Ask HN: Should I offer an OSS version? - <AUTHOR>

I sell a WordPress template online that does quite well. The problem is that someone released an older version into the wild and now it's available for free.
I've often thought about releasing a free version in the repo with no customization ability but I'd hate for my sales to suffer.
Has anyone out there decided one way then switched to the other and regretted it? Or switched and had a great experience? <comment><USER2> Sales will suffer and when people find out that they can get it for free (especially if it's on a site with more juice than you on Google), they will fall off to nothing.

Not only that, but the people using it will be your biggest complainers and the cause of many headaches. OSS seems to have created a whole group of users that feel entitled to everything for free.

This has happened to me a few times already, so now I stick to pure services/commercial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, Paul.

My thought was to offer a stripped down version, no customization options at all. Those who wanted more than just the basic functionality would pay.

Does that still sound like a bad idea?</comment></comment>


Socialize American Housing in 3 steps – No private housing - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenation.com/article/how-to-get-rid-of-your-landlord-and-socialize-american-housing-in-3-easy-steps/ <comment><USER2> All the tools this guy advocates are already in place.

Property tax already reflects the value he's looking to include.

Eminent Domain is already available to take land for public use.

Gentrification is just about the lamest issue on the planet. It's essentially renters remorse. You can buy a house in Detroit for a couple thousand dollars, so go get in on the ground floor and stop crying about how expensive the Bronx is now.

His ideas are dangerous and poorly thought through. There were mansions in communist Russia for the political elite. So nothing changes the fact that some have it better than others. I'd rather the wealthy who produced value be rewarded for their effort than a bunch of dictator's friends and family.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just went to post this myself!</comment>


Microsoft and Docker team up to make packaging cloud-native applications easier - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/04/microsoft-and-docker-team-up-to-make-packaging-and-running-cloud-native-applications-easier/ <comment><USER2> Gabe from Microsoft here. Happy to answer any questions. A few links to help you explore the spec and tooling:

\- [https://cnab.io](https://cnab.io)

\- [https://duffle.sh/](https://duffle.sh/)

\- [https://open.microsoft.com/2018/12/04/announcing-cnab- cloud-...](https://open.microsoft.com/2018/12/04/announcing-cnab-cloud- agnostic-format-packaging-running-distributed-applications/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for being here and answering questions. Is there any way you can (internally) push to remove roadblocks for the insanity of Windows Home vs Pro for Docker/Hyper-V? I know this isn't possible in the short run but I think it prevents a lot of children from getting started with Docker.

Based on what Scott Guttrie's team has been able to accomplish, I am cautiously optimistic that this is possible if there is enough push for it from within Microsoft. Thank you once again for your support!

<comment><USER4> If you want to play the "think of the children" card, then let's start by _discouraging_ development on Windows.

<comment><USER5> I would discourage development _for_ Windows but not necessarily _on_ Windows. I develop on Windows and deploy to Linux all of the time. I also have started using the Linux subsystem for Windows.

I've been developing for and on Windows for over 20 years. The "Windows Tax" didn't become a concern of mine until I started using cloud providers. The cost of Microsoft's licenses was someone else's problem.

But, when every resource you use is tagged and it's very clear how much you're spending on an implementation, the double hit of Windows becomes real. First you pay more for Windows VMs than the same size Linux VMs and then you need more resources.

I can do a lot with a 256Mb-512Mb RAM Linux VM. I at least need 4GB of RAM for Windows and that's stretching it.

On the other hand, I still love .Net Core but it's not getting the uptake that Node is or even Java - yes that makes me sad.

<comment><USER6> Why do you need 8x more memory for Windows? The NT kernel isn't 8x worse than Linux, not even close.

<comment><USER7> It's a philosophical difference. NT doesn't do overcommit. In theory overcommit is dangerous (and if you decide that matters you can tell Linux not to do it) but in practice it's usually a huge RAM saving.

If your apparent virtual size is 2.6GB but there's actually only 240MB of resident memory, Linux will run on 256MB of RAM. NT requires enough RAM for the entire 2.6GB plus overheads.

This is especially frustrating if you have orchestration services that would have recovered from the unlikely event of OOM since avoiding OOM is literally the only reason for NT's choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Both crossplane[1] and CNAB are attempting to play in similar spaces, understanding that deploying an application for the cloud (public or private) is more than just dumping your software into an image and giving it to a provider (be it K8s or some other IaaS/PaaS stack). There's more associated with the application, specifically what it means to orchestrate IaaS/PaaS/SaaS to realize your application.

But I see CNAB falling into the same trap as Helm, and many of the package managers before them (including newer variants with things like charm/juju), an archive with some notion of lifecycle events is not enough. Even though it's cute that lifecycle events are encapsulated in containers making it easier to manage their runtime dependencies.

What I think makes Crossplane's model more attractive is the notion of building on top of Kubernetes design and leveraging things like the operator pattern[2]. Now application stacks can do more interesting actions during their lifecycle, which can work to preserve availability during an event (like upgrading your application stack). Crossplane is about expanding the management of resources beyond just containers running in your cluster, but to any resource you can model in the K8s control plane and writing software that can react to events related to those resources.

[1] [https://blog.upbound.io/introducing-crossplane-open- source-m...](https://blog.upbound.io/introducing-crossplane-open-source- multicloud-control-plane/) [2] [https://coreos.com/operators/](https://coreos.com/operators/)

<comment><USER2> We are big fans of Kubernetes operators. However, taking a dependency on Kubernetes to solve this problem is not something our customers want. CNAB design acknowledges this, and leans on the concept of invocation images to perform lifecycle management.

Take the example of deploying serverless functions and a cloud based datastore (like CosmosDB) with a 3rd-party DNS service. Kubernetes operators are a poor fit for this, as they presume the existence of a Kubernetes cluster.

<comment><USER9> I see it a bit differently.

To me it looks like CNAB invents a new way of describing and deploying an application that looks nothing like a Kubernetes API while Crossplane is trying to use the existing Kubernetes API tooling to interoperate with and leverage that ecosystem.

Just because you are using a Kubernetes API doesn't mean you are presuming a Kubernetes cluster IMHO. The work being done with virtual kubelet[1] illustrates that.

So, I guess I am confused. You have users that want to package their app in containers, and run those containers. However, those users don't want to use Kubernetes APIs to do it? Why?

[1] [https://github.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual- kubelet](https://github.com/virtual-kubelet/virtual-kubelet)

<comment><USER2> As I said, we have lots of customers who need a packaging format that targets clouds APIs which in some cases don't have any containers (hence no need for Kubernetes). Functions + datastore + service bus being a good example.

I know there's lots of love for Kubernetes, containers, and operators -- with me too. Still we can't and shouldn't presume the existence of Kubernetes or Kubernetes APIs to solve the problems CNAB is tackling.

<comment><USER9> From reading the spec though it looks like everything uses containers built from a Dockerfile:

"A bundle is comprised of a bundle definition and at least one invocation image. The invocation image's job is to install zero or more components into the host environment. Such components MAY include (but are not limited to) containers, functions, VMs, IaaS and PaaS layers, and service frameworks."

So, the very first step of CNAB is to run a container. And CNAB invents a new way of configuring, lifecycling, etc, this container image.

[1] [https://github.com/deislabs/cnab- spec/blob/master/100-CNAB.m...](https://github.com/deislabs/cnab- spec/blob/master/100-CNAB.md)

<comment><USER2> Right. We took a dependency on a container runtime and not on a container orchestrator.

One of the examples we show is an electron app that provides a desktop installer experience for a cloud-based distributed application. We presume a container runtime for this.

We expect CNAB to play nicely with Kubernetes lifecycle management, but taking a hard dependency on Kubernetes was not deemed advantageous to CNAB's design goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was at DockerCon EU today when Matt Butcher announced this. I wondered how CNAB would relate to existing cloud native package managers like Helm, especially since a big part of Helm comes from Matt himself.

He told me that he and his team saw the need for something like CNAB after finishing their work on Helm 2, but that they would keep working on Helm 3. He also explained that Helm could be used to install some or all components of an application bundled in CNAB format, which makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm an avid user of both docker compose and kubernetes/helm, and have been very frustrated by the lack of interoperability between them. This looks like it might get us there, which makes me very happy. Nice work Microsoft and Docker.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! We're excited about the opportunity to align Compose and Helm with a standard packaging/distribution/management model. Same is true for other tooling like Terraform, Ansible, and cloud provider declarative APIs (Azure Resource Manager, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> NOTE: THIS HEADLINE DOES NOT MEAN THAT DOCKER WORKS IN WINDOWS

I have spent all day today trying to switch from running Docker in a Vagrant to running Docker for windows and can say without question that Docker and Windows are incompatible as of today.

Specific issues are numerous, but primarily it is slow, and has stupid defaults, volumes will drive you nuts, don't use with cygwin or Ubuntu for Windows either (volumes won't work) and expect everything to crash your terminals.

<comment><USER13> I'm using docker right now on my win 10 64bit pro

<comment><USER12> Yea me too finally. Switched from running in vagrant today and it shouldn't have felt like an achievement. It should work in cygwin and ubuntu for windows sanely, but it doesn't and it's pretty slow and temperamental so I'm not sure how many re-installs or restarts will be required tomorrow. We had issues with our redis dataset being too large for the default memory allocation settings. Here's a relevant ticket if it's running slowly for you you might get some pointers: [https://github.com/docker/for- win/issues/1936](https://github.com/docker/for-win/issues/1936)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's 2023. You develop on Windows, store your code on GitHub, and deploy to Azure with Docker.

You are able to develop and deploy your code only because Microsoft allow you to.

But it's OK, Microsoft love "Open Source".

</comment><comment><USER15> This strikes me as possibly being somewhat similar to Habitat from Chef but, like Habitat at launch, I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what this does.

<comment><USER16> I had the same thought. Seems very similar to Habitat, but I'm still fairly confused as to where CNAB fits and what it's solving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been working on something similar with sugarkube[1]. It looks like it takes a different approach and aims to solve more of the toolchain. I'd be interested in feedback if anyone has the time...

[1][https://github.com/sugarkube/sugarkube](https://github.com/sugarkube/sugarkube)

<comment><USER18> Can you elaborate? It's not completely clear from the README.

<comment><USER17> Imagine you're running Wordpress on K8s. It actually needs ingress, Cert Manager for SSL certs and a DB. Locally you might want to use MariaDB for convenience, but in the cloud you want to use RDS.

Sugarkube lets you install everything in a single pass. In this example you'd create several different bundles (MS call them CNABs, I call them kapps to disambiguate them from apps which is an overloaded term). You'd create one for nginx ingress, one for cert manager, and one for wordpress. But the wordpress one is parameterised differently per environment to either create a MariaDB when running locally or RDS when running in the cloud. These bundles are just stored in a git repo.

Under the hood, Sugarkube calls Make with some predefined targets - right now just install, but in future also destroy - and passes a bunch of environment variables that the kapp declares that it needs. These can be loaded from a hierarchical YAML configuration which Sugarkube reads (kind of like hiera/puppet does). Oh, and it can template files as well.

'Make' just calls whatever you've implemented - Helm, terraform, any non-k8s stuff you need (there's no dependency on K8s in the architecture). You can easily drop down and ignore Sugarkube and just work directly with tools you already know.

Sugarkube also lets you control which versions of which bundles to release to your environments. It can support multiple live environments.

A final thing is it can also spin up clusters on a variety of backends - minikube, kops, and in future EKS/AKS/GKE, etc.

So altogether Sugarkube gives you a complete solution for launching clusters (ephemeral if you like), and installing your dependencies into them (all as a single golang binary).

Check out the example project ([https://github.com/sugarkube/sample- project](https://github.com/sugarkube/sample-project)) which launches a minikube cluster, installs nginx-ingress, cert manager and 2 wordpress instances backed by MariaDB, and then loads different sample data into both databases.

It's still in preview but it can solve a real pain point around working with K8s and deploying applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How long before Microsoft buys Docker?

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this targeted at IT or devops or developers? Also, how does this compare to [https://cloudron.io](https://cloudron.io) ?

</comment><comment><USER21> I smell like acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER22> How do these solutions compare to something like [https://containership.io](https://containership.io)?

<comment><USER23> I'm a bit confused by your question. Would you mind expanding a bit on that thought?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this Microsoft's Docker compose but with packaged Docker images that get deployed to Azure?

Ie: K8s for humans?

</comment><comment><USER25> First thought: Helm. Second, unappealing brand name.

Is it Helm?

<comment><USER23> No, it is unrelated to Helm, though the engineers working on the spec (including myself) are Helm core maintainers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does this directly compete with Helm?

<comment><USER2> No, in fact we view CNAB as enabling broader adoption of Helm. Some of the first bundles we built use Helm and Kubernetes. See: [https://github.com/deislabs/bundles/tree/master/hellohelm](https://github.com/deislabs/bundles/tree/master/hellohelm)</comment></comment>


HTML site that smells like flash, but isn't - <AUTHOR> http://rectusmedia.com/ The site looks and smells like flash, but it's not and that just amazed me. <comment><USER2> I feel that the animations are a bit slow.</comment>


The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep Bubble Going - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble

<comment><USER2> This article is the financial-world equivalent of beating up on a security researcher for working on Windows exploits.

JPMorgan is a grownup company, it ought to be able to take care of itself. Outrage over the crisis should be directed squarely at those who weren't smart enough to see the problems with these practices but were issuing insurance and ratings anyways, and at the powerful companies who used politics and fearmongering to convince the government to take over their idiot counterparties' obligations so they could get paid off at 100%.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was working in the same markets at the same time - Magnetar's trade was widely known and considered pretty shady. We thought they were exposing themselves to big liability/reputation risk, but it seems like it worked out fine for them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't read this article, yet, but FWIW, U.S. public radio's "This American Life" has a segment this week on the same topic, done in conjunction with propublica. It was an interesting listen.

TAL podcasts are available free for one week beginning the Monday after each show's weekend debut.

EDIT: Podcast description page: <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast></comment>


Brainhacking: How to Learn 2000 Japanese Characters In A Month - <AUTHOR> http://najafali.blogspot.com/2010/01/hacking-brain-how-to-learn-2000.html

<comment><USER2> Is this approach really that unique? I took a couple of Chinese classes in college, in a fairly traditional program, and memorizing the characters was ALL about the semantics & mnemonic devices for the varies different shapes & structures (radicals) found in the characters</comment>


Show HN: Folio for Mac – Simple version control app for designers based on Git - <AUTHOR> http://folioformac.com <comment><USER2> looks good! As a small comment, your css rules for headers and other parts has only "Helvetica Neue" or "helvetica neue-thin" and in looks broken in PCs where it's not installed.

Try fixing it by adding: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif.

a quick way to do this is at the end of your css file just add:

* {font-family:"helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif!important}

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, will do!</comment></comment>


Zynga loses much of its 'Facebook bounce' - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/250316/zynga-loses-much-its-facebook-bounce

<comment><USER2> >While Zynga reports 150 million users, only 2.2% (or about 3.3 million) actually pay to play. Further, 70% of Zynga's annual $800 million in revenue comes from only 680,000 of these paying customers.

>In other words ... 70% of Zynga's annual revenue comes from less than one- half of 1 percent of its customers.

Just curious... why is this regarded as a bad thing? It seems like a pretty meaningless statistic to me - if you redefine "customer" to mean "people who pay", the statistic goes away completely. It's just a freemium model.

Is it supposed to uncover some risk I'm not aware of?</comment>


A Former CIA Agent Talks Spycraft - <AUTHOR> http://pursuitmag.com/lindsay-moran-former-cia-agent-talks-spycraft/ <comment><USER2> An operative is not an agent, i.e. case officer. The original articles in Pursuit Magazine (listed below) correctly describe her as a former agent. Whoever wrote this summary doesn't understand the distinction.

[http://pursuitmag.com/lindsay-moran-former-cia-agent- talks-s...](http://pursuitmag.com/lindsay-moran-former-cia-agent-talks- spycraft/)

[http://pursuitmag.com/lindsay-moran-former-cia-operative- why...](http://pursuitmag.com/lindsay-moran-former-cia-operative-why-became- spy/)

In any case, you won't find anything published in the US that the CIA would not agree to. Everything written by current or former agents is screened by the CIA's Publications Review Board.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am slightly bothered by the notion that "blending in" has any chance of working in the modern era.

Certainly, in the past, the entity carrying out the surveillance was likely to have a limited budget of time-and-attention, a limitation that could be gamed to evade analysis and pursuit as described.

However, computerisation and data analytics change the game significantly. The cost of "attention" is reduced to such a significant extent that practically everybody's behaviour can be analysed, albeit superficially.

It is a relatively trivial matter for the entity carrying out the surveillance to build a dossier on large swathes of the population: to identify and categorise their beliefs, their behaviours and their weaknesses. To score them according to how much of a threat they represent, or according to whatever other factors may be useful.

The information-dominance landscape has shifted considerably over the past 10 years. I am greatly interested in seeing how our newfound industrial-scale- information-dominance is translated into real-world power: Presumably also by automated means and on an industrial scale.

I imagine that this can be done subtly, by targeting specific influencers, inhibiting some selected communications and inserting or promoting others, thereby shaping discourse and the formation of political belief in a larger section of the population.

Emerging geopolitical crises (Ukraine/Crimea, anyone?) provide an ideal petri- dish to see if the competing factions are deploying this sort of technology, and for assessing the effectiveness of these techniques.

<comment><USER4> but then the terrorists would have won, etc, etc.

also in the end it all boils down to someone taking money from the spy, and as far as i know every country already has some IRS keeping tab on the entire population...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Weird how there is a culture of seeing spies and their craft as special. They are at best Peeping-Toms and stalkers.

Also, keeping secrets is no big deal. Every family has them. Every school has 'secrets' that they don't tell the children. Every company board has 'secrets' they don't share with the staff or the outside world.

As for personalities and the need to keep different persona, who really is the same person at work as they are in their private life? It is not hard to compartmentalise your life and be a different person for work.

However, ultimately, what these agencies are up to is quite sick and twisted. They are not out for the common good. Some of the psychology behind that could be a better basis for an article.

<comment><USER6> I LOL'ed.

Once you realize that the USA is probably behind in terms of "spying" when compared to the Soviets, you'd be a _fool_ to accept that without a response.

It is the _height_ of narrowmindedness to think that Nation-States operate within the same plane as ordinary individuals.

<comment><USER7> <i>USA is probably behind in terms of "spying" when compared to the Soviets</i>

From hypothesis to demonstration in less than 10 words.

<comment><USER6> I say probably because I have little direct knowledge of what the Soviets are capable of.

But I do know that the Soviets have been caught doing some impressively sneaky stuff. One thing that sticks in my mind is the placement of a (completely passive) eavesdropping device in the _Oval Office_. Said device was unpowered, and missed during a comprehensive check for bugging devices.

So I'm making an assumption here: namely, that they have only refined their techniques in the areas of statecraft and espionage.

<comment><USER7> My point is that they're not "Soviets" anymore...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting for some insight to certain facets of life as a CIA agent, but I find the articles the post discusses to be one-sided.

I think "cute" human interest stories like this, while not necessarily bad in themselves, are particularly suspect at a time like this, when the CIA is in the process of being charged with remarkable crimes against their own nation's democratic system (see e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7351710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7351710)), not to mention the continuing distasteful matter of torture and related practices.

I aim no criticism at the post but find that the material that led up to it has a light scent of media damage control.</comment>


Ask HN: how do you split up an iphone app between 3 people? - <AUTHOR>

greetings!  so we've been working on separate stuff, but now it seems like a good idea to converge on the iphone app, since it's our bottleneck right now.<p>my question is for anyone who has worked on an iphone application with 1 or more friends: how do you split the tasks up and divide the work between people? <comment><USER2> I think that some kind of source code management (SCM) tool is the first step. Subversion, Git, whatever - pick something and go with it. After that, a project mgmt tracking tool of some kind. You can start small (text files) in the beginning and grow into bigger tools that feature bug tracking, feature requests, support, etc.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> was hoping for something a bit more specific (we already use github to synch our code), but appreciate the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are many possible answers depending on the type of application. How difficult is the view? That can be one person, or a very small piece depending. In some types of games, AI can be enough for one person. Business logic or the model, depending on the application, can be two thirds of the work. Further, programmers vary on productivity.

My suggestion would be to put out a preliminary design then split it into rough time estimates. Then, everyone pick a task and start working. As you go, you'll get a better idea on what takes the most time and adjust accordingly.</comment>


What You Believe Affects What You Achieve - <AUTHOR> http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-of-Success <comment><USER3> I have the book, started reading it about a year ago and stopped halfway, because my bullshit cup got full.

The reason I think this book is nicely packaged bullshit is because it presents _exceptions_ as _rules_ and then tries to build a theory out of it.

I wish it were as easy as Dr. Dweck describes it, but there are gotchas.

I can agree with the distinction of 'fixed' versus 'growth' mindsets (although... .. how do you measure that?), but that success is guaranteed if you believe and try... Not necessarily. Ask 9 startup founders out of 10.

Not achieving "success" (failing) is rarely free: it leaves emotional and physical scars.. Repeat it a couple of times and you're either dead or on your way there.

No, success is not guaranteed even if you try many many times times, even if you train a lot and believe a lot.

In fact, the _rule_ is this: _No matter how hard you try, you might still lose_. Sorry about that.

And the reason for this is not mindset - the reason is your definition of success. If you try to win at the wrong game, you will probably lose at it. So pick your game wisely.

Of course, a fixed mindset will only land you some semi-boring job, a family, a couple of kids and a lot of mainstream entertainment.. I guess that's the definition of "failure" these days... But is it ?

 __*

By the way, if you want useful advice about how to be successful in life, Bill Gates is a _very bad_ choice. It might be counterintuitive at first, but think about it ... As a bird, is it smart to fly around with your mouth wide open in order to catch food... because that's what the whale does ?

<comment><USER4> "Bill Gates: No. I think after the first three or four years, it's pretty cast in concrete whether you're a good programmer or not. After a few more years, you may know more about managing large projects and personalities, but after three or four years, it's clear what you're going to be. There's no one at Microsoft who was just kind of mediocre for a couple of years, and then just out of the blue started optimizing everything in sight. I can talk to somebody about a program that he's written and know right away whether he's really a good programmer." [http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better- programm...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better-programm..).

<comment><USER5> This is in the context of programmers-who-have-already-been-hired-at- microsoft. And possibly speaks to a lack of training/mentoring. Edit: and something Gates said 20 years ago.

Learning new things makes you a better programmer, always. My first four years, I was a copy/paste programmer. Then I turned 11 and learned algebra. Huge leap forward. Another huge leap forward with trigonometry and calculus. Again when I had access to a library with books that weren't older than me. Another when I finally met other programmers, studied FP and learned half a dozen real languages. Another with statistics, differential equations and linear algebra. And so forth.

The ascent only ever stops if you are employed at a company that has a culture of overwork and no mentoring. But if _Gates believed people can 't grow,_ then (true to the headline) he probably made it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

<comment><USER6> I think Bill Gates is not saying people can't improve their programming chops, but instead that innate talent cannot be taught or learned.

From a different perspective - all pro-level athletes got to where they are today with a lot of training. But only a tiny fraction of the global population, if put through the same training regimen, could achieve that pro status.

<comment><USER4> That's what you call a fixed mindset :) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is an inversion of cause and effect. The reality is much less inspiring; It's "What you achieve affects what you believe" not so much the other way around.

I know this for a fact because as I become more sceptical/pessimistic over time, my achievements increase. If I was a blind optimist, I would probably fail as soon as reality reared its ugly head.

If someone is really lucky throughout their lives, they will have an optimistic view about the world and the people around them.

Unfortunate people might find a statement like this offensive because they know for a fact (based on their own experiences) that this isn't true - It's almost like saying "It's your fault for being poor; it's all in your head!".

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's anyone's fault for starting out poor, or becoming poor from outside factors (war, medical condition, etc.)

But barring all those factors, if you don't make a deliberate choice to change something, the world around you will keep you down.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but you might try very hard and still not move up. It's debatable whether it's better to "Fail never having tried at all" versus "Fail having tried as hard as you could".

<comment><USER9> Trying hard does not guarantee success. But not trying at all _does guarantee_ not-success.

<comment><USER10> Probably in developed countries, trying hard might be an option where in poverty means you most likely have cell phone, laptop and roof over your head. But in developing countries like India, where abject poverty its ugly head, the people even are not aware that there are opportunities which could enable them to move up. All they have time and energy to think about is how to get the next piece of meal for their family. This also partly due to social structure which is deliberately designed to keep them that way for the benefit of upper class people.

<comment><USER9> So what you're saying is that not trying hard will leave them starving, posdibly dead? Sounds like pretty strong incentive to try hard ...

<comment><USER10> Trying hard to get the next meal... If getting a meal is s being successful then I think we have very different definition of success.

<comment><USER9> Yes, we do. That's the whole point. _You_ define what success means for _you_.

That's also why "what you believe shapes what you achieve".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's an important idea I feel is being missed. Something can be true "in distribution" but not true in a "pathwise" sense. That means, over the long run, for most people, on average x is true. But for specific individual and/or specific time frame it can be very untrue.

Point being I can say to you "adopt a growth mindset", you do it, but it doesn't work and life throws you 'a curve ball' again and again. Doesn't mean my hypothesis was wrong, and doesn't mean you didn't follow through properly. We can both be right in this case.

All it means is, we should act as if our actions/thoughts count, but accept it as a fundamental property of the universe that they may not 'bear fruit'.

All we can do is embrace the chaos^

^ as in chaotic systems

<comment><USER12> I think that most people would be a lot happier if they saw life as a series of low probability events rather than trying to create a story of accumulation.

Life does not accumulate things (luck, good fortune, bad fortune, karma, any other crap that feeds the story of continuity).

Life is about maximizing your exposure to positive low probability events, or the probability of them, and minimizing your exposure to negative low probability events, or the probability of them.

You're not working hard in work to get a reward, you're working hard to be exposed to more chances of possible rewards.

You're not exercise to avoid bad health, you're doing it to lower the chances of a series of low probability diseases.

I think this is the same thing you were saying. I think realising that life is a series of low probability discreet events, not a continuum that accumulates based on past events is a real life changer.

All you can work on is the process of finding the right events to be exposed to - having feelings about the outcome of those events is irrational and leads to unhappiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a bit late but this should be noted :

"Bill Gates: No. I think after the first three or four years, it's pretty cast in concrete whether you're a good programmer or not. After a few more years, you may know more about managing large projects and personalities, but after three or four years, it's clear what you're going to be. There's no one at Microsoft who was just kind of mediocre for a couple of years, and then just out of the blue started optimizing everything in sight. I can talk to somebody about a program that he's written and know right away whether he's really a good programmer."

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better- programm...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-become-a-better-programmer- by-not-programming/)

So Does Bill still believe this or is he a hypocrite in hiding ?

<comment><USER13> God he used to be such an ass. Sometimes I forget he's even the same person.

<comment><USER14> > he used to be such an ass

Gates became successful back then, not now when he became mellow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is interesting in the context of American History. Basically, a majority of settlers were Calvinists. A big part of Calvinist belief was "predestination" which basically holds that a person's destiny (heaven or hell) is determined by God before they are born. This would seem to me to reinforce a "fixed mindset". Paradoxically, out of that same belief system came the "Protestant work ethic" which depending on who you ask made America the greatest country on Earth. I think that one could argue that the "fixed mindset" enabled a sort of wishful thinking attitude: believers though they were predestined so they focused on growth and self improvement over the usual Catholic traditions (which focused on a growth mindset in religious observance while having a more fixed mindset in practical work ethics).

<comment><USER16> I think your basically right, but the paradox actually makes more sense when you understand a few nuances of Protestantism:

0) Reformed (i.e. Calvinist) theologians made significant efforts to argue their understanding of predestination was not deterministic because humans are moral agents and responsible for their actions. They were aware and quite comfortable that God predestining morally responsible people is a paradox (technically referred to as an antinomy).

1) Reformed theologians also taught the predestined are 'born-again', meaning they are given a new spiritual life that changes that person's perspective and attitudes towards everything. The predestined evidence their salvation by good works.

Here's where the growth mindset would apply. Reformed theologians taught predestination as a motivating belief, rather than a fatalistic one. Grace, or salvation, in Reformed theology doesn't comes through religious observance but comes from faith, which demonstrates itself in how a person lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe everyone should have a growth mindset, but the paper from Dweck is popularized and interpreted a little too loosely. The stricter interpretation is less compelling:

 _In the Bloody Obvious Position, someone can believe success is 90% innate ability and 10% effort. They might also be an Olympian who realizes that at her level, pretty much everyone is at a innate ability ceiling, and a 10% difference is the difference between a gold medal and a last-place finish. So she practices very hard and does just as well as anyone else._

 _According to the Controversial Position, this athlete will still do worse than someone who believes success is 80% ability and 20% effort, who will in turn do worse than someone who believes success is 70% ability and 30% effort, all the way down to the person who believes success is 0% ability and 100% effort, who will do best of all and take the gold medal._

It might seem pedantic, but I worry that propagating this loose interpretation will lead to many people believing their positive "growth" attitude, and not years of concentrated practice, is enough to grow.

From: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/10/i-will-never-have- the-a...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/10/i-will-never-have-the-ability- to-clearly-explain-my-beliefs-about-growth-mindset/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Gates speaking about the "fixed mindset" vs. "growth mindset" reminds me of this [1] article by Aaron Swartz.

[1]: [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dweck)

<comment><USER19> Carol Dweck (the first name mentioned in that article) is the author of the book: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FCKPHG/ref=dp-kindle- re...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FCKPHG/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this maybe a western cultural bias, that somehow God blesses you with talent and that's it? Some residue from aristocracy?

When you look at things like Japanese martial arts, it's all about learning from someone more experienced and lots of hard work. The limiting factor is your endurance, and the general sentiment is that "if someone learned before me, I can too".

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure about that specific instance of Japanese culture, but for East Asia I'd say fixed mindset was much more relevant. I grew up being told that I will never do anything great with my life (not in a mean you-are-stupid way, but just a seemingly "rational"/"realistic" world view that only a few very smart people can do great thing, and I'm not one of them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Love this idea, but I do not recommend the book. It's clearly a science article that has been stretched into 250 pages. Same idea, repeated repeated repeated.

I highly recommend a summary, unless you think you'll benefit from reading twenty examples of the same concept. It's one of the few books that I started but didn't finish this year.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely agree. I'm reading the book now, and it feels like hundreds of examples to reinforce the same idea over and over again. Granted, she varies the topics (business, parenting, sports, academics, etc..) - but the takeaways are exactly the same, and in each case the data draws the same conclusions repeatedly. Still, an interesting topic and not bad for light commute reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Energy flows where attention goes"

Above is another line, like the one in the title. On one hand, it's obvious because if you focus your attention, for example, on building a computer, of course your energy goes in that direction. On the other hand, if you don't realize your attention (ie, thoughts) is on certain matters, you may be expending energy on that unknowingly. Of course, if you're a generalist and your attention goes everywhere, your energy is following suit.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the same about the language we use.

Or rather, I think... "What we hear affects us, and we hear ourselves.".

This is an extension of the "surround yourself with positive people" thing, in that I believe it's important to be positive, kind, generous, as the language and tone that we use to express we hear constantly and those words, that tone, shapes our thoughts, mood, aspirations.

It's important to be mindful and to be the person you want to be. By doing so, we frequently are that person.

</comment><comment><USER25> >When I was visiting with community college students in Arizona, one young man said to me, "I'm one of the people who's not good at math." It kills me when I hear that kind of thing. I think about how different things might have been if he had been told consistently "you're very capable of learning this stuff."

Couldn't agree more with this specific example. But you shouldn't ignore reality either. A man with no legs is not going to win the 100 meters at the Olympics. Understanding where your potential lies is important for deciding where to invest your effort. That doesn't mean he can't improve at all though.

Especially in things like math, there is a popular belief that you need some kind of 'math gene' to be decent at it. There is little evidence that there are math specific genes beyond general learning ability.

[Same genes 'drive maths and reading ability'] [http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28211676](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28211676)

Sadly, in a lot of cases this will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where you will stop trying to improve your math skills because you weren't "made for it".

But that's really more a problem of a false belief that these things are set from birth. A blind belief in 'I can do anything i want despite the situation or environment i am in!' isn't going to help anyone. I would advise the runner with no legs to invest his precious time and resources in something other than trying to win the 100 meters at the Olympics.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, the "reality" described are examples of fixed beliefs - <USER2> decides what someone's potential is? Who decides what someone's precious time and resources are? In other words "the reality" is singular, fixed, immovable. Examples: "Face facts, you cannot win the 100 meters" "Don't ignore reality, you have no ability to win races". The article seems to imply that people with low fixed beliefs have been told by others what their potential is, and what is precious. Having more flexible beliefs would mean that one does not limit the scope of ones potential. I imagine that one should therefore encourage others in having more fluid beliefs and one should guard against others when they say reality is fixed.

For example: a man with no legs can win the 100 meters race in the Paralympics.

<comment><USER27> A man with no legs can even reach 8th place in the semifinals of the 400m race in the actual Olympics: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius#2012_Summer_Ol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius#2012_Summer_Olympics).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You know what's worse than thinking you're not capable? Others telling you you're capable and despite your best efforts you fail to meet these expectations whether those reasons are within your control or not. This is putting a carrot on a stick in front of a lot of kids potentially and saying "you just need to believe you can do this and try real hard, gosh anyone can do it!"

Expecting a person with severe learning disabilities that they can go work at a top HFT shop or a paraplegic that they'll be able to beat the world record for a 100 meter dash is the kind of goalpost that is being set for many children that are born disadvantaged. Bill Gates may have been studying what keeps the world's poor the way they are for a long time but there are a lot more factors that keep people down than just simply motivation.

Part of why I haven't started a company yet is out of fear of kind of literally destroying my life and others around me. The sheer amount of work that you put into a company is one thing, and not having the closest people you know be supportive of the work you do puts you into a position where you must either be so secure that failure is not a problem or that you must succeed on a first try.

Reid Hoffman's tips on when you _DON 'T_ want to start a company come to mind. Some of those criteria include "if you cannot get another job" or "you will put yourself in harm's way by doing so" (paraphrased, can't find the slides he had). So for the poor, despite having not much to lose in theory, they do have everything to lose in that their lives are all they can give up in the absence of capital or remarkable domain knowledge / skill advantages. Risk tolerance for the poor is actually very low thusly.

</comment><comment><USER29> The central idea seems so important, with so much benefit to education if it were true, that it would justify a large scale rigorous experiment [ just as a new kind of promising medicine would be trialed over a wide sample ]

Maybe schooling is stuck in a local maximum, because we don't do things like this, because its not socially acceptable to 'experiment with our childrens education' ?

<comment><USER30> >Maybe schooling is stuck in a local maximum

If only! We're camped out on the slopes. A hill climbing algorithm would be a great start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is no intrinsic motivation. [http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm](http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/inmotiv.htm)

</comment><comment><USER32> Another way to view it is that the biggest limits in your life are the ones you set.

I'm perfectly aware that some people start with huge disadvantages in life, but whatever your starting point, you can end up much higher. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

<comment><USER33> What about that guy who clearly can't sing yet applies for every casting show there is? Maybe by the day he will die he's got performing Rihanna's Umbrella down to a fine art. But what's the point?

<comment><USER32> You must discover what you are good at. It requires brutal honesty with oneself.

Also, why should there be a point? Life is a journey.

<comment><USER33> > You must discover what you are good at. It requires brutal honesty with > oneself.

But isn't that circular reasoning? "I am not a math person" -> [discover growth mindeset] -> "Math is fun" -> [weeks/months/years later] "Shit I am still not significantly better at math" -> "I am not a math person"

<comment><USER32> That's the hard part being able to see yourself with some objectivity. The other trap is : "I sing so well I am talented" (and in fact you are at best average).

For any activity there is always better than you, what matters, I think, is where you want to go.

But starting with "I'm not a math person" will close many doors for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> _If you don 't fail 90% of the time, you're not aiming high enough_ Alan Kay

</comment><comment><USER35> Ya, but... are some people more genetically predisposed to have growth mindset? :)

<comment><USER35> The inescapable question of free choice always seems to come back into these things. It's easy to say "just think like this" when you already do think like that. It's much more difficult when (for whatever reason) you don't. How much control do we really have over our feelings, our attitudes and our emotions? How much is the result of environment, genetics and circumstance? My personal opinion is a bit of both. But it's really hard to say in what proportion.

Do we really choose when we choose or are we just acting a predetermined role? I have noticed people who do well tend to believe the former. But I'm not convinced this belief is necessarily what caused them to do well and somewhat suspicious that it is partially an attempt to frame their achievements in their own mind as the result of "their" free will and goes back to their need to "prove" themselves superior which may well be the cause of much of their success in the first place. I've met more than a few people who have this need very intently and it seems pretty mechanical and not generally the result of meditative conscious choice.

Not to bash the concept. Sometimes the faulty, but useful belief holds more value than a more truthful belief which leaves one powerless. At least in the short term. Long term and on a societal level the side effects of faulty beliefs become much more prominent. For you and I however, here and now, we are almost certainly better off thinking we can do it (imhop). But the question is very deep and certainly a lot more complex than just clicking a switch and deciding to "think" a certain way which to be frank, is a bit of juvenile and superficial way to think about the topic.

<comment><USER36> I see free will as an illusion. Things may be predetermined or there may be true randomness, either way our conscious decisions can be reduced to the laws of physics.

But it is an illusion that I am still subject to, and it is useful to believe that I can choose, insofar that anything is useful. If we can't choose then there's really nothing to be said about anything. Isn't it somewhat ironic to comment on someone's behavior while calling free will into question?

<comment><USER35> Do you mean ironic to comment on people's beliefs while calling free will into question? Absolutely.

Consciousness might just be an illusion as well. But as you point out, these are the conceptual tools we have to work with.

I prefer to think of it like this. People like to think they are making conscious decisions most of the time while in reality most of the time they aren't. Most of the time people are responding to conditioning/stimuli/response like a trained dancing bear or an insect following a pheromone trail.

Still... people have the _possibility_ of having free will. Sometimes it glimmers through a little.. sometimes more, but in order to really have free will people have to step outside of conditioning/stimuli/response and conceive of themselves differently which is a psychological place most people don't enter for long or very often if ever. But the possibility still exist. Again... just a conceptual model that works for me. Not sure there are hard and fast answers in this realm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I did not read the book, but I think the book is not about becomming succesful but about getting to know your potential. Success and potential are related/connected but there is a huge difference.

Being able to help out your neighbor isn't connected to success in our society. I think a lot of posters in this thread don't realize the destinction between potential and success.

</comment><comment><USER38> Also, take this to the second derivative. You can learn to learn faster and more efficiently. You can set yourself up for success. You can start small, and gain momentum from there. You can learn to hack your motivation.

Will this guarantee success and a happy life? Of course not. But it will greatly increase your chances.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think it is easy to praise growth mindset if you are the one who wants to learn and wants to get better through failing. But what about the other side of the coin?

Just imagine you are a teamlead and one guy in your team tells you "hey, I have found 2 new ways how not to impelent Feature X. May I work on feature Y and use the knowledge I gained fucking up feature X?"

Or you have a project team and the profect manager tells you "Hey, I found one new way how not to manage a project, how not to deliver on time and how not to motivate people. May I manage your next project and maybe waste an other million dollars?"

In my experience situations like these end badly...

<comment><USER40> I don't think these are cases against a growth mindset but rather cases against overconfidence and biting off more than you can chew.

I don't think the point is to say "wow I can get better at anything so I'll take on this big project that's way out of my league". It's more about thinking "wow I can get better at this so I'll ask my manager for tips and maybe a small project in which to grow my skills".

I've read the book twice and its helped me tremendously. I used to say to myself I'm not a maths person but now I say that I can get better if I work on it. I've made more progress than I ever did believing that people are simply born with or without a mind for maths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There was a good episode on the podcast "Invisibilia" discussing this topic of expectations influencing/shaping reality: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/544/b...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/544/batman). Some pretty fascinating stories in this one; well worth a listen! I believe Dweck is referenced/interviewed early on in the episode.

</comment><comment><USER42> I only know that if you have strong Will you can achieve many things. Personally, the difference between Wish and Will is when you decide to achieve what you wish.

</comment><comment><USER43> The same thing [Derek Sivers] explains with amusement:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYTN7yVYbeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYTN7yVYbeg)

Fortunately, yesterday night I was listening it.

[Derek Sivers]([https://sivers.org/](https://sivers.org/))

</comment><comment><USER44> Interesting contrast, stories like this compared to the stories about how everyone who is successful feels like they are a fraud.

Maybe my study will be of note: If you believe headlines, you should read more.

</comment><comment><USER45> Mindset is __everything __(at-least extremely important for any level of success in entrepreneurship and most other things)

Most entrepreneurs solving ambitious problems look crazy to outsiders. Hence the famous Steve Jobs quote

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Look at what the Gates, Jobs and Musks of this world have achieved with their 'anything-is-possible' mindsets..

Btw, for those who are interested in this stuff I've created an app to help people develop a growth/positive mindset at [http://positivethinking.net](http://positivethinking.net)

</comment><comment><USER46> Well, if you read title, then you can safely skip the rest of it.

It's a good summary of an essence :)

</comment><comment><USER47> Takeaway from this: I'm imagining Bill Gates practicing his fadeaway jumpers.

</comment><comment><USER48> Can someone explain to me what claim Dr. Dweck has demonstrated that is both novel and true? I have read a bunch of articles about her work, but it all seems to me like she has framed "growth mindset" against a strawman.

It seems blindingly obvious to me that ability in most fields is a function of both genes and effort. Genes shape how fast you improve with effort, and where you plateau. Genes shape the curve of the achievement-to-effort graph. Effort determines where you are on that curve. Effort determines how much of your potential you actualize. This dynamic is true in basketball, math, golf, painting, speech-making, guitar playing and virtually every other complicated human endeavor.

Some people need to be told, "You have are naturally gifted in this field, stop being so hard on people who are not as good as you, they are doing the best they can."

Some people need to be told, "You are naturally gifted in this area. You have a responsibility to work extra hard in order to maximize your gifts. If you work your butt off, you have the potential to be truly special."

Some people need to be told, "This stuff might not come as naturally to you. You're going to have to work extra hard to keep up."

Some people need to be told, "Look you have been practicing harder than anyone, and honestly, I just don't think you have the raw talent to be a professional in this field. You can do it for fun, but be realistic about your career choices."

Some people need to be told, "Look you can't say you are bad at painting/writing/music/math/etc. You haven't even tried to learn it. This stuff is not natural for most people, there are books and youtube videos that can show you how to do it. You need to build step-by-step. Practice one technique until it is in mental memory and then add more complexity. Unless you're mozart, you don't just start from day one being able to produce great stuff."

It seems that as a culture, there are mistakes in messaging going both ways. For example, the premise of the "No Child Left Behind" education law was silly. There is in fact a bell curve with regards to natural academic aptitude. For instance, if you are in the bottom ~20% of that curve, it is nearly impossible to learn algebra. ( for some articles from a real teacher who is trying to teach algebra in the field, read: [https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/algebra- an...](https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/algebra-and-the- pointlessness-of-the-whole-damn-thing/) and [https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/noahpinion...](https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/noahpinion- on-iq-or-maybe-just-no-knowledge/) ). Someone in the middle of the bell curve can learn algebra, but if they try to go into a career that involves advanced quantitative or logical skills, they will be competing against those who both have a natural aptitude and an economic incentive to try hard. The person with normal aptitude will likely lose that competition. So it might not be good advice to tell that person to double-down on math, even if they could make themselves better.

On the other hand, I hear a lot of smart friends say stuff like, "I'm just bad at math" or "I'm just bad at painting." In many cases, they never had good teaching, or they never tackled the problem aggressively. They never tried to learn incrementally, by building muscle memory on a simple technique and then adding more complications. They started with the hard stuff, and when it did not work, they just assumed they were bad at it. For people like that, a "growth mindset" can be helpful.

All of this should be pretty darn obvious. I don't really gather what new, credible information Dweck is adding to our understanding of how learning, motivation, and achievement works.

</comment><comment><USER49> Well the problem with the growth mindset is that ultimately you die, so your growth does a nosedive eventually.

If something excites or intrigues you, then do it. But don't delude yourself that your personal growth really matters.

<comment><USER50> That's sorta the ultimate in fixed mindsets, right? That eventually we'll all be dead, and so none of it matters.

It's true, but also irrelevant. Focus on what you can do & experience _while you 're alive_, because who cares what happens once we're dead? The scale of granularity that you use to look at life is as arbitrary as the emotional tenor of it, so why not focus in on a timescale that'll actually be interesting?

<comment><USER49> Well what makes growing more interesting than not growing?

<comment><USER51> Surely the opportunity to experience more is more interesting than the one which has you firmly planted where you are?

<comment><USER52> _to experience more is more interesting_

It depends. In some ways by choosing what _NOT_ to do, you are choosing what to do and have more time, effort and money to invest in them as a result of being conservative with your resources.

Perhaps the Exclusionist Mindset?

<comment><USER51> Sure, you'll _have_ to exclude things by necessity, but what I was getting at was rather the not doing things because one believes it is actually impossible, while still actually wanting to do that thing for some reason (desire).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I collected 62 ready-to-use designs for iOS apps [free UI kits] - <AUTHOR> https://flawlessapp.io/blog/60-great-ui-kits-for-ios-engineers/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you have some great iOS UI kits to add - please ping me. I'm happy to add more useful resources to the article.</comment>


Linux Journal Mirror - <AUTHOR> https://linuxjournal.rocks/ <comment><AUTHOR> All old articles and issues available here And you can also submit new articles that will be published on this website.</comment>


Feature Visualization with Convolutional Neural Networks (in TensorFlow) - <AUTHOR> https://www.datastuff.tech/machine-learning/feature-visualization-convolutional-neural-networks-keras/ <comment><USER2> Cool images, and nice explanations, thanks for posting!

Couple of questions:

1\. Why do you have to start with a small initial image? What happens if you start optimizing a large image?

2\. Intermediate layers typically have lots of feature maps (64-512). Each individual feature map can be thought of as a color channel. In your experiments, you always optimize triplets of feature maps (I assume you use the same code for inputs to every layer). So this is not exactly how it's happening during normal training - there's not easy way to visualize an image which has 512 "color" channels, right? Other than looking at each individual feature map (where there would be no colors).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, those are really good questions! I'll do my best.

1_ I started with a small one and then kept rescaling because the literature said convergence was faster and the results were "better" that way, but to be honest I didn't even try starting from a big image. I just kinda took their word for it.

For a (not too academic, but very well put) example, see this: [https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-visualize- convolutiona...](https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-visualize- convolutional-features-in-40-lines-of-code-70b7d87b0030) If you start with a big image, you get whatever "shape" the filter is generating, many times, but kind of small. If you start with a small image and keep rescaling, you get less of the shapes, each of them bigger.

That makes for subjectively cooler visuals, and that's pretty much it.

2_ I'm not entirely sure I get this one. Don't the filters apply to the three (RGB) channels simultaneously? Or do you mean a filter actually refers to the transformation for a single channel rather than the one to a whole pixel? Other than that, with regards to the ease of visualization, it's actually kind of hard to display all of the filters in a visually interesting way that isn't just "Here's the 240 filter images I made with this layer", so I had to make a trade-off between 'here are some of the cooler images' and 'I want each layer I tried to be represented in this'. I'm still sort of new to presenting visual information of this kind, so if you have any advice on how to display more of the images, I'm all ears.

Have a nice weekend!

<comment><USER2> 1\. Ok, makes sense, however this is something to keep in mind when we try to gain understanding of how NNs work. In this case, the actual features which excite the filters the most might be even more "texture-like" than what you produced. This could be important, if, say, we wanted to argue that NNs pay more attention to textures than to shapes.

2\. Let me try to explain this better. If we want to optimize the inputs to the first layer, these inputs are actual RGB images. So what you're doing in line 35 is correct:

      input_img_data = np.random.random((1, 3, intermediate_dim[0], intermediate_dim[1]))

but in the next layer, the inputs have more channels than 3. So you should be optimizing images of the shape the layer expects (replacing 3 with the number of channels of that layer). If you do it like that, then the image you want to visualize - the image that excites the outputs of an intermediate layer the most - will have more channels than 3, and therefore it's not clear whether we should pick arbitrary triplets of channels to use as RGB channels, or if we should visualize each channel (each input feature map) individually, in which case it would have no color.

I guess my question should be: when you show optimized inputs to the second or third VGG layers where does the color information comes from? Also, you probably shouldn't call them "filters", because the filters in this context are the actual convolutional layer weight kernels, and are 3x3 in size (each filter).

<comment><AUTHOR> 1_ I hadn't thought of that. To be honest, my main concern was generating the most aesthetically interesting pictures I could. However the "textures" you'd get from optimiing for the last layers would really be just repeating shapes, albeit maybe a bit smaller than you're seeing in my post. Kinda like zooming out.

2_ Oh ok, I get it now. But that's not what the program is doing. I don't generate a vector for the single layer I am maximizing, I generate an image and run the whole CNN from input to that layer, all through. Then I optimize for that layer's output.

Edit to add: As stated in the post, when I "maximize for a filter", the exact function I am maximizing is the average output for that filter over the whole image.

<comment><USER2> Oh interesting. Then I have more questions :)

1\. If you try to optimize an image that would maximize all layers outputs, how would it look like?

2\. After you optimized an image to maximize some layer outputs, how do those outputs look like?

3\. If you try to do what I thought you were doing - optimizing not the RGB image, but the individual layer inputs (feature maps), how would those feature maps look like? You could either plot each individual feature map, or pick top 3 with the strongest signals and combine them as RGB channels.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: MotionCAPTCHA – Stop Spam, Draw Shapes - <AUTHOR> http://www.josscrowcroft.com/projects/motioncaptcha-jquery-plugin/

<comment><USER2> Show HN for something that was made 3 years ago and hasn't been updated since?

[https://github.com/josscrowcroft/MotionCAPTCHA](https://github.com/josscrowcroft/MotionCAPTCHA)</comment>


Sexy sinatra app for pg_stat_statements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kirs/pg_web_stats/

<comment><USER2> I can't upvote, but seems that you just read my mind. Congrats and thanks!</comment>


Can I get a good job as an iOS developer after learning just Swift - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I was wondering what people's thoughts were around employability of knowing Swift (but not Objective-C)?
Some context: I had studied CS Eng. in undergrad (and graduated at the top of my class) from a top program that focused on C++. I and know C++ forward & backward, but I dipped into the business side of things immediately after undergrad. Now, four years later, I'd like to get back into software development and my area of interest is iOS. I've been focused on learning Swift through a Stanford iTunes U course which is really good, but I'm not sure how it would be perceived if I don't know Objective-C.
I'm in the SF Bay Area and looking to stick around here in case that's relevant to the answer set.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I've been an iOS guy for 6 years now; recently, I've had to pick up swift to adapt with the market and the many readily available resources being in swift. I say this because the advice I'll give you is based on what I've seen in the Bay Area, larger companies, and even from a personal learning experience. If you can build an app from scratch in Swift and publish it to the App Store, then you're golden in the job market. It's always the apps you have in the App Store that will bring out your resume when companies look to bring you in for interviews. With that being said, here are some pieces of advice I have for Swift vs. Objective-C: \- Learn Swift through the iTunes U Standford course and master it \- Stay upto date with the NSHipster blog for many of the ins and outs of Swift, Obj-C, and the iOS framework \- Be sure to learn some of the Objective-C concepts that aren't that common in Swift (contact me for more details) \- Research the common iOS interview questions as many of them still pertain to Objective-C \- Understand your basic CS theory: Data Structures, Algorithms & their complexities, OOP, System programming \- Integrate libraries that are written in Objective-C into one of your Swift apps and be sure to know how to incorporate it correctly

Currently, I'm working with a team of iOS engineers to build out our SDK for our service. One of the issues we've come up with over the past year was Swift vs. Objective-C. We made the decision to continue development and refactoring in Swift while maintaining our well written Objective-C code base. So, anyone coming on to our team would need Swift experience and be able to understand some details in Objective-C.

If you have any questions about what I mentioned, you can email me: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Having learned Swift, followed later by Objective-C, I would say that Swift's biggest advantage (for me) was giving me a familiar-feeling language while working out the idiosyncrasies of the iOS API's, Xcode, and all the other things that come with learning iOS development.

Once you know Swift well, and have written at least one app, you'll probably know a bit of Objective-C anyways. As other commenters have mentioned, there are lots of libraries that haven't been ported yet, lots of example code on Stack Overflow, etc. The Swift community is still evolving, so you're going to encounter some Obj-C as you work more in iOS-land. From there, learning Obj-C is pretty much limited to the language itself, which is not a huge hurdle (I picked up the rest of what I needed to be productive in a matter of days).

TL;DR Learning Swift makes it easier to learn iOS - once you know Swift + iOS, it's easy to pick up Objective-C.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm job-hunting currently and most companies demand you know Objective-C with Swift as the icing. Many don't even care about Swift at all.

Many frameworks are written in Objective-C and have not been ported over.

I think you'll find it very frustrating if you only know Swift because there's just so much Objective-C out there and they're by no mean deprecated.

You should learn the basics of Objective-C at the very least.

Edit:One thing I forgot to mention, knowing just Swift means you have next to no experience with iOS comparatively speaking since Swift hasn't been around that long. There are companies that expect us to know pre-ARC Objective-C just to let you know where the bars are in this game.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your post makes no sense. On the one hand, you claim to "know C++ forward & backward" and on the other, you claim you "don't know Objective-C". You seem to think you cannot teach yourself Objective-C quickly and easily. That does not portent well for your ability to solve problems and learning quickly.

How about taking an afternoon (or however long it takes you) to learn Objective-C. After all,it is just another C variant and closely related to C and C++, which you already know.

Whether you are employable as a developer depends on your programming skills which are separate and distinct from the particular language(s) you "know".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the message. I think there's a distinction between knowing objective-c (or any language) and having significant experience where you can program effectively in that language. I should've been more precise with my wording, but I had meant the latter.

I'm sure I can teach myself objective-c quickly, but if I were to code an app I'd probably prefer to do this in Swift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an assumption, but if you go to work for a big tech company (Fb, Twitter, or any of the like), the code base is most likely to still be in Objective-C. So for practicality, it would be wise to catch up with Obj-C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure but do you think it's a barrier to entry or is it acceptable to learn on the job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Saying "no" is kind of difficult here, but most codebases at large companies are going to require some Obj. C familiarity at minimum, and proficiency on average.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes. Of course. But you you will be more valuable to potential employers if you learn objective C.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are lots of Swift jobs.

[http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united- states/californ...](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united- states/california/san-francisco/san-francisco/)

However, no one will hire you unless you have at least one app in the app store. There's no specific requirement for what that app actually does. As far as I can tell, there's not even a specific requirement that the app be any good.

This has to do with that, at one time, it was quite difficult to get Apple to accept new apps. Now Apple accepts nearly all comers, yet hiring managers still have the idea that applicants are only qualified if they have a shipping app.

What that means is that your knowledge of C++ and Swift and your CSE degree won't help much; what you need is an app in the app store.

<comment><USER10> > However, no one will hire you unless you have at least one app in the app > store.

I guess this encourages publishing random garbage apps and polluting the app store. You can be a great engineer but not a businessman. Not everybody comes up with a polished product ready for publishing.

Btw, all your links (including internal) redirect to: [http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html](http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html)

<comment><USER9> mod_rewrite FTW.

I've been contemplating doing that for years.

What led me to choose last night to set up the redirect, was a reply to my complaint that having grey hair, as well as being openly public about my mental illness, has made it impossible to find paying work.

Some joker replied that if I wanted to find paying work, I wouldn't link to my essays about my schizoaffective disorder.

I regard his suggestion as the problem, not the solution.

I won't leave that redirect there forever. Eventually I'll stop being so pissed off.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, it might be a good filter - you really don't want to work with those kind of people who hesitate to offer you a job because of your disorder, neglecting your background and experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cookie summary for minecraftforum.net - <AUTHOR> http://www.cookie-checker.com/check-cookies.php?url=minecraftforum.net

<comment><USER2> This is the real cause of most cookie deletion. (EDIT: Many) browsers are configured by default for ~1000 cookies, and all these ad networks and data providers setting their own cookies quickly overrun that. It doesn't help that google Analytics sets separate (first party) cookies for each website you visit.

That 1000 cookie limit becomes a sort of FIFO, and that's why we always seem to get logged out at weird times for no reason.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any evidence to point to this ~1000 cookie limit?

<comment><USER4> This is a bit dated, but it makes sense that there is a set cookie limit: <http://www.ghacks.net/2008/08/16/browser-cookie-limits/>

<comment><USER5> It seems the current value for Firefox is 3000: [http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/file/48502b61a63e/netw...](http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/file/48502b61a63e/netwerk/cookie/nsCookieService.cpp#l92)

<comment><USER6> In Chrome it's 3300 [1]

[1] [http://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/net/cookies/cookie_...](http://src.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src/net/cookies/cookie_monster.cc) search for kMaxCookies

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see 139 when I navigate the mincraftforum.net directly, but when you have 8 ad units on a page, plus site analytics and a sharing toolbar or two the 37 that I see is about what i'd expect.

One thing that could be happening to drive the number up in some cases is identity synchronization between advertising providers. Vendors like BlueKai share profile data about you (sites visited etc) by calling out to the domains of other partners, who redirect back with an ID appended (or vice versa). This ID match then enables out-of-band profile sync.

Best spot to do this is these sites who go for ad overkill.

<comment><USER8> It's worth noting that the user ID sync only needs to happen once per bidder in the real-time auction that determines which ads get served - once the bidder's user ID is linked to the auction provider's user ID, no more cookies need to get set.

A typical user who landed on this page as part of their normal everyday browsing wouldn't have nearly so many cookies written - because this site is being tested in isolation, it's a bit misleading.

This is probably why the parent here only saw 37 cookies, vs. the tester's 139.

<comment><AUTHOR> The software acts like a first-time visitor with no set cookies and empty cache. I agree on the fact that once you're logged in, made a bid or whatever, the number of cookies written on each page load is substantially lower... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why would anyone keep 3rd party cookies enabled? I have found only 2 or 3 sites that needed to be whitelisted. Everything else works just fine without them.

<comment><USER10> What sites, out of curiosity? Obviously all the like-like (likesque) buttons would no longer function, but I don't care about those. I was wondering what valid use case there is for 3rd party cookies that actually benefits the user and not the service provider.

<comment><USER11> stackexchange 'global' login on their sites requires 3rd party cookies.

<comment><USER12> The open-id login does not and works great for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've checked one of my pages and it's putting requests to my sub domain (static.example...) under third party.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically that is a third party ;-) Help me out: should I filter those?

<comment><USER13> I think that you should. But I'm sure there are cases where this assumption would be wrong: )

<comment><AUTHOR> One case could be that an ad agency allows customers to direct a subdomain to their servers (eg. ads.domain.com). A visitor doesn't know if the request is 'close' by or to some shady ad agency...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They also include scripts from (at least) 9 different external domains, similar the minecraftwiki and they monitor page activity. Every few seconds a ping packet about browser information is sent to some random advertisement corp. Nothing special if you just want to make the most money possible with a community, that besides hosting, you have absolutely nothing to do with :(

</comment><comment><USER15> if it's helping notch make money, and its not degrading user experience, why exactly is it mad...?

if lots of cookies is a viable technique, the browser vendors will increase the cookie limit.

Then again, 640k of ram is enough for anyone.

<comment><USER16> It's not a website owned or operated by notch, it's completely independent (or at least, it was when it was created). I think it's mad because it probably _is_ degrading user experience, just not in exceedingly noticeable ways (i.e. sending 139 cookies for every request takes time, so each page load will take more time).

<comment><USER17> This is correct, Minecraftforum.net is not owned or operated by Mojang, that is done by Curse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yep, but most of them are third-party cookies. There is no good reason to use them and plenty of bad reasons.

</comment><comment><USER19> I get an error for every single site I try.

<comment><USER20> HN DDoS.

<comment><USER21> I would love to see an analysis from someone who gets HN'd/Slashdotted/Reddit'd often traffic stats. I know that the "frontpage" of reddit would garner you hundreds of thousands of hits.

<comment><USER22> There are _heaps_ of blog posts on HN, digg, reddit, slashdot etc from overly excited dudes who can't wait to show us what a one day spike then decline back to nothing looks like in Google Analytics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RubyMotion: Dreams do come true - <AUTHOR> http://rubysource.com/rubymotion-dreams-do-come-true/

<comment><USER2> Being an Obj-C fan, I'd love to use Ruby, but I just can't stand the hybrid message-passing notation.

It's a necessary compromise to fit into Ruby's syntax, perhaps, but why not just go all the way (since it's otherwise not backwards compatible with Ruby, or is it with Ruby 2.0?) and have full Smalltalk-like Objective-C-style message passing?

</comment><comment><USER3> Example of a well written, well tested RubyMotion app (according to the ML)

<https://github.com/tkadauke/TinyMon></comment>


White House suspends environmental protection, citing coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/white-house-suspends-environmental-protection-citing-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> In other words the administration got political cover to do what it wanted anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once again, guns don't kill people, Republicans kill people.</comment>


US navy tests 'GhostSwimmer' drone-fish - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/18/us-navy-tests-ghostswimmer-drone-fish-video

<comment><USER2> One use case I think would be really great for drone-fish would be programming them to be able to search for warmer-than-the-water objects on the surface and swim to them, to potentially find people lost-at-sea. Then, ideally it could have a blow up life jacket or some such along with an ability to transmit a radio signal to an emergency channel.

You'd of course need a whole lot of these to make any noticeable effort at actually reaching people, but it'd be worth it if the cost of these got low enough.</comment>


Show HN: I made a tool which generates a sitemap automatically - <AUTHOR> http://sitemap-gen.com <comment><AUTHOR> Made this after being frustrated with existing tools with similar functionality, which either do no adhere to the standard/do other weird stuff. Anybody have some feedback for functionality they feel are missing?

Still want to add:

-automatic generating hreflang elements

-make it a bit faster

-support for larger sitemaps.

-make it look nicer( I know almost nothing about making nice-looking software)

-add support for recieving a link to the results by e-mail when the crawling is done

<comment><USER2> Probably need to support SPA webapps, as they're very prevalent on the went today. Good work though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't seem to work with SPAs</comment>


Dropout Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikealrogers.com/posts/dropout-generation.html

<comment><USER2> I see it more as the entitlement generation. A generation that thinks things should be handed to them (why should I pay for music? The musicians don't deserve to earn a living!) and that by graduating from college, they will be handed a $70K/year job (occupy wallstreet).

I believe this was the mantra of the 60s generation as well. If you see what happened in the Haight-ashbury area of the country during that time, it almost parallels the occupy movement exactly. The only difference was that there were many more people in the Hait and the collapse was much much worse than the occupy movement.

<comment><USER3> If your not a young person in this generation you know nothing about it. 70% of young people work jobs during college now and if your not rich is even worst. We are expected to just lay down and accept either a less education, less wealth, or to simply fail. 70k a year is nothing when you just racked up 50k a year in debit for 4 years. We built thing your generation most likely could think of. Is it not fair to want to go to school without working 40 hour weeks, graduate to job any job that you can use your degree, then be able to get house without having to look over your should because the previous generation started caring more about the rest of the world than it's own people.

<comment><USER4> I don't agree with him either but your first sentence is wrong. That you would feel this way is normal but I promise you, we've been in your shoes. And when I was a 'young person' I thought our circumstances were unique too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> kids

this kind of declaration is a part of growing up. once you watch a few go by it's easier to see the pattern.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to note that I am NOT the blog author.</comment>


Show HN: Republics.us - Integrate your Internet - <AUTHOR>

Show HN: Republics.us - Integrate your Internet
This is a side project I have been working on while at college to help make it easier to have my favorite web apps, rss feeds, videos, and search engine wherever I go and whatever computer is available.
Right now, I am just looking for feedback on the concept, bugs, etc. I also will apologize for it is still being a little buggy so be gentle and it prefers Webkit browsers.
Also, I am about to graduate in three weeks in a major I don't  care for(Business Administration). So am asking for advice on if I get nowhere on this, could this site help me get a job being a web programmer so I don't have to look for a non-tech job?
http://www.republics.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.republics.us></comment>


FSF joins forces to fight software patents in U.S. Supreme Court - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-joins-forces-with-software-freedom-law-center-and-open-source-initiative-to-fight-software-patents-in-u-s-supreme-court <comment><USER2> What would happen if software were no longer patentable? Finance may offer us a guide. Financial innovations are not patentable [1]. This has two effects:

(1) Good ideas drawing on common knowledge and resources catch on fast. This compresses the time between invention and commoditisation. Those who rapidly implement ideas, whether their own or others', are rewarded. Scale and agility gain currency. Downside: the blind copying of competitors' ideas.

(2) Good ideas drawing on scarce knowledge or resources are protected fiercely. This comes in the form of secrecy - think hedge funds. It also comes as increased pay for producers. In the late 1970s Salomon Brothers helped invent the mortgage-backed security, giving them a de facto Wall Street monopoly. This made everyone involved on the mortgage desk incredibly valuable. Salomon did not pay them accordingly and so lost its storied monopoly.

[1] [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/19/can-you- pat...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/19/can-you-patent- financial-innovations/)

<comment><USER3> Good parallel. One of the points for having patents was to reduce the amount of secrecy in technology IP rights allow companies to share knowledge without fear of competing against their invention. This is covered by a form of IP: trade secrets.

This is a legitimate argument for patents in several fields, and for allowing patents for software parts of machines (users of such machinery are better off as a group if they can find out about its workings). Perhaps users of securities are put at risk by the trade secrecy governing securities innovation and so financial patents should be allowed: certainly, failure to understand risks associated with financial instruments was a large part of the problem in the 2007/8 financial crisis.

For software it is not so useful: patented software typically is triple protected: by the patent, by copyright, and by secrecy, since the patent applies to ideas in the source code that are not visible in the deployed binary. So software patents do not promote transparency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In anticipation of a slew of "this is so obvious" comments that quote from the brief, I urge you to remember that there's an opposing side to this argument: no matter how compelling or obvious this brief's arguments may seem on their own, the court will be weighing them against the arguments of the opposing side.

Without seeing those arguments, we can't really make any substantive judgements about this brief.

<comment><USER5> The opposing argument is "we don't want to lose our ability to crush new innovations and keep lawyers rich".

<comment><USER6> Yeah, take a look at this pack of horrible deceptions stopping just short of lies that the BSA/Microsoft has submitted to the court:

[http://www.bsa.org/advocacy/~/media/Files/Policy/Patents/BSA...](http://www.bsa.org/advocacy/~/media/Files/Policy/Patents/BSACLSAmicus.ashx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have read the brief. It basically says to constantly apply the "machine or transformation" test to a patent to determine if it's standalone software or something substantive. It also mentions how some software doesn't rely on a specific type of machine to execute.

How is the PTO expected to be able to determine the difference between a "standalone software" patent from "software as part of a machine/transformation" patent? And if they can't and the law is only applied in retrospect (e.g. patent validity challenges), how does this abstract "machine or transformation" concept prevent litigation which seems primarily driven by intimidation not expectation of victory.

<comment><USER8> The PTO would probably revise the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure to include any new direction from the Supreme Court. See the current section on patent subject matter eligibility:

[http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html)

<comment><USER9> Of course. But without a bright-line test that can easily be applied by the corps of non-lawyer patent examiners, what's the point? And does the Supreme Court _ever_ really give us a bright-line test?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of this is verging on arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Trying to draw lines within the framework if section 101, despite the general inadequacy of that framework. The flaw of section 101 continues to be that the law is decoupled from the economic rationale for patent. To whit: patents exist to protect expensive capital investment in research from free riding, but judges are not allowed to consider the scope of that capital investment in determining patentability. The law continues to adhere to that outdated notion that innovation can happen in a "flash of insight."

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought the Amicus from Schultz, Love, Bessen, and Meurer was a lot better than the FSF brief. It explains the issues much better and suggests more constructive conclusions that would lead us a lot closer to outright abolition of software patents.

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/sof...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/software- patents-are-not-good-property-rights.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Software patents in general aren't game here. This is about how courts should draw the line between applications of principles, which are patentable, and the physical principles themselves, which are not. This has particular relevance to software patents, because it is in this area that there is the greatest charge that people are trying to patent general principles.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone explain to me exactly what it would mean if software ideas were no longer patentable?

<comment><USER12> Ask 10 people this question and you'll get 11 different answers, but IMO the practical impact will be the lawyers will make less money and there will be less multi-billion dollar lawsuits, but the industry will keep trucking on as always.

The idea of software being patentable is actually a very new concept. Though there are some rare examples of software systems being patented back in the 1980s, it wasn't until the late 1990s that software patentablity was a widely accepted concept, prior to then software was seen as a mathematical construct and thus explicitly excluded from patents. The industry got along fine back then on copyright laws alone and will get along fine with or without patents in the future.

<comment><USER13> Worrying about the giant lawsuits is the wrong angle.

Any time MegaCorp 1 accuses MegaCorp 2 of stealing its stuff, it's going to be expensive to resolve. Even if you draw the line at "copyright, not patent" MegaCorp 2 is just going to push the line that much further in how closely they can copy MegaCorp 1.

<comment><USER12> It is way easier to avoid committing a copyright violation than a patent one because the USPTO has let way too many fundamental and obvious ideas be patented. As a developer, if I write 100 lines of code I have probably violated at least one active patent and probably more like 3, completely unknowingly.

Copyright violations require a much more willful sort of of idea "theft".

<comment><USER10> I agree with both of you. On one hand, when you have a personal pissing match like Apple v. Samsung, if it wasn't about patents it'd be about something else. On the other hand, requiring a showing of willful violation would cut down on patent suits against smaller companies.

<comment><USER14> Also, a larger part of the Apple v. Samsung cases was about design patents rather than software patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally, I hope at least that they declare that math is not patentable even if executed on a computer.

<comment><USER16> What is software if not math executed on a computer?</comment></comment>