Kenyan Women Create Their Own 'Geek Culture' - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/24/167961947/kenyan-women-create-their-own-geek-cuture <comment><USER2> I see huge opportunities here. There are people all over the world solving the same local problems, shared across disparate areas. Furthermore, there are resources, ideas, talent, and real solutions being developed in certain areas (even the US and Europe) which I feel should be collaborating with groups like this to better understand their needs and great a more global technology community. Likewise, there are no doubt some incredible, innovative solutions coming out of lesser-known technology centers with which the right localization could make a huge impact here in the Western World.

I'd be very interested to see a group acting as a "liaison" between these communities to help solve problems more efficiently. Example: You're developing a sensor network to measure rain levels across cell phone towers? I have an algorithm that can measure this data effectively and correct for error so you don't have to. We already do this today with the overload of SaaS startups -- you're building some monitoring platform? Use Librato to capture the metrics. You need a disaster response application that can aggregate data and display the most severely affected areas? Use Parse for the backend and OpenStreetMaps for the geo -- no need to do it yourself. If you're solving a problem, there is a 70% chance that somebody either solved it already, is currently trying to, and/or has a good idea about how to solve it. Increase the collaboration to a more personal, local level, and you've got something big.

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, the tenacity (on the part of both parties) demonstrated in this statement is amazing: "When he came home for the holidays, he would haul his entire workstation in the car back with him — the monitor, the CPU, the keyboard, the mouse — and set it up in Oguya's living room. Oguya was 15."

<comment><USER4> Bah, we routinely did this for our lan parties.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing you didn't drive on dirt roads or carry all of the fuel for the trip with you in jugs, all while hoping you had enough bribe money for anyone who might turn up with a rusty AK-47 and a barricade to keep them from taking said computer from you along the way.

<comment><USER6> Not sure if you are kidding but I am pretty sure Kenya wasn't THAT bad. It's actually a fairly stable country, even with the high level corruption scandals and occasional election violence.

<comment><USER5> This would likely have been around 10 years ago. Perhaps longer. Today's Kenya is less violent but according to the New York Times corruption index, its still one of the most corrupt nations on earth.

The point is that throwing your Alien-Ware in the back of your Volvo to go to a lan party across town is a ridiculous (to the point of being non sequitur) comparison.

<comment><USER7> If anything the country was _more_ peaceful ten years ago, not less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kenya is a fascinating place - incredible hardships, but such a will to persevere. I love that they aren't satisfied getting jobs freelancing or anything like that, they are solving their people's issues where no one else will bother. Awesome to see.

</comment><comment><USER9> Complete with what looks like a Kanban board on the wall. There is going to be _plenty_ of competition in a decade or so! But then there are plenty of local problems to solve...

</comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic story. I would love to hear some first-hand accounts / comments from any Kenyans on HN. Is there anyone here currently in Kenya and involved in startups?

<comment><USER11> I'm Kenyan. The scene mostly revolves around the incubators in Nairobi, the iHub, Nailabs and the 88mph Garage being the most vibrant. The iHub is closer to a typical hackerspace than the others, which are more concerned with startups actively seeking investment than meetups and such. I'd wager that half of all Kenyan startups are building mobile apps of some sort. The stack is quite varied. SMS is king here, but J2ME, Symbian and Android are also fairly popular. Some of the more interesting startups I've interacted with:

<http://wezatele.com> \- I interned there early this year. <http://mfarm.co.ke> <http://kopokopo.com> <http://frontlinesms.com> \- I did some work there last year. <http://ushahidi.com> \- nonprofit, so I'm not sure it qualifies, but one of our better known exports. <http://pesapal.com> \- I dislike the obvious play on PayPal, but they're an awesome team

There are many more, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind.

There's something of a running joke that every second startup is an M-something, presumably due to the runaway success of mpesa, a mobile money service by one of the telcos, Safaricom.

Some more established players, not startups in any sense, are Craft Silicon and Seven Seas technologies.

<comment><USER12> I've seen Ushahidi in practise in a disaster area, extremely impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Projects like this make me hopeful :)

<comment><USER14> Projects like this make me hopeful for the world, but fretful for America. Not because of the increased competition or outsourcing or anything like that, but because by and large we've created a political climate where large infrastructure developments are nearly impossible to implement. We eschew any sort of tax-funded large digital infrastructure projects while at the same time we do our best to keep regional ISP monopolies in place, killing any meaningful competition.

The fact that Kenya now has hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable is _awesome_. The fact that most of the internet I use in the USA ends up last- mile-ing over coaxial lines laid in the 1970s is terrible and unlikely to change in the next 10 years.

(Of course, our non-digital infrastructure is crumbling for largely the same reasons, so that's even more stuff to worry about).

<comment><USER15> First, we have _tons_ of fiber. _Tons_.

Second, are coaxial lines really that bad? You do need literally bundles of fiber for backbone activity, but last-mile? DOCSIS 3.0 is 42Mbit/channel, with as many channels as the endpoints can support. Comcast has already offered 305Mbit. We will need fiber last-mile one day, but not nearly any time soon.

I suspect the real limitation is a grab-bag of things like:

\- Increasing speeds highlights damaged coax, which would then require repair

\- Slowing the growth in speed means they can continue to charge a lot for service that is easy to provide

\- The true bottleneck is probably somewhere in the ISP, for example routing infrastructure, which would need to be upgraded

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stories like this can give you a lot of hope for the developing world.

</comment><comment><USER17> I _so_ wish I could invest in some of these companies...

<comment><USER18> I agree - we need more oportunistas to invest in businesses in developing countries.

I invested in this African company: <http://unreasonableinstitute.org/profile/mwilkerson/>

It was a little easier as the founder was from the US and I met him here, and then he returned to Africa to continue running the operation. Wish more African founders had the opportunity to raise money here.

<comment><USER19> If your sentiment is common, then there is an opportunity for someone to arrange introductions and bring African entrepreneurs to the United States for fundraising.

<comment><USER2> I believe that instead, the opportunity is to guide US investors to invest in African companies. An organization to vouch for the reputability and asses the risks of these companies to allow for greater, less risky foreign investment.

I personally would love to start such an organization.

<comment><USER19> I understand the difference. Either way, though, personal connections and legwork would have to be done both in the US and in Africa.

It's been on my mind since I made the comment; if you've interest I wouldn't mind discussing it with you if you'd like to e-mail me at the address in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 What does M-Farm do?

<comment><USER20> <http://mfarm.co.ke/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Beautiful :)

</comment><comment><USER3> BTW, thanks for posting that OP

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's get Alexander McCall Smith on this right away!

Perhaps a whole new series of novels based on the concept of the "The No. 1 Ladies' Geek Startup" ?</comment>


How Much Does The Government Spend To Send A Kid To Public School? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/155515613/how-much-does-the-government-spend-to-send-a-kid-to-school

<comment><AUTHOR> Full Census report:

<http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf></comment>


Don't throw away your competitive advantage - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/competitive-advantage/

<comment><USER2> This is why there's so many products for designers and developers, honestly it feels like we're a bunch of naval gazing, self-important idiots who never learn to market correctly because we're too afraid to.

My biggest concern with the approach of picking something you have an existing audience with or is in some corner of your wheelhouse is that it leaves a lot of opportunity outside.

Is there not a huge competitive advantage in selling to underserved markets? You may believe market saturation is "bullshit", but it's much harder to get noticed in an already crowded field.

There seems to be two fields of thought on researching and marketing a bootstrapped product:

1) SEO and niche marketing. This is the sort of thing that Rob Walling talks about. Basically the idea is you research through Google keywords that you can rank highly for and build a product around that, regardless of what you yourself are good at. The problem with this is that the internet is full of scumbags and many online audience "niches" are already taken. PPC is extremely competitive as well.

2) Content marketing and "become famous". This is the approach that I think Amy and Ryan Carson recommend. This has a longer path to success, years in some cases, and is highly subject to survivorship bias. To be frank, it's hard to get noticed in our little world unless you're a) an extreme extrovert and b) extremely charismatic and/or c) really lucky.

There's a middle ground that Patrick McKenzie occupies that combines traits of #1 and #2, but also introduces the free radical of underserved markets. Actually, the reason for his success is that he initially started with an underserved market, and then used that to gain SEO knowledge and internet fame to leverage #2 to some extent.

I've emailed with Amy on this regard, her tone has been basically "Well, it works because he's Patrick". I disagree with this sentiment because it sets up a "Golden Calf" mentality that we mere mortals can't follow the same path.

<comment><USER3> Seriously.

Its like a startup circle jerk around here with everybody trying to sell their lean social media analytics project management ab test tracker to each other.

<comment><USER4> I don't mean to self-promote, but I spent an hour over the weekend making my latest side project. If you have time, check it out at:

[http://le.an-social-media-analytics-project-management-ab- te...](http://le.an-social-media-analytics-project-management-ab-test-trackr- ly.io)

Feedback welcome! I spent the most time on the domain name.

Svtble writeup coming soon...there really is an art to coming up with ideas like this, which I learned by choosing the best toenail clippers last summer over a two week long deliberative process. I know most people wouldn't spend that long on toenail clippers, but I had to have the best. It's who I am. Deal with it.

Anyone want me to open source the code? All I did was add my copyright to the Bootstrap CSS, but maybe someone wants that? Just let me know.

Also, I've made $0 in the 10 minutes I've had it online, without any marketing or awareness other than this post on HN. What am I doing wrong? Is it too early to monetize? Would Stripe integration help?

UPDATE: Sorry, my WP installation couldn't handle the load! I'll see if I can get a cache up somewhere. Ironic that my first post was on "How I used a free EC2 microserver to achieve 100% uptime with a million simultaneous connections -- and you can too." I guess I should have tested it first.

UPDATE 2: Help!1! I'm being downvoted, but those cowards won't say why! What could I do better with my comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of people enjoyed reading the conversation with Amy:

[http://unicornfree.com/2013/difficulties-for-nathan- barrys-a...](http://unicornfree.com/2013/difficulties-for-nathan-barrys-app- experiment/)

It's interesting, since we didn't plan on the transcript being public we talked in a much more transparent way.

As always, happy to answer questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> These posts are a free masterclass on building an online marketing campaign. I'm not really talking about the content of the posts, though that is relevant. Rather, because Nathan is so open about what's he's doing, you can really understand the reasoning behind each post and he often talks about results in following posts. It's like you can see the construction plans if you look closely enough.

I'm not really his target market but I follow along just to learn how to be a better marketer.

<comment><USER3> Except he's not a master...

<comment><USER6> Although your account is 3 hours old and you've only commented twice, both on this post, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you want to constructively engage.

This is a drive-by comment. It's useless. Why not add something useful. Why do you hold this belief? What could Nathan do better? That would be interesting to know.

Nathan may not be a master at marketing right now, but the way he's going he'll get there. What he's doing is practically a textbook example of deliberate practice, and the best thing for the observer is you get to see all the mistakes along the way, instead of the cleaned up textbook version. I fail to see how this is not useful.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> From what I know Nathan has launched two ebooks and a blog to an audience familiar with Saas and digital goods.

Labeling him as a master after a couple of success stories is quite a leap. Lets save the "master" term for people who have been in the game for a bit longer.

\----

I did not say he won't be a master or that this post isn't useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great read. I often think people sell themselves too short, so it's always good to reinforce not settling and know what your product/software is worth.</comment>


Password reset links – random strings vs. signed tokens? - <AUTHOR> What are the pros and cons of the different ways of handling reset links?<p>I see two ways of handling them:<p>* Generate a random string, for example with uuid4. Store it in the database with the user and send it in a link to the user. When the form is filled in and sbumitted the random string will be the payload and matched to the user. The string is then removed from the database so it can only be used once. It should also have an expiry date. Pros: Simple and safe Cons: Have to store it in the database<p>* Generating a signed token. From the username or id and a timestamp a signed token is generated with a secret key. This is the link sent to the user. When the user submits the token is decrypted back and the user and timestamp retrieved and validated. The issue here is that it can be reused so you have to store the old password as well. Pros: Nothing needs to be stored in the database. Cons: Riskier? Is it a bad idea to send the old, encrypted password in the link? It is encrypted. <comment><USER2> My first thought is that if you have the old password then it was not stored properly in the first place. Need to fix that first.

Second thought is that anything that exposes information about the existing password is an information leak just waiting to be exploited.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it is a hash of the password, not the password. So you would check the hash in the signed link and compare to the stored one. But I agree, I don't like the feeling of it.</comment></comment>


Larry Tesler cut and pasted from this mortal coil - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/19/larry_tesler/ <comment><USER2> Headlines like that really should be divulged to the subject before their death. It's shame they miss out on the chuckle.

<comment><USER3> You were downvoted for this comment, but it was merged from a previous thread where it made much more sense in context:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200219213005/https://news.ycom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200219213005/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367558)

The original thread was a link to The Register which had this headline:

 _Larry Tesler cut and pasted from this mortal coil_

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/19/larry_tesler/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/19/larry_tesler/)

I also found The Register's headline pretty funny and apropos, and I am sure that if Larry is looking down on us, he got a chuckle out of it too!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying the situation. Karma come, karma go.

<comment><USER4> Sorry! When merging threads, we always try to exempt the comments that only make sense in the original context. I even saw your comment and recognized it as such but it must have slipped through my fingers somehow. We've repatriated it now. (Of course now these replies are out of context, but oh well.)

<comment><USER3> This could almost be a scene from the great Firesign Theatre album _How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You 're Not Anywhere at All_:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Can_You_Be_in_Two_Places_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Can_You_Be_in_Two_Places_at_Once_When_You%27re_Not_Anywhere_at_All)

And I'm certain that Larry would appreciate the reference! ;-)

All hail Marx and Lennon!

p.s. If you happen to see this, aklemm, your username - or at least a possible pronunciation of it - plays a role in another Firesign Theatre album, _I Think We 're All Bozos on This Bus_:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Think_We%27re_All_Bozos_on_T...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Think_We%27re_All_Bozos_on_This_Bus)

(search the page for "Clem"...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361282)

<comment><USER4> Comments moved thither. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Are Software Patents Evil? (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

<comment><USER2> Some Drug Patents cost the companies who discovered them hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions of dollars. The period of time might stretch over decades, require hundreds of researchers, and involved thousands and thousands of wrong turns. These drugs will never be created by private enterprise without the monopoly protection of a patent - so we either forego future development of those drugs, or socialize the process.

On the flip side, I find it hard to put Drug Patents into the same category as a software patent that three engineers with a half-formed idea can sketch out in a period of a couple days, and then finish off with two or three round trips to the patent office.

I (and this is where I probably disagree with Stallman) think that truly, truly innovative algorithms, such as public key encryption, should be greatly rewarded for a limited time as a result of being shared with everyone.

But - "One Click Purchase" - a process that any high school student with knowledge of cookies could have invented in under 45 minutes if asked to, does not meet that bar.

So - put me in the "For non-obvious patents" column.

<comment><USER3> Except that it's still very hard to make distinctions about what is innovative in software design.

Node.js is pretty innovative. Is anything in there patentable? I think most people would agree it isn't.

You can't use the metric of capital investment either. It takes a lot of capital investment to mine BitCoins these days. Should I get a patent on the number that I find? If not, what's the difference between that and an algorithm I found through tuning a neural net, or through genetic algorithms?

I agree with you that RSA is the paradigmatic example of software that ought to be patentable. I still can't think of any objective way to show that, other than the judgment of other experts.

<comment><USER4> This really seems to boil down to arguing that the patent examiners in the software art unit need to do a better job evaluating whether patent application claims really are novel and non-obvious, like they're supposed to under current patent law.

For several years they were really overwhelmed as the volume of software patent applications exploded and they couldn't hire well-qualified software patent examiners at nearly the same rate. Traditional patent examining practice of looking primarily at existing patents and secondarily at academic publications to show the state of the art also tended to miss a tremendous amount of publicly known subject matter. The examiners have been getting steadily better and more creative in searching for references though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The secrecy section is interesting. The new web vanguard (thinking of Google and Facebook primarily) is motivated to shrug off, if not outright undermine, the patent system precisely because many of their most valuable assets are hidden and very difficult to reverse engineer, let alone patent. Their main assets aren't user-facing features or UI conventions - they're distinguished by hidden stores of data and advanced algorithms and tools for which few of their employees have complete source code access.

<comment><USER4> This is a great point and I've seen it in action many times among clients - calculating whether to apply for a patent on a new idea or to protect it as a trade secret. In cases where the value is mainly in inaccessible firmware or a manufacturing process where it would be hard for someone to reverse engineer, and even harder to detect if someone did manage to copy it, they typically set up procedures to keep it as a trade secret.

The other side to this, that I've seen among clients, is they really do often make decisions whether to devote money to developing a technology based on the expectation of whether they'll be able to patent it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> A previous General Counsel of ours divided the community of IP lawyers into two categories - those who work hard to build companies, protect created intellectual property, and the other category - the attorneys who do the opposite - destroy companies and leech off wealth. He referred to those attorneys who do work for Patent Trolls at an all hands meeting as "bottom feeding lowlifes".

I sometimes wonder how miserable Patent Attorneys who end up working for patent trolls must feel about themselves, or whether they've kidded themselves into believing they aren't part of the problem. Or whether they are just paid so much money they don't care.

<comment><USER4> I know one active patent troll who is also a patent attorney, who wrote and prosecuted his own patent application and now writes his own threatening letters and licenses to the patent, has made a lot of money from it, and shows only delight at the money. He also still works for his law firm, and spends part of his time doing patent work for outside clients. I've long wondered how the rest of his firm felt about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general."

This is possibly the most important statement in the piece.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it is the most important statement, and I disagree with it.

Software expressions are a form of lambda calculus, i.e., mathematics, and ought to be outside the proper domain of patents, whereas the proper domain of patents is the material. 1+1 is always 2. One drop of water + another drop of water is sometimes one drop of water and sometimes two drops of water and sometimes something else. One ball-bearing + another ball bearing is usually two ball bearings, but one needs to be careful about their environment, or you end up with something that no longer constitutes two ball bearings - and that is the crux of the matter. If your patent is intrinsically implemented by 25 or more Schrödinger modelled actual entities (e.g., just about any molecule larger than H2O) you're now operating in the material world, the old rules apply, and good luck to you. The Platonic 0 and 1 and the finite (though arbitrarily large) operations on them should not be bound by those rules.

And yes, it is a religious belief - in mathematics.

<comment><USER4> Software is represented and conceptualized as math. But when you put fingers to keyboard you set in motion a bunch of electrons and magnetic domains; you're assembling mechanical objects into a complex physical machine, a computing system that's in a new physical state it never existed in before. Nothing about the process couldn't be done instead with hydraulics or gears and levers instead of electrons and magnetic domains, except it would be a lot bigger, slower, harder to ensure a precise 1:1 relationship with our mathematical abstraction of it, and harder to ignore its physical nature.

<comment><USER8> Granted. But surely the prior art on bits being transmitted through a general purpose computing machine, whether mechanical, magnetic, mental, musical, or magical, is now unassailable. What is novel is not physical, what is physical is not novel.

<comment><USER4> So every software implementation of anything is not novel? Are you really sure about that?

I am wrapping up a tremendously complex and awesome patent application today that my client is essentially implementing in hardware, but there is absolutely software involved, and I also drafted the claims so that a bunch of stuff my client happens to be implementing in custom ASICs is also covered if the same magic were also done by a general purpose computer running the same functionality in software. It's not a distinction almost anyone will ever be able to tell the difference with (except the custom silicon is going to function faster than a software-on-general-purpose-computer could do). Are you sure that difference would automatically make it not novel and undeserving of a patent?

<comment><USER8> Sorry I didn't see this earlier.

I believe there is no meaningful distinction between an algorithm running on general purpose hardware and the same algorithm running on custom hardware. If you'd enforce your patent by claiming that someone else was barred from implementing an algorithm you own, I'd say that "what is novel is not physical". Algorithms are not within the purview of the patent office (or I should say, should not be).

If you'd enforce your patent by saying that someone else was barred from inventing your custom hardware to run this fast algorithm, I guess I'd want to know if the leap from the algorithm to the specific ASIC is "obvious to one skilled in the art".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "When a company starts fighting over IP, it's a sign they've lost the real battle, for users."

What does this say about Apple's lawsuits?

<comment><USER10> That's an interesting line from pg, but I think it's a little overbroad. There are a whole host of reasons a company might start fighting over IP. Sometimes it's a bad sign, but not always by any means.

<comment><USER11> Yes, Apple shows you're right. I wouldn't be surprised if the cause in their case is that Steve is personally angry at having his stuff copied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _"Since software patents are no different from hardware patents"_

I stopped reading at this point since PG appears to have just stated that software patents are the same as other patents but not really discussed this point very thouroughly.

I would disagree completely. Software patents are certainly nothing like any other form of patent.

I'll leave the copyright vs. patent argument for the moment (because although there are some cases where software patents are equivalent to trying to patent, say, a minor 7th chord), but I think the key difference is this:

Software patents protect IP that is more often than not, common knowledge or completely trivial but where the implementation of that idea or concept will prove the success of the venture. "One click shopping" is like the canonical bullshit software patent. There are a million different ways to skin that cat, and patenting that as a concept is absurd.

Other patents protect inventors who come up with a unique idea, process or design, the implementation of which is relatively trivial once you have that insight or knowledge.

Things like fabricating a new kind of mouse trap are just so easy that anyone with a couple of bucks can do it: buy competing product, send to china, make profit.

But I can't just go out and build, say, Farmville, unless I had all the source code and the engineering team at my disposal.

I'm not sure how to _codify_ that distinction, but I think that's the key.

It's a bit like trying to write a computer program for common sense. I can tell the difference between good and bad patents (and I've never seen a software patent that I didn't think ridiculous) but codifying it in law is another story.

<comment><USER4> It seems like you're saying though that software patents are being applied to things that are obvious - in which case, that would just mean the patent office isn't doing a proper job of not granting patents to subject matter that's obvious under current law.

<comment><USER12> Not so much obvious as fundamental. Something like "One Click Shopping" is a refinement of user experience - it's not the same as having a chemical process that allows greater transistor density.

The former requires skills and experience within a given field but isn't some kind of grand invention.

The latter is something that would require great research, insight and discovery (and no, I don't think usability research counts here).

Patenting one click shopping is like patenting being really good at something.

Like if I were an amazing neurosurgeon, and I came up with this way of making sure I had a really steady hand - a way of breathing or a way of holding my wrist, and then I patented that and said that, even if someone came up with the same idea completely independently then they need to pay me for it.

<comment><USER4> The one click patent is a really unfortunate representative of software patents. I've worked on software patents where the inventors are computer science professors at top universities. Those patent applications are at least as hideously complex and thrillingly ingenious as in the most technically complex hardware patents I've worked on, and, obviously I'm biased here, but at least as deserving of patent protection.

<comment><USER12> Okay so - this is the challenge: how do we _codify_ that? It's like I'm saying we can look at these, as humans and use our common sense and say "This is reasonable" and "This is not".

Let's look at something I did recently: I came up with an idea for an ORM which doesn't require you to create any boiler plate base classes and uses the primary key structure of your database to intuit how to join tables together.[1]

Do you think that's patentable? I think not and to patent that would be total bullshit. I don't know what prior art exists (I've not seen anything that does this before but then I didn't really look all that hard) but even without prior art patenting this process would seem ludicrous to me because it's like patenting a workflow or a formula.

It's almost like the hardware analogue of that is patenting a way of using something, rather than an actual invention. Is that the distinction? Software patents that are awarded for figuring out how to improve the way we use existing inventions, as opposed to real inventions?

[1]<https://github.com/iaindooley/PluSQL/>

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I haven't been ignoring you, I've been struggling with how to respond. I think for now I will have to leave it at:

(1) since I'm a patent attorney, looking at your code and advising you on its chances of patentability would constitute legal advice and potentially initiate aspects of an attorney-client relationship outside of any retainer agreement, and I'm not going to do that;

(2) in the off chance that you ever do want to try to patent something that involves software, your future patent attorneys will thank you for starting to train yourself now to get out of the habit of making public posts about how ludicrously unpatentable your work is, no matter how much you might think of any current project at the present moment; and

(3) talk to a good patent attorney of your own, one who spends all her time on patent law subject matter, as soon as possible in the process, which will almost certainly be before you think it should be, about anything and everything you might ever possibly want to patent in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder whether the recommendation at the very end, about starving patent trolls of lawyer resources, is more or less viable now than it was five years ago. Although there are certainly plenty of megafirms, I'm not sure that the legal world is coherent enough for that to be a great strategy. Plus you need maybe two full-time lawyers and twice that many paralegals to operate on the Lodsys level of suing smaller developers and working your way up.

Patent trolls, like terrorists, take advantage of asymmetric resource usage. So trying to attack their supply of lawyer resources might not work.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if this would really work:

[http://jeremy.tregunna.ca/articles/2011-07-28/fight_software...](http://jeremy.tregunna.ca/articles/2011-07-28/fight_software_patents_with_patents_its_not_what_you_think_honest)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Patent trolls are hard to fight precisely because they create nothing. Big companies are safe from being sued by other big companies because they can threaten a counter-suit. But because patent trolls don't make anything, there's nothing they can be sued for."

This is a very good point and part of the problem. But there is a loop hole for big companies, that I can't help but wonder if it has even been used. A big company could, possibly under the table, use a small company to sue another big company, leaving no way for the sued to fight back.

<comment><USER16> Shell companies have limited value in this case. Because if Microsoft uses XYZ corp to sue IBM then IBM can just sue Microsoft again and again.

<comment><USER15> Only if IBM knows Microsoft is using XYZ

<comment><USER2> Isn't this somewhat simliar to how Microsoft funded SCO to sue companies that used Linux? Microsoft didn't want to be in the position of suing their customers, so they used SCO as a shell to do their dirty work for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> Frankly, it surprises me how small a role patents play in the software business. It's kind of ironic, considering all the dire things experts say about software patents stifling innovation, but when one looks closely at the software business, the most striking thing is how little patents seem to matter.

This is not true any more. At least some developers withdrew from the US market because of patents fear (specifically, mobile app developers) - this is a business changing phenomenon.

<comment><USER10> Who?

<comment><USER17> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/15/ap...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/jul/15/app- developers-withdraw-us-patents)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Whether they encourage innovation or not, patents were at least intended to. You don't get a patent for nothing. In return for the exclusive right to use an idea, you have to publish it, and it was largely to encourage such openness that patents were established._

How common is it in practice for useful information to be gleaned from published software patents? How many of us have ever had a problem to solve, and thought: I know, I'll search the patent database to see if there's a clever solution that's been disclosed by the inventor! I would suspect very few. Which implies that we're not getting much out of "our" side of the bargain.

<comment> wes-exp Indeed. I don't think anybody is benefiting. Quite the opposite. Software patents are seen as just a bunch of land mines that make it harder to get the job done. There is no thought of making use of them whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A difference between software patents and other patents that pg is missing, is that a piece of software is always a composition of thousands of (patentable) ideas. A non-software product is typically a composition of 0-10 (patentable) ideas.

That means that the odds of any hardware product of accidentally hitting or being encumbered by a patent are nearly nil. The odds of a software project of _not_ hitting any patent are nearly nil.

This difference is circumstantial and not a fundamental property of things -- but a very important one.

<comment><USER20> Non-software products are quite complicated once you look beneath the surface, e.g. even a cheap toaster has 400 parts [http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...](http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html) . Sure, the number of distinct parts would be lower (perhaps 100), they tend to involve more mature technology for which any patents might have now expired, and the toaster manufacturer probably buys many of the parts rather than manufacturing them themselves, but I would think that the odds of an advanced hardware product accidentally hitting a patent are significantly more than nil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "One thing I do feel pretty certain of is that if you're against software patents, you're against patents in general."

I'm glad he says this because it's an important point. You can't stop software patents without stopping patents altogether, and that means Intel can't protect massive investments in new techniques for creating faster CPUs without deliberately obfuscating its hardware, etc. etc. etc.

Kill patents and we're in for a world of reverse-threaded screws, gadgets filled with glue, and on and on.

<comment><USER22> That's totally incorrect. Why can't you draw the line at software? Books aren't patentable. Music isn't patentable. Paintings aren't patentable. Mathematical formulas aren't patentable. So why is it that you have to be against patents in general just because you're against software patents? Patentability is one method of protection out of many that can be applied, and it's been applied to particular kinds of "inventions" and not to others for hundreds of years.

Software is protected by copyright and trade secret protections, so even without patents it will always be intellectual property that is strongly protected and which has material value.

<comment><USER23> I also disagree with pg on this point, but with different reasons. The problem with your reasoning is that books and paintings aren't isomorphic to patentable machines in the same way that software is.

<comment><USER22> Ah, but that's where the problem is: just assuming that isomorphism is enough to justify patentability. While software can do the same things machines can do and are isomorphic in that sense, that _doesn't_ imply that they're isomorphic in the sense that's important for patent protection.

Machines aren't patentable because they do stuff: they're historically patentable because new ones take a lot of work to create and they can easily be reverse engineered and copied, so they're patentable because of the pragmatic tradeoff that says that society will be better off if machines are patentable, because it gives people an incentive to create and share knowledge, knowing they won't be stolen. That same justification applies to why pharmaceuticals are patentable: it's a huge amount of work to create a new one, and once they're created they can be copied for a fraction of that amount of work, so without patents people won't research them. Machines are pharmaceuticals are in no way isomorphic in that they do the same sorts of things, but they do share the same sorts of qualities that make patents a net win for society.

Software doesn't share those characteristics: the difficulty of a given software "invention" tends not to be high (except for things like compression or crypto algorithms), similar "inventions" are likely to be arrived at independently, copyright and trade secrets protection work well enough to motivate people to do it, and outright duplication of a program without stealing source code requires a significant amount of work due to the size of any complex program. (i.e. you can try to copy photoshop down to the last behavior, but it's going to take about as much work as writing photoshop took).

Therefore, I don't believe it's to correct that since you can replace a machine with software, and the machine is patentable, therefore the software is patentable. The machine isn't patentable because of what it can do, but rather due to the inherent qualities of mechanical inventions, and those are things that simply don't apply to software.

<comment><USER21> You're ignoring the important middle-ground, which is machines with software parts which, today, includes almost all machines.

If I make a machine with a vital mechanism in software why is it not entitled to the same protections as a similar machine which implemented the same function in hardware? And when does hardware transition to software? If it's an analog circuit it's hardware, but digital is software? ROM is hardware but EPROM is software?

If someone clones my "mechanical" device by implementing the patent-protected part in software is that a violation?

Assuming stuff is either like a sewing machine or like Photoshop is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> An interesting idea than cropped up in another thread was taxing IP according to its valuation. If I find a million dollars in gold in my backyard, I'll have to declare it in my tax form, so if I stumble upon and patent an idea that I think is worth a million dollars, isn't it fair that I pay taxes on it? Then later if I sue a company I can't say my idea is actually worth 20 million dollars.

<comment><USER25> It looks like, in the US, you actually get taxed on the gold when you sell it, not when you dig it up — [http://www.irstaxattorney.com/tax-topics/irs-audit- technique...](http://www.irstaxattorney.com/tax-topics/irs-audit- techniques/Placer%20Mining%20Industry%20-%20Chapter%2013%20-%20Inventories%20and%20Uniform%20Capitalization.asp) says:

"It is not uncommon to examine a return where the taxpayer claims to be in production yet keeps no inventory. Since the gold recovered must eventually be recognized as income, inventories must be maintained."

This is precisely equivalent to the situation with patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would we as a culture be so up-in-arms about patents if they lasted ... 3-5 years in the CS industry/any-other-ethereal industry?

<comment><USER23> No, we would be about 1/4th as up in arms as we are now.</comment></comment>


The Mortgaging of Sierra Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/the-mortgaging-of-sierra-online/ <comment><USER2> I grew up with Sierra adventure games in the 80s and they hold an incredibly special place in my heart. I love reading these articles about what was happening behind the scenes so thanks for posting.

Despite my extreme level of nostalgia for those old games (I installed KQ3 a few weeks ago just to visit Manannan) I find them unplayable today. I think the last Sierra adventure that I honestly enjoyed was probably KQV. When I look at the list [0] of their releases I think the last Sierra adventure game I ever bought was probably Dagger of Amon Ra.

By about 1991/1992 I was beginning to move on to other genres. When more open games like Microprose's Darklands and Origin's Ultima 7, Ultima Underworld, and Privateer were released I switched over and never looked back. I haven't played an adventure game for more than a few hours since.

I often wish I could travel back to 1989 and sit down in front of my IBM PS/2 30/286 and fire up The Colonel's Bequest or KQIV and experience the enjoyment that I felt with those games one more time.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_v...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_video_games)

<comment><USER3> My feeling is almost exactly as you describe yours. I wish I could go back and relive the enjoyment I had when I was young, playing on the Tandy 1000 in my parents basement. I still feel very strong nostalgia and think about the games quite a bit, but then if I try to play them I get bored nearly instantly or start feeling guilty for not doing more important things with my time (wife & 2 kids). Oh well, I will always have the nostalgia I guess.

<comment><USER4> Years ago, I got really into (or at least taken with the idea) of amassing a collection of vintage games machines.

It started with some Pong clones, and went on to various Atari machines and then to NES.

But pretty quickly, I realised that I was taken with the IDEA of buying and owning them. Actually owning them and actually playing the games wasn't that fun.

I think I kept hold of the NES the longest and sold them all as consoles with huge game collections (kickstarting someone elses hobby I hoped). I hope who ever got them enjoyed them - but it turned out there are very few old games I really enjoy playing for any length of time.

I think 'Blazing Lazers' is likely my favourite old game, and I still have a romantic attachment to owning a NEOGEO to play it on, but in truth a fire it up no more than once a month on my MAME, play it for 15 minutes at most and turn it off again. I keep telling myself I'll build a MAME cabinet, but again, I'm more interested in the idea of the cabinet than actually the pleasure I'll get from owning it (and the 'space debt' it will add to my house).

<comment><USER5> Count me in as another person on the same level of nostalgia for old games and especially Sierra games as you and the parent comments..

I found the same thing you did on the experience. There are games from that era that are still fun, but you really have to dig. I run emulators and sort through them, and it's no surprise no one is trying to repackage and sell most of them. No one would buy them. The IP is only valuable for respins.

One thing worth noting, I found the more simple the games were, the better they aged. There was a time in the 90s when Atari 2600 games felt useless, now I'm finding their simple arcade action aged better than genres that tried to do more.

Adventure games themselves are timeless because they're at their core, puzzle- oriented storybooks.

My favorite by far is Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory. Those were the crown jewel of the Sierra lineup. The original creators are back at it, and recently released Hero-U (it's on Steam and GOG). I've only played it a bit, but it seems like as good as you can do to bring a traditional adventure game into 2019.

Hero-U is definitely worth checking out for any old Sierra-head!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just here to suggest that anyone looking for wholesome, intellectually challenging games for kids should look into both the Dr. Brain and Incredible Machine series. The later entries especially in both series still hold up today as seriously amazing and entertaining puzzle games for kids to develop critical thinking skills.

<comment><USER7> The Incredible Machine 3/4 does indeed hold up well. I recently grabbed "Crazy Machines 3" off of the steam sale to try to scratch that itch and it just wasn't the same.

<comment><USER8> FYI Wikipedia suggests that GOG.com has the originals and that a game called Contraption Maker on Steam is a spiritual successor by the original developers

<comment><USER7> Yup:

[https://www.gog.com/game/the_incredible_machine_mega_pack](https://www.gog.com/game/the_incredible_machine_mega_pack)

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I absolutely love these write-ups! Every time one comes out I read it immediately.

This doesn't jive with my recollection, though:

> The monochrome cargo vans of 1985 had improbably become the multimedia > sports cars of 1993, all whilst sticking to the same basic software and > hardware architecture.

I don't really believe that this was true until after the adoption of Windows 95 (and remember, Windows NT retained the older Windows 3.1 look for longer; well into the late 90s my college labs' Windows machines looked ancient). At the time, the Mac was the closest thing to a multimedia sports car (with Amiga being the hand-crafter multimedia Rolls Royce, to carry the metaphor too far): it was attractive and ran well. Those of us who used Macs back then look at Windows 3.1 and thought it was a joke; we didn't even think DOS was worth noticing.

In retrospect, I actually have a lot more respect for DOS now than I did then: given what it was, it wasn't actually bad, and it enabled some neat programs. If I were teleported back in time, I might get a DOS box. But there is no way I'd want to use Windows 3.1 again — give me a System 7, 8 or 9 Mac anytime!

<comment><USER10> Soundblaster and vga cards came out before windows 95 did. You had games like Wing Commander and Doom and such that came out well before windows gaming existed.

<comment><USER11> People forget that originally, Windows 95 was a resoure-hogging, performance- robbing, disaster of a gaming environment until Windows 98 or so.

3D accelerators and internet play finally killed off DOS.

Even in the days of Windows 95, you had to drop down to 320x200x256 to get any decent performance on the average PC.

<comment><USER12> Even in the Windows98 era, it was common to boot into DOS for many games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sierra and LucasArts' games were my vindication for getting an "IBM PC" instead of the Commodore Amiga I had been lusting after in magazines.

I'm glad there has been a resurgence in point-and-click adventure games lately (like Thimbleweed Park, Broken Age, Samorost, Machinarium etc.) and I hope they become more popular again.

<comment><USER14> I think tablets have paired extremely well with Point and Click adventures. The Journey Down was very enjoyable, for one.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I have been revisiting a lot of these old school adventure games and even playing them in their entirety through ScummVM for Android. Haven't had that much luck with ResidualVM which tries to emulate 3D adventure games like Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island, here's hoping they get it to a more stable state.

<comment><USER14> For what it's worth, DoubleFine put out a great version of Grim Fandango for mobile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fans of this should check out MetalJesusRocks' channel on YouTube. He was a former Sierra Online employee and is one of the biggest figures in the YouTube retro gaming scene. Great video where he reminisces with a former employee here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmNCFtAlYN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmNCFtAlYN0)

</comment><comment><USER17> Let's not forget The Realm, Sierra's entry into the exploding MMORPG genre at the time. Believe it or not, it's still alive and well, after having changed owners quite a few times. It hasn't changed much since the late 90's. This was my first MMORPG experience and I sunk many many hours into it!

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone else seeing all the 9s in this article replaced with em dashes? It's really confusing me.

<comment><USER19> I believe you have an old (and broken) copy of the Lucida Grande font installed for some reason.

See [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542644](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1542644).</comment></comment>


Seemingly Popular Covid-19 Model Is Obvious Nonsense - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QuzAwSTND6N4k7yNj/seemingly-popular-covid-19-model-is-obvious-nonsense <comment><USER2> I wonder if people are aware how turgid and impenetrable is their prose.

Does the person who wrote this understand that they are incapable of communicating effectively? Do they do it anyway to prove some kind of point that is tangential to the main one? Is there some sort of secondary gain involved in being unclear?

In short, is the author getting some sort of self-aggrandizement out of explaining things poorly, or are they just incompetent?

<comment><USER3> Unaware, is my bet. The vast majority of technical writing, both online and in print, is either dumbed down beyond utility, or utterly incomprehensible. Communication is a specific skill, and vanishingly few have expertise in a given field, and the ability to promote those ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Whereas the New York City subways continue to run, and California thinks > weed sales are an essential business.

If the model is no good then it might make sense to come up with alternative models and compare predictions. Instead of doing so this piece is mostly snark that is at least as unrealistic as the assumptions the model being criticized.

Shutting down the NYC subway system would likely cause serious problems for essential workers who still need to get around. Cannabis users in California include people who experience seizures without it and the result of shutting down the legal trade would without doubt be a resurgence of the illegal trade which has many downsides not least of which being likely increased spread of CoV2.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this intentionally to model the first wave?</comment>


Whatsapp seen by a trader mindset - <AUTHOR> http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.se/2014/02/facebook-buys-whatsapp-for-19-billion.html

<comment><USER2> I really liked your article! Especially the first paragraph. In the "The Trader (Pricing) View" section, I was disappointed that you continued referring to value, especially with respect to a fickle measure such as number of users.

"The key variable in explaining differences in value across companies is the number of users."

Your conclusion was very rational, and I agree that fundamentals will matter (sooner or later), but I wish you had taken a stance instead of being so balanced. Very un-trader like of you :)</comment>


Jinx 1.0 Released -- Quickly find concurrency errors in your multithread code - <AUTHOR> http://www.corensic.com Today, Corensic announced general availability of Jinx 1.0, a software quality tool for Linux and Windows that will help developers, testers, and IT organizations improve the reliability of their applications when they are running in a multi-core environment. Multi-core processors enjoy significant usage in enterprise desktops and datacenters, and many software developers are only just beginning to realize the full potential of these powerful processors. But developers still find it challenging to build high quality multi-core applications and avoid concurrency bugs. Such bugs are enormously difficult to prevent, and once introduced, even more difficult to find, sometimes taking large development projects weeks and months to discover and resolve. Jinx makes applications "unlucky" by forcing hard-to-find concurrency bugs to occur more frequently and then pointing out the location of the bugs to software developers. With Jinx, organizations can ship software faster and at significantly less cost.<p>Mark Oskin CTO Corensic <comment><USER2> Neat looking product.

Bad website. Just WTF does this product do?

This should be in large print on the home page:

"Jinx makes your code 'unlucky' by forcing hard-to-find concurrency bugs to occur with more frequency while you are debugging."</comment>


The Great Puri.sm Outage of 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/the-great-purism-dns-outage-of-2018/ <comment><USER2> this is some serious amateur-hour stuff on the part of the registrar. another example of why not to use random ccTLD top level domains. nobody remember when the .ly registry randomly canceled things they didn't like? when .cx canceled things they found objectionable?

see also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838670)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12813065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12813065)

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_tra...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_transition_cockup/)

At least if you use .ca, .de, .us or .com/.net (or similar) you can have reasonable confidence that the root zone won't fail entirely.

If something goes catastrophically wrong and kills your business that is run by a .CA domain, CIRA knows that businesses in Canada have access to legal recourses... Do you have the same with a .ly domain?

<comment><USER3> This case appears to be the registrar's fault, not the top level domain's fault. Unless 1and1 uses a "sub" registrar for .sm domains (which is actually quite likely) then I would say the moral of the story here is to not use shitty 1$ domain registrars who if I remember correctly have very bad support reviews.

<comment><USER4> Suspending all of a registrar's domains when they're behind on fees is also super weird, though. A more typical approach would be to just stop letting them perform new billable actions.

<comment><USER2> Suspending all of a registrar's domains when they're behind on fees is exactly the sort of thing that I expect ignorant bureaucrats at a small country ccTLD registry to do. It's probably run by some person in San Marino who has never seen the CLI of a router in their life. A number of small ccTLD are run by their host country's "ministry of communications" or local equivalent.

<comment><USER5> I struggle to see why this is problematic, to be honest. They (the registrar, not puri.sm) didn't pay their bills, so they get turned off. The story doesn't relay to what extent the registrar received reasonable and timely warnings about this, although with a bit of guesswork, it doesn't feel absurd that perhaps they simply failed to act on such warnings, like, at all.

If a SaaS doesn't pay their AWS bills, they get turned off, it's not on AWS to keep the SaaS' customers running, and if AWS doesn't pay their electricity bill - - etc.

<comment><USER6> The registrar is merely the path to edit registry records; most of the ICANN agreements and registry-registrar agreements are structured to minimize exposure of registrants to bad/failed/incompetent/evil registrars.

There are some registries which don't have registrars, and in that case "suspend the registrant's domain name until paid" would be a reasonable expectation, but it's definitely the expectation of most registrants that their registrar isn't providing availability-critical service, merely facilitating updates. (Unless the registrar is also providing DNS hosting, which is generally a bad idea IMO.)

<comment><USER2> Part of the problem is that icann policies for legacy ccTLD network engineering and backend support systems are very lax compared to the operational and technical requirements for a new gTLD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The surprising omission from this post is that it doesn't conclude with them migrating away from 101domains. Comically bad support and not paying registry fees. I'd have pulled domains the moment it was live again.

<comment><USER8> I've been using 101domains for .ai TLD for about a year now and never had problems. Super responsive customer support too. Sure their admin panel is pretty bad UX but overall it's been a positive experience.

What was your bad experience with 101domains?

<comment><USER9> Parent isn't saying that they had a bad experience, they are saying that purism should switch after their bad experience, which the blog post is about.

<comment><USER8> Oops, totally misunderstood that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Purism makes crapware-free and security-focused phones and laptops. (Dear product blog operators: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16278142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16278142) )

</comment><comment><USER11> And this is why I use gandi.net for all my domain registrations. As their tagline says, "0 bullsh*t". Such has been my experience with them for the last ~20 or so years.

<comment><USER12> 0 Bullshit, except when it isn't. They constantly kept harassing me for information because "ICANN is asking us daily." After being threatened the 7th day in a row, despite providing the same exact information every single god damned day, with the same passport and state identification .. I gave up. That's when I moved to Namecheap, had the glue record problem I mentioned in another comment, moved from them to Google Domains and have been happy since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another trap: Once a registrar didn't send renewal reminders and this way we lost a two-letter domain to a domain grabber. What I have learnt: Set up your own reminders to renew domains.

</comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't surprise me, I used 101domains to register a .io domain and only had issues with them. Their support wasn't useful, and when I eventually decided to move my domain away from them it got to the point where I was concerned they'd hold it hostage, because they would not give me a transfer code. Eventually I got it escalated and moved to another registrar, and because of that experience I'll never use them as a registrar again. This story just re-enforces that.

Props to the purism guys for going so far as to work with the TLD, that's impressive.

</comment><comment><USER15> My favorite part of the story is their sysadmins! Their names are great in this context and make it sound almost like an ancient Greek epic: "Our long- suffering and amazing sysadmins Theodotos and Stelios contacted our puri.sm registrar, 101domain.com, to find out what was going on." You can't go wrong with your two best warriors Theodotos and Stelios at hand!

</comment><comment><USER16> It's pretty early to declare you've already had your greatest outage of 2018 ;-) Hope you aren't jinxing it!

</comment><comment><USER17> Switch to the .com they just registered permanently and 301 redirect their fanciful domain hack registration to never have to deal with such an issue again?

</comment><comment><USER18> Long story short? Don't use shitty registars. And that cute two letter extension? Don't use that either.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know this is not a very constructive comment, but I had a very stressful day, being jacked up on caffeine while also being sleep-deprived.

My brain wanted to read "OutRage" instead of Outage, and I got kind of confused, ending up thinking, "that is not _that_ outrageous! Why do people get upset so easily?"

With that error corrected (what is it called? A "reado"?), the title makes a lot more sense. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER6> I hate people abusing ccTLDs for "cute" domain names. It breaks everything about how they are supposed to be assigned/used.

The biggest assclownery was .ly, IMO -- an islamofascist rogue state (then; now just a generic failed state) being used for various domains.

<comment><USER20> Makes me wonder what kinds of interesting stories bit.ly have collected over the years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr their registrar, 101domains.com, failed to pay their registrar fees to the .sm TLD so all .sm domains registered through them got suspended

dns outages are always a nightmare because of ttls, but bringing a registrar and a nontraditional TLD into the picture meant a much more extended outage.

<comment><USER22> I can't believe that 101domains didn't notice that nobody else's .sm domains were working either. You'd think after around a day they would have noticed some correlation in complaints. Or the .sm specialist would have.

But yeah, don't use unnecessarily cheap infra for really critical stuff. I don't get the fetish around obscure TLDs with web pages straight out of 1995.

[http://nic.com.ai](http://nic.com.ai)

<comment><USER23> I'm gonna wager that .sm isn't too active with the registrar, and most of the sites are of a relatively low-traffic nature.

If someone from the registrar starts checking the overall health of the TLD, or any domain they weren't directly responsible for, it may have seemed that "everything was ok" even though all their customer records were suspended...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How did it happen that the early internet development community agreed to hand over the governance and registration of a domain name to central authorities like domain name registrars?

What is preventing us from making domain name governance and registration completely decentralized?</comment>


Astronomers to sweep entire sky for signs of extraterrestrial life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/15/astronomers-to-sweep-entire-sky-for-signs-of-extraterrestrial-life <comment><USER2> Stuff like this regulated by the government. Even if they do spot something, we wont be told until several months after.</comment>


What is New York City like right now post-Hurricane Sandy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-is-New-York-City-like-right-now-post-Hurricane-Sandy <comment><USER2> A. Depends on where in NYC you are this very minute. If you're sitting in downtown Manhattan right now you're in a dark room with no power and no net connection — and very little is open. If you're sitting in North Brooklyn like me you've got power, a net connection and not only are the bodegas open but they're fully stocked.</comment>


Rejected by Apple, iPhone developers go underground - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/07/iphone.app.developers/index.html

<comment><USER2> I'm still skeptical about the Cydia Store. I won't spent money on apps that might stop working with any update Apple may release. At least with the App Store I'm reasonably certain my applications will work on a future iPhone.

Also, 3G Unrestrictor has sold 10,000 times for $2 in the Cydia Store when you can get the VoipOver3G app for free? I also don't get why anyone would rather by something from the Cydia store (iWipe) than the App Store (iEraser). My guess would be the last one suffers from bad reviews.

</comment><comment> onreact-com LOL. The ways how you use your phone are illegal? Nope. The way Apple bans legitimate software are illegal. Imagine Microsoft banning some software from usage on your Windows PC.</comment>


Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work - <AUTHOR> http://drop.io/swl/asset/variable-cost-living-sadly-doesn-t-work <comment><USER2> When you read this, keep in mind I work at Airbnb :)

I think this failed because it was so contrived. Here is a more realistic and reproducible example of how my girlfriend is living variably in NYC. She currently has a lease in Brooklyn for about $900 / month but doesn't need to be there all the time. This weekend she will be house-sitting in NJ, next week she is visiting me in SF for a week, and in December she plans to stay with her parents for the holidays.

To continue to have occasional access to her apartment, not screw over her roommates, and make this lifestyle remotely possible, she listed her place on Airbnb.com. She so far has booked about $700 that will go towards October rent. When she needs to be in Brooklyn, she simply marks her dates as unavailable. Her place is still open for December, but has enough interest that she'll be fine.

Using Airbnb absolutely reduces the friction for these short term stays. If a listing is dishonest, we'll drop it like it's hot. If your host bails on you, we'll find you a new place to stay. SO, sam lessin - Despite having a new lease, don't give up on variable cost living! -Chris

<comment><USER3> her roommates are okay with people using a room as a hotel?

<comment><USER2> It's definitely a point of contention, but one that can be solved easily by paying for utilities for a month & buying a 6-pack or two.

<comment><USER4> Maybe with her roommates, but that would never fly with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course it doesn't work.

The time cost of finding a new place every few days must be considerable. You've got no guarantee that demand at certain times wouldn't price you out or that there will be any inventory at all that suits your needs. There are costs associated with moving your stuff and there is an acclimation period while you get settled. I might see this as an experiment to "try" a number of neighborhoods before you settle on a place to live, but it sounds just awful as a long-term method of living (Good choice with the East Village by the way).

Reliability and predictability are two very important considerations when picking a place to live. Throughout time, people have paid a premium for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think part of the problem is that he was attempting to find sublets to fulfill his space needs. This is a pain because each period of stay has to be negotiated, which is time consuming... especially when you are moving around a lot.

What you really need to make this work is a provider of living spaces with set prices and set contracts for set durations. Think extended-stay hotels crossed with a fast food joint. You can walk into any McDonalds in the US and know what will be on the menu, and for roughly what price. Likewise, you need a place that you can walk into with various room options and set prices/terms. I guess you could call them franchise apartment complexes.

Well obviously the closest thing to what I'm describing is a hotel. The problem with hotels is that they are too expensive, and (often) don't offer kitchens or offices.

I'm going to pick $1500 for a reasonable Big City rent amount, which works out to $50 a night. Throw in furniture rental and a maid, and it's probably more like $70 a night. So really, if you could rent a studio apartment as if it were a hotel room for $70 a night, you'd be breaking even but gaining all that flexibility.

Of course, in most places rent is much cheaper, so in Kansas City, for instance, the place would need to be more like $30 a night to make sense.

I wonder if it's economically possible to offer various apartment size places on a per-night basis at those prices. Does the hotel industry just rampantly overcharge, or is this an economic pipe dream?

If you did away with daily maid service (only have maids clean between guests), and things like complimentary laundry service, maybe it would be feasible. Thoughts?

Of course, there are other issues, like carting around your wardrobe. Maybe we can have franchise closet/changing rooms too. It'd be like a PO Box for your clothes.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.yesicanusechopsticks.com/capsule/>

<comment><USER8> That... is ... fascinating! And fascinatingly practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought that was a very interesting experiment, but I thought of it more of a proof of concept rather than a "I wish this could work for everyone".

The thing that will ultimately make something like this impractical is the emotional attachment to the places that we live. It's likely the same reason that you wouldn't want to live in hotels year round... at least not for your whole life (if you're a contractor you might have some experience with this). People, unlike data, like to decorate, have things set up a certain way, and have a place they call home.

While it's interesting to imagine a world where people only used what they needed when they needed it, we can see some of that today. That's why people will rent a pickup truck for a day while they're moving, or pay to go to a public pool. They don't need to own a pool or a truck year-round, just for a bit of time, which is a little like utilizing server resources.

The part about living in a nice hotel for a day, however, was a good example of something we don't see very often. I guess we really don't have a real- world version of excessive "server load spikes" where you want to live somewhere REALLY nice for a day or two, but analogies can only go so far

<comment><USER10> It depends on your priorities. Many U.S. families move long distances every few years, and many young single people move significantly more often than that. Certain jobs can require someone to move almost daily. Part of it is because people want to, and part of it is because the culture makes it easy by providing technology that enables it. My guess is that the future will probably trend towards even more flexibility in mobility, not less (especially in the U.S.), although there will always be many people who want to settle down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the concept and I'm glad someone managed to try it out. I also immediately thought of Airbnb (good job on ramming your brand into my brain guys!), but there seems to be something missing that even Airbnb doesn't quite cover: standardisation, perhaps?

If you're extending the parallel to cloud storage, sure, you can spin up and spin down as required - but you (generally) stay within the same provider to do so. So you know what your costs are going to be, you know what's available, you trust it to be there when needed, and so on.

When it comes to living, everyone's their own provider. As the OP found out, people have stupid bills; people change their schedules; people can be fundamentally dishonest toward strangers; people aren't a consistent platform. It's peer-to-peer, so it's like - instead of using Amazon to run your website, and spinning up instances, you're relying on Joe Bloggs's spare server space in Watford. What if Joe Bloggs changes his mind?

Would a solution look like a compromise between the standardisation of hotel chains and the flexibility of crowdsourced space? Perhaps. You'd need a trusted third party who could guarantee stuff. Guarantee that the living space is fairly represented and scale costs depending on facilities and features (location being a feature) - just as you pay more for 2 CPUs in the cloud, you pay more for 2 bedrooms on the earth. Guarantee that the overhead costs are totally consistent, broadband, cleaning, etc. Guarantee that if someone changes their mind you still have somewhere to stay the night. And, you know, that's starting to look an awful lot like an aparthotel chain.

I guess the difference is you could have one mega 'cloud' landlord who, instead of building custom aparthotel buildings, leases apartments from private landlords. The cloud-landlord sorts out checkin and checkout cleaning, services, etc; it's kinda a distributed aparthotel. Hell, it's starting to look a lot like the way some universities do accommodation now. Is it a step beyond Airbnb's self-managed approach? Yes. Would it allow variable cost living? Yes. Would it work as a business? Nobody's done it yet, so who knows. I'd guess not, though. Costs and overheads and stuff.

<comment><USER12> What about something straight out of Snow Crash? Take one of those storage space rental places, and rent out something like that on a daily basis. You might have to do some work on getting things like plumbing,etc in there, but it would be cheap space that could be rented quickly and for variable amounts of time.

Of course, it would be relatively low-quality... but in Snow Crash he wasn't living in a 'high-class' neighborhood.

<comment><USER13> I remember reading somewhere that there are hourly hotels in Japan, because of the extreme hours many "salarymen" work. You pay by the hour, just for the time you're there, for a shoebox barely bigger than the bed.

<comment><USER14> I thought the hourly hotels in Japan were "love hotels", due to lack of space available for privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is already variable cost living, its called hotels. They are properly priced for the current market.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like having a place I call "home." I want more than a roof and a bed to sleep in. I want a place that feels like my base and is emotionally comforting.

Also, the pop-up chat thing is amazingly annoying.

<comment><USER16> I was surprised the author didn't mention the (hard to quantify) emotional cost of living out of a suitcase. Bits don't care where they live, people usually do.

<comment><USER17> Some of us grew up like that, and we like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think the metaphor works very well. Cloud hosting is much more like a hotel (or a hostel), since you stay on the same "infrastructure", but you don't have a dedicated physical location. Moving between infrastructure would be a nightmare for computing as well.

<comment><USER19> Rather, cloud hosting is a commodity.

There is much less qualitative differentiation than there is in accommodation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > the fiction around transacting temporary real-estate is just too high

Er, should that be "friction"?

Also, the right-click functionality on that site is infuriating.

<comment><USER21> Variable Cost Living: A Tale of Fiction Due to Friction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion. So the facilities are not there. That doesn't prove anything. One time, there were only mainframes, and "home computers sadly didn't work".

I'd like to see some innovation by architects, for stuffless living. Since almost all of my personal things fit into a computer in the future, living space could be a lot more generic.

<comment><USER23> "Since almost all of my personal things fit into a computer in the future, living space could be a lot more generic."

To me that's a truly dystopian future. I'd rather my skis, surfboard, bike, kites, hiking boots, etc were not virtual.

<comment><USER24> Why do you have to have skis, surfboard, bike and kites just for you all the time? It's not like you can use them all at once, is it?

Maybe I would understand if you used one item per day, but I don't think even that's the case. Probably most of the stuff you mentioned is simply lying around 90% of the time, taking space and amortizing.

<comment><USER25> If you own skis (or any of the other items), you don't just own _some_ skis; you own _those_ skis. They're sized to you, you've used them the last 100 times you went down a mountain, you're accustomed to exactly how they handle, and the left ski boot's padding is a little more spacious because your left foot is a little bigger, and has worn away the padding more.

Yes, you don't use them, but between the custom fitting and the emotional attachment, they aren't fungible anymore. Which is, I suppose, the point of the article: if you declare something to be freely exchangeable, then you can have a much more freewheeling style of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me a bit of this article: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_pr.html>

(not because of the author's experience, but rather a pitfall I can see occurring)

</comment><comment><USER27> I was without a permanent address during the month of June and looked at doing this, but the overhead seemed way too much. Places were getting taken before I could snatch them up for short term stays, and even then most people wanted months.

If you _do_ need to do this, the YMCA has a number of locations with not- terrible prices. I ended up staying with friends, thankfully.

</comment><comment><USER28> Another reason moving around a lot is always going to be a painful because your address, you being known to be available at a location, is important for legal and financial purposes for lots of service suppliers. Any kind of ongoing transaction will be made difficult by history of moving around a lot.

<comment><USER13> If you're staying in the same city like he is, all you need is a fixed mailing address. Even moving between cities you can use a mail forwarding service (paying a friend you can trust would probably be better than a commercial service).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> eh? What? I don't get the relationship. When would you need more space and less space?</comment>