Ask HN: Is there any excuse not to know Java? - <AUTHOR>

I have complete buy-in to the idea that Lisp is an elegant computer language, and general buy-in to the idea that knowing a lot of languages from a lot of paradigms is good for perspective and for problem-solving. As Alan Perlis said, "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." Any programmer can gain new ways of thinking by learning a new language.<p>But asking more for students whom I advise than for myself, is it at all expedient for a young person entering the job market today to be unfamiliar with Java? Java has its own set of trade-offs, but doesn't it continue to be employed in many applications in many industries? <comment><USER2> You're asking (or implying) a lot of different questions here.

Is is expedient for a young person entering the job market to be familiar with Java (I'm changing this to a positive formation becasue negatives are confusing)? Of course. The TIOBE index answers this is two seconds. Java has over 18% market share, the most of any language.

Is there any excuse not to know Java? Of course. You don't care about the 18% of the market that uses Java. I think I could be happy knowing just Python most of the time.

To answer some more implicit questions:

Will learning Java affect the way you think about programming? Java is a great place to learn about unit testing, DI, and design patterns. The value of these is of course up for debate, but knowledge is power, and Java gives you a great chance to get this knowledge. Ultimately, I think it's better if you move on to more expressive languages, but Java is a good platform to learn some stuff on.

Should you know a lot of languages? Yes. While you may not need Java specifically, not knowing _any_ C-like object-oriented language is not only career suicide, it's detrimental to your development as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no reason for not knowing something. That being said, knowing Java at this point might be advantageous in many respects because of the mature state of third party libraries available to support all aspects (development, testing, deployment) of any kind of work you are into.

If you are a good programmer without a job, it will definitely help you as there are plenty of Java jobs available in the market now.

I have personally come across a couple of startups, started by smart engineers from MIT/Stanford, which suffered because they found excuses not to do their work in Java and do it in Ruby/PHP. One of them ended up rewriting everything in Java (which made their initial 6 months of development a throwaway) and sadly, another one got stalled. Am not implying that its better than other languages as each language has its own pros and cons. However, you will not know if it can serve your specific purpose better because you don't know what you don't know.

<comment><USER4> Well, there is opportunity cost. Could the time and effort spent on Java be better spent elsewhere?

It may be because I'm still feeling the glow Java had when I learnt it in the late 1990's, but I really like a lot of things about it. It's a very simple, safe and easy to use language, it's C++ without the broken glass, it's C with automatic memory allocation, bounds checking and a nicer package/interface system. API's are separated and enforced. It used to be bemoaned as slow ("knock knock" "who's there" "................java"), and now it's seen as fast. That's pretty cool (it's partly because it's _relatively_ faster than python... but it also has been made actually faster).

Many early adopters left it for python/ruby a few years ago when the small language that Java was became uglier with extensions, esp generics and annotations. Perhaps an important reason people left is _because_ it became successful, and it became associated with unpleasant mindless corporate programming.

If you care at all about what qualities a language needs to have in order to be wildly _adopted_ , Java has something to teach. Some people say it was just Sun's marketing... but Sun marketed it as a web language (applets), and it never took off there.

<comment><USER5> _Well, there is opportunity cost_

That's the succinct version of my first thought: "Because one was too busy making something instead of learning languages for their own sake."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The wording of this question (as summarized in the headline) suggests professional negligence on my part for not having spent a year, five, or ten learning Java. I'd like to respectfully disagree.

Ruby is my primary programming language, but I've also built apps and scripts in Python, C, C++, Objective-C, PHP, and Scala.

I'm a firm believer that exposure to a wide variety of programming languages is a great way to experience new constructs, paradigms, and approaches to computer programming, which is why I've spent the past few years branching out. During this process, I've worked with a few languages built atop the JVM (Scala and JRuby), and thus learned a bit of Java, basic language structure / primitives, and some underpinnings of the JVM. I believe that making an effort to understand and employ these various platforms has helped me to become a better programmer.

It sounds as if you're coming from the perspective of an academic advisor. This surprises me, as your question is primarily career-focused. Had Java been forced on me in University, I would have left disappointed by my education and mentally prepared for five years as a junior developer in a cube farm working on obscure, broken internal HR software. Instead, exposure to this variety of languages, architectures, and concomitant development methodologies has taught me a lot about programming / software engineering, and opened my eyes to careers I might not have imagined otherwise.

Circling back to the original question, I can tell you that I live a happy, productive, fulfilling life as a software developer at a great company doing what I love without "knowing Java."

<comment><AUTHOR> _It sounds as if you're coming from the perspective of an academic advisor._

Yes, and I appreciate your response and the diversity of responses here. The only programming language I formally studied, a good long while ago, was BASIC, and I'm still wrapping my mind around what personal productivity problems I could solve by programming (as contrasted with being a power user of other programmers' software products). I do have occasion to talk to young people about career planning and academic goals through my math-coaching nonprofit organization, my new occupation, and through a statewide parent organization about education of able learners. My involvement with people in the next generation is what prompted the question.

Would it be fair to sum up the joint agreement of everyone here that one should always be eager to learn that which might bring about greater personal happiness and career development, without being squeezed into a mold by arbitrary requirements of an educational program?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought this little corner of the web was about startups, not how to get industry jobs.

If you want to be big and lethargic. If you want to write twice as much code to get the job done then go ahead and use java or C#.

<comment><USER3> Its a misconception to think startups don't use Java or C#. I did a search on startuply (YC funded site for startup jobs) for some of the programming languages I know to get an idea of how many openings exist in startups and the results are below. Guess which language has most openings in startups ..

Python: 167 C#: 87 Ruby: 187 Java: 601 PHP: 318 Erlang: 14 Clojure: 3 LISP: 7 Perl: 100

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is a strong statement, and not true for everyone, so I would vote for it not being necessary to know Java.

Until about 3 years ago, I used Common Lisp and Java each roughly 40% in my work (I still think that if you search for "Java consultant" I am the number 1 Google hit :-)

However, after I started using Ruby, I have transitioned to using Ruby for most of my work.

Ruby is great because it provides most of the advantages of Lisp except for the fantastic run time performance (natively compiled Common Lisp is fast!). However, for many (at least web) applications, bottlenecks tend to be stuff like session handling across multiple servers, database access, dealing with network partitioning and server failure, etc.

One problem with Lisp is the lack of a super rich ecology of libraries. Lots of great stuff is available for Lisp, but still weak compared to Ruby, Java, Python, etc. I'm rewriting a customers app right now because we learned what we needed to learn with a small Common Lisp prototype, and are now doing a hopefully final Ruby + Rails rich UI web portal (it is so much easier to write a rich web UI in Rails that in Lisp-based alternatives).

I would advise concentrating on one language and platform, and only spend perhaps 5 to 10 hours a week (an evening and some weekend time) learning new languages and frameworks.

BTW, feel free to substitute Python for Ruby, in my advice to your students - pick a primary language based on which you enjoy using the most. Also, Java as your primary language is fine also, if that suits you.

</comment><comment><USER9> I "know" Java because I had to do many undergrad projects in it, but I don't advertise the fact that I know Java at all because I actively do not want to work with it. It is a language designed for incompetent replaceable programmers, and I find working with it sort of insulting in a way, and just not enjoyable in general.

Depends on your (or your student's) approach to employment, really. If you want any programming job at any cost, of course you should know Java. There are lots of Java jobs, though the flip-side to that is that the market for Java programmers is extremely flooded.

On the other hand, if you're more worried about actually finding "interesting" work, pitching yourself as a Java programmer might help more than hurt. I would personally rather stack boxes or something along those lines than work on some kind of enterprise payroll nightmare in Java. Some would not. As always, it depends.

That said, Java is pretty simplistic if you're familiar with any even vaguely similar language (which you certainly should be, since the overwhelming majority of code out there is written in them). There's really very little to "learn" anyway...

</comment><comment><USER10> It only makes sense to know Java specifically if you have some use for it. The limited Java I know is only because I do some work with JVM languages and it becomes a hindrance to not know any. Otherwise, I could have gotten by just fine without knowing it at all.

I think it might be better generalized as knowing some object-oriented C-like language (C++, Java, C#).

</comment><comment><USER11> Why should someone have to know Java?

I know Java because it was the language of choice for my undergraduate software engineering lab (6.170), but I specifically do not take Java work because I've found other languages I enjoy more. One of the joys of being a professional engineer is the freedom to choose your tools.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's knowing Java as in having a grasp on the language syntax itself and some parts of it's standard libraries (and of course OOP, as I think most would agree it's a sine qua non for a programmer nowadays), and then there's knowing Java as in JEE and the miriad of associated apis, frameworks and tools. While I (as an employer) am not interested in the later, I would pretty much expect any decent programmer to be familiar with Java at least on some basic level.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't think of any valid excuse. Quite a few very good open source projects are in java and it will be highly beneficial if you know Java to use the code for your own purposes. Also I believe Java is one of the heavily used language in the industry currently if not THE most used. And it is also a well designed object oriented language (so I find no harm in learning it). It is also a good entry into the Java platform/ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd say .NET is more valuable than Java if you're looking for an 'industry' job.

But at the very least you should have some familiarity with C.

</comment><comment><USER15> You are so right about the 'can gain new ways of thinking by learning a new language.'

I took an APL course once. I SWEAR I could feel myself growing new brain wiring...

</comment><comment><USER15> 'I know Ruby'

That's a good excuse.</comment>


Program Development by Stepwise Refinement (1971) - <AUTHOR> http://sunnyday.mit.edu/16.355/wirth-refinement.html <comment><USER2> This is similar to program development using the B method, which is used for some safety-critical systems: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-Method)

There the idea is also to start from a general specification and an abstract program (not executable) that is refined stepwise into a final, executable program. At each stage you prove formally (using automated provers and a proof assistant) that the current program is indeed a refinement of the previous, more abstract one.

From what I can tell, this would be a good way to develop many things, though the B method itself is hampered by terrible notation and a lack of availability of good toolchains.</comment>


Ask HN: Should developers maintains Open Source projects for free? - <AUTHOR> I think it's a very bad idea or at least those projects should not be business friendly ?
I created and maintained an open source project for more than seven years. Used by a lot of companies (big names Oracle/IBM/SAP/VMWare ). Even if it was a really fun and I learned a lot with this project
I will never do it again and I encourage people I know to stop contributing to Open Source unless it's part of their day job.
You can of course have little toy projects and learning experiments but should not work on open source project unless you have a clear idea on how to make money from it. If you feel like you want to do charity, there are other people worthy (than big corporations).
What do you think ? <comment><USER2> I am a freelance web developer working mostly as a frontender and in Node.js. I very often sell my clients on the idea that something I develop for them is better as an open source module. I then charge them for that time as if I built it just for them.

I do not consider this unethical as I always tell them up-front that I am doing this, and they are still getting this functionality. Several times I release the module under their name after as well (on Github and/or NPM), depending on their wishes.

As for the big players like Oracle, I am personally not a fan of the organisation but in their defence, they release plenty of open-source projects (Graal comes to mind: [https://github.com/oracle/graal](https://github.com/oracle/graal)). And you know Facebook has a whole ecosystem they maintain in PHP, React, machine learning, etc. Their developers are paid to work on these projects. Google is the same way as far as I know.

So "maintaining for free" might not be completely free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly no problem if paid by someone but should not be unpaid job.

When companies open source stuff are not for the greater good they do it because of economics. Just like in a bar when you get free salty nuts that help you drink more :D</comment></comment>


An Internet-Ready OS From Scratch in a Week – Rump Kernels on Bare Metal - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/an_internet_ready_os_from <comment><USER2> As someone who forcibly steered himself away from the temptation of a toy OS side-project due to the enormous time investment in drivers, syscall handlers, and so on that it would have taken to get working, I can't possibly thank you (or curse you) enough for calling rump kernels to my attention. So instead I offer a minor nitpick:

> If you do the math (and bc did), there are 86400 seconds in a week.

you might want to check bc's math ;)

<comment><USER3> Heh, I suspect "the author" missed a digit when inputting the calculation. bc needs a calculate-what-i-meant mode!

<comment><USER4> "On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -Charles Babbage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see rump make the front page again.

The author's command of the English language easily trumps any deficiencies in multiplication. His little quips crack me up. "All that and a can of paint."

"Rump" is just a cool name in my opinion. I liked rump(3) before I even knew what it did. Naming and coming up with clever acronyms that are not annoying is difficult. Props to the author for that alone.

Whereas something like "Docker" makes me cringe. No matter how good it is. Some of these names people come up with are just terrible.

Anyway, we know that rump can be used for mounting filesystems (e.g., ones containg applications) that reside on USB sticks or other removable media. By using rump_ffs, there is no kernel panic on errors associated with the mounted filesystem. For that one use alone, nevermind its otherwise enormous potential, I'd say rump is worth the rumpification of the NetBSD source tree. It is not easy to crash the netbsd kernel, but filesystem errors are one way to do it, in my experience.

I think the author should have at least one article about rump that uses a certain song title from Exile on Main Street.

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh oh oh oh! This is exactly what I've been looking for! And from what I can see it works on ARM too? Amazing! I've been working on a toy kernel in my spare time to learn bare metal stuff, and this will be perfect to give me a leg-up to doing real work with it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, works on ARM. The only architecture-specific support that a rump kernel _needs_ is cache-coherent memory operations, and those are necessary only if you want to run on a multiprocessor system. So works on anything to which you can compile C code, really (though you might have to toy with some Makefiles a bit for new architectures).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This makes me think of MirageOS but with more drivers and I don't have to learn OCaml.

<comment><USER3> MirageOS, at least from my viewpoint, is trying to figure out what the cloud software stacks of tomorrow should look like. Rump kernels give you production quality building blocks for running existing code today in any environment. I wouldn't compare the two projects too much.

<comment><USER8> I see MirageOS as an OCaml Machine, it doesn't let you develop applications within itself in the way that a Lisp Machine does but maybe that doesn't make sense for OCaml.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You need to expose a hypercall interface for this. Can anyone explain how that would be implemented, and does it restrict the kinds of kernels you can write? e.g. can I create a unikernel or microkernel with this?

<comment><USER3> Unikernel: yes, that's what the article mostly describes.

Microkernel: yes, though strictly speaking you'd use rump kernels for the servers in a microkernel OS. (that was actually the first use case back in 2007)

There are multiple example implementations for the hypercall interface ("rumpuser") at [http://repo.rumpkernel.org/](http://repo.rumpkernel.org/)

You can find full details from [http://book.rumpkernel.org/](http://book.rumpkernel.org/) (it's a bit out of date in describing what has been built using rump kernels, but the parts describing basic functionality are accurate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 503 Service Unavailable... anyone have a copy? It's not on wayback machine yet.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.iki.fi/pooka/private/baremetal/art.html](http://www.iki.fi/pooka/private/baremetal/art.html)

It doesn't contain the pretty css, and I probably fixed a tyop or two when posting, but the content should be 99.9% same.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, much appreciated!</comment></comment></comment>


The Hardest Logic Puzzle: A step-by-step guide to true, false, and random - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/how-to-solve-the-hardest-logic-puzzle-ever <comment><USER2> This is an aside, but somewhat similar in spirit.

In high school, ages ago, I remember discussing the following problem and never being satisfied with the solution. If someone could clarify the exact wording and source of the problem I'd appreciate it.

What I loosely remember is as follows. A teacher tells her students on a Friday that they are to have a test next week. However, she adds, they won't know the day before that they're going to have a test on the following day.

The students, being somewhat savvy, deduce that if it transpires that they don't get tested by the end of the following Thursday then they'd have to be tested on Friday, which would mean that they know this beforehand, so the test cannot possibly be on Friday. And so, inductively, cannot be on Thursday, and so on.

This "logic" is very unsatisfying, so I need to find out what the actual form and solution of the problem is.

This has bugged me for decades.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox)

<comment><USER4> And read this, too: [http://www.ams.org/notices/201011/rtx101101454p.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/201011/rtx101101454p.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Wow Peter, thanks for that. I like their analysis.

It reminded me of a great article I read years ago that dealt with the issue of self-referential paradox. In fact, at the time I tried applying the techniques therein towards the surprise examination, however I didn't get anywhere.

It's a paper by Noson Yanofsky entitled "A Universal Approach to Self- Referential Paradoxes, Incompleteness and Fixed Points" ([http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0305282](http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0305282))

I think you'll enjoy reading it. I read the paper on a long train ride loved working out how given "Ann believes that Bob believes that Ann believes that Bob has a false belief about Ann" asking "does Ann believe that Bob has a false belief about Ann?" results in a paradox. This is supposedly called Brandenburger's Epistemic Paradox.

Anyway, thanks again for your reference.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, downloaded. I have to read the paper I quoted a few more times before I grok it fully. Perhaps it will be clearer after reading the one you cite, which appears most intriguing.

Thanks again!

EDIT: Just started reading. Mind already blown by the clarity of the "limitation, not paradox" idea. Slowing down for a longer, deeper, read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The trick resides in how you can ask questions like "if and only if" which in my opinion are really multiple questions masked as one. For example you can formulate iff as "(not q or p) and (not p or q)" where the "not" refers only to the term directly to its right. This is far from a simple assertion like "is it true that if the earth is round then I am a knight?" because you are also asking "is it true that if I am a knight then the earth is round" and thus get the chance to ask two questions in one.

It's certainly still a tricky puzzle but you would need to understand the rules on what kinds of questions you are allowed to ask before starting

<comment><USER6> Asking compound questions isn't the same as asking multiple questions because you can only ever get one bit of information out of each question.

<comment><USER5> Not exactly because you can combine as many questions as you like and get an answer about whether one of them or all of them is correct, furthermore if you can ask question in first order logic, like "for all x is y true?" as opposed to just "if x then y?" The wording would be come awkward very quickly but you can gain an almost unlimited amount of information from compound questions. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a solution to this problem involving only two questions or even one, though at the moment I don't have the time to work through it so don't take my word for it.

In binary terms, let's say you have one bit, 0 or 1 that represents a single propositional statement, "x or y" or "x and y" but with compound questions you can get as many bits as you want "(x or y) and (x and y) and (p and q)" so you can only ever get the truth value of the entire compound statement but you get far more than a single truth value

<comment><USER6> If you take an information theory point of view, then a single question could provide more than a single bit of information, but it never will on average (for some suitable meaning of "average"). If I'm speaking to 1 of 1024 possible people and I ask "Are this particular woman?" then 1 time out of 1024 I will learn 10 bits of information, but 1023 out of 1024 times I will learn approximately zero bits of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sam Hughes implemented this puzzle in Javascript to demonstrate how the solution works, and why some other proposed ones don't: [http://qntm.org/gods](http://qntm.org/gods)

<comment><USER8> Not impossible but makes it slightly harder to do IFF and "is exactly one of these true"

I had formulated my yes/no questions when I worked through this as "Is exactly one of these true: Ja means yes, X" Which makes Da yes and Ja no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Suppose that you can't remember whether Pluto is a dwarf planet, and you need to find out by asking someone nearby—but you don't know whether that person is a knight or a knave. What's the one yes-no question you can ask to figure out whether Pluto is a dwarf planet?

>"Are you a knight if and only if Pluto is a dwarf planet?"

>If the person's a knight and Pluto is a dwarf planet, then you get the answer "yes," since both statements on each side of if and only if are true, and knights always speak truly.

I don't get how this follows. Surely, the person being a knight or a knave is independent from whether or not Pluto is a dwarf planet so a real knight would say "no" either way since the assumption is bad and a knave would thus say "yes". Thereby, you have not determined whether or not Pluto is a dwarf planet but instead whether the person is a knight or a knave.

Please explain my error.

<comment><USER10> It's easier if you see it as logical operations, rather than language. A iff B has the same meaning as A == B, but with the added twist that !B negates the answer in the example (knaves always lie). So let's take A = Pluto is a dwarf planet; B = you're a knight, then "are you a knight if and only if Pluto is a dwarf planet" has the formula (B && (A == B)) || !(!B && (A == B)), which after a bit of simplifying you can see is the same as A == True || !(A == False), or A == True.

Very often logic formulas, when translated in English, sound absolutely bonkers, not least because the words if, and, or have pretty loose meanings in ordinary language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I heard that Norman Steenrod was pacing back and forth in Fine Hall thinking about this puzzle, until he solved it. This was before it was attributed to Boolos, according to my sources. The author might have been Mark Kac, or it might have been communicated to Steenrod through Mark Kac, I was told.

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought you had to ask exactly one question to each god. This solution uses god B twice.

<comment><USER13> "Each question must be put to exactly one god" means you can't ask one question to all of them and get three answers. One question, one answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article presents a good technique for handling situations, but I can't help but feel the solution breaks a rule. You are supposed to only be able to ask a single question to each god, but a biconditional question is really two different questions. You can see this simply from the structure of the English question (as well as in the conversion to NAND logic):

> "Does 'da' mean 'yes' if _and_ only if you are True _and_ if _and_ only if B > is Random?"

<comment><USER15> While you can construct the answer to "Does 'da' mean 'yes' if and only if you are True?" from "Does 'da' mean 'yes' if you are True" and "Does 'da' mean 'yes' only if you are True", you cannot construct the answers to "Does 'da' mean 'yes' if you are True" and "Does 'da' mean 'yes' only if you are True" from "Does 'da' mean 'yes' if and only if you are True?" alone.

Note, in particular, that at the end of the three questions in the solution you still have no way of discerning whether 'da' does, in fact, mean 'yes'.

<comment><USER14> I'm not arguing that there is a solution that meets all of the constraints of the problem, just that this particular solution does not seem to meet the constraints described.

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry if I was unclear but I did understand that and was responding to that particular notion. I was attempting to demonstrate that the "and" does not imply the question is now two (or more) questions. Perhaps I can be clearer:

My primary point is that there is a difference between asking both the question "A" and the question "B" vs. asking the question "A and B". It is true that I can waste two questions asking both "A" and "B" to obtain the answer to "A and B" so in that sense I can see why one might feel "A and B" is two questions rather than one.

But really, the answer to "A and B" isn't really about the answers to "A" and "B" as much as it is about the _relationship_ between them. If you ask "A and B", an answer of "yes" will tell you they are both true but an answer of "no" will not distinguish between whether A is false or B is false or both.

Alternatively, consider questions "A" and "B" again. A is either true or false. B is also either true or false. You don't know the truth value of either. How many questions does it take to determine the truth value of both questions, assuming A and B are independent and the value of one doesn't influence the value of the other? Well, you could ask "A and B" and if you get "yes" you're done but that rides on you being lucky. In fact, there is no way that you can differentiate all four possibilities with a single yes/no response; you need at least two. This isn't really a _proof_ that "A and B" is a single question, of course, but intuitively if "A and B" were, as you say, "really two different questions" one would expect to be able to construct an "A and B" that does differentiate four different possibilities.

Or, from another angle, per your prior post would you say "are you and the god to your left both not Random?" is actually two different questions? How about (ignoring for the moment that this is an entirely useless question in this puzzle) "are you not Random and the god to your left not Random and the god to your right not Random?" Or "Are none of the three of you Random?" I can see no cause to say "Are none of the three of you Random?" (or, say, "does it rain here every day?") is any more than one question nor any way to differentiate this construct from the version using "and". I also see no reason why asking "are you not Random and is the god to your left not Random?" would be any more or fewer questions than "are you not Random and does 'da' mean 'yes'" or why that would be any different from an "if and only if".

Of course, there is the final, if somewhat less satisfying, point to make: the framing as a "question" is more for convenience and wider understanding but the common intention for puzzles like this (especially with Smullyan credited for the puzzle) is generally for you to choose a predicate and ask a god to evaluate it for you, with the god possibly running the output through a not gate before it gets to you.

<comment><USER14> You make fair points. Our disagreement seems to only be about the interpretation of the rules.

>In fact, there is no way that you can differentiate all four possibilities with a single yes/no response; you need at least two.

This is why I would say that the question is actually two questions. Two separate truth values must first be produced, then combined with some operator to make a third (and possibly combined again) value, which is the answer given by the god.

If a god must parse your question down into individual propositions and then answer them in some order to resolve a larger statement, it might stop after the first proposition. I believe it's a valid interpretation of the rules anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article mentions law of excluded middle which doesn't hold in constructive logic so I wonder what exactly happens in the constructive setting.

<comment><USER15> Well, the part where it directly mentions excluded middle is the part where it cites Boolos commenting on just that.

<comment><USER16> That's not what I mean. What is the analog of the hardest puzzle in the constructive setting.</comment></comment></comment>


Read what Paul Graham's newspaper probably looks like - <AUTHOR> http://presseract.com/hyp_pg This is not affiliated / sponsored by PG or YC.
We are showing off our startup to get feedback.
Startup summary: On Presseract, users create and share their own newspapers. Users can add sources / feeds (via boxes) from other profiles to theirs,  comment / tag their friends on news-worthy items, and share their presence on the web in a unique way: experience other people's internet.
Would love to get some feedback from the HN community. <comment><USER2> Why would he want to read his essays so often? And even if he wanted to read them frequently why would he want them above the fold? Surely he knows where he put them.

<comment><USER3> Very good point! (Disclaimer: Lead Backend developer for Presseract here.) When we set up the page, we couldn't actually know what sources he reads, so it's obviously not totally accurate. We did, however, create a page with an assortment of things we thought he might want to consume, but as that's only half the story with Presseract, we also put some things we thought he would want his fans/followers/readers to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very neat demo. I'd love to see what Paul Graham's newspaper looks like!</comment>


Behind the Scenes of HBO's Silicon Valley: How our startup made a cameo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/media-minded/17f43edf9e9e

<comment><USER2> thats pretty cool. you showed great hustle in making it to the show and loved to read the inside experience of filming and your experience

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. There was a lot more I learned that I chose to leave out, like how weird the people in LA were and how it might have affected the show. Worth another post maybe.

<comment><USER2> would make for an interesting read for sure :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Send.firefox.com has been down for weeks. What are viable alternatives? - <AUTHOR> I liked Firefox send to share files with correspondants who aren't tech savvy and wouldn't know how to use pgp or who would be confused at a zip file asking for a password. Firefox send was great because it also encrypted the files while on their servers and didn't need an account to download.
But it's been down for weeks now.
Any suggestions for a similar tool to replace it? <comment><USER2> I've been using Dropshare for a long time. It just connects to a Digitalocean droplet over SSH and transfers files into a directory. [https://dropshare.app/](https://dropshare.app/)

<comment><USER3> Another vote for Dropshare. You can use a custom domain with Dropbox Spaces too for nice URLs for your uploads. Dropshare can also generate landing pages for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can self-host Web Wormhole

[https://webwormhole.io/](https://webwormhole.io/)

Or use the addons that are available for Firefox and Chrome

</comment><comment><USER5> WeTransfer has been the market leader for years now.

[https://wetransfer.com/](https://wetransfer.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right but they don't encrypt the files, do they? So they have a clear copy of it in their servers, correct?

<comment><USER5> Files are encrypted at rest, but no end to end encryption, you're right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok that's the same as Firefox send then. The server operators can't decrypt the files without the key contained in the url, at which point the file is decrypted and transmitted over https.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Down for weeks? That's pretty crazy. I wonder why.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-suspends-firefox- send-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-suspends-firefox-send-service- while-it-addresses-malware-abuse/) i assume

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> selfhosting? [https://github.com/mozilla/send](https://github.com/mozilla/send)</comment>


President Obama Speaks on the Clean Power Plan - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/live

<comment><USER2> Something that came up in another thread today [1] is the LLNL graphs about how energy is generated and used [2]. From these, it's apparent that _about 2 /3_ of the input energy for electricity generation becomes waste output instead of usable output.

Improving the efficiency of electricity generation _must_ be one of the keys to Clean Energy.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9994294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9994294)

[2][https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2014_United-...](https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2014_United- States_Energy.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Depressed HN - <AUTHOR> I'm fairly new in HN and I have realize that it's fairly common post of people depressed, and even a case where a guy wanted to commit suicid.<p>My question is why are hackers so depressed? I frequent some forums and I've never seen this amount of people seeking this kind of help. Is it because HN is so evolving that it is the first place to come in cases like that? <comment><USER2> From my experience the problem is generally short lived, and manifests around our (meaning my group of friends) mid-20s.

My assertion is the problem stems from hacker types being more introspective (I hesitate to use the word "smarter") than your average person, which leads to the following realisation for most of us: We are not normal enough to enjoy a simple life of working 9-5 and partying on the weekends, but not brilliant or lucky enough to achieve the success we would like to attain.

Realising the above means deciding to "settle" for a life of drudgery or toiling forever with the prospect of ending up like a failed delusional "wannabe". Both thoughts being rather depressing as we essentially struggle with our unfulfilled ambition.

The thing is though, as I'm in my early 30s, now find that my friends have generally found other interests in their life to find pleasure in; rather than just being focused on career or success as a metric.

We find peace in being slightly above average, reaching mid-level management or senior technical positions, and enjoying the stable financial environment we are able to provide our partners/families.

Although the point is a bit after-school-special, but when you stop focusing on what you can/cannot do for yourself but what you can do for others, there can be tremendous fulfilment in that, which alleviates our otherwise depressive tendencies.

<comment><AUTHOR> > We are not normal enough to enjoy a simple life of working 9-5 and partying > on the weekends, but not brilliant or lucky enough to achieve the success we > would like to attain.

It says a lot about what I think sometimes

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > My question is why are hackers so depressed?

Consider the possibility that this conclusion results from a sampling error. Hackers may not experience depression at rates different than the general population. Your observation may depend on the fact that hackers are willing to post about this issue anonymously, where if they had to identify themselves, they wouldn't express the same ideas.

Also, because of their technical knowledge, hackers are more likely to access and use online discussion forums, which may make them seem to have a higher depression rate than people less able and willing to make posts in social media.

So maybe this is a non-issue.

<comment><USER4> Like you, my suspicion is that more intelligent people spend more time introspecting and are more open to seeking out information about mental health. Hence they'd be overrepresented in the statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few guesses: social isolation, physical isolation (spending all your time in the same places, e.g. living alone and only leaving your house to go to work, or working at home), burnout, unemployment, unfulfilling jobs, childhood traumas (e.g. bullying, abuse), worries about the future (fear of ageism in their fields of work, fear of losing touch with technologies or current practices)...

HN's getting more of those posts partly because you can create a throwaway account easily, and also because HNers have been warm and understanding of posters who may be depressed. In other communities there's a greater chance of trolls and griefers replying with personal attacks or suggesting suicide.

<comment><USER6> All true.

I just want to add that even though OP may see it in HN - that doesn't mean we have a higher-than-average depression rate. Every career will have a few depressed people, our community is online a lot though, so it's a natural place to ask for help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Working on a startup isn't always as easy as it seems. You have to put so much time and effort into it, which can burn out/depress people quite a bit. Then, once 'completed', if you find your idea has failed, this can add a lot of additional depression. You can also find yourself having to do all kinds of different tasks which you don't enjoy, which take up more time than you'd want.

Life can be tough, but being in a startup, which should essentially make your dreams 'come true', can be even tougher.

</comment><comment><USER8> Startups are hard.... (Insert your Snow Clone about shopping here)

HN has a lot of Founders_

Often when you talk about founders, you're talking about people who are putting it all on the line. These are people who quit salaried day-jobs with scheduled amounts of vacation days and health care for the unknown. If they fail, not only do they go down, but their family goes down, so the stress is very high. For that reason, I try to do a hello-world type of check with founders at least once a week. Sometimes something as simple as "Hey, are you OK?" can snap people out of an otherwise spiraling-down depression. Sometimes it takes more.

Hackers in general_

It is anecdotal, but smart people in general are depressed. It is also an anecdote shared by many—even the Simpsons made fun of this so there is a common thought in society that smarter people are often more depressed. Hackers typically want to solve problems. Often hackers have a better solution to a problem, but that solution will be ignored by society. That leads to frustration and multiple instances of frustration leads to depression.

</comment><comment><USER9> Because we realize at the end of the day that we spent 8-10 hours a day to get more people to click ads, buy virtual farms, help big financial conglomerates make more money, etc.

And we have little to no control over your circumstances. Starting a startup and getting funding relies on getting the approval of investors. Getting a dream career depends on persuading a few gatekeepers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been here a year and a half or so. I think it is a pretty recent trend that I've only noticed in the past 6 months or so, but I could be wrong.

My hypothesis is that an isolated post or two really resonated with people and received good responses. People then hope that others will respond similarly to their situation.

</comment><comment><USER11> From the book "Learned Optimism": "There is considerable evidence that depressed people, though sadder, are wiser"

HN has a lot of smart people on it. It also highlights very different lives from the average person. Sometimes, HN is not much different from entertainment gossip magazines in that people read them and feel depressed that their lives aren't like famous people. On HN, it's possible that people read stories of "successful" entrepreneurs and get depressed because their lives aren't like that. I say "successful" in quotes because it's very easy to make anyone look successful if you just look at a tiny portion of their life.

Having dealt with this issue as well, I've developed a course that hopefully, helps hackers to deal with these issue. It's available at [https://www.programmingspiritually.com](https://www.programmingspiritually.com) I'm changing it to a freemium model later this week so there's no need to purchase it. If you want to be notified when it's available for free, just email me and I'll let you know.

</comment><comment><USER12> My guess that hacker depression some combination of social isolation and lack of self-esteem.

For an intelligent, logical person, there are few places to turn to. And they can post here anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER13> One point not mentioned is that there are higher rates of ASD among programmers, and that ASD is a risk factor for depression.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Ignorance is bliss". Is this the opposite?

</comment><comment><USER15> I am depressed due to social isolation, which others have mentioned, and constant career struggles. Past attempts to strike out on my own have failed, or just not succeeded enough. Software jobs pay extremely well, but at a cost of having to do someone else's crap work, including having to follow development practices that I'd never endorse myself.

As for the isolation, I'm introverted, mostly involved with a lot of reading, learning, and thinking. I get outside to exercise, but don't have much to talk to others about. I have no interest in the things that occupy the biggest part of shared reality, like sports, popular TV shows, or politics. I've had many girlfriends in the past, but could only get them and keep them by playing up a fake personality that was funny, tough, daring, sociable. It's been my experience that women respond best to a combination of theatrics and measured acquiescence, and that they will give you a lot of feedback on how they want you to be. But as soon as I "be myself" \- they're bored or annoyed and then they're gone.

So, now I spend almost all my time by myself, and that's depressing. I wished I belonged to something. Also, I'm 35 and my life is almost identical to what it was a decade ago, except that my body is older and hurts more, so I always wonder why I don't feel a sense of progress.

<comment><USER16> I don't know if this might work for you, but what has worked for me is playing music; as a form of meditation and especially as a form of social interface. It might be worth a try learning an instrument, then - once you have gained a certain level of capability - joining a band or community music group. Even on days when I feel depressed or not like interacting with others, the social obligations associated with learning songs, rehearsals, gigs etc force me to look 'outside' myself. And I find my introverted personality comes across more as 'interesting' or 'quirky' when set against a creative background. There are many other benefits - learning an instrument is a lifetime discipline, and there are endless depths of musical history and appreciation to investigate. You will also come into contact with a number of interesting and inspiring people. Music is a good counterpoint to and distraction from 'nerd programming life'. If music isn't for you, why not something else creative in the arts arena?

<comment><USER15> This is really good. I actually play piano and guitar. In fact, 15 years ago a lot of my social life was incidental to guitar playing. It hasn't occurred to me to use music this way lately. Thanks for reminding me.

<comment><USER16> I'm happy to hear that. Music has been a constant for me throughout career / software / relationship up and downs. Best of luck moving forwards!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are beginner friendly good open-source projects to contribute to? - <AUTHOR> I'm a relatively junior developer and I'm trying to improve my skills. Ideally I'd want to start contributing to some open source projects for the experience, but it seems really daunting. I'm looking for any projects that have a good beginners guide to contribute, tag their issues by skill level, etc. I'm proficient in JS/node.js and Python, and any suggestions or advice would be really appreciated! <comment><USER2> You can check [https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy](https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy) \- Easy tag

[https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask) \- Beginner friendly tag

I am sure you can find similar projects for js.

You can also check my project [https://github.com/Dineshs91/devlog](https://github.com/Dineshs91/devlog) \- (desktop app using nw.js)

</comment><comment><USER3> Choose a project that you personally use, then fix or improve something that impacts your use case, where the accuracy of the fix can be verified by a test that you can run. Caring about the project is the most important aspect of unpaid open-source contributions, as it will lead to quality work.</comment>


Digg's Problems Are Much Deeper Than Traffic Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-diggs-problems-are-much-deeper-than-traffic-numbers/

<comment><USER2> Much as Reddit now has these impressive numbers, I think they have issues of their own with their new community. Before the Digg fiasco their numbers were lower, but the community felt settled and involved. The surge in numbers eems to be mostly kids, who can be very fickle in their online habits. You don't have to hang around reddit long to see how shallow and repetitive the content has become, which isn't going to keep people around for the long haul.

Mind you, the subreddit system means there are still pockets of worthwhile discussion. Reddit may be very glad of this bedrock community in years to come.</comment>


Writing with Synesthesia, Seeing Colors in Music - <AUTHOR> https://americansongwriter.com/finneas-on-synesthesia/ <comment><USER2> If you look at the bouba/kiki effect[0] almost everybody shares this synesthesia-like shape to sound mapping.

I'm pretty sure that as the concept of synesthesia is more well-know you'll see many more people report it.

Don't have any source for this but I feel like these synesthesia like mappings are pretty fundamental when learning/memorizing. Seems to me like everybody makes these unusual associations that don't seem to follow any obvious logic to memorize things. But not everybody can readily verbalize and describe what they're seeing/feeling.

Say when speaking or listening to Chinese I have a visual sensation representing the tonality. Which to me is pretty obviously an adaptive technique that helped me learn.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if it's synesthesia but music's always had a colour to me. Major and minor scales in the same key tend to have similar colours just with different tones. A tends to be a bright blue while a minor is more of a darker purply blue. G minor's a dark reddy brown. Dminor is a darker forest green while dmajor is a brighter 'happier' green. C major tends to be a bright yellowy colour, c minor more of a darker yellowy green. B minor takes on a darker yellowy green while b major tends to be an orangy yellow. F and f major start moving into shades of light purple.

It's not just notes though but the octave and tone make a difference too. Distorted instruments like electric guitars or that sound they use in edm music tends to be kind of fuzzy, bass notes are full round and heavy, pianos and bells remind me od looking through the colours through a stained glass window or something.

<comment><USER4> Definitely sounds like synesthesia.

<comment><USER5> Definitely looks like synesthesia. FTFY

<comment><USER6> I'd say the line between sights and sounds is pretty blurred here.

But in seriousness I have heard written language described as similar to synesthesia. We associate a sound to graphemes and text. Some people describe reading quietly as hearing sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those interested in these things, here's a music/synesthesia study that I stumbled across last week that sounds pretty cool.

[https://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/...](https://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/euphoria- research-exploring-a-novel-area-of-synaesthesia-through- music\(e0150a9c-0cbf-4756-84d5-2cdbdf122fc2\).html)

> Typically, research has focussed on synaesthetic musicians such as the > composer, Messiaen, who experienced colours when hearing music. This new > inquiry investigates and develops a novel approach:

> Can music be composed to evoke cross-modal sensory experiences such as > taste, touch or smell in a general audience?

> From principles derived from current research, can a methodology be devised > to evoke novel cross-modal sensory experiences through musical composition?

</comment><comment> GuB-42 What is the downside of synesthesia? It is often presented like a superpower with no downside.

As if people with synesthesia have some kind of built-in color coding that allow them to see patterns more easily than anyone else.

But considering that matching patterns is what brains are for, there should be some big evolutionary pressure toward such an ability. If synesthesia for instance is able to help make a difference between an edible and a poisonous plant, make up camouflaged animals or anything like that, it is a direct advantage when it comes to survival.

For that trait not be selected for and be considered a condition, there must be some kind of drawback, but what is that drawback?

<comment><USER4> I think synesthesia wouldn't help much with these examples. Some common types of synesthesia, like graphemes->color or chromesthesia (music in colors) would've been completely useless throughout 99% of human history.

</comment></comment><comment> Abstract-ed Synesthesia with poetry / metaphors. strikes me as a more interesting subject. At what point does a specific sense cross the point of abstraction that is relatable to other senses?

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have Synesthesia? Is it a blessing or a curse?

<comment><USER9> My daughter has synesthesia. She is an adult now but we discovered it when, at about the age of three, when asking her if she knew the meanings of words, she would preface her definitions with, "That's a yellow (or whatever color) word." It led us to realize that, to her, sounds had distinct colors and that she found it hard to believe that was not the case for everyone.

Is it a blessing or a curse? It is hard to say but perhaps a mixture of both.

In the possible blessings column, she is, without a shred of hyperbole, an innately skilled artist and has been since she was old enough to hold a pen. Her works, illustration, paintings and sculpture, flow fully formed without any apparent planning or sketchy second-guessing. It is quite a thing to see but I have no idea whether, or how much, her synesthesia plays in it. Her palettes are incredible.

She is not a musician but finds live music to be so pleasurable that she goes to extremes — such as driving 350 miles round trip on a weeknight after work — to see concerts or live acts, and often four or five nights a week. This is a curse in the regard that it has in the past threatened her financially and I worry about her hearing. The pandemic has curtailed this and she terribly misses the music.

<comment><USER10> The right/left brain idea is usually considered debunked, but it's still observably true as a _metaphor_ , even if it's not literally true in terms of physical brain function.

People with what are labelled strong right-brain skills can often do some or all of those artistic things. It's complementary to having a talent for linear symbolic logic, but operates in a different space.

It can also be learned or at least enhanced. But just like other talents some people are born with exceptional ability while others have to struggle to be mediocre. And skill levels as an adult depend on a supportive and stimulating environment in childhood which brings out the talent, as opposed to leaving it undeveloped.

<comment><USER11> >. It's complementary to having a talent for linear symbolic logic

Interesting. Can you expand on that?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monsanto wins landmark patent case in Supreme Court - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/patented-monsanto-court-patent-210/ <comment><USER2> Once again regarding this story: to understand what's happening here, it's very important that you understand that the farmer didn't just acquire Monsanto seeds, but also _used glyphospate herbicides on the crops_. The point of Monsanto's invention is that it survives Roundup; if you spray Roundup on normal crops, they die.

Most people who see this story play out seem to think that it implies a Monsanto seed could blow onto your field and then get you sued. But of course, if you didn't know you were planting Monsanto seeds, you wouldn't think to try to kill them with Roundup.

<comment><USER3> Since I am not a lawyer and know nothing about patent law, I have no problem with what the farmer did, up until the point I read that he had intentionally signed other agreements with Monsanto, and that, I think, poisons his intentions.

Apart from that, I can revel in my ignorance that tells me that collecting grain from a common silo and spraying it with roundup is not much more a big deal than going to a river and panning for gold, or passing a list through a filter.

Or even was growing yogurt, and intentionally subjecting his cultures to "too cold temps" in order to evolve strains that would grow at lower temps.

<comment><USER4> Look I'm no proponent of Monsanto, but they do have a point here.

Roundup will kill all non-monsanto plants; they change the formula every year to make sure that you have to keep buying seeds. In this case, the farmer grabbed a ton of seeds, sprayed everything with roundup and kept only the seeds which survived; the seeds he knew to be from Monsanto.

I don't like the idea that Monsanto can go to your farm and throw seeds and suddenly you owe them money, but it seems like they might be in the right here. The farmer did go out of his way to pursue survivable seeds without paying Monsanto for the privilege.

This is different from Yogurt where you have some natural selection. He didn't introduce a chemical to the Yogurt with the intention of killing all non- chemically-protected strains.

<comment><USER3> Oh I'm sure I am probably in the legal wrong.

I think that if cable companies broadcast encrypted signals in through my house, I should legally be able to decrypt them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)

I think that if I find a scanner for cell phone conversations and find cell phone conversations that are unencrypted, I should legally be able to listen to them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)

I think that if an Apple employee leaves an iPhone 6 in a bar, I should legally be able to break it apart. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)

It might be ethically wrong for me to do so, but it should be legal for me to do so.

If Monsanto can't keep its products out of a community silo, and Farmer John wants to go fishing for their seeds by spraying them all with a commonly obtained chemical and seeing what survives, I think that should be legal too.

<comment><USER5> _I think that if I find a scanner for cell phone conversations and find cell phone conversations that are unencrypted, I should legally be able to listen to them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)_

No, I don't think that should be legal. Many places have data protection & privacy laws. If you get access to private information, you can't do what you want with it. I'm fine with that being the law and ethics.

<comment><USER3> I think the airwaves are the public's airwaves. If you broadcast unencrypted information through them, Joe Average Public should not get in trouble for listening to them. But I'll go further to. I think my living room is mine. If you send your encrypted information through it, I should be able to listen to it.

I was born. I didn't sign any data protection & privacy law agreement. Things that I can witness and observe in the privacy of my own home should be none of yours or anyone else's business.

If that makes it hard for certain business models, I'm okay with that because the country is intended for the use of its citizens, not its corporations.

<comment><USER5> _I didn't sign any data protection & privacy law agreement._

That is not how laws work. You consent is not required.

(Fun fact: There is some people who think that consent is required (and can be withdrawn) for laws to apply to them. It's called "freemen-on-the-land". It's like homeopathy but for laws. It's quite funny)

<comment><USER3> I think you're missing the point.

Broadcasting your radio signals unencrypted means there is no privacy. Making a law saying that it is private is like making a law the sun should come up at 5am. The sun will do what it wants and the communication will be overheard.

If you broadcast signals that are encrypted, but that I can intercept without any kind of physical tampering or alteration or destruction of the signal, again laws are of no help to anyone. The communication will be decrypted and overheard.

It's better to make laws that conform to reality than to make laws that tilt at windmills and are used arbitrarily against citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although many people hate to see Monsanto win, it seems clear that this case was well considered, and that the license was violated here. No one should be surprised that Monsanto won this one.

However, the passage of the Farmer Assurance Provision aka. "The Monsanto Protection Act" is a much more horrific legislative end-run around the will of the people.

<comment><USER7> _the license was violated here_

I can see this point. Contracts should be honored.

However, the string "patent" occurs _96 times_ in the ruling in question. ("licens" occurs eight times.) It is difficult to credit that this was a case about licenses rather than one about patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that this whole legal struggle would have been unnecessary if Monsanto had not been pressured into abandoning genetic use restriction technology [1], aka "terminator genes".

I am aware though not fully acquainted with the concerns about "food security" in developing nations that led to the moratorium, but at least in developed nations, why favor the legal tactic of signing contracts that forbid replanting over the technological solution? They seem to accomplish the same end, after all. It also seems prudent, from an ecological perspective, to ensure that genetically modified plants cannot accidentally spread into the wild.

I cannot help but suspect at some level that the widespread fear of this technology is the result of successful scaremongering based on its unfortunate moniker ("terminator" or "suicide" seeds); it would be reassuring to learn of better reasons for the ban.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology)

<comment><USER9> It sounds like the primary reason for the ban on this technology is that the green lobby doesn't like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> IANAL but it seems especially bad that the verdict was _unanimous_. I guess it really is time to shutter the USDA, because any pretense that this government supports the farmer, rather than the same corporate interests that all other agencies do, is demolished at this point.

<comment><USER10> Can't farmers still use non-Monsanto seeds like they could 100 years ago? My grandpa's small family farm has been doing just fine without for decades, after all.

I get that we're all supposed to hate Monsanto because they're a corporation (something which they apparently don't have in common with the YC-backed companies), but what's the incentive to develop "superior" seeds if the first farmer who buys them can farm them and resell them at a lower cost until the end of time?

Maybe we need a different type of IP protection for this kind of thing: If you're able to independently reproduce this patented gene on your own then by all means utilize it, otherwise buy from us. But I find it hard to find the farmer wholly sympathetic on this whole thing.

And after all, this decision makes its harder to introduce those supposedly- evil GMOs in our American farms, so this should really be considered a victory, amirite?

<comment><USER7> _Can't farmers still use non-Monsanto seeds like they could 100 years ago?_

Well, they can't buy such seeds at the elevator like they could 100 years ago. And now they can't plant elevator seeds period, without paying the Monsanto tax. (I know that isn't the explicit text of the ruling, but it is certainly its result for the most marketable crops.)

 _My grandpa's small family farm has been doing just fine without for decades, after all._

Yeah I'm sure his unicorn herd is thriving. If you actually have a family connection to agriculture, you know that outside a few sheltered crops like avocados, "family" farming has been steadily supplanted by corporate farming. I'm not against that _per se_ , because competition, but my point was to impeach the oft-repeated lobbyists' saw that USDA is "for the farmers! [and their children!]"

 _what's the incentive to develop "superior" seeds if the first farmer who buys them can farm them and resell them at a lower cost until the end of time?_

Monsanto already make a killing selling Roundup, to which these seeds are a completely complementary good. If Monsanto were good at business rather than evil at business, they would increase the price of Roundup and give the seeds away. (That would still be bad for both the environment and agriculture, but it wouldn't be _as_ bad.)

 _this decision makes its harder to introduce those supposedly-evil GMOs in our American farms_

News flash from the mid-90s: GMO crops are here already, in fact in many areas most farmers use them; that's why you can't avoid them at the elevator.

<comment><USER11> > Monsanto already make a killing selling Roundup,

Your information is extremely dated. The patent for Roundup expired over a decade ago, and in the last 5 years the market has been flooded with cheap chinese made Glyphosate.

<comment><USER12> but isn't the main crux of the case the fact that monsanto changes roundup every year such that only the new strain soybeans is resistent to it?

if roundup was readily copy-able, how could this be possible?

<comment><USER11> Everything you wrote is completely confused. Monsanto doesn't invent a new strain of herbicide resistant crops every year. Roundup doesn't change. It is a trade name for a chemical with an expired patent, and many different companies make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm concerned that one of the only companies working on the efficiency of food production has such bad PR. Is there anyone else inventing innovative crop technologies like Monsanto? For the future of the human species, I hope the anti-corporation types don't gather enough power to drive them into the ground before capable competitors pop up.

<comment><USER13> There are lots of them:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Hi-Bred>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer#Bayer_CropScience>

(Call that a sampling, I didn't try to do an exhaustive search)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think modifying already self-replicating seeds should give you a right to dictate what happens with subsequent generations of those seeds. Any such agreements should be rendered invalid (like non-compete agreements in California).

I realize this is an issue with the laws themselves and probably not within the purview of the Supreme Court, but I was kind of hoping they'd step in and end the madness.

</comment><comment><USER7> More background on Monsanto:

[http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805)

Those who concentrate on questions of narrow legality with respect to this organization are missing the forest for the trees. We have observed this system long enough to know what it does. The reason this system employs an army of lawyers and private investigators against the town of Pilot Grove (literally, the henchmen outnumber the population of the town!) is not because it seeks justice in fair proceedings. They kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys. It doesn't actually matter what a particular farmer has done when the Monsanto Man starts snooping around. The Beast must be fed, and until all American farmland is under the control of a single corporate operator that transfers all profits directly to Monsanto, the Beast will be on the hunt.

</comment><comment><USER15> The most ludicrous part of all of this is that you can patent biology.

<comment><USER16> This isn't _natural_ biology... it's engineered biology. That's a big difference.

<comment><USER15> Then they should engineer it to be seedless too so they don't have this problem. I really can't believe we're living in a society where a corporation can successfully use the courts to make natural reproduction illegal.

<comment><USER16> They didn't make reproduction illegal. They confirmed that Monsanto's patent lets them restrict how you can use the products of reproduction (beans/seed).

These beans wouldn't naturally exist if it weren't for Monsanto. It would be extremely difficult to produce a soy bean that didn't produce seeds... since that's the bean part.

This is very different from the Myriad BRCA1 patent where they patented a naturally occurring mutation in humans. In Monsanto's case, they actually produced something that was novel - an herbicide resistant soy bean.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/08/priceline-com-acquiring-travel-company-kayak-for-1-8b-in-cash-and-stocks/?utm_source=Twitter&awesm=tnw.to_isx7&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus <comment><USER2> Kayak and Hipmunk get a lot of praise for their UI but if you want to use a hacker interface for finding flights, <http://matrix.itasoftware.com/> is the way to go.

It's not as pretty, but is incredibly feature-rich, not limited to the US and regularly finds me prices that are significantly cheaper than anyone else.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried out Google Flights? I've been told it's based on this same technology, and has a much better UI.

And be sure to click around. It has some interesting tools, like prices for flights to your destination flown out of nearby airports.

<comment><USER4> wow google flights is super fast!

<comment><USER5> My guess is that they predict the most common searches and constantly query and cash results for these searches, something I don't think Kayak or hipmunk does. I don't think you can launch a search product on google if it takes more than .xx seconds to return the result...

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure, I looked for a few random flights. However, having built my own very rudimentary internal flight search tool from the global flight list, I can tell you there are roughly 7 million flights per month, a small data set by google standards.

<comment><USER5> It's not the size of the dataset that is relevant but more that this dataset changes in realtime : price + availability. These requests go through GDSs that are relatively slow, that's why so called real-time search engines like kayak are fairly slow. What do you exactly mean by 7M flights? Keep in mind that most search requests involve a combination of flights (leg), outbound, inbound and sometime multiple stops...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relative volatility of KYAK was 3x the normal amount during the day. The news was released after hours. Long live insider trading!

<comment><USER7> Insider trading sends important price signals to the market. The alternative is LESS information.

<comment><USER8> That's completely idiotic, and I hope you feel ashamed of what you wrote.

The problem isn't more or less information, it's that insider trading creates two classes of people: Those select few "in the know" who can reap massive profits by getting an illegal phone call, and the suckers.

<comment><USER9> This ad hominem comment is inappropriate. It is certainly not "completely idiotic". There is a lot of intelligent discussion on the issue in some places. For example: <http://www.fff.org/comment/com0306f.asp> .

<comment><USER10> This is not an "intelligent discussion." Did you read this article? He sets up a straw man by comparing specialized knowledge to facts in his first argument. Everyone can know the odds in Blackjack by card-counting, but no one should know the next card in the deck. This is a better comparison of insider trading because using statistics and predictions of market activities based on 'guesses' is perfectly fair, but actually knowing materially negative news that is confidential puts you at an unfair advantage in a market system. I mean, how far would you take the argument... so can the CEO sell his shares before the news? What about the FDA committee chair? How about if a scientist shorted shares before rendering his judgement that the drug should not be approved?

Insider trading is just another way for the privileged and wealthy to get richer and small investors and pensions to get robbed.

<comment><USER11> You have to ask yourself, what is the point of the market? I'd say to efficiently allocate resources, in order to do that one should be able to use any and all knowledge they have available to them -- it allows the market to find the appropriate price quicker. If small investors and pensions get "robbed" then they'll adapt or leave the market.

<comment><USER12> Or use whatever advantage you can get to dump the shares in the greater fool.

Having an elite crowd with an unfair advantage is going to make it hard to get future IPOs or companies issuing more stock to generate much interest in their offerings.

<comment><USER7> So the market will become more conservative in cases with low transparency? Good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fun fact: Both are located in Norwalk, CT., about a 5-10 minute ride from each other. Priceline is located almost on the Darien border and Kayak is nestled in South Norwalk (SoNo). I gotta believe this proximity lead to board member and executive coziness.

<comment><USER14> I can't escape the feeling that that fun fact is why stories like these have hit the wires:

<http://zlkdocs.com/KYAK-Info-Request-Form-463>

To save you from reading that document, a law firm has decided to 'investigate' whether Kayak's board "breached their fiduciary duties to stockholders by failing to adequately shop the Company before entering into this transaction and whether priceline.com Incorporated is underpaying for Kayak shares, thus unlawfully harming Kayak stockholders."

Another firm has announced it is conducting another investigation ([http://finance.yahoo.com/news/block-leviton-llp- investigates...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/block-leviton-llp-investigates- kayak-222900689.html)). Not sure if it relates to whether or not Kayak adequately shopped around the company....

<comment><USER15> Breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits are very common for all major acquisitions. For the law firm it's high potential reward with relatively little downside. The mere fact of one or two being filed means pretty much nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kayak is great (was?) but Hipmunk is more than up to the task of filling the void if Priceline ruin Kayak.

Congrats to the Kayak folks I guess, when they got into the industry they really raised the bar.

Before Kayak I remember having to use Expedia and Orbitz and just having to accept their crappy UI because there simply were no alternatives.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;...](http://www.google.com/flights/?hl=en&gl=us#search;f=LAX;t=SFO;d=2012-11-22;r=2012-11-28;q=lax+to+sfo)

versus

[http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to- SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16...](http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/LAX-to- SFO#!dates=Nov09,Nov16;kind=flight&locations=LAX,SFO&dates=Nov22,Nov28~tab=1)

I respect what Hipmunk is trying to do, but I really doubt they are filling voids outside of "this" community. I find it much harder to scan, slower to load, and having lower quality tools for finding alternate (or cheaper) fares.

<comment><USER18> I tried the Google tool...

"Sorry, flights from Germany are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from Italy are not currently supported."

"Sorry, flights from United Kingdom are not currently supported."

Wonderful. I can find flights from New York to London, but not vice versa.

<comment><USER17> It's interesting, considering they will provide round-trip flights and list the London to NY flight(s) as a separate item, which would make me think the data is there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't like any of the existing travel sites, so even had to write one for friends and family (we like pick a random place and just go):

<http://www.somewherenice.net/>

This was put together over several weekends, so don't be too harsh on me. :)

<comment><USER20> I'm working on a travel (many)weekend(s) project myself yet to launch, so I won't be too harsh, but... :P I put Warsaw in, and the suggested airports were Okecie (correct) and Babice (it's in Krakow), Modlin was missing. And all the result were in the USA. I like the design theme with all the backgrounds etc. and the logo, cool idea. You should leave some way to contact you with feedback on the page. Keep on, good luck.

<comment><USER19> zalew: airports - the UI lets you add your own. But I will look into Warsaw... I am currently looking at airports within a 50 mile circle, is Modlin farther than that?

About the results: if there's no snow, a ski resort will most likely not be shown to you.

The destinations were hand-picked, e.g. 2012 Best All-terrain, or best night life, or... But the list is growing, we just started to add European locations.

<comment><USER20> <http://goo.gl/maps/hWc9q> Modlin is a recently opened low cost airport, a few months ago. maybe your data source is not current.

oh, hand picked, I get it. I thought they were scrapped but maybe capped for US-only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just 4 months after IPOing and right after reporting record earnings! It looks like they perfectly timed it right at their peak.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hope this doesn't kill the current best UX that hides the junk in this industry.

<comment><USER23> There is always <http://hipmunk.com>, which I think has the best UX of any of them (although maybe it is lacking some features, but none I would use anyhow).

 _Edit: Doh, fixed the link!_

<comment><USER24> I agree their UI is somewhat nicer, but they don't have all the features. In particular they don't have one way.

<comment><USER25> They do, you just leave the return date blank.

<comment><USER26> Not great UX on a site priding themselves on UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pretty tangential, but why is it that none of the flight search engines include Southwest? I realize that Southwest doesn't give their fare info to whoever the other airlines give it to, but what's stopping someone from just scraping southwest.com every hour or so for the current fares? Or even if scraping is against their TOS, couldn't they hire one data entry employee to manually go through and add Southwest's flights every day? Or is it somehow _illegal_ to publish Southwest's prices?

I imagine it would be a big competitive advantage for whichever one did it first - it's pretty annoying how every time I want to search for flights I have to first search on Kayak/Hipmunk/GoogleFlightSearch and then separately go to southwest.com and wade through their slow, awful search interface.

<comment><USER28> Southwest does not believe in distributing their fares through the metasearch or OTA channel. They want to own the customer and make sure there's only one destination to book Southwest fares and that is Southwest.com and it's worked out pretty well for them.

The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise to companies like ITA.

<comment><USER27> > The hard part for scraping is that it's both against their TOS and you > wouldn't be able to have accurate availability and price information through > manual data entry. The nature of how frequent price changes and the number > of possible combinations of fare types/routes/availability is what gave rise > to companies like ITA.

Anecdotally, whenever I've checked Southwest prices multiple days in a row they usually stay the same. So I'd imagine it would still be a valuable enough resource if there were someone who did this manually at the granularity of a day, even if when you clicked through to buy the tickets they occasionally wouldn't match the price the search engine told you. You could even have a "report this price as incorrect" button.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but if you're a website serving millions of customers per day, you need a contractual arrangement to A) have up to the moment pricing, and B) agreement that the airline will honor the prices published on your site.

Because airfare prices follow an upward trend as flight time approaches (although they sometimes taper as the flight date gets really close), you'd inevitably publish prices that are out of date and lower than the actual fare. This is unavoidable because you're relying on scraping, which involves polling, in which there is always a delay due to polling intervals. You'd stand to lose millions of dollars every time a price increase occurred between the time that a customer decides to book a ticket at one price, and the time your polling system picks up the increase.

Circumventing Southwest's desire to avoid this channel is not a good business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone have any idea if Kayak will be integrated into Priceline or if it will remain its own company?

<comment><USER31> It's own company: [http://www.tnooz.com/2012/11/08/news/priceline-buys-kayak- fo...](http://www.tnooz.com/2012/11/08/news/priceline-buys-kayak- for-1-8-billion/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This may not be the place or time to ask this but here goes anyway:

How do the travel indexing sites like Kayak get their data? Surely they don't index or consume APIs from the travel companies individually?

<comment><USER33> A company called ITA, now owned by Google. [http://www.fastcompany.com/1666092/google-acquires- airline-d...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1666092/google-acquires-airline-data- company-ita-get-ready-google-flight-planner)

<comment><USER34> And where does ITA get it's data. I assume there must be a few competing standards, and the airlines use one of them to give their data to ITA. Why can't other companies get the data directly from the airlines?

<comment><USER28> ITA get its data from ATPCO (<http://www.atpco.net/atpco/aboutatp.shtml>) the clearinghouse for flight data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> From the Kayak IPO S-1:

In particular, for the nine months ended September 30, 2010, Expedia and its affiliates, including its Hotels.com and Hotwire subsidiaries, accounted for 25% of our total revenues. Also during this period, Orbitz and its affiliates, including its CheapTickets and ebookers subsidiaries, accounted for 19% of our total revenues.

I guess Priceline wants to get a first shot at all that business, and then to get paid by their competitors for bookings they don't get.

<comment><USER19> I am curious what their contracts with all these parties looked like... Booking providers seem to like exclusivity.

Btw, anyone from Travelocity here? Would love to share some feedback about your platform.

<comment><USER36> Related: Expedia has an API... <http://developer.ean.com/>. Haven't checked it in a while - looks like only hotels are available now (no flights, cars, cruises, etc.)

Of course, not saying that Kayak went through this route - this is just something available to the hoi polloi.

<comment><USER19> I looked at Expedia for somewherenice.net, and didn't choose them for that reason. Needed to be able to package the whole trip, from airfare to lift tickets, so ended up working with Travelocity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In recent times, Kayak has been shifting to push customers directly to airlines and hotels, instead of pushing them through online travel agencies like Priceline.

I suspect this is Priceline admitting that it (and other OTAs) are losing relevance in preference for the meta-search model.

Smart move, and I don't think they're dumb enough to ruin it. Read up on how successful Priceline was with their Booking.com acquisition.

<comment><USER31> Also, I wouldn't be surprised if we see another OTA scoop up Hipmunk soon while it's (relatively) cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sad day today. I hope they don't touch it!

<comment><USER38> You mean by having Captain Kirk do commercials for them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm not remotely worried about priceline ruining kayak.

Kayak was the best interface before hipmunk, and it may (or may not be) the best interface now.

But there will be more improvements in travel buying interfaces... whether those improvements come from kayak or someone else, Kayak's current interface will seem kludgy in a couple years.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's really bad news for Expedia. When you book a hotel room directly on Kayak, over 90% of the bookings go through expedia and hotels is where these travel agencies make most of their money. (Not airfares, they have become a commodity, thanks to Kayak :) )

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this is a great acquisition by Priceline. They are going for market share here to get ahead of Expedia et al.

A big part of their growing business is in Europe via Booking.com, so with Kayak they beef up their market share here in the U.S. in a big way.

</comment><comment><USER41> Since everyone seems to be putting in their 0.02$ on which sites they use for booking, bing.com/travel is also very good. The buy-wait prediction is fantastic.

<comment><USER28> It's good to see people still using Farecast! Most of the original team is now working on other startups including Decide.com, Medify.com, and Room77.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great. Now Kayak will become a hell of a lot more "biased". Priceline does not give nearly as good of results as Kayak.

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone can explain me where they get all the deal ?

</comment><comment><USER44> The title looks like it reads $1.88. I thought they had pulled some legal gimmick to screw them over.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to Kindle Publishing - <AUTHOR> I am looking to self publish an e-book. It's a fiction book. I dislike Amazon's fee structure for Kindle publishing. I wonder if there are any good alternatives. <comment><USER3> I've heard Lulu ([https://lulu.com](https://lulu.com)) mentioned the most as a direct competitor of sorts to Amazon's KDP (with a much wider reach than just KDP) if you still want something of a "real retail" type reach.

Also, I've seen a surprising number of DRM free novels turn to itch.io if you are looking for a "non-traditional" approach, but someone to handle a lot of the "storefront basics" for you. This seems to be an extension of itch.io becoming a major hub for indie TTRPGs, because a indie designer can just throw a simple PDF (and maybe a DOCX or an EPUB) on itch.io as opposed to the effort that DriveThruRPG/RPGNow want in PDF formatting. Then a few TTRPG related novels started using the platform, and like I've said I've seen a surprising set of novels that aren't even directly game related at this point. itch.io's flexibility in what they will publish/host is an interesting strength (though makes it a bit more caveat emptor than a traditional retailer from a consumer side searching for interesting books).

</comment><comment><USER4> The following is the eBook publishing pipework I use.

1\. Smashwords[1]. They've been around for a long while now, and the publishing system isn't as snazzy as KDP. You input a Word file (.doc, not .docx) and - assuming their "meatgrinder" accepts your document's formatting[2] - the site outputs epub, mobi, pdf, rtf and various other minor format versions. The book then gets published on the Smashwords site.

2\. More importantly, Smashwords has a number of partnerships in place - <USER2> ones being Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. This ability to ship directly into Apple Books is the MAJOR reason why I continue to use Smashwords as that's where the majority of my 'sales'[3] happen.

3\. You can then download the epub and mobi files and upload them to the other two mainstream channels as followup actions: KDP for all Amazon/Kindle distribution; and Google Play Books for the all-important distribution across Android devices.

4\. For the cherry on top, I sometimes also offer books in hardcopy. KDP has (I think) processes in place to convert an eBook into a hardcopy book. But mostly I use Lulu[4] because they've been around for a long time, I like their publishing flow, and <insert-vitriolic-anti-kdp-rant-here />!

[1] [https://www.smashwords.com/](https://www.smashwords.com/) \- Smashwords landing page

[2] [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52) \- the Smashwords Style Guide - I guarantee that you come to love-and-hate this book in extreme-yet-equal measures.

[3] [https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11163](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11163) \- I have never knowingly turned down an opportunity to spam the link to one of my books. It's free. Enjoy!

[4] [https://www.lulu.com/](https://www.lulu.com/) \- Lulu.com landing page

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know how do you get into them but some stores actually sell ebooks directly, guessing by your nick here's one from Sweden:

[https://www.bokus.com/e-bocker](https://www.bokus.com/e-bocker)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure if it will work for fiction books, but I have seen people self publish e-books hidden behind a simple Stripe payment. Should be relatively easy to set up as well.

I believe ddevault published his Wayland book this way.

<comment><USER7> [https://Gumroad.com](https://Gumroad.com) is a great way to get something like that up and running quickly, too.

<comment><USER8> I am looking at [https://gumroad.com/features/pricing](https://gumroad.com/features/pricing) -> how is this different from setting up my own shopify website for eBook. I am doing this today with $0.30 + 3% per transaction. Does Gumroad have any exclusivity? I am sure they have a bigger reach than my website and love their business model -- this is very fair. btw, my website is www.thenextinnings.com and the eBook is on sale at $2.99 I have enough details about the book and you can buy if you like the storyline. thanks for the tips!

<comment><USER9> I use leanpub and gumroad for my technical books. Both of them are non- exclusive, you retain the rights and ability to sell anywhere else you like. Leanpub has 20% cut, but that's probably because they allow you to generate the ebook in pdf/epub/mobi formats from their website.

An important feature I like is the ability to update the books (due to s/w versions, typos, adding new content, etc) and notify the users regarding the new version.

Another feature for both sites is that customer can pay _more_ than the price of the product. And that does happen often enough to make it a highlight of using their site. But this may probably apply more for technical books than fiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate Amazon kindle's business model options and ethics - can share how they nudge a creator to choose the 35% royalty (using detailed docs instead of being explicitly) at every screen when you have explicitly indicated your would like 70%. Happy to create a Post if there is interest. Don't see a viable player who gives the same reach though. I am interested in the responses

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do share your post. Any experience good or bad is welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> hi @ystad, looks like u have researched this topic quite a bit, can you please look at www.thenextinnings.com and suggest if there are alternatives to sell it? I have priced it at $2.99 for 53K words to ensure it has a broader reach. I also used paid contractors (artists, copyline editor, marketing etc) from all around the world. Any suggestions are appreciated!</comment>