Richard Posner: Why There Are Too Many Patents In America - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/why-there-are-too-many-patents-in-america/259725/ <comment><USER3> This piece amounts to a red alert signal from a distinguished judge to Congress that it needs to fix some pernicious elements of the U.S. patent system and that it needs to do so _now_. The tone is judicious but the message is essentially alarmist: the system is seriously out of whack and Congress needs to get on with fixing it.

Judge Posner admits he is no expert on what the fixes should be and his tentative suggestions for fixing the system are, in my view, decidedly mixed on their merits (e.g., specialized adjudications before the USPTO - <USER2> when it was suggested that a specialized appeals court would improve the patent system and the result was a court that has been so maximalist in its approach to patents that it has in itself become a significant part of the problem).

So where to begin?

Legally, it has to go back to fundamentals and, for me, this has to go back to the scope of patentable subject matter and whether this should be defined to include software at all.

The Patent (and Copyright) Clause of the Constitution (Article I, sec. 8, cl. 8) provides that the Congress shall have the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note that, in defining this as one of the enumerated powers of the federal legislative branch, the Constitution does not mandate that the legislature provide for patent protection of any sort. It merely permits the exercise of such a power within constitutionally prescribed limits. Thus, any legitimate exercise of patent authority in the U.S. must come from Congress and must respect the constitutional bounds that any grant of patents be for "limited times" and be done in such a way as "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Legally, then, any patent system in the U.S., if adopted at all, must be authorized and defined by Congress with a view to promoting the progress of science and, implicitly, must employ "limited times" consistent with what it takes to promote scientific progress.

The first issue, then, is whether patents are needed at all to promote the progress of science. In the U.S., in spite of philosophical arguments to the contrary by Jefferson (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171754>), this has never been seriously in dispute. The industrial revolution was already well in progress in 1789, when the Constitution was adopted, and the federal authority, though generally regarded with great wariness at the time, was seen as vital to protect the rights of inventors and to reward them with limited monopoly grants in order to encourage the progress of science. In the first U.S. Patent Act (Act of April 10, 1790, 1 Stat. 109, 110), Congress implemented its constitutional authority to sanction patent monopolies by defining patentable subject matter very broadly, to include "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement therein." Congress amended the Act in 1793 and then again in 1952, so that today it reads as to the idea of "patentable subject matter" as follows (35 U.S.C. sec. 101): "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."

Thus, patents in the U.S. can be granted for any original invention that fits within the definition of patentable subject matter and that also meets the other conditions of the patent act (i.e., that is useful and non-obvious). Note, though, that the 1952 definition of patentable subject matter significantly _expanded_ the scope of such subject matter in the name of bringing the patent laws up to date with developments in then-modern technology, all in the name of promoting the progress of science. It did so by defining patentable subject matter to include any "new and useful process" as well as any "new and useful improvement" of any original invention. Over time, "process" has come to embrace business methods and also software. And the protection of "useful improvements" made clear that new _uses_ of existing machines or processes could be patented notwithstanding older Supreme Court decisions such as _Roberts v. Ryer_ , 91 U.S. 150, 157 (1875) ("it is no new invention to use an old machine for a new purpose").

To promote the progress of science, then, Congress in 1952 allowed patents to be granted for any inventive process and for any inventive new use for any such process. In my view, this generally made sense for what was essentially the continued playing out of the same sort of industrial revolution that animated the original forms of patent protection granted in 1790. Looking at that language at that time, one could readily make the case that patentable processes and improvements thereon could and did promote the progress of science. Discrete inventions tended to be sharply differentiated and tended to involve significant development effort in time and resources. An inventor could keep a process secret and not patent it but the grant of a limited monopoly gave a decided inducement to disclose it to the world and, hence, to expand the broad pool of scientific know-how available to society.

Then came the digital revolution and, with software, a new or improved process can amount to an almost trivial variation on prior art amidst a seemingly endless stream of improvements developed in ever-rapid succession and with little or no capital investment beyond what developers would be motivated to do for reasons entirely independent of gaining monopoly protection for the fruits of their efforts. Moreover, there is little that is closed about such innovations: a wide knowledge base is in place, known to an international developer community that is basically scratching its collective head asking why it should be restricted legally from using techniques and processes that represent common knowledge in the field.

The main question, then, concerning software patents, is whether the existing framework makes sense as one that promotes the "progress of science" insofar as it grants patent protection to process inventions in this area. Congress needs to seriously ask itself that question. A second question, also tied to constitutional authority and assuming that it is legitimate to grant _some_ form of patent for such inventions, is whether a 20-year period of exclusivity makes sense in an area where innovation occurs at blazing speeds and with not too much capital investment tied specifically to any given discrete invention. Is that necessary to promote the progress of science? That too is a question that Congress needs to consider.

Thus: (1) there is nothing magical about the current definition of patentable subject matter and Congress can adapt this to suit the needs of the time in promoting the progress of science, (2) process patents are in themselves a fairly recent phenomenon (at least in any large numbers) and it is no radical change to curtail them in areas where they make little or no sense in light of the constitutional purpose for why patents even exist in the first place, and (3) legitimate patent reform needs to go far beyond procedural fixes around the edges of the system and needs to focus on the realities of modern technology and whether the patent laws further or impede the progress of science as applied.

The policy debate can and will go all over the board on this but, if it is framed in light of the constitutional foundation for having patents in the first place, it can be shaped in a way that puts the focus on the fundamentals of what needs to be fixed as opposed to lesser issues that do not get to the heart of the problem. The main problem today is the blizzard of vague and often useless patents in the area of software. These are effectively choking all sorts of innovation and are benefiting mainly lawyers, trolls, and others who do not further technological development by what they do. It is a mistake, in my view, then, to swing too broadly in trying to fix things (as by advocating abolition of all patents) or to be so timid about the issues that reform is marginal at best and ineffective in dealing with the current crisis of an over-abundance of essentially worthless patents. Congress _embraces_ the patent system as a whole and shows no hostility to its fundamentals. Reform must be shaped in light of those fundamentals but it must, at the same time, be meaningful to eliminate the main garbage from the current flawed system. Judge Posner has pointed the way generally and proponents of reform ought to follow his lead, with the focus being (in my view) on software.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the absolutely fantastic insight. I completely agree with everything that you've written, and especially with your sentiments concerning rash decisions in reforming patent law. Patent law is an enormously complex system that's inextricably linked with the conflicting interests of many stakeholders. Moreover, _getting it wrong_ (by constricting the scope of patentable subject matter, limiting the remedies available, etc.) will cause the very conduct that the framers sought to avoid: overuse of trade secrets to safeguard inventions. Effectively, an exclusive right to exclude others from practicing an invention is the price the public pays to help the public repository of knowledge (e.g., scientific, literary, artistic) stay abreast of the private repository.

I have a problem with any suggested systemic improvement where the available protection depends on either the cost of the inventive process or its duration. The industry averages sound good in theory, but the USPTO is not equipped to investigate the truthfulness of these claims, which themselves are extraordinarily susceptible to accounting tricks and the like. I don't believe the solution stems from increased regulation. Instead, I've been considering an alternative approach that I haven't heard of before: _patents should be inalienable with their rights vesting exclusively in the inventors (jointly and with right of survivorship) for the statutory period._ It follows that the state would have a vested remainder in those rights and that no inventor would be able to transfer their right to another.

This idea came after reading about the philosophical and theological concept of inalienable possessions. Paul Kockelman's[1] first theoretical point on the topic concerns ontological classification: ``the gain and loss of inalienable possessions is related to the expansion and contraction of personhood.'' In other words, an individual's accumulation of inalienable possessions correlates with their personhood. Kockelman's second theoretical point asserts that inalienable possessions ontologically individuate, viz. they are uniquely identifiable with the particular individual for his life. Kockelman's final theoretical point is intimately related to classification and individuation: ``inalienable possessions historically and biographically trace.'' It follows that the inalienable possessions held by a group of people can act as a lens through which an observer may view that group's history.

Kockelman's formulation serves as a brilliant metaphor in the domain of Art. 1, Sec. 8, Cl. 8, because ``Writings and Discoveries'' are precisely the ``transcendent treasures'' that we must ``guard[] against all the exigencies that might force their loss.''[2] Overly litigious plaintiffs who amass war chests of patents constitute one such ``exigency.'' Another ``exigency'' occurs when universities strip patent rights from uncompensated students who took that one giant inventive leap. Universities justify their actions by asserting that the transfer was consideration for facility usage---an ``exigency'' that arguably constricts the affected students' personhood.

Many people question how an idea is patentable subject matter: the answer is that it's not. An invention isn't any idea: it's a process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement on any of them. During the inventive process, an inventor must maintain constant ``intellectual domination'' over his work, and but for a highly particular ordered set of neurophysiological reactions occurring in the prefrontal cortex (``the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain''), the idea would not have occurred at the instant it did. If the idea contemplates a novel and nonobvious invention, then it advances the humanities or sciences by that fact itself. The idea is a psychofact capable of acting as a vehicle ``for bringing past times into present'' so that the history of the inventive process elides into the inventor's identity. It logically follows that a chronology of all inventors in a society produces historically significant insight into the progress of the Arts and Sciences. By contrast, a chronology of patent assignees produces its own historically significant insight: the alarming increase in exigencies threatening the dissemination of these ``transcendental treasures:'' ideas. Accordingly, inventions are properly entitled to the appellation of inalienable possessions.

Applying Kockelman's theoretical points creates what, in my view, is a sensible reformation of intellectual property law. We can distinguish patents from other property interests by noting that patentability requires an idea to meet a series of standards that elevate it to the status of an invention. When an idea meets those standards, it becomes intertwined with the inventor's personhood---his conscious ability to frame representations about the world and act accordingly on them. The gain and loss of inventions is clearly related to the expansion and contraction of the inventor's personhood, because as he invents, the plans he formulates and actions he takes on his conscious perceptions change according to new representations based on the changed state of technological advancement.

In the end, intellectual property is different because it's inextricably linked with the property creator's personhood. Ideas are so profoundly human that it becomes unconscionable to think someone can claim ownership rights in a property interest arising out of another's invention. This solution isn't perfect, but it's one with which I would be more okay.

[1] [http://www.columbia.edu/~pk2113/Article%20PDFs/Inalienable%2...](http://www.columbia.edu/~pk2113/Article%20PDFs/Inalienable%20Possession%20and%20Personhood.pdf) at 343

[2] [http://books.google.com/books?id=lNitvRLiiBUC&lpg=PA33&#...</a>

<comment><USER5> Non-transferable/alienable rights is a valid possible adjustment. But it is or would be so solely on the basis of its actual economic effect. This simple clear economic approach -- Posner's broadly -- is the only sensible way to understand actual law and activity here.

All that stuff about 'personhood' and 'intellectual domination' and 'possession' is otiose. Any attempt to make an _a priori_ case for intellectual monopoly seems certainly doomed to failure -- for a very simple reason: they do not fit the basic physical facts.

Informational goods are nonrival: they are copyable and usable with no loss to the original. The relation between copies of information is abstract. A copy _adds_ its value, and subtracts nothing.

Two notable ethical points follow from that. Copying is consistent with the principle of universalisation: a general rule that all should copy is not self-contradictory -- the opposite: if we all do it, we all gain. Second, _restriction_ of copying _fails_ a basic rights-justification or liberty principle: we are restricted only so far as we would harm someone else, yet for the notion of unauthorised copying any claim of loss has no grounds in any physical fact.

Ultimately, we want to be governed by the basic physical facts and how their constraints and ramifications allow us best advantage. 'Personhood' justifications for intellectual monopoly seem about as reasonable a basis for regulating behaviour as believing that taking a photo takes someone's soul.

<comment><USER4> > Informational goods are nonrival: they are copyable and usable with no loss > to the original. The relation between copies of information is abstract. A > copy _adds_ its value, and subtracts nothing.

That is where I disagree. There's an important distinction between the inventive step leading to a discovery and subsequent copies thereof. A subsequent copy of an idea does not possess the same characteristics as the ``flash of genius'' in the mind of the person responsible for producing that idea. From this distinction, it follows that an idea, alone, has no intrinsic value--intrinsic value arises out of attachment to society.

Your argument is that an idea gains value as it spreads, but I don't think that's correct. Rather, societal advancement occurs when members of a society generate and produce novel ideas. There are two competing forces: (1) the spread of new ideas is akin to a positive feedback loop, since new ideas are based on old ones (there's evidence of this: technological advancement grows exponentially with respect to time); and (2) as an idea spreads, its connection to its creator fades, eventually causing misappropriation of that 'inventive step' and disincentivizing the creator's continued creation of new ideas. The belief that losing control over the spread of an idea on the basis that no harm to the information occurs from copies thereof is flawed: it focuses on the information, rather than the person who created it.

Permitting patent rights to vest only in the inventor transforms his talent into a commodity, rather than the fruits of that talent. It rewards the individual rather than those acting on the information for no purpose other than economic gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posner may well be one of the most important figures in tech in the coming decade for standing up against the lunacy of software patents. What Congress and the President don't seem to understand is the cost of patent litigation in the US poses an _existential_ threat to America's dominant position in tech.

One of the most compelling arguments to me (against these patents) is that in pharmaceuticals, for example, you are dealing with a handful of patents. Some processes might be patented, maybe even some equipment (easily licensed generally) but basically the patents that go into a process (that may itself be patented) are minimal and can be reasonably well understood by those running such businesses.

Posner pointed out that a smartphone may well contain (and violate) _thousands_ of patents. That right there is a sure sign that something is rotten in the state of the patent system.

The solution here isn't reform, as some suggest (ie raising the bar to what's patentable). It's simply to get rid of them. First-to-market and execution are what matters and what should matter. 20 year exclusives for vaguely worded patents on things that are more often than not obvious is just a means for big companies to extinguish smaller companies.

<comment><USER7> Especially in the tech world. If you're not first on the market with something, in many cases you might as well be last.

Problem is, this keeps out small companies trying to innovate beyond their corporate brethren. If I come up with something completely new and awesome, it might be two years before I can start manufacturing it and it might still be new and innovative then. HTC might have it out in 18 months. So during the time I'm designing and testing this equipment, I have to maintain complete secrecy through the entire supply chain, because if one link in the chain goes down, my billion dollar rivals have run off with the biggest idea of my five cent company.

Raising the bar and lowering the time frame would lower the barriers to entry moreso than removing patents altogether. Two years to get to market and then 6 months after release would be close to sufficient.

<comment><USER8> a) You probably didn't come up with something new and awesome worth the court's protection (sorry)

b) If you did, HTC is going to use it anyway and bury your suit in the courts until you run out of money (sorry)

c) Either way, your example only applies to hardware or you wouldn't have a supply chain or manufacturing

Ultimately, theft of the biggest idea of your 5¢ company doesn't warrant tens of billions of dollars of legal overhead.

Perhaps I agree that raising the bar fixes the problem: if your invention can be implemented by a general purpose computer, it does not deserve patent protection. And that's "can", not "is" : if it is at all possible to implement an invention in software, it is essentially math and does not deserve patent protection. Patent protection is for mechanical inventions (wheat threshers) and material transformations (metal casting). If pharma deserves protection, it is the exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER9> You seem to have a very "Web 2.0" viewpoint. Yes, all the consumer-facing web startups pimped here on HN aren't really doing anything where patent protection would be beneficial. But in the embedded realm, there are a lot of situations where software might merit patent protection.

E.g. my wife is pregnant, and we recently got an ultrasound. The ultrasound machine gave us a surprisingly detailed three-dimensional image of the fetus. I'd be willing to bet that the algorithms for generating these visualizations were not something you could whip up in a few weeks using Rails. Without patent protection, the maker of that software has to get into the business of building ultrasound machines. He can't just sell the patent to someone who builds ultrasound machines. I think there is a lot of value in being able to facilitate such specialization of labor.

<comment><USER8> That's almost offensive - you seem to have a very _ignorant_ viewpoint. Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries that become incorporated into products that they do not sell. They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another team actually write the code. Why does the licensee bother to pay? Exclusivity, maintenance, further improvements, etc. Ideas that are not patentable can still be protected as trade secret, making them commercially valuable. If a company does not pay their licensing fees, the researchers might choose not to work with them in the future, providing a competitive advantage to other companies that do.

Since you don't show a firm grasp on patents, let me provide an example of the problem. Remember that patents are a legal protection ignorant of independent discovery. Say that you created a new, successful communications tool. People are often bothered when someone sends them a message while they are giving a presentation, so you change their status from Available to Busy when their calendar says they are in a meeting.

As you become a big commercial success, IBM sues you for infringement of their patent on changing chat availability status based on calendar free/busy. They seek damages and an injunction until the matter is resolved. They will settle for 150% of your company's worth, or they will pay their lawyers to tie this up in the courts until nobody cares about your product or you run out of money.

Hopefully it is obvious that patents do not help innovation in this situation. Some will say that this is a case of a bad patent, and the solution is just to ensure that patents are good. The problem is that only a couple of people in the world could tell the difference between a bad software patent and a good one (none of them are judges or lawyers), and who are they to rule on IBM's lawsuit against you?

It is now on your head to request re-examination and prove that someone else had already created a product that uses a personal calendar to change away status based solely on information in trade publications and product manuals (if you can find them). Alternatively you could attempt to prove that the invention was obvious, which requires you to recreate the environment in which the patent was filed and convince a non-technical examiner that an average programmer in that environment would have found it to be obvious.

But let's cut to the chase and say that you run out of money. IBM can litigate their toilet paper patent for centuries without noticing, and you probably have a couple months of runway. This is what it means to have patent protection.

<comment><USER9> > Have you never heard of licensing? Research teams regularly build libraries > that become incorporated into products that they do not sell.

Licensing is based on copyright, a different government-granted monopoly. Why should software libraries be protected when software algorithms aren't? What you're saying is that you should be able to protect your "yet another JS framework" under copyright, but not something like a power control loop in a wireless device under patents.

> They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another > team actually write the code.

You can license it, but you have no legal protection to keep people from copying it.

> Ideas that are not patentable can still be protected as trade secret, making > them commercially valuable.

1) you can't transact in trade secrets; 2) trade secrets are of no use when embedded as software in devices.

Say I come up with a new power control loop for wireless devices. The loop allows radios to cause less interference while maintaining bandwidth. Say I keep it as a trade secret. If I put it in a radio and sell it, someone can reverse-engineer the firmware and copy the design of the power control loop. Trade secrets won't protect me. Moreover, I have to get into the business of building every kind of radio I might want to sell. I can't just sell the power control loop to someone who is good at building radios, because trade secret doesn't cover things you voluntarily disclose. Imagine the situation: I go up to Raytheon and say "I've got a great power control loop, I'll sell it to you for $50m." And they say "well, how does it work? We're not paying $50m without understanding what we're buying." And you say "well pay me first than I'll tell you!"

> Hopefully it is obvious that patents do not help innovation in this > situation.

Agreed, but that's a phenomenally bad patent.

> Some will say that this is a case of a bad patent, and the solution is just > to ensure that patents are good.

Yup.

> The problem is that only a couple of people in the world could tell the > difference between a bad software patent and a good one (none of them are > judges or lawyers), and who are they to rule on IBM's lawsuit against you?

There are hundreds of IP lawyers with strong technical backgrounds who could tell the difference between the patent in your example and say the OFDM patent: [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=...](http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=3488445&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP).

The "chat availability status" patents are getting a lot of press on HN, but I spent years working at tech companies that produced patents along the lines of the OFDM example linked-to above. I think a lot of people on HN don't have the exposure to embedded software to be able to really appreciate what the other side of the patent coin looks like.

<comment><USER8> _Why should software libraries be protected when software algorithms aren't?_

Independent invention.

 _> They can also license the math (which is not patentable) and have another team actually write the code._

 _You can license it, but you have no legal protection to keep people from copying it._

To keep _other_ people from copying it. The people that you license it to will be contractually bound. Perhaps, but it will be expensive and time consuming for them to copy it. Patents are for a limited time, so this is an argument tied up in a comparison of how long it takes someone to unravel a complicated system, how long a patent lasts, and how much the inventor would license it for.

 _I think a lot of people on HN don't have the exposure to embedded software to be able to really appreciate what the other side of the patent coin looks like_

That may be true. If you have made inventions such as these, you should protect them with trade secret because chat availability status patents are far more excessively damaging than strong signal processing patents are valuable.

<comment><USER9> > Independent invention.

Nobody is independently inventing the OFDM patent I linked to, at least not within the patent term. You're taking an edge case and making the debate all about that edge case. I think it's quite reasonable to have genuine independent invention as a defense to patent infringement, FWIW.

> You can write a contract for anything.

You can contract for anything, but you can't enforce the contract against anyone not in contractual privity.

> That may be true. If you have made inventions such as these, you should > protect them with trade secret because chat availability status patents are > far more excessively damaging than strong signal processing patents are > valuable.

As I described above, trade secrets don't allow the crucial feature of being easy to transact in. And you have absolutely no basis for your claim that "chat availability" patents are more damaging than signal processing patents are valuable. You can point to the Apple litigation on one side, and I can point to ARM, Ltd. on the other, etc.

<comment><USER8> _You're taking an edge case and making the debate all about that edge case._

Sadly, I see this the opposite way. Quantity-wise good, innovative architecture patents are in the vast minority. If we are to deal with software patents one at a time, the combined effort dealing with bad ones far outweighs good ones.

 _You can contract for anything, but you can't enforce the contract against anyone not in contractual privity._

Hah, I already updated my comment based on your updated comment! HN isn't the best for these kinds of discussions.

 _Nobody is independently inventing the OFDM patent I linked to, at least not within the patent term._

I have been thinking for some time that we need a collection of good software patents. Not having read the OFDM or ARM patents (for which I'm not qualified anyway), I don't know if they are "good". But I do know that one day we're going to invalidate a large percentage of software patents or watch innovation happen elsewhere. When that day comes, it will be important to have a list of things that are valuable, or else we'll end up with the bar that I described (anything computable is not patentable).

Unfortunately, I don't know of enough of them to seed such a database. Maybe fast square root or some of Carmack's graphics work. And as such I'm okay with seeing them 100% invalid. If you disagree, perhaps we can chat about it (email's in my profile).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _In most [industries], the cost of invention is low; or just being first confers a durable competitive advantage because consumers associate the inventing company's brand name with the product itself; or just being first gives the first company in the market a head start in reducing its costs as it becomes more experienced at producing and marketing the product; or the product will be superseded soon anyway, so there's no point to a patent monopoly that will last 20 years; or some or all of these factors are present. Most industries could get along fine without patent protection._ "

Wow, this guy _really_ gets it. This is how markets and competition work. There's no need to give a company a legal monopoly. If anything, that lack of monopoly, will force companies to keep trying to invent new things to keep staying one step ahead of the competitors.

I also love this one:

" _forbidding patent trolling by requiring the patentee to produce the patented invention within a specified period, or lose the patent_ "

These days big tech corporations are filing patents as fast as they can print them on paper. And then 95% of them will probably never be used in products that are shipping in the market.

<comment><USER11> _"forbidding patent trolling by requiring the patentee to produce the patented invention within a specified period, or lose the patent"_

That bit is, I think, is _the key_ to unravel whole patents issue.

The other day I was wondering why it was that, somehow, I considered some patents valid and others invalid. For example, I consider many codecs (DivX, JPEG) to be valid patents, but consider patents on certain algorithms to be invalid. Weird, huh? Because codecs are just a specialized algorithm. I just couldn't put my finger to it.

And then it hit me: all the patents I considered valid were _actual products_. DivX and JPEG were patented, implemented and licensed. The codecs themselves provided a leap in technology, and without that particular codec the product wouldn't exist at all. The patents I considered invalid are either bells and whistles or lack a real implementation. In other words, the creators of DivX and JPEG were making real money by developing and marketing a new technology, whereas Apple (just using the example du jour, please spare me the faboyisms) is trying to shut down competing products by just pointing at a tiny feature and screaming "COPYCAT! COPYCAT!".

The day Apple shows that it's the rounded corners in the iPad that is making them money, and not the fact that they developed a really thin tablet with great battery life and a decent OS, I might reconsider.

<comment><USER12> Aren't those two very weird examples? Jpeg is mostly free to use and no one uses the bit that isn't. Divx is just a proprietary twist on mpeg standards that got famous on the back of piracy. And the standard itself was considered a bit crappy in both technical and licence terms and might not have succeeded at all if not pushed by an industry cartel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to be like Richard Posner, where I was generally against patents except for a few cases like pharmaceutical. Until I read Against Intellectual Monopoly. [http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstne...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm)

See chapter 9 for an historical analysis of the pharmaceutical industry in countries without patents. The surprising result is companies no-patent protection countries were producing equivalent new drugs as the patent protected companies.

Now I am full anti-IP advocate, except for certain trademarks and attribution of authorship (so people know who the company/author this product came from).

<comment><USER14> Makes sense. But perhaps Posner is applying some logic, privately. Pharma is well-funded and powerful, and going against all IP would definitely set them off. So, giving them an industry exemption makes patent reform for the rest of us far more likely. That's an outcome, I believe, that is worth giving pharma their exemption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whenever a congressman or members of an executive branch do something, I usually hate their gut.

Whenever a judge decide something, it usually make me like them.

In fact, Americans trust their judges more than their politicans and bureaucrat. [http://www.gallup.com/poll/143225/trust-legislative- branch-f...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/143225/trust-legislative-branch-falls- record-low.aspx)

<comment><USER16> That's because the judicial branch was design to be a-political.

While I enjoy reading Posner's opinions, I think he should run for office if he wants to be in the political spotlight. I don't want judges creating and pushing new political theories. I want them to spend their time and energy understanding the laws created by legislators and interpreting those laws as best they can through the filter of the Constitution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great points all around, but I don't necessarily agree 100% with his thoughts in the pharmaceutical industry.

For specific drugs, this may be the case, but when you have pharmaceutical companies doing things like patenting specific gene sequences, causing both other companies and academics to have to get licenses/permission just to perform research on something completely different, that's just ridiculous.

How patents work should be more flexible, and not limited to just whatever industry they're in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Before 1989 or so, software was assumed to be not patentable. This did not appear to slow down innovation or progress in software in the slightest.

<comment><USER19> It depends on what you mean by "software". For example, the well-known RSA algorithm patent was filed in 1977.

What most people are calling "software patents" are actually business method patents, which do not necessarily involve software at all (though many of the infamous ones do). Business method patents are relatively new and largely unique to the US.

<comment><USER20> As an example, the Amazon One-Click patent is a business method and has nothing to do with software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "There are a variety of measures that could be taken to alleviate the problems I've described. They include: reducing the patent term for inventors in industries that do not have the peculiar characteristics of pharmaceuticals that I described; ..."

To me the obvious solution, and the one missing from this list, is to abolish patents altogether in such industries ( including the tech industry). I wonder if judge Posner would agree, and if so, why not come out and say it? Would this be considered too radical at this point in time?

</comment><comment><USER22> In my opinion, the key characteristic of software that makes the current patent system not suitable is the vast amount of interdependence inherent in this type of technology. Code is not used side by side like an infantry of little computer processes working in parallel to make computers or phones go. It is rather organised and packaged in a huge network of building blocks, a pyramid of hundreds of thousands of libraries, APIs or functions heavily inter-dependent on each other. What's more, the building blocks are usually not all written by the same people or organisations and a consistent interface is critical for enabling compatibility (often between millions of parts made by thousands of developers).

This hierarchical and networked architecture is inevitable and it is the best way to organize such complex information, however the stability it requires at the bottom of the pyramid of code means that some building blocks cannot be changed once the pyramid is built. Someone claiming ownership of the shape of a bottom-center block after the pyramid is built, someone having the power to force a bottom block to be removed and replaced with a different shaped one, no matter how simple and obvious this bloc is, does not have power over just this block but over the whole structure above it and all the components that depend on it. This means patent holders have a disproportionately large amount of power when they target such a bloc. From a possibly trivial piece at the bottom, they can control a vastly more sophisticated structure built on top which they had no part in conceiving. They know that changing it would require tearing down, redesigning and replacing often tons of dependent work and probably break compatibility for huge amounts of users of these projects.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm extremely skeptic of the proposed solutions. I haven't yet seen a solution that would be a clear net win for society after summing the pros vs cons. It seems to me that fixing patents is a mathematical impossibility. Trying to come up with a system that forces most inventors to pay a few inventors, while at the same time not punishing most inventors. Sounds like trying to come up with a number that is less than 2, while at the same time greater than 1000. It's mathematically impossible.

The optimistic in me would love to believe there's a brilliant solution, which is way over my head. The realistic in me, can only see paradoxes and no obvious solution. Maybe I'm just too dumb to solve this problem myself.

I believe the right path is to look back at what the vision behind patents are in the first place (incentives for invention), and think from the ground up how we can implement this without the modern "necessary" dogmas (such as licensing or IP). Then I can actually think of plenty of solutions. But none of them even remotely resembles what we know today as a patent.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I don't understand and also feel is a issue with patents as a whole is you can patent something without actualy being able to show a working example/product.

For example :- somebody could patent teleportation - define it and then when somebody does all the hard work and actualy invents a teleporter, you are then able to cry patent violation and cash in. That too me is compeletely wrong, yet that is how the patent system stands currently.

I have also noted that alot of patents that have no working prototype or product, all seem to have been done in some SCI-FI movie/TV series priviously and find it somehow suprising that the movie industry have not started jumping on this patent bandwagon as they have more of a working prototype than many awarded patents that get approved in this day and age.

<comment><USER25> They aren't supposed to grant a patent if there isn't a reduction to practice. In practice, the PTO is overworked and things get through that shouldn't.

If it comes down to a lawsuit and there was no reduction ot practice, a patent can be thrown out. Of course, when it gets to court it's very expensive for everybody.

The best way to demonstrate the practicality of a software invention, for instance, is to attach working source code to the patent -- with the funny consequence that a strong software patent involves, in some sense, a contribution to open source.

<comment><USER26> That's not funny or ironic, that's one of the two things patents are intended to achieve: to encourage inventions to be published for everyone to use freely (after the patent protection expires) rather than kept secret.

<comment><USER25> it makes sense from the perspective of the patent system and it's goals, but it's contradictory to the "patents bad" attitude that is common in the open source community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "...eliminating court trials including jury trials in patent cases by expanding the authority and procedures of the Patent and Trademark Office to make it the trier of patent cases, subject to limited appellate review in the courts..."

UK perspective: what do people here think of this suggestion, perhaps even as a temporary 'damper' on the patent troll business model? Raising the barrier to litigation would perhaps slow down the rate at which these cases occur. In the UK, we have a special court for trying IP cases, and the barrier to litigation is very high, perhaps too high for some small companies. Of course, the EU does not allow the granting of software patents.

<comment><USER19> The EU does not allow business method patents, which is what most people actually mean when they say "software patents". It does allow computer algorithm patents.

<comment><USER28> Actually the EU clearly disallows software patents in very plain language: [http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal- texts/html/epc/2010/e/...](http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal- texts/html/epc/2010/e/ar52.html)

<comment><USER19> Define "software patents".

That "very plain language" only excludes business method patents i.e. "...on a computer" or "...on the internet" patents. These are not computer algorithm patents (for example, a new sorting or encryption algorithm). The term "software patent" does not denote a distinct class of patent.

Computer algorithms are patentable in the EU. I can think of many, many examples of computer algorithms that are patented in the EU (e.g. crypto patents, compression algorithms, codecs, etc.).

<comment><USER28> Patents have certainly been granted, but the language I link to above is very clear about the validity of such patents:

"The following in particular shall _not_ be regarded as inventions [...]: schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, _and programs for computers_."

[my emphasis]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The good thing about patents is that they motivate the discovery of alternate approaches. The bad thing is that they stagnate inter-connective progress.

Patents have become a hideously bureaucratic market unto themselves, creating a kink in the hose leading to the fountain of progress, but the fountain attained its magisterial beauty partially as a result of the motivation to circumvent roadblocks.

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't the fundamental problem in software patents that patent holders have the option of NOT licensing their patents to infringing parties? Outright ban based on patent infringement is criminal in my view. Collecting rent based on infringement is completely fair, on the other hand.</comment>


Ask HN: How close to market rate do engineers get paid, post series-b? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You should get a market rate salary post series-B or damn close in my opinion. This is the round where founders can take money off the table, making them millionaires. If they take money off the table but tell you that you should take less then market, you are getting taken advantage of. At a large company, with stock and bonus you could be getting $100k more per year. Your startup stock should cover this and more since you are taking a risk it is worth nothing in the end. Your base salary should match what you would get elsewhere. Founders take money off the table so they can focus on building the company and not worry about finances. There's no reason employees shouldn't be treated the same way.

How would you like working at a place like Secret for a discount only to find out 18 months before shutting down the founders each made 3 million.[1] Don't take a below market salary at this point. There's enough money the company can afford to pay market. If the founders can make millions they can afford to pay you the wage you deserve. Even post series-A I feel should be close to market, since the company just raised millions. Seed can be lower, but you should have a guarantee that it goes up at the next funding round. There's a lot of money in the market and a lot of bad founders, so don't make personal sacrifices to make others rich. If you want a mission, join the Peace Corp. Startups are business, otherwise they would be incorporated as non-profits.

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders- pocket-6-mill...](http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-founders- pocket-6-million-in-25-million-fundraise-2014-7)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, a trick question.

Employees should _always_ negotiate to be paid their market rate, regardless of the stage of the company. Founders can pay themselves as little as they like, but once they start hiring people they need to actually pay those people to work for them. Stock options (on top of that market rate) and other things are a nice way of offsetting the risk that the company will go away in a matter of months, but never make the mistake of trading away salary for them.

Doing otherwise is a combination of betting on other people's lottery tickets and simply being taken advantage of.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with jasonkester. Unless you are a very early employee getting an out- sized amount of equity (>2%) then you should be damn close to market from the beginning. Of course startups pay less, but more than 10% off market is terrible. Even early employees should be brought up to market very quickly once funding happens. If you google it, you'll find the consensus is that founders can pay themselves market after series A. You better be getting market too.

The best way to get a raise post funding round as an employee is to go in guns blazing in your next salary/performance review. Make sure to keep a list of your accomplishments, tie them to the revenue of the company, outline what you're excited about in the coming year, and print out a payscale report of how under market you are and say something like, "I'm getting a bit demoralized by how under market I am. It will be a load off my mind and make it much easier for me to stay motivated for all that we have ahead if this can get corrected."

If you are invaluable to them you will receive the raise. If you're not, then you're getting the better end of the deal and you should look for a job where you can be invaluable. If you are invaluable and they give you a shitty raise, you can be more explicit with them, but it's likely that you'll need to job hop to get what you want.

I got a 30% raise doing what I just outlined.</comment>


CodeAnywhere Closes "Free Forever" Accounts - <AUTHOR> Their free account was, and still is, advertised as "free forever". However, today I received this email:
"We are writing this email to inform you that as of March 1st 2019 the Free tier will become a free trial and limited to 7 Days use.
Why are we removing free? We at Codeanywhere have always tried to give our customers the best value for their money making sure that we just cover our operating expenses. Lately the increasing demand from our user base to boost the performance of our container service forced us to increase the operating cost of running our service, and with that, a forever for free plan is no longer feasible.
As mentioned earlier and as you all know yourselves, compute power is not cheap, and as a preemptive measure for this we have to scale back on free usage.
What about education use? We do offer very large discounts for education use, furthermore if you do decide to upgrade to an Educational licence, only the teacher/admin has to use a Credit Card, students do not have to, so you have no worries there.
What and why now? We understand that this will be hard on some, and we are very, very sorry for this, we tried to prevent closing free accounts completely, but the economics just did not work out.
We will do our best to help all we can to transition in this period, so please feel to reach out if we can help in any matter or form.
Furthermore this is one of the reasons we have reactivated the lifetime 40% discount, if you upgrade and use the following code (Promo code: 40forlife1533 valid until 15th March. 2019) you will have a 40% discount on any and all plans for the rest of your life.
We truly hope this is the last of our policy changes for a long, long time, and hope you will support us by upgrading, so we as Codeanywhere can continue on this journey of helping you code, from anywhere.
Thank you for understanding. Your Codeanywhere Team." <comment><USER2> Note to self: don't call anything "forever" in a SaaS product.

<comment><USER3> Also don't believe anything will be free forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > if you upgrade and use the following code (Promo code: 40forlife1533 valid > until 15th March. 2019) you will have a 40% discount on any and all plans > for the rest of your life

This seems an unwise commitment to make on their part.

<comment><USER5> fool me once, fool me twice

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let it be known that 1st March will be henceforth known as the end of forever.

</comment><comment><USER7> At least they provided a great deal of notice. 7 whole _days_.

</comment><comment><USER8> One dies, another one will rise.

</comment><comment><USER9> That sucks. I used them in the past.

<comment><USER10> I didn't, so I won't be crying now.</comment></comment>


The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host - <AUTHOR> http://narrative.ly/couch-surfing-capers/secret-life-obsessive-airbnb-host/ <comment><USER2> Airbnb and a crazed host landed me in a police car once. My crime: having my girlfriend over, and being male.

Airbnb offered me a 500 USD voucher, which barely covered the cost of my last minute Holiday Inn stay that I had to make to, well, not spend the night on the street after getting kicked out, and it's all water under the bridge now, but nightmare stories happen both ways.

<comment><USER3> What were you accused of?

<comment><USER4> Rape, I think.

<comment><USER5> You made an account just to post this?

<comment><USER6> You can get fired for what you say on the internet these days. [https://twitter.com/zivcjs](https://twitter.com/zivcjs)

<comment><USER7> Can you give more context/information?

I understand that he was fired for dropping the C bomb but couldn't find more from his twitter profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a guest, I feel way more safe using Airbnb when I'm renting an extra room in the host's home. Even better if there are strict-sounding house rules. It makes me feel like I'm sharing a living space with a real person rather than helping somebody play landlord with their rental-only flat. And judging by the article, it's better for the hosts as well.

I've been living like this with different people for the past month or so. It's been about the same price as a hostel and so much more comfortable and interesting! It would be a shame if lack of trust brought prices up and made this way of life no longer viable.

<comment><USER7> Great tip. I felt tempted to try AirBNB many times but I just didn't feel comfortable with that. I guess geeky social awkwardness was taking over :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly similar to the guy who squatted at AOL around the same time (2012).

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/26/after-2-months-of- squatting...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/26/after-2-months-of-squatting-at- aol-eric-simons-launches-claco-the-github-for-teachers/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > If used wisely and responsibly,

Being an illegal sublet and uninsured doesn't feel wise or responsible.

<comment><USER11> In addition to that, this man was illegally staying in his office overnight. The fact that he used his office's resources doesn't make him clever, but something else.

<comment><USER12> Would you mind finding me the relevant law that makes napping under the desk a crime? I didn't realize that I was a serial offender until you mentioned it. It's a wonder that Google hasn't been busted for their nap rooms yet.

Personally, I'd say it makes him clever as long as he didn't bother anybody. Admittedly, I live in the savage lands of California, where practically anything goes. But if somebody who worked for me had both the chutzpah to attempt this and enough consideration for others to pull it off without us catching on, I'd give 'em a standing ovation.

<comment><USER13> If you do it when you aren't supposed to be there, the property owner can have you arrested and charged for trespassing.

<comment><USER12> Oh, please. Everybody knew he was there. He was never told not to be there at night. They may not have realized how much time he was spending there, but what he was doing was in no way illegal.

<comment><USER14> Is that your legal advice? Because it's not good.

<comment><USER12> Well since you're a legal expert, please point me at the law that makes this guy's behavior illegal. Sure, he could have been fired. But arrested, tried, and convicted? I don't believe it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am looking forward to the Airbnb movie which is obviously a rom-com of sorts with the pilot paid for by Airbnb rentals and the script written from true life experiences such as this story (with some rom-com elements being pure fantasy rather than grounded in reality).

<comment><USER16> Then you'll probably enjoy this. The Trixie episode of High Maintenance:

[http://vimeo.com/56895025](http://vimeo.com/56895025)

<comment><USER15> Having seen that I can now see that we can expect a lot more! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've used AirBNB quite a lot now, with our most recent booking being a cottage in the Lake District, UK for our whole family, kids, baby and all. Never had a problem as a guest, but I would be more hesitant to use AirBNB as a host, given the legal climate.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm creeped out about the idea of some perv bugging his house with hidden cameras then renting it on airBNB, this alone is why I havn't used airbnb for me or my family.

</comment><comment><USER19> > It's no secret that Airbnb's housing stock is partially composed of listings > that are technically forbidden by a landlord, co-op board, or city ordinance

This sounds like you tubes early days - ignore the copies of DVDs and music videos until have enough scale not tomworry anymore.

But ... That's not a proper strategy is it? And is there a class action means of preventing it? If a landlord sues Airbnb can they be forced to stop renting beds they have not legal right to?

Just catching up on the Airbnb story

</comment><comment><USER20> Why do I have to give my email address in order to read this?

<comment><USER21> You don't. I was able to click "No Thanks," and read the whole article.

<comment><USER22> Or just click outside of the newsletter subscription box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any website that throws up a subscribe dialog box like this I'm going to avoid. (DR)</comment>


Symbolics Genera - The Best Software Environment Available - <AUTHOR> http://lispm.dyndns.org/genera-concepts/genera.html <comment><USER2> I have a Symbolics XL1200 that still works (at least, it worked the last time I turned it on, which was a few years ago). I'd be happy to demo it at YC sometime.

It was a fun environment to work in. Although the hardware was very slow by modern standards, the environment was designed to maximize hacker productivity. For example, you didn't have to run a program under the debugger to debug it -- the debugger was always there. Any program that hit an error would drop you into the debugger. One keystroke would then take you to the source for the current function. You could change that function, recompile it, and restart from the point where the function was called.

The environment was completely open; there was no access control of any kind. There was also only a single address space. Did that make it crash-prone? Remarkably, no. The hardware tagging and bounds checking kept programs from stepping on objects they didn't own. Of course such a design would never survive outside of a research lab, but it made it amazingly easy to hack almost anything in the system.

<comment><USER3> I don't know that I'd agree that it wouldn't survive outside of research. In recent years, there's been a huge push for pure-managed operating systems, where everything runs in one address space and depends on the compiler to ensure security and reliability. While no such systems are in practice (to my knowledge), the potential is incredible. We'll see how it pans out in the next few years.

(Full disclosure: I started such an OS, Renraku, so I have a bit of a vested interest in the success of such ideas)

<comment><USER4> What about IBM's OS/400? <http://users.snip.net/~gbooker/AS400/ibm.htm>

<comment><USER5> Indeed, OS/400 is just wonderfully advanced under the hood. Get one of the cheap used copies of this book for a lot more: [http://www.amazon.com/Inside- AS-400-Frank-Soltis/dp/18824196...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-AS-400-Frank- Soltis/dp/1882419669/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia has more information for people (like me) who haven't heard of Genera before: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system)>

</comment><comment><USER7> Lisp Machines are something that you think is really cool when you first learn about them, then you come to the realization that pining for them is a waste of time.

I've had a flash of inspiration recently and have been thinking about Lisp Machines a lot in the past three weeks.

But first, a digression. There's an important lesson to be learned about why Symbolics failed. I think Richard Gabriel came to the completely wrong conclusion with "Worse is Better" (<http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html>). There are two reasons why:

1\. Out of all the LispM-era Lisp hackers, only RMS understood the value of what's now known as Free Software. (If you haven't read it yet, read Steven Levy's Hackers - it describes the MIT/LMI/Symbolics split and how RMS came to start FSF and GNU).

2\. Portability is really important.

The key lesson to draw from Unix isn't that "Worse is Better," it's that survivable software is Free and portable. Free because getting software to someone's harddrive is 80% of success, and portable because you don't know where people will want to use your software (there are some really weird places).

Symbolics was neither. If Genera had been Free Software, it would by definition still be around today. If Genera had been portable, it's likely Symbolics would never have gone out of business (the Alpha virtual machine would have been done sooner, with less resources, and for more systems).

Being released as Free Software today wouldn't help. Genera's predecessor, MIT CADR, was made available under an MIT-style license in 2004 (<http://www.heeltoe.com/retro/mit/mit_cadr_lmss.html>). There's a VM emulator which runs the code. The whole system is pretty useless.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Now on to the inspiration part:

It's possible to make a very high-performance, portable Lisp operating system on modern hardware. This has been a possibility ever since the Pentium came out. The main bottleneck to conventional Lisp runtime performance is the way operating systems manage memory allocation and virtual memory.

A type-safe runtime that has control over memory layout, virtual memory, and is aware of DMA can provide extremely high throughput for allocation and GC (this has been shown by Azure's Linux patches for their JVM), true zero-copy I/O, almost optimal levels of fragmentation, and excellent locality properties. If you go single address space (and there's no reason not to) and move paging into software (object faulting and specialized array access), you've also eliminated TLB misses.

Throw in the fact that it now becomes trivial to do exokernel-type stuff like for example caching pre-formatted IP packets, and it should be possible to build network servers that have throughput many times that of anything that kernel/user-space split OSes like Linux or FreeBSD are capable of for dynamic content (ie - not just issuing DMA requests from one device to another).

The only problem is device drivers. Lisp doesn't make writing device drivers any more fun, or reduce the number of devices you have to support.

What to do?

The reason I've been thinking about this is that I came across this: <http://www.cliki.net/Zeta-C>

I've heard of Zeta-C multiple times before, but for some reason this time I made the connection - "why not use Zeta-C to compile an OS kernel?"

I explored the idea further, and it seems to me that it wouldn't be an unreasonable amount of work to take the NetBSD device subsystem and have it running on top of a Lisp runtime with the necessary emulation of those parts of the NetBSD kernel that the drivers depend on. If you don't know, NetBSD's device drivers are modular - they're written on top of bus abstraction layers, which are written on top of other abstraction layers (for example, memory- mapped vs port I/O is abstracted). So the actual system twiddling bits can be neatly encapsulated (which isn't necessarily true for Linux drivers, for example).

I'm aware of Movitz (<http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/>) and LoperOS (<http://www.loper-os.org/>). Movitz makes the mistake of trying not to be portable, but there's useful things there. I haven't spoken to Slava about this yet so I don't know what's going on with LoperOS. I am also aware of TUNES, and think it was an interesting waste of time.

The main thing is to get Zeta-C to work on Common Lisp. Then it's to build a new portable, boot-strappable runtime (I think the Portable Standard Lisp approach of having a SYSLISP layered on top of VOPs is the right way to go for this), and either build a compiler targeting that runtime, or adapt the IR- generating parts of one of SBCL, CMUCL or Clozure. Further bootstrapping can be done with SWANK and X11 once a basic networking stack is in place. I think such a system would be quite fun to hack on.

If you've gotten this far, let me know what you think about this idea. I also have some preliminary thoughts about how this can be worked into the base of a new high-performance/scalability transactional database startup, if you want to hear about that email me: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER8> Steven Levy basically repeats Stallman propaganda. Others have different memories about that time.

Also not only Stallman promoted free software in that time. For example the Common Lisp community had extreme benefit from what was done at CMU. CMUCL/Spice Lisp was released as public domain software and has been used widely in derived implementations, like SBCL or even commercial software. There were several other prominent Lisp hackers from that time which promote free software.

Stallman did a lot, but please make him a saint - when people like Scott Fahlman had much more impact in the Lisp community.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't that reinforce his point? CMUCL & SBCL were released as free software and are still around. Genera isn't.

<comment><USER8> I haven't said anything against his point. It is just that claiming that Stallman was the only one 'getting free software' is bullshit. He did a lot, but in the Lisp community there were many others which promote(d) free software.

Also Stallman did promote Free software, but his promotion of Lisp was mostly limited to Emacs Lisp. There was an attempt with Guile, but that was mostly it. He had worked with the Lisp Machine, but once he was out, that topic was finished.

Anyway, I find a few points are right and several others not. That Symbolics would have not gone out of business if Genera would have been free software and portable is speculation. It is neither necessary nor sufficient. For example Franz is still around, though Allegro CL is not free software. There are lots of free software / portable Lisp implementations which are as dead as Genera, or more than dead. I agree that it might help, but not more.

I agree with the following: portability and 'free' can help with survival.

I don't think adding C to Lisp is of much help. The mismatch is huge. There are two options: 1) repeating the design of the past (with the same problems and maybe slight improved. There has been lots of talk and little action. It's difficult because we don't have the hackers with knowledge and time for that. 2) doing a new design which gets rid of the limitations of past designs (single user, single image, no security, ...). That's even more difficult.

<comment><USER7> "That Symbolics would have not gone out of business if Genera would have been free software and portable is speculation."

Two different things. I was claiming that Genera would still be around if it was Free Software - this is by virtue of definition. Symbolics being in and out of business has nothing to do with it.

A totally different thing is that I think Symbolics stood a very good chance of surviving if it had made its software more portable. It's a good thing you mention Franz, because they're almost as old as Symbolics, and still around, largely due to the fact that their system is easily portable. They don't waste immense amounts of engineering resources on supporting platforms, but dedicate it to improving features and performance and more importantly responding to customer needs.

"1) repeating the design of the past (with the same problems and maybe slight improved. There has been lots of talk and little action. It's difficult because we don't have the hackers with knowledge and time for that."

It's difficult to do because when you get down to it, Zetalisp sucked for systems programming. Portable Standard Lisp, Interlisp, CMUCL/Allegro/Clozure (anything with LAP and VOPs) provide a much better model for how to build a Lisp runtime.

It's also difficult to do because people like to waste their time imagining how awesome hardware type-checking on FPGAs would be and how the new Lisp OS will have super-duper database-backed storage and network transparency and etc. etc.

"2) doing a new design which gets rid of the limitations of past designs (single user, single image, no security, ...). That's even more difficult."

The key is the namespace. Symbol identity needs to be preserved across users/processes, symbol values don't. This is actually a much simpler problem than you assume.

<comment><USER8> Zetalisp sucked for systems programming? That's a pretty strong word. Have you ever used it at all?

I doubt that Allegro CL is easier to port than Open Genera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is no such thing as the "best" software environment, anymore than there is the best car. It all depends on what you're trying to do and what your priorities and constraints are.

<comment><USER11> That's the dogma, but is there a reason for it to actually be true? All we know for sure is that there isn't a clear winner _yet_.

<comment><USER12> Software environments, languages, and other such abstractions aren't there to be perfect. They are there to help human beings manage absurd numbers of machine instructions. Maybe when we fully understand the human mind, we'll figure out the perfect way to map machine instructions to concepts that humans can grok. Until then, we'll have to make somewhat subjective design decisions in the face of uncertain constraints and priorities, which is certainly not going to lead to a "best" solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That page is giving a 403 error now. What am I missing?</comment>


Drawing with randomly generated Turing Machines - <AUTHOR> https://maximecb.github.io/Turing-Drawings <comment><AUTHOR> Stephen Wolfram would be surprise if he see this.</comment>


If Portugal is a net neutrality nightmare, we're already living in it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691506/portugal-meo-internet-packages-net-neutrality-ajit-pai-plan <comment><USER2> This story was FAKE NEWS by the way. Glad I lost 5 karma debating the morons who posted it / believed in it. Kudos.

[https://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/11/24/...](https://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/11/24/viral- tweet-about-net-neutrality-is-fake-news-n2413348)

</comment><comment><USER2> How is that any different than buying a cheap 200MB of data per month and getting cut off after minimal browsing? It's basically the choice between a handful of sites a lot, or a ton of sites but you only have enough data to browse it once. You get what you pay for. Just like fiber vs dialup

<comment><USER3> Because at the moment I can do whatever I want with those 200mb. It's not 200mb of "Facebook data" or 200mb of "Youtube data", it's just data.

<comment><USER2> Right well maybe you only use Facebook and would prefer unlimited Facebook instead of 200MB of yahoo or 50MB of popups. Since these are internet packages for 5 euros a month, how much cake do you expect to eat for free? You act like simply because someone has packaged internet "channels" they old model is completely gone. These are BARGAIN Plans which means beggars cant be choosers.

<comment><USER4> if the package plans make companies more money, and they are being perceived as more strategic, then your best effort default-free internet may just disappear or become drastically more expensive just because.

look what happened to static ips. not saying the situations are completely comparable, but with only one or two large corporate providers to choose from, that situation isn't implausible. I'm not looking forward to calling Comcast service to talk to them about why I can't ssh into AWS anymore.

<comment><USER2> I see what you are saying, but at the end of the day we are talking about trying to categorize literally billions of domains * 65,535 ports per address. Are you really concerned that Comcast is going to come out with tiered services depending on which IPs you want to ssh to? That seems a long way down the slippery slope to me.

<comment><USER3> Nah, they'll just put you behind CGNAT and limit public IPs to business-grade plans.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Crawl products from manufacturer site and upload to your Shopify store - <AUTHOR> https://www.agenty.com/docs/plugins/shopify-integration <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

My name is Vikash from [https://www.agenty.com](https://www.agenty.com)

We are excited to launch our new integration with Shopify - This will allow you to automatically crawl products from your manufacturer website(even PW protected) and upload to your Shopify store, update prices, images and more on schedule or using our API.

See step-by-step guide here - [https://www.agenty.com/docs/plugins/shopify- integration](https://www.agenty.com/docs/plugins/shopify-integration)</comment>


Personal Data Search – More Important Than Ever - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2012/04/19/personal-data-search-more-important-than-ever/

<comment><USER2> Awesome, love your point there. I din't realize the importance of personal data search till you mention it.</comment>


Audio Newspaper - listen to the news on the go - <AUTHOR> http://www.audionewspaper.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but seems kind of limited. How can I add different things to listen too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out the FAQ - I think if you create an account the tailor the news to your tastes based on what you've listened to in the past.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: How do sites like Compete, Alexa collect traffic estimates? - <AUTHOR>

I've always been curious. <comment><USER2> Compete & Alexa heavily rely on browser toolbars (<http://www.compete.com/help/s11>) to estimate their data. They work hard to normalize their data, but you can probably imagine that the demographic of people with that kind of toolbar installed is heavily skewed (and some people argue loudly against it: [http://venturebeat.com/2007/02/22/traffic-measuring- continue...](http://venturebeat.com/2007/02/22/traffic-measuring-continued- why-compete-doesnt-work-and-why-quantcast-does/))

Other sites, like Comscore, use various methods like router-level analysis & client-side monitoring software (like Nielson w/ TVs).

In the end, no method is 100% accurate and the best analysis comes from looking at various sources & taking it all with a grain of salt.

<comment><AUTHOR> i remember seeing their browser toolbars, i didnt know that was the only source of data.

it seems like collecting data like search engine queries, number of inbound links to the site might also be used. no?

<comment><USER2> There's no way to them to get that interstitial data without having code analyzed/reporting per-page on the site (either backend Apache-log analysis or something like Google Analytics). Alexa did this for a while with their "embed your site's score", but that was too easily gamed so it was discontinued as a metric source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://blog.compete.com/where-do-these-numbers-come-from/>

</comment><comment><USER4> In the UK there is the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation IIRC) to whom you can send your Apache logs and they'll give you an official number. This is where magazine readership figures come from too. Having a neutral third party do it is important for advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER5> A good way of understanding the popularity of a website is google trend. This article on Techcrunch shows an example of obvious bad data with Hitwise (which can be applied to Alexa and Compete as well): [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/20/new-hitwise-stats- show-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/20/new-hitwise-stats-show-how-bad- hitwise-data-is/)

At the end of the day, everyone who owns a blog or a website (myself included) has been able to experience first hand how flawed the data from such companies are by simply comparing them with their own google analytics data :-)

<comment><USER6> Every web hosting company offers analytics software. Beside having Google Analytics you can use that too in your comparation.

<comment><USER2> But the point of these services is so that you can know how your competition is doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They get a lot of their data by purchasing ISP traffic logs and parsing it. The browser data only serves as a much smaller "focus group" pool of users.</comment>


California's housing shortage has companies carving up apartments to lower rent - <AUTHOR> https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article222356905.html <comment><USER2> It's very poor journalism to not have mentioned that almost all cities have _maximum occupancy limits_ for all dwellings. Typically a typical minimum is 200 square feet per person, which is more than double the 88 sqft allotted to the person in the first example.</comment>


Show HN: Homemade Hamster Activity Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://www.bold-it.com/hamster/ <comment><USER2> This looks good. Please email email@example.com if you would like us to send you a repost invite. It's an experiment we're working on to give good submissions a second chance.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with operational work as a software engineer? - <AUTHOR> As a software engineer doing infrastructure work I often find myself working on operational stuff (mostly chasing weird bugs, some on-call, etc.). In my position I am also expected to release features and do development too, but I feel like it's very difficult to focus because of all the operational issues I am dealing with. How are you guys dealing with that sort of work? <comment><USER2> Badly. We've lost a couple devs/ops people in the last year, and haven't adequately replaced them. We're stretched way too thin and everyone is getting very burned out.

I haven't done any significant development work in more than six months, just chasing bugs, doing support, and fussing with email and meetings. It blows; I've got to find a different job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Identify points to automate. Automate them. Get the automation peer reviewed by the team. Establish testing for the automation. Deploy the automation.

If it's one-offs and not consistent misbehavior that the above can deal with, improve testing infrastructure. If you're unable to hit your feature development schedule, point to the problems in the present system and infrastructure.

Ask your boss for clear priorities: Do they want a stable system, or more features. If the present system is this unstable, then more features will only exarcibate this. If they say they want both, and give them equal priority, ask for a pay raise and search for new jobs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Chasing bugs and being on-call sound like core parts of a software engineer's job, rather than operational work.

That said, some teams at my company are experimenting with having a week-long rotation for "bread box" issues. Those include tending issues/PRs in open source repos, handling bugs as they come in, etc. That frees up the rest of the rest of the team to work on core feature work.

I like to keep a running list of smaller, non-urgent tasks that would otherwise get neglected. When I have a long-running script or need to take a break from another project, I can refer to the list.

<comment><USER5> Chasing bugs? Yes. Being on-call? No. Not unless you signed up for that. Too many companies think they can just get Pagerduty going and sign up all their engineering staff for operations duty. This is stupid for a number of reasons least of which is managed services get rid of most of the need for this and it is typically cheaper than developer time.

Do some developers on the team need to think about scale? Yes. Should all the developers be on call because perhaps the company decided to roll it's own infrastructure and someone has to deal with occasional server with full disks? No.

<comment><USER6> The flipside to this is that being on call forces developers to care about bugs in their code that cause operational headaches instead of just throwing releases with varying degrees of test coverage over the fence to ops. Funny how certain bugs that languished in the background get priority when the dev responsible for that code's phone is the one that rings at 3am instead of some poor schmuck on the ops team.

<comment><USER7> This exactly. If the developers responsible for the problem (and the fix) aren't feeling the pain of being on-call, then nothing will change and the fallout will be left on support/ops (who will usually find a poorly thought out workaround).

Do developers need to be on-call to handle purely ops-related activities (low disk space, high system load, etc)? Absolutely not. Should developers be responsible for their "production-ready" code when it breaks? Definitely.

<comment><USER5> But the problem is if you assign a rotating duty to your engineering staff, you as an engineer have no direct impact on how often you will be called due to the half-assed work of other developers. It's a rocky road. Do this too much and your staff will leave. I certainly will. Life is too short.

In short, we're all describing poor management issues. Signing up all the developers for Pagerduty is band aid. So is pushing it all onto operations. In both cases, management is making a choice to avoid dealing with something that requires ongoing effort and time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Never agree to be on call and if you do, make sure you are being paid double salary as a minimum, all modern science points to working unsociable hours as a massive detriment to your health. Also working Saturdays and Sundays does not make your team more productive, because your staff will be tired the following week, it's a false economy.

<comment><USER9> So if your software needs to run 24 hours and something breaks with your software, how do you avoid being on call?

A developer shouldn't be the first person called, there should be an operations staff but they may have to escalate.

On the other hand, any time that a developer is routinely being called in the middle of the night, there is usually either an issue with the software or the infrastructure not being fault tolerant.

<comment><USER8> In the UK there are laws you can opt out of being asked to work more than a certain amount of hours. They company should have an out of hours plan but most experienced developers will know very few things get resolved in the middle hours of the night, things need testing, reviewing and sometimes the solution is not simple, it is better like you said to have ops staff that gather data and then pass it on when devs are in fresh, however if you have, say, a big international sale which is happening in another timezone then why not just pay staff as a one off to be around?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It depends on the frequency and nature of these issues, but it sounds like you are experiencing technical debt and that your paying for it with slower development speed. Solving the stability issues should take precedence over developing new features.

Is the stuff you have to intervene for under your control or external? If you're relying on outside systems that are flakey then you need make your systems more resilient, things like automatically retrying a few minutes later if some third party service is down and/or being more transnational so you can deal with errors.

</comment><comment><USER11> We may need some clarity in the problem are you experiencing.

If the problem is that you can't focus long enough to do non-operations work whats the problem with that?

Are you unhappy you're not coding? If so then ask for a new hire to take over the part you don't want or start looking for another job.

Are you unhappy that your boss is still pushing you for results and is an utterly clueless idiot who has no idea where your time actually goes?

Fill us in.

</comment><comment><USER12> I see chasing weird bugs as part of development job, not something separate. As long as it has weird bugs, the feature is not really done. As a side note, developers who do "only development" and offload all weird bugs to someone else tend to create less maintainable software overtime - they lack feedback and tend to favor whatever makes them produce new stuff faster over what makes us all avoid those weird bugs.

As for infrastructure and first line support, lobbying management for more people continuously is just about the only long term solution.

The other thing is planning and transparency which helps the above. Keep plan with realistic estimates to show it management each time you talk with them. Do your best work, definitely dont slack etc, but dont skip corners to make something look like done when it is not. Instead, move dates in plan and send it to management again. The point is to convince them that there is really more overall work then possible by one person. (If they get offended over that or treat you badly over that, find a new job.)

<comment><USER13> > As a side note, developers who do "only development" and offload all weird > bugs to someone else tend to create less maintainable software overtime

My problem is that I have become that someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Time Management for System Administrators has some ideas I think: [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007836.do)

(I haven't read this cover to cover but I has more or less read his and Christina J. Hogans book cover to cover I thing and I've also bought a couple of copies of the above book to share.)

Summary of what I've learned and found useful from those and other resources:

Get someone to step in for you half the time. (If only to fill in a ticket or - in a real emergency: call you.)

Manage expectations. (You don't expect hard interrupts except for emergencies. )

Make support requests asynchronous. (Mail, support tickets - not calls. Even when you (or someone else) are available for real time support, - make chat the preferred option.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah I really get your suffering. I really hate when software engineers try to meddle in the ops part. It usually ends up being a stupid piles of crap on another crap. It is also sad to see companies pushing devs to do this instead of giving it to someone who understands what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER16> If I don't fix bugs and I don't help my customers with setting up servers and the like I don't think I'll get new projects with them. Why would they trust a developer that disappears? It's as simple as that.

Some of those activities are paid, but fixes close to a delivery are not and it's OK. Usually I set up a maintenance contract for quick activities, like small new features or investigating puzzling events (not necessarily bugs.) I have a ticketing system to keep track of those activities. Customers have access to it.

Obviously one has to make clear that maintenance will slow down development.

</comment><comment><USER17> What issues exactly are you dealing with? You only provided a very vague description of this "operational stuff" you do and are disturbed with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dealing with production problems, which may be functionality, performance, and reliability related.

<comment><USER18> Speaking as an ops person, my first thought is that you have technical or architecture debt. Obviously, big and/or very rapidly growing systems will hit limits and need constant attention, but these days designing most applications to scale is not a problem.

The root cause of many operations issues that I see these days stems from one or more deficiencies in the development process. I don't say "deficiencies in developers": to get safe development at speed, you need a disciplined development process with appropriate feedback mechanisms: unit tests, integration tests, performance tests, static analysis, code review etc. The default state of code is "buggy", because humans are not perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You need a better system in place to prevent bugs from happening.

\- Separation between development / staging / production environments.

\- Integration tests.

\- Service / System Metrics.

\- Central logging.

\- High availability.

\- Alerts.

When you have a solid deployment pipeline things don't usually break. Errors and regressions are caught in the staging part of the deployment pipeline and errors in production can be rolled back automatically (and then you add a integration test for the regression!)

All this devopsy work at my company is done by software engineers with advise from systems engineers. And we do it because neither of the groups want to get called in the weekends :) it has been working really well. Last year we had 0 calls. Before we had this in place things would break in a weekly basis.

You can build all of what I mentioned with OSS like:

\- Ansible (deployment)

\- Jenkins (ci)

\- ELK stack (metrics / logging)

\- Zabbix (system metrics)

This system has been serving us, on premises, without much maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER20> > As a software engineer doing infrastructure work

So you are into devops but doing more ops than dev? This doesn't sound like a problem until your team's agenda and objective is to deliver more ops work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Treat your operations work like your engineering work. Over time things get a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's hard to read this and not want to offer help. I don't know if this is the best venue though.</comment>


Show HN: A shell script to break Facebook addiction - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/DavidLiedle/63102f3f4dcc3090e9c4166ff7772e49 <comment><AUTHOR> It's a mindless habit: open a new tab, type "face..." and, as it autocompletes to "facebook.com", hit enter.

As I was thinking about what I need to have open in my various GNU Screen sessions, I was going over things that I would miss from my GUI. That's really the last one that's gotta go! It's a bad habit, but now I can perform the same muscle-memory habit and get a little encouragement.

And so can you!</comment>


Hetzner DIY Private Networking with Tinc - <AUTHOR> https://romantomjak.com/posts/hetzner-private-networking.html <comment><USER2> Use WireGuard[1] instead. It's way faster than Tinc and other userland VPN implementations. I've been using it for the same purpose as the author of the article and it has been rock solid - not a single issue during almost two years. Setup and configuration is a breeze[2].

[1] [https://www.wireguard.com/](https://www.wireguard.com/) [2] [https://github.com/hobby-kube/guide#wireguard- setup](https://github.com/hobby-kube/guide#wireguard-setup)

Edit: Benchmarks on Hetzner Cloud (1vCPU, 2GB)

      $ iperf3 -c kube1
      Connecting to host kube1, port 5201
      [  4] local 10.0.1.2 port 57622 connected to 10.0.1.1 port 5201
      [ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth       Retr  Cwnd
      [  4]   0.00-1.00   sec  77.2 MBytes   647 Mbits/sec   79   1.37 MBytes
      [  4]   1.00-2.00   sec  78.8 MBytes   661 Mbits/sec    0   1.51 MBytes
      [  4]   2.00-3.00   sec  81.2 MBytes   681 Mbits/sec    0   1.62 MBytes
      [  4]   3.00-4.00   sec  85.0 MBytes   713 Mbits/sec  134   1.20 MBytes
      [  4]   4.00-5.00   sec  80.0 MBytes   671 Mbits/sec    0   1.28 MBytes
      [  4]   5.00-6.00   sec  77.5 MBytes   651 Mbits/sec    0   1.33 MBytes
      [  4]   6.00-7.00   sec  88.8 MBytes   745 Mbits/sec    0   1.37 MBytes
      [  4]   7.00-8.00   sec  73.8 MBytes   619 Mbits/sec    0   1.39 MBytes
      [  4]   8.00-9.00   sec  78.8 MBytes   661 Mbits/sec    0   1.41 MBytes
      [  4]   9.00-10.00  sec  80.0 MBytes   671 Mbits/sec    0   1.42 MBytes

<comment><USER3> Running Kube on their cloud servers? Well have fun with that, the "vCore" is a very inconsistent unit unless you get their dedicated core servers. I moved back to Hetzner Bare Metal because you can't have anything that will push the resource boundaries on these boxes.

Also regarding Wireguard, I really like how tinc will find a new path and allows you to route over other nodes as needed. Wireguard can't really do that out of the box, every link is 1:1. You can of course setup something on top of that, but I miss the ease with which tinc does this.

<comment><USER4> I was actually surprised at the lackluster performance on the cloud products as well and recently spun up a dedicated box for a workload that actually required consistent performance. I never expected the performance to match a bare metal option of course, but coming from any of the other cloud providers I expected it to be more equivalent than it turned out to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can achieve something similar with Hetzner's recently introduced "vSwitch feature". Works across their different DCs, which is nice. Some docs here: [https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Vswitch/en](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Vswitch/en)

I've been using ZeroTier to give a common backplane to my Hetzner servers, DO droplets and AWS instances.

<comment><USER6> I understand this may not be an issue in your case, but vSwitches won't encrypt your data in transit between servers, unlike a VPN or ssh tunnel.

<comment><USER3> It depends. I've seen some shit on cheap bare metal providers, including getting ARP poisoned on Online.net.

Hetzner has been great overall. They've been very very helpful in documenting me reacting to abuse emails too when I got into some user-generated-content related legal trouble.

<comment><USER7> I really have to second the praise of Hetzner overall here. I have run a couple of their dedicated machines for several years and have nothing but good things to say about them and their service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Normally you only get one public IP and no private interfaces.

From my understanding, this statement is not quite correct, as Hetzner allows you to set up VLANs:

> With the vSwitch feature, you can connect your dedicated root servers in > multiple locations to each other using VLAN via the administration interface > Robot.

You probably still want to encrypt the traffic passing through those VLANs.

They also offer the option to install custom hardware, so you might even be able to get a second NIC connected to your own private switch.

<comment><USER4> That only applies to their dedicated servers. OP is using their cloud offering, which doesn't support this feature or custom hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't the point of DO's private networking that you don't need to encrypt the traffic? Or is it just internal, but not private?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I found that an odd comparison to make as well. If you want encrypted traffic that's all well and good, but there's no reason to assume that the private network is going to be any different performance wise than the exact same encrypted solution over the public interface - a network is a network is a network in this case.

Since the goal was to have a private network between your own boxes, the encryption was only really "required" to protect private data because it had to transit the public network in Hetzner. Since DO provides a private network natively there's (in theory) no justification for the encryption, which means you'd get native performance, hence the advantage.

<comment><USER2> Are you sure DO's private network traffic is actually encrypted or even isolated? Back some time ago, any host within the same private network could be reached. I wasn't surprised to see connection attempts from random hosts on eth1.

<comment><USER9> Other comment there talks about it, they changed it a while ago and now it's isolated, but not encrypted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about Zerotier with Hetzner?

<comment><USER11> Zerotier doesn't do PFS Perfect Forward Secrecy... and somehow it is too easy to add new clients to the network without you noticing.

<comment><USER12> New clients have to be approved before they can join. How would you not notice?

<comment><USER11> Where do you approve them?

<comment><USER12> The online control panel where you setup your private network in the first place. This is where you configure the IP range and other settings, and accept any devices that try to join.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I mined San Francisco's trash for art - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/240395/jenny-odell-bureau-of-suspended-objects/?utm_content=bufferd7fb5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> A friend of mine has applied several times for the Artist in Residence at the SF dump.[1] It's highly competitive. I've been to their art shows, which are OK, but not great.

[1] [http://www.sfrecycling.com/index.php/about- air](http://www.sfrecycling.com/index.php/about-air)

<comment><USER3> That characterizes so much of SF... highly competitive, OK, not great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heads up- there's some NSFW pictures of an anthropomorphized pig statue on the page so be forewarned.

<comment><USER5> I'm not seeing anything NSFW in that picture. The pig is wearing some clothing, and is ... well, a pig.

edit: ah, I see further down. At least the nsfw one is small...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shame that someone tossed out that old red rotary phone. Wasn't it Buckminster Fuller that said garbage was just an non utilized resource?

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1497563/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1497563/)</comment>