidence that the USPTO is not doing their job by issuing patents that should never have been issued.

A number like 90% should embarrass anyone who might wish to argue that the system is not broken.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nothing in the article suggests HTC's patent is ridiculous like what was portrayed recently in the TAL program about Intellectual Ventures.

There doesn't seem to be anything inherently absurd about patenting an image compression system. I mean, imagine it was a small company that invented a new compression system that was 20% better then all the competition. Would they too be chastised if they tried to protect themselves from large corporations that ignore intellectual property law?

Patent are supposed to incentivize innovation and give the patent holder an edge against the competition as a sort of prize for his work. This "edge" was sold to HTC, and now HTC has every right to protect it. Seems like Apple should just either suck it up and pay a licensing fee, or change their hardware/software to get around using this technology.

The problem with the patent system is the disgusting legal harassment done by patent trolls - where smallish companies are sued over absurd patent and because they don't have the financial means to legally defend themselves they're pressured into settling; this case doesn't seem to exhibit any of those problems.

<comment><USER35> In the real world this small company would be counter sued with any random patent eg pattern matching. With reason or not the costs skyrockets... Guess who loses?

<comment><USER34> Yes, that would be the problem I described in my last paragraph, but that has no bearing on the facts of this case. Just because they could be counter sued (though I'm not completely convinced it's that east), doesn't mean the original law suit has no merit. Large companies routinely ignore the intellectual property rights of others (in part due to so many of them being bogus), but that doesn't make it okay. HTC is completely within it's right to demand compensation for technology they own, if their claim is legitimate. There is nothing in this article that suggests their claim is absurd or unjustified. Maybe the patent is on some amazing piece of compression technology that took years to develop. People are just jumping to the conclusion that it's yet another "toast" or "pop-up text" patent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Wouldn't creating a patent alliance render the evils of this system ineffective? Members of the alliance would work together to acquire patents, and these patents will be used as patent lawsuit deterrents. Any non-member company who sues a member of the alliance will have to face a dozen lawsuits from other alliance members. (Alliance members should sign a legal agreement not to sue other members on patent-based issues.)

Of course for this to be effective a huge number of patents is needed, but there are probably a lot of big companies willing to give big bucks to avoid the patent menace, and they can raise enough money to acquire a huge number of patents. Plus each company will come with its own patents.

I guess others have already thought of this and found it impractical, which makes me wonder why it is so.

<comment><USER37> That sounds kind of like the [Open Invention Network](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network>).

<comment><USER29> or the mpegla? not sure we want more of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Maybe we can get to the "mutually assured destruction" phase of patents where everyone has so many ridiculous patents that any lawsuit is sure to ruin everyone?

Of course, that doesn't stop patent trolls (terrorist rent seekers) with no skin in the game, but at least this drama would end.

<comment><USER39> There's an idea, start calling patent trolls "patent terrorism" to leverage the current climate of fear for our own purposes.

<comment><USER38> I think the Patriot Act could actually help us here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Maybe even Apple will realize that the current patent system isn't really doing them any favors, either, overall.

When even companies that stand to benefit from the current patent system start complaining about the patent system, _that's_ when we'll see some radical change.

<comment><USER41> > Maybe even Apple will realize that the current patent system isn't really > doing them any favors, either, overall.

I suspect all the big manufacturers realize that. They just don't have an option - _someone_ is going to sue, so everyone feels they have to.

<comment><USER40> Then I assume all the big companies have no problem supporting Google to push for an overhaul (or dare I say the abolishing?) of the patent system.

<comment><USER41> Good luck. There's more than just the US patent system at play here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> One of the few articles who recognises these patent law suits as what they are: means of gaining leverage and cutting into the winnings of other companies in the same market. Also a lot of references to further reading. Great article!

</comment><comment><USER43> Curious, it happens that Apple just recently phased out their last Macs that still used nVidia chips (and thus their only non-infringing models). Anyone know the reasoning for the switch?

<comment><USER44> Long story short it was to reduce the number of chips and thus cost, area, and heat (which leads to noise). There are good articles on this on AnandTech or Ars Technica but I can't find them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Well Appe will just use Nvidia chips in the new set of mac airs. I think the author overstates the damage by saying the ruling will impact the entire mac line up.

</comment><comment><USER46> ITC judge says Macs infringe on S3 patents, but it may not help HTC.

"Litigating Apple noted that on the very same day that an ALJ ruled that Apple infringed two of S3's patents, the USPTO made initial determinations that the relevant claims of the two remaining patents are also invalid due to prior art."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2815852>

</comment><comment><USER47> Sadly it looks like there's an arms race brewing. Hopefully some sanity is restored before these companies start destroying each other.

</comment><comment><USER48> Awaiting the day when 'Patent Law 101' becomes a pre-req for Computer Science degree..

<comment><USER49> already there at my uni.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Paradoxically, the ideal result seems to be only the lawyers coming out ahead.

</comment><comment><USER51> Could Apple do anything about this? It seems to be an AMD and Intel problem

<comment><USER52> Of course. They can license all their patents to HTC in exchange for a license to all of HTC's patents.

Everyone wins except the new upstart company without eight billion dollars worth of bullshit patents. We don't need any new computer companies, though, there are enough already. The system works!

<comment><USER53> You're not taking patent trolls into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I expected to see Economic Wars soon[1], but so far it seems we're getting Patent War. Anyway, is getting interesting.

[1] - yes, I've just read "Black Oceans" by Dukaj ;).

</comment><comment><USER55> Somehow this old tale from 1992 springs to mind: [http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Au...](http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/A%20Legend%20For%20Our%20Time.html)

</comment><comment><USER56> Mutually Assured Destruction.

</comment><comment><USER57> We live in a capitalistic society. I'd like to think that means IF !STOLEN THEN PAID and its contrapositive IF !PAID THEN STOLEN. Patents say IF USED THEN STOLEN. Companies tend to license these patents into their capitalistic form for many reasons, but the fact that they have a decision in the matter allows for monopolistic behavior.

I believe all patents should come with a required provision that lists a fair market value for licensing it which anyone can use, thus IF !STOLEN THEN PAID. In turn, this forces the USPTO to actually quantify (to some degree of error) the "useful" requirement of a patent and, by small extension, if it is "statutory" (product or productizable) and "nonobvious" (existing competition?). I think it also forces the requestor to give some detail on the intention of the patent rather than making an arbitrary claim to an underlying concept.

It's all about the money; they need to stop pretending and judge it that way. As it reads now, the current patent system was a premature optimization which planned for a society out of Star Trek instead of, well, lets not go there today.</comment>


Dude mails himself in FedEx box to steal start-up's source code - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-10/thieves-spies-and-silicon-valley-startups-a-cautionary-tale

<comment><USER2> I don't think that's what happened. The article talks about a security audit using a fake FedEx box after the fact, but it sounds like this guy just got a hold of some keys or passcodes.</comment>


Functors - <AUTHOR> http://bartoszmilewski.com/2015/01/20/functors/ <comment><USER2> This is a case of "Read like math" \- you can't just skim this and get the ideas, you'll have to work with the text, fence with the examples, struggle with the notation, and fight your way through.

If you're not willing to put in the effort you wont gain much from this. But if you _are_ willing to put in the effort, there is considerable insight to be gained.

And after all, what does one ever get for free? Anything worth having requires payment. For ideas and understanding, that payment is your time and effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mind that 'functor' is an ambiguous term in computer science. To an OCaml programmer, a functor is something else: [https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/functors.html](https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/functors.html)

A Prolog programmer will also think of something else when he hears the word 'functor'.</comment>