Snowden's First Move Against the NSA Was a Party in Hawaii - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/05/snowden-cryptoparty <comment><USER2> This article keeps saying in many words that the NSA would put Snowden on a boat to gitmo if they found out he hosted a CryptoParty.

I don't see why, given that educating the US public about security best practices perfectly aligns with their mission. Back in 2001 they even released the first version of SELinux:

[http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2001/se- linux.shtm...](http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2001/se-linux.shtml)

It is only in the post 9/11 world that we somehow believe a CryptoParty is to the NSA what the tea party was to the british.

<comment><USER3> "This article keeps saying in many words that the NSA would put Snowden on a boat to gitmo if they found out he hosted a CryptoParty."

No, the actual words are just "That was a huge risk for him to teach a crypto party while he was working for the NSA." It was a risk for him, the kind of like organizing "don't drink sugar water" event while working for Coca Cola which has effectively its own police, and that at the time the employee already downloaded the secrets from the Coca Cola's secure network and he even contacted some journalists to give them those.

<comment><USER4> > Coca Cola which has effectively its own police

Link with more info?

<comment><USER3> I'm not claiming that Coca Cola has its own police but suggesting to imagine a hypothetical Coca Cola which has police at their command, and a hypothetical employee working for a such company, who just took secret documents, contacted a journalist, then making a "let's not drink sugar water" event, and then to try to imagine if his behavior could trigger such police to investigate him more and maybe in the process discover what he did. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

Snowden organized a "let's use Tor" event after he apparently already downloaded some secret documents and contacted a journalist. And the top commenter disputes the claim "That was a huge risk for him to teach a crypto party while he was working for the NSA" falsely claiming that the article "keeps saying in many words that the NSA would put Snowden on a boat to gitmo if they found out he hosted a CryptoParty." It doesn't. But I also claim that it was a potential risk for him as there was some chance that somebody in charge for security starts to investigate what he does or already did.

And if I understood other sources, at that time Snowden actually worked for a private company (Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.)

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230462680...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579363651571199832)

which had the contracts with NSA. Still, apparently exactly working in that company gave him access to the secret documents he wanted to take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be sure to check out this comment explaining the name of Snowden's email address: [http://www.wired.com/2014/05/snowden- cryptoparty#comment-139...](http://www.wired.com/2014/05/snowden- cryptoparty#comment-1397370989)

</comment><comment><USER6> Regardless of all the controversy, I see this man as a hero and I hope history gives him the recognition he deserves.

<comment><USER7> It's obvious that Edward Snowden was upset with mass surveillance for quite sometime and did a lot of preparation before taking the final leap to disclose the truth.

He is a hero and has brought out a (long due and) renewed interest in privacy and security. We'll all be the better for it in the coming years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love the last sentence of the article, quoting Wolf: "What a fucking legend."

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER9> > A recent Wall Street Journal column argues that Snowden might have been > working for the Russians and Chinese at the same time.

This sounds straight out of The Onion. "Controversial figure found to be working for the Chinese, the Russians, Al-Qaeda, the KKK and Nazi Germany at the same time"

<comment><USER10> There has not been a single shred of evidence about this claim which is an attempt to discredit his motives.

Here is the article mentioning this claim: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1cwq_2e...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1cwq_2eYAWwJ:online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304831304579542402390653932+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER11> And if there was such evidence that came to light, would you believe it? Would it change your opinion of Snowden?

<comment><USER12> Didn't he provide classified documents to the South China Morning Post? Certainly a clever way to create plausible deniability, but anyone with Google would be able to see how closely related that paper is to Beijing[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post#Alleg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post#Alleged_pro- Beijing_bias_and_censorship)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cynically perhaps I'd imagine that increasing number of tor users for his node would be a great benefit if he wanted to reduce the possibility that his own traffic could be easily tracked. If you're the only user of a Tor node I'd imagine it's far easier to track traffic and potentially deanonymise if not decrypt some communications.

<comment><USER14> This was my first thought as well. And specifically if anything he was doing got flagged the crypto party would be an excellent cover for why he was using Tor and TrueCrypt to send things to random people

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > He was leading a local "Crypto Party," teaching less than two dozen Hawaii > residents how to encrypt their hard drives and use the internet anonymously.

I found this quite interesting. I wonder how many more of these events are happening around the world. They could teach how to use truecrypt, how to turn on two factor authentication for the popular services that use it and what it is, good password policies, and what https means for browsing the internet securely.

Edit: I found this: [https://www.cryptoparty.in/](https://www.cryptoparty.in/)

<comment><USER16> Yup, quite a few of them are happening around the world - the overall 'movement' is / can be called the 'cryptoparty movement' (if one could say it was indeed a 'movement'). We did our own event in our local town ([http://cryptoparty.lt/](http://cryptoparty.lt/)) (well, "i participated in one" is more like it), and hopefully we'll pick it up and do it again.

There's always this delicate thing of having a balance between being interesting to local hackers, vs. being understandable by laypeople. We veered towards the former, and it was great fun, but it would be very beneficial to try and be more welcoming towards the general crowd, too. It's not always easy when introducing complex technologies - I try to avoid using leaky metaphors, but sometimes that's not possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tl;dr not just a party but a crypto party.

What a link bait title :(

</comment><comment><USER18> So Snowden is basically Marcus Yallow from "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. Great book even if it is young adult sci-fi.

<comment><USER19> Does Marcus end up Putin's lapdog against the West? As good as his disclosures are, fleeing to a state with much worse human rights records and pretty much a one-party klepocracy obsessed with annexing territories and controlling its neighbors isn't how most good stories end.

Why isn't he railing against Russia's SORM-1, SORM-2, and SORM-3? My concern here is that his disclosures won't change business as usual and will provide political cover for nations with just as bad, if not worse, human rights violations because the US's critics can just point to Snowden and deflect the conversation, which is EXACTLY what's happening now.

<comment><USER20> depending on what you believed he either ended up there as a result of having his passport revoked en route to ecuador (his story) or that was a ruse and he intended to stay in russia because it was the only state that could and would stand up to US pressure to extradite him (assange's claim); neither of these interpretations lend any credence to the idea that snowden condones the russian regime's policies. he has openly criticized putin's pre-scripted response to his question regarding russian state surveillance.

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladimi...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/vladimir- putin-surveillance-us-leaders-snowden/print)

<comment><USER21> For one thing, he was _studying_ Russia in Geneva. With British help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's nothing as absolute privacy on the internet. Even Tor cannot keep you truly anonymous ([http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/34294/tor-is- not-a...](http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/34294/tor-is-not-as-safe- as-you-may-think/))

However, perhaps Snowden's biggest achievement is to bring security to the forefront of everything and create a wave of new half-baked "security" products which want to ride the wave.

The notion of security is relative and the weakest link is always us. A small overlook or an error is all it takes...

<comment><USER23> This is very true. But all that needs to happen is a non-trivial amount of people making the bastards work for it, in order to make the kind of at-scale mass monitoring the NSA and friends are doing become prohibitively expensive. And oh yeah, as a bonus, it makes you a less attractive target to your everyday script kiddie.

That means truecrypt all the drives, https all the websites, pgp all the emails.

In short, If you have an option between a secure and nonsecure (but slightly more difficult) way of doing something, always pick the secure one.

<comment><USER24> Did Snowden, as a user of Tor, benefit from having more nodes in Hawaii at the time?

<comment><USER23> Considering it's a stated goal of the NSA to break Tor, having more "friendly" nodes in any location would be a benefit for all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> so it all started at the Box Jelly co-working space :)

<comment><USER26> I just checked through my email to see if I could find the thread on this from the HiCapacity email list and I couldn't find it. I vaguely remember talk about a crypto party, but there's nothing in my email from that time frame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> He was running one of the largest Tor exit nodes at 2Gbps. Meanwhile the NSA was reading everyone's Facebook posts.

The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

<comment><USER19> Except prior to his whistleblowing he was the NSA and helped enable that kind of data collection. It always seemed odd that defectors suddenly get absolved of their crimes. If the NSA, as an organization, is guilty of felonies, then their employees must face time, including Snowden. That's justice right? Or does the "I was just following orders/paycheck" defense suddenly work as well?

Serious question, if we do round-up the NSA, who gets in trouble and who doesn't? Just the leaders? Are we also absolving Congress and POTUS? Please explain.

<comment><USER28> Make up your mind bro. Is it bad that he sysadminned for the bastards, or is it bad that he stopped? It can't be both.

I'm all for voting out current office-holders, but in their defense: the NSA not only lied to Congress, but spied on Congress so they could see how well their lies were playing.</comment></comment></comment>


My weekend design project: A simple online resume - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/msencenb/Online_Resume_Template

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I originally did this weekend project to try to start brushing up on my design skills. Anyways it got rejected from ThemeForest so I thought I would open source it for anyone to use if they want / contribute to making it better. Let me know any feedback you have :)

<comment><USER2> Is there a demo to see the finished resume online?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure

<http://www.sencedev.com/onlineresume/index.html></comment></comment></comment>


Emojis in Email Subject Lines: Advantage or Impediment? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/emojis-email/ <comment><AUTHOR> Summary:

Our research shows that emojis in subject lines increase negative sentiment toward an email and do not increase the likelihood of an email being opened.

<comment><USER2> Definitely true for me, anecdotally</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any research on 25+h days effects on health? - <AUTHOR> I believe many people in the startup world would be interested in this question.
What happens to your body, when you sleep 7-8h, but you extend the period of time you are awake?
I, personally, can't sleep longer than 10h, no matter how long I was awake before that. Lately, I've been experimenting with my schedule (out of necessity to meet certain deadlines, mostly) and I found that I feel relatively OK, when sleeping regular 7-8h and working longer hours, ultimately going over 24h per sleep-awake cycle.
Obviously never getting your sleep at a certain time of the day (every day you move the time you go to bed with the number of hours you extend your day with) has an effect of the quality of your sleep and ultimately you get less sleep.
So, is there any research that you know of, comparing these 2 different types of sleep deprivation:

  - sleeping less but keeping the 24h cycle duration;
  - sleeping regular amount of hours per cycle, but extending the cycle (through your awake time) to over 24h.
 <comment><USER2> Pretty sure that would count as habitual sleep deprivation, and thus you'd incur brain damage on a regular basis. Plus your productivity will go straight into the dumpster after about a week or two.

As someone who's no stranger to sleep dep, I strongly advise you to avoid that course of action.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is how you deal with having lots of work, you might want to instead quit your job, or better yet re-negotiate your terms of employment

Sleep deprivation destroys your productivity. It's equivalent to being drunk. E.g. "Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14 consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks." ([https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/26/2/117/2709164](https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/26/2/117/2709164)).

The idea that "oh I can just can stay awake longer" _might_ have merit. I doubt it. But the whole premise is flawed, even if it is workable.

The premise is that working longer is better. It's not. Productivity is about achieving your goals with minimal wasted effort. If you're spending your time thinking about "how can I have more hours to work" you're not thinking about the important thing: "what work am I doing that is unnecessary."

You can get order of magnitude reduction in effort by having the right idea, or the right shortcut, or the right set of priorities. Staying awake more might give you 25% more hours at the cost of massive cognitive deficit, and a completely broken set of priorities.

More on productivity and sleep:

\- Productivity: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/)

\- Why your startup has you working long hours: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want- lon...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want-long-hours/)

\- References to research on long working hours and sleep deprivation: [http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons](http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons)

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed.

Yet (to continue with the metaphors) telling someone dying of thirst "You should've packed more water." isn't immediately helpful.

Please assume (and that is addressed to everyone who would like to comment) there is no other way, you are in that spot and you need to get that work done. That's what my question is about.

And BTW, I can't speak for other people, but in my case being in these situations where I have more work than I can complete within regular working schedule, is more often caused by me loving my job too much, then me, being forced to work longer hours.

Thanks for the links, will check those out.

<comment><USER3> If you love your job then _work sane hours_. You'll do better at your job. Really.

There is almost always another way. By starting with assumption there isn't you're dramatically reducing the changes of finding it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terry A. Davis of TempleOS fame has been dong something similar: awake for 32 hours, then sleep 16 hours. Judge the effects on his sanity yourself.

<comment><USER5> Some context from Wikipedia:

"Development for TempleOS began in 2003 after Davis suffered from a series of manic episodes that left him briefly hospitalized for mental health issues.[1][4] Davis is a former atheist who proclaims that he has had "communications" with God, and that God told him the operating system he built was for God's third temple."

There's a lot to be said for getting a solid eight hours in every night.</comment></comment>


Startup Equity For Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.payne.org/index.php/Startup_Equity_For_Employees <comment><USER2> By my experience (I've gotten job offers from a few startups), most startups (especially after their series A) offer employees (at least engineers) a miniscule amount of equity (a small fraction of a percent). Even if these companies would have great exits (tens of millions), their engineers would hardly get enough for a down payment on a house in the Bay Area.

Summary: don't expect the equity you get from working at a startup (unless you're a VP or an executive) to be worth much. Google-like events where many employees got rich are few and far between. If you do work for an existing company, I suggest looking at salary more than equity as a means of making money. The difference between making 120k vs 80k over 4 years is 160k -- more than you're likely to get from options, and less risky.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very good article, but it's incorrect in some areas.

 _"Companies raise money by selling new stock after the board of directors authorizes the sale to investors. Those new shares are created out of thin air by the company, and will dilute all of the current stockholders."_

These shares are not created out of "thin air" as the article states. When a corporation is formed, it requests and is granted a certain number of shares by the state in which it is created. These are the _authorized_ shares. At this point, the company may sell shares from their authorized pool of shares. The shares that are sold to raise money are called the _issued_ shares.

This is the point of error. The shares are not created out of thin air, but are rather moved from the authorized shares to the issued shares pool.

Additionally, the company may decide to buyback some of their shares from the people who they sold the shares to. Shares that are repurchased are called _treasury_ stock. The shares that are not repurchased are considered _outstanding_. Only the issued and outstanding shares have any voice in the company. Authorized and treasury shares can not vote.

To recap, here is a quick diagram:

Authorized

|-Issued

|-- _Outstanding_

|--Treasury

Outstanding is highlighted because that is the only category that has an influence on voting and percentage of ownership. For most young companies, you won't have to worry about the other classes of stock, but for medium+ companies, it's a good thing to understand going into a negotiation for equity compensation.

<comment><USER4> I'll concede that 'thin air' is probably an oversimplification, for the purposes of this essay.

My point is that the company sells new shares up to the amount authorized, to raise money. In my experience, the authorized number of shares is a minor point; the board/majority shareholders will increase it if it's ever a limiting factor.

Before those shares are sold (issued), they don't really exist -- nobody votes them, they're not compensated if company is acquired, etc. Hence, the simplified "thin air" description.

<comment><USER3> Sure, for the purposes of the essay it works fine. I just didn't want people to misunderstand the process of dilution. This site is geared towards hackers - many of whom are or will be founders. They will have to deal with significant ownership and dilution between investors and other founders. I thought it was a good idea to clarify how stocks work for them.

Also, the board of directors can't exactly increase the number on their own. They have to get permission from the state to do so, since it could have an effect on ownership. If I had a 49% stake in a company, the 51% couldn't authorize and issue themselves more stock to keep me from getting control, but they could dilute my ownership by bringing stock out of treasury or issuing stock from their authorized amount.

A last note, I believe that most companies issue stock compensation directly out of their treasury stock, so if you'll be getting a good deal of ownership, it will probably be from that stock pool. Take that into account to figure out your ownership percentage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "My Advice: politely ask for the shares outstanding, or for what percentage your share offer represents (then confirm the approximate shares outstanding). If the company won't provide you with this necessary information, it's unlikely they're going to be straight with you on other issues; go work somewhere else."

The number of jobs just shrunk by 90%.

<comment><USER6> Not really, offering you a number of shares but refusing to tell you the number of shares outstanding is like offering to pay you 100,000 a year but not being willing to tell in which currency the 100,000 are. Might be in GBP (about 200k USD) might be in Yens (about 1000 USD)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article advises employees to exercise their shares as soon as they are vested as long as they're bullish on the company. I know several people who've been fucked over doing this. The thing you need to remember is, your private- company common shares grant basically no enforceable rights.

<comment><USER8> Care to elaborate?

You can't say you know someone who was "fucked" by doing something, and then not tell us what fucked them-- that's teasing!

<comment><USER9> simple scenario: when you join your company gives you 1000 options valued at $1 per share (at the time of issuing), vesting in 4 years.

Assuming after 2 years, you decide you want to exercise the options that are vested, so you pay your company $500 to get your 500 shares.

Company start going down the tube, and folds out, or is selled at fire price. You end up with basically worthless paper on your hands. So, instead of earning money, you lost. Imagine, that instead of $500 that was 5000, 50000. It is a lot of money.

There are also tax implication, depending what kind of taxing schedule you choose. You can find yourself actually paying taxes, for those shares at the time of excercising, yet when you want to sell, they are worthless.

Double ouch. Also, one thing to consider is that when you exercise options, you have buy those shares. If your company is iliquid (not gone ipo), it might take a long time when (if) you are able to sale them (either it goes IPO, or the company is sold). So, you are tying a chunk of your money, in these shares.

So, as always, buyer beware. Do your own math when it comes in cases like this.

<comment><USER7> Put aside the company failing, which is an obvious risk that you already knew about.

Assume the company does moderately well, and is sold at a premium.

There is nothing that practicably prevents the company from diluting shares at that point and distributing the new shares among current employees, to the disfavor of everyone who left.

In fact, that seems to happen regularly. Companies get sold, and non-employee non-VC stockholders get nothing because of how the deal is structured.

<comment><USER8> Ah, makes sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Liquidation preferences are _always_ important, regardless of size; if your prospective employer has taken 5 and is only doing 1-2 in revenue, prefs will still keep you from making more than a token amount. They also often have multipliers attached.</comment>


Amalgamated hosts file - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts <comment><USER2> Was this complexity needed?

It's just a few lines in bash

      #!/bin/bash
      wget "http://adaway.org/hosts.txt" -O- > hosts
      wget "http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts" -O- >> hosts
      wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/StevenBlack/hosts" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&mimetype=plaintext&useip=0.0.0.0" -O- >> hosts

      mv hosts /etc/hosts

      # Flush DNS cache as per your OS
      # Mac OS X
      # dscacheutil -flushcache
      # Linux
      # /etc/rc.d/init.d/nscd restart
      # Linux with systemd:
      # systemctl restart network.service
      # Fedora Linux
      # systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

Or in a windows batch file

      wget "http://adaway.org/hosts.txt" -O- > hosts
      wget "http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/hosts" -O- >> hosts
      wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/StevenBlack/hosts" -O- >> hosts
      wget "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&mimetype=plaintext&useip=0.0.0.0" -O- >> hosts
      move hosts %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
      ipconfig /flushdns

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm giving it a try since I had previously used a much short list.

One thing to be careful of is auto-completion tools. Something like `ssh <tab><tab>` could dump the 30k list to your console as zsh + prezto does in my case.

To workaround this, I run a local DNS server (DNS masq) and provide it 'addn- hosts=/etc/hosts.blacklist' and place the blacklist there.</comment>


HP CEO: We will build a cloud - <AUTHOR> http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/20110314/leo-apotheker-hewlett-packard-will-build-a-cloud/

<comment><USER2> AWS is so far ahead that it's not even funny.

E.g., go to IBM's cloud site (<http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/cloud/index.html>) and behold the content free page w/ generic stock photos. Click on the pricing page on the getting started page and it tells you "This page is no longer available".

With AWS by contrast the "Sign Up Now" button is prominently displayed on the home page and in mere minutes you can have your test server up and running for which you _pay nothing for a year_!

IBM and HP can't get out of the mindset of selling expensive hardware w/ even more expensive support and consulting contracts. Until they do, they are doomed in the cloud space.

<comment><USER3> Also the mindset of playing the "Ask a salesperson for a quote" which is code for _"We have no fixed pricing, it will cost whatever you can afford to pay because our business is a resource extraction operation and we will strip-mine your budget."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HP CEO: We will build a $buzzword!

Snark aside... Why don't they build ink that costs less than human blood instead? ([http://reflectionof.me/relative-prices-of-different- liquids-...](http://reflectionof.me/relative-prices-of-different-liquids-1))

<comment><USER5> I can't wait for them to Sun up and get their own language going: HPJavaC++#ObjectiveWebOSCloudpad. Enterprise Edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This isn't exactly a dupe, but if you change "HP will build a cloud" into "HP will ship WebOS on every PC next year," you will probably get the exact same discussion we had the last time Mr. Apotheker opened his mouth to brag about stuff he wasn't shipping:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2304768>

The best comment came from JoelSutherland:

> _"HP will stop making announcements for stuff it doesn't have. When HP makes > announcements, it will be getting ready to ship."_ \- Leo Apotheker, Jan 27 > 2011

> Source: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529>

If you agree, give him some karma love.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's kind of wacky that he sites selling servers to most of the cloud hosts today as an indicator that it's a market HP ought to be in. Not paying resale margins on servers is an advantage, but not a reason. A reason may be.. say, you're Google or Amazon and you've had to build out the ability to quickly and deploy apps on the internet _anyways_. Is that something HP has any real mindshare or experience in?

<comment><USER7> Many companies outsource their IT to HP; if HP doesn't have a cloud it could lose those customers when they decide to "go cloud".

<comment><USER8> That's a good point. Even if they think it's hype, their clients don't think it is and they will look bad if they don't join the bandwagon. Large companies have a harder time being opinionated.

<comment><USER3> My cynical take is that their clients do know it's hype, however if you're an executive who has bet on HP, this announcement means you can't be second- guessed. If somebody angling for your job asks "Why are we with HP? Why don't we go to the cloud?" you will respond smoothly, "We are going to the cloud with HP, in the fullness of time, after all the relevant details have been examined and the considerations carefully weighed, ..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> HP already had cloud services in 2006 called Flexible Computing Services when I worked there as an intern.

These services still exists (maybe with a different name), I have friends working in those departments.

But Leo is new and HP is big, he probably didn't know about them ;).

<comment><USER8> And neither did I, is this anything like the other cloud services people know off?

Also, if I was CEO the first thing I'd change is the damn website. That's probably why he hasn't heard of it, it's almost impossible to find anything on that site.

<comment><USER9> I think it is targeted at larger companies and HP is also not only providing the infrastructure but additional software by the hour as well.

The HP website is so chaotic due to the many sub-organizations and regions fighting for attention (I worked in the HP web team in 2007/2008).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Again, another latecomer announcing "future plans". So far behind.

<comment><USER11> Latecomer? AWS is one of the oldest cloud hosting platforms out there and it's what, 6, 7 years old? The majority of the others are less than 5. This space is just heating up.

That's not to say that HP won't fail spectacularly here, but to suggest that it's too late for a company with billions of dollars to make a move in the space seems a bit rash.

<comment><USER12> This is really not a nascent market any more when you have some of the largest Internet companies using cloud services heavily, like Netflix.

The incumbents have huge scale advantages and accumulated experience. Also, they have a huge base of open source, freely available libraries out there to allow interaction with their cloud. (I feel like there is one for every AWS service in every commonly used programming language.)

These are huge advantages that HP will have tremendous trouble overcoming if it just comes out with a "me-too" cloud service a year from now.

If HP announced their cloud service TODAY, and you were choosing which company to put your web service with, would you really consider them over the existing services with a significant track record and third-party support?

<comment><USER11> For enterprise hosting, yes, I would. They are giants in the enterprise server industry, no reason for them not to be the same in the enterprise cloud industry (which has barely started to heat up).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> He announced the plan after laying out a strategy combining the cloud, connectivity and software that "enables and joins them together." He portrayed it as a natural move for HP, which is a powerful player in the server business. "Today seven out of 10 cloud providers are already our customers," he said._

... so of course we knew we had to compete with them!

</comment><comment><USER14> This explains why it's so overcast in Palo Alto today.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is anybody else bothered by the use of the term "cloud" when speaking about hosted services? These services don't live "on the cloud" - they just reside on someone else's remote server, really no different than if you had a remote data center yourself. For something to really live "on the cloud" it literally needs to reside on the network, not stored on a server somewhere but constantly moving/shifting/replicating out in the aether of connections that is the Internet with the ability to pull up the service through a local terminal on demand (think Skynet).

</comment><comment><USER16> When I see the picture of a suit-and-tie type next to something about joining the latest tech gravy train, I can't help but smell the burning platform.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anybody else thinks this makes HP sound like they have no idea what they are talking about?

> what it calls an open cloud marketplace for the enterprise

and

> a strategy combining the cloud, connectivity and software that "enables and > joins them together"

It's like every awful enterprisey whitepaper ever written.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not sure why, but I found this headline hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think I found a picture of HP's cloud: [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Sz5ESDttTuE/S7jLPZqcm-I/AAAAAAAAAI...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Sz5ESDttTuE/S7jLPZqcm-I/AAAAAAAAAI8/dJFpwn2Lhog/s1600/mushroom- cloud-hb.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm still waiting for my "MAKE-IT-RAIN-CLOUD".</comment>


Peter Pan Syndrome – The Startup to Company Transition (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://steveblank.com/2010/09/20/the-peter-pan-syndrome-–-the-startup-to-company-transition/ <comment><USER2> I find this very relatable. We currently lease space from a startup that is a little bit ahead of us, but our revenue are catching up quickly. My co-founder is an aggressive salesman, so much so I have to push hard to keep up product. Which is good, we are moving quickly.

But the company we work next to is having trouble with sales. None of the founders have sales experience and then they hired a sales person straight out of college. That kid is an excellent guy, he tries as hard as he can, but he has no idea what he's doing. The number one thing holding this company back is the founders being willing to look outside their bubble and hire an experienced salesman who is going to make them uncomfortable, tell them they are wrong and move their business forward. But at the same time, I know it's hard. We hired a head of Operations totally different than us, but still fit our core values. And she pushes us all the time. And we do the same. And while it's been hard, it's definitely made us better.

<comment><USER3> This is pretty common - many startups have literally nothing compelling to offer many experienced, successful sales person with deep domain knowledge and networks. So you are much more likely to end up with something else, unless you are lucky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You need domain knowledge, you need sales, and you need marketing.

At my last gig, i asked my boss about developing a mailing list. he said it was "done". I didn't push further, but thats just not how mailing lists work.

find a channel or a few channels and develop a presence. You're building a relationship, not just selling something.

get their info. ask for it. on a web form, on the phone, and in person. Keep in touch with them. Do drip marketing. Get them involved.

Word of mouth, blog posts, tweets and facebook pages only carry you so far. For some, its plenty far enough. For others, they need to inject more hustle; cold calls, chance meetings, going door to door if need be.

Know how to hustle your customers; what they want, what they need, and what they'll pay.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. The right marketing people will take that entire lead gen/relationship building/RFP process to a whole new level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the end of the article sums it all up very nicely: "But first you need to become a domain expert. Spend a year in Washington". They basically have no deep knowledge of the domain in which they operate and how to win the sales game. However brilliant you are, if you don't understand the rules of the game:

-> you are not playing the right game

\--> you cannot win

<comment><USER7> More like,

-> you are not playing the right game \--> you will only win by luck</comment></comment>


A new standard of beauty led to today's weight-loss regimens - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/1920s-food-flapper-diet <comment><USER2> It's interesting to compare official "beauty standards" (which flit around on the winds of fashion) with what gets published in lads' mags (which is quite consistently buxom women with trim waists and long hair).

<comment><USER3> One is about novelty, one is about maximized fertility cues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Lucky Strike plastered colorful ads in magazines. In one, a pursed-lip > flapper looks at the viewer. "To keep a slender figure no one can deny," the > ad trumpets, "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."

Well, I gained ~70 kg during the year after I finally quit smoking tobacco. And I've never managed to completely lose it.

But overall, I'm better off fatter and not smoking. I smell better, if nothing else. And my skin isn't yellow.

</comment><comment><USER5> "hacker" news

<comment><USER6> _" hacker" news_

I have observed that there is a lot of discussion in HN about diets, maybe because trying a diet is like hacking our own body. It's interesting to know that it has been done for a long time and the circumstances. Sex seems the cause :)

<comment><USER5> This place should be more like 2600 and less like Cosmo.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Pays $36 Million to Avoid IBM Patent Suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2014/03/twitter-ibm/ <comment><USER2> First, Twitter didn't pay off IBM for trolling here. They outright bought a set of patents in the hope that Twitter's own new portfolio would be enough to discourage other companies from suing Twitter in the future.

Defensive portfolios of garbage patents used to be the key to preventing competitors from suing you with their garbage patents. After the eBay v. MercExchange [0] case in 2006, it's not as dangerous to be sued but defensive portfolios are now much less useful also because you can't threaten to shut down aggressors' businesses with injunctions. The Apple v. Samsung and Microsoft v. Motorola cases also recently demonstrated that vague garbage patents are much more useful in court than technological patents. Juries and judges understand them better and are inclined to award hundreds of times more damages.

Second, IBM is the least awful kind of patent troll. They generally ask for small fractions of revenue or investment in companies that have established themselves. The IPO phase is a favorite time for them to ask for a few million from growing companies. The worst kind of trolls -- such as Microsoft's Intellectual Ventures -- ask for much more money from companies and often go after startups. IBM exercises restraint with the idea that they might have an ongoing relationship with companies someday in some other context.

And IBM, unlike most trolls, actually does real research. Most of the new ideas in Google Search were first published in an IBM research paper that Larry and Sergei read. IBM didn't patent those ideas, though; they mostly seem to accumulate scattershot patents at random. I think IBM's primary goal is to top the list of prolific grantees every year.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_Inc._v._MercExchange,_L.L....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_Inc._v._MercExchange,_L.L.C).

<comment><USER3> > The Apple v. Samsung and Microsoft v. Motorola cases also recently > demonstrated that vague garbage patents are much more useful in court than > technological patents. Juries and judges understand them better and are > inclined to award hundreds of times more damages.

I don't think that I agree with this part especially if you are equating Standards Essential Patents with "technological patents" and all other patents as "vague garbage patents". If that wasn't what you meant I misunderstood.

The reason that SEP are worth less (than other valid patents) and not entitled to injunctions is because commitments were entered into by their owners to enable them to be included in the standard. And some SEPs are pretty low grade too and alternative approaches are often only prevented by the standard itself.

<comment><USER2> _The reason that SEP are worth less (than other valid patents) and not entitled to injunctions_

Actually, almost no patents are entitled to injunctions since the eBay decision made courts apply the same standard to patent cases as to other injunction requests, and we all owe many thanks to the Supreme Court for that.

 _some SEPs are pretty low grade too_

Indeed, the Microsoft v. Motorola patents were particularly lousy. One Motorola patent was on the use of a particular number as a key in an error correcting code. The code itself was prior art but any two devices needed to use the some identical arbitrary key to communicate. It's embarrassing that the PTO allowed that one, but the court is making Microsoft pay for every device shipped now. Fortunately the price is small.

The Apple v. Samsung case involved a few Samsung radio channel efficiency patents that the jury found not infringed even though Apple did infringe them. They were probably as invalid as all the utility patents in the case but they failed to be useful probably because they were complicated and juries don't pay much attention to technological patents or discussions of them.

Apple's garbage patent about bounce-back was much more effective. Juries can measure that.

Now SEP (standards essential) patents are much less useful because judges are not inclined to allow them to be used defensively. And arguably valid patents are slightly more powerful than clearly erroneous ones. But simple garbage patents focused on non-technological UI and superficial means of doing business are much more effective in all litigation than actual technological patents independent of SEP status or validity.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, I have seen plenty of comments on here assuming that SEPs are better patents than others but your view seems clearly much more nuanced. I mostly agree with your actual view and did incorrectly interpret the section I quoted.

I'm not sure the bounce back patent is inherently garbage (although it may be invalid due to prior art) but that sort of patent is entirely possible to work around. I'm not saying it is great patent but it does strike me as somewhat inventive, novel (AFAIK). I do understand what you mean about the likelihood of juries putting too much weight on what they understand.

I'm not aware of the details of the Samsung radio channel efficiency patents but I wonder why Samsung didn't bring them to (or didn't win with them) at the ITC where there isn't a jury. I'm not actually disagreeing here but it would be something ai would want to understand before completely agreeing with you about the lack of value in true technological patents (I'm in a don't know state rather than disagreement at this point).

<comment><USER2> The Obama administration vetoed ITC's Samsung-requested ban on importation of Apple phones last year. That ban depended on SEPs, so perhaps Samsung should start over with some of its other patents. Samsung seems to have unlimited money for American legal fees but little wisdom in spending it so far.

It seems quite unlikely, though, that an iconic American company like Apple will ever see an ITC action that really harms its interests sustained. It is especially unlikely to happen in favor of an Asian competitor company, given American trade politics.

Apple's ITC bans against Samsung phones don't face similar barriers so far.

In any case, since particular phone models are seldom sold for longer than two years and both district court and ITC cases take longer than that, it has almost always been obsolete phones targeted by injunctions. Until the companies get more clever about targeting broad classes of devices, that is some small relief for the industry from the insanity.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if the Presidential veto would have been applied if the companies' nationalities had been reversed (I hope it would have been as it was correct). [0]

ITC bans include devices that aren't explicitly listed if there is no colourable difference in the infringement.

[0] I'm British so nationally neutral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of guessing and conjecture about how IBM deals with patents, so I thought I'd write a new parent thread to discuss.

I worked at IBM for 7 years, leaving many years ago. I am an IBM Master Inventor, having 36 patents filed with the USPTO with my name on them (some are still winding their way through the system). I worked heavily on patents for 3 years, and the last 2 years I was there, I was on the Patent Review Board. I'd also estimate during my active time with patents, I submitted 250-300 patent ideas to the board.

The Patent Review Board is organized along technologies - so, mobile would have its own Patent Review Board. People on the Patent Review Board tend to be Master Inventors and others who are active in the patent process. Once a week, about 3-4 hours of presentations are made to the Board (which includes the patent lawyers as well). After a 5-10 minute presentation, they are asked to leave the room, and the Board votes whether it should continue to the lawyer, or whether to close it. Most obviously are closed at this step with prior art. If it's voted to go to the lawyers, in my background, there was a pretty good chance it was going to get filed.

If your patent got filed with the USPTO, you got a point. IBM is very generous with their patent bonuses. You get $750 per patent filed. You also get an additional $1500 on your first patent filing, and $1500 every 3 after that. So, effectively, about $1000 per patent.

Patent ideas could be anything and everything. If they could patent it, they would. I remember from my time on the board seeing ideas on everything from dog doors to server optimization techniques to music devices. Given the people who work at IBM, most tended to be tech related, but it definitely was not a requirement at all.

The stuff people have asked about royalties makes me laugh as well - I never got the feeling once they cared if your patent would make them $1B or $1. And they certainly didn't care about compensating us for an idea that could make $1B. I was awarded the Software Group Patent of the Year one year, and other than an email denoting that fact, nothing was different than some of the lame ones I had filed.

Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the patent process at IBM - it was one of the few outlets that rewarded creativity and hard work at the company.

<comment><USER5> What you wrote underscores how the patent process is flawed. IBM abused the spirit of patents for their own financial gain.

<comment><USER6> >A company did something to make money

Stop the presses!

<comment><USER5> Stopped.

Now what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The bullshit patents that IBM threatened to sue Twitter over were for url shortening [1], inline user-customized advertising[2], and diff-ing contact lists[3].

[1] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6,957,224.PN.&OS=PN/6,957,224&RS=PN/6,957,224) [2] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,072,849.PN.&OS=PN/7,072,849&RS=PN/7,072,849) [3] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,099,862.PN.&OS=PN/7,099,862&RS=PN/7,099,862)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is how companies become members of the exclusive club known as "entrenched interests."

It would be interesting for a company to take an alternative route and threaten to go out of business, or, say, publicly announce that they can't implement certain features, because it would require them to purchase their freedom to do so. [Insert your own slavery metaphor here]

However, now Twitter will have to say that their position on a given technical controversy is "complicated" and "nuanced" and imply that we rabble just don't understand the real world of business.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ah good old IBM

Yeah, 36Mi is not a lot to Twitter, but it's more fuel to the extortion racket

Another reason to buy nothing from this company

<comment><USER10> Really?

I wonder how many people could take medical care, buy food (mind goes to Africa), etc with that amount of money that apparently was given to a patent troll (IBM).

Just sad.

ps. Nothing against twitter, or IBM. They are just exploiting rules made by humans.

<comment><USER11> Really?

I wonder how many people's lives have been made better by technologies created, sold, and serviced by IBM.

<comment><USER12> Really?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

(And by Goodwin's law corollaries I've lost this debate)

<comment><USER11> It's tragic that IBM built technology that helped enabled the death of large number of people. One thing the wikipedia page doesn't make clear was IBM aware of the atrocities? The article cites the 1933 census, but things in Germany didn't really heat up until Kristallnacht in 1938?

Anyway, the point was, things are not always black and white. IBM has certainly done some bad things, but it has also had a tremendous positive impact on society, medicine, techology, etc easily; more than 36m.

<comment><USER13> >The article cites the 1933 census, but things in Germany didn't really heat up until Kristallnacht in 1938?

"As the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of each subjugated nation, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Gypsies. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New York office following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg invasion."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" OK,"_ [IBM] _said,_ [to Sun in the 1980s] _" maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list._

 _Patently Absurd_ , Forbes, 2002: [http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html](http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting how the playing field changes when you reach a critical mass.

Reforming patent law could be part of the solution against this type of thing, but the bigger problem may actually just be that IBM is run by assholes.

<comment><USER16> Ding. Ding Ding. We have a winner.

Creating / getting a patent at IBM is comical. Sort of like a game. All you have to do is document something, pass it to their patent lawyers ... and they fill it with so much verbose lawyer language and fluff that any normal person can't read and interpret it. Then it gets submitted and ... voila ... patent pending (and quite typically a couple years later, patented).

(Source: Me, a former employee of IBM (Indian Business Machines)).

<comment><USER15> Really, THAT is the procedure they use to 'invent' new patents? Wow, just wow. Appreciate you sharing this.

Curious, did you submit any yourself? Did they provide incentives for you or staff to come up with these 'documents' ? Do they have a monthly quota for # of new patents per week/month? In addition to staff submissions, did they have special division specifically their to conjure up new patents fulltime? Feel free to indulge, I find it fascinating to hear it from someone who has been in the belly of the beast.

<comment><USER11> It's not quite like that, at least in the USA.

For example, my good friend had to submit and modify his idea 3 times because the lawyers were not quite happy with the novelty of it. Documenting your idea is a bit more involved then just slapping a few paragraphs down and sending it off to the legal team.

As an IBMer, I've refused to participate in patents because they are a net negative for society. IBM does however reward you for filing patents.

In the USA, it's like $1000 for your first file and then royalties from the patent in some cases (I've heard 1%, but this is just a rumor) if it is granted. Beyond filing your first patent there are different tiers for the number filed & accepted that provide extra monetary reward.

As far as I am aware, there are no divisions at IBM that just sit around and come up with new patents. Novel ideas come as a product of working on other things, so a team doing nothing but patents would probably quickly run out of inspiration. There are however monthly meetings with "Master Inventors" who have been through the process several times and are willing to help mentor you through the process. As an employee, management regularly has asked (2-3x a year) if anything we've done we thought was patentable.

<comment><USER17> My experience at IBM in the US (six years worth) was that management "strongly suggested" patent submissions as part of the review/promotion game.

On one occasion at a meeting of a second-line managers entire org (4 or 5 teams), an employee questioning the utility of making patent submissions a numbers game (e.g, everybody better submit some) was told - with limited paraphrasing - "Hey, 1,000 people on the street want your job and will do the work plus publish technical reports plus submit patents for less money. You should keep that in mind."

I suspect, but didn't really know enough people in other software group divisions to verify, that this particular managerial mindset may have been more tied to our specific division than IBM "in the large."

<comment><USER18> Oh yeah. This sounds familiar (6 years at IBM). Very familiar. I wasn't even in the software division. I was in GBS. EVERY thing we did would get discussed and executives would ALWAYS ask if it could be patented. Half the time stupid, normal stuff like making AJAX requests to improve a web page's UX or embedding a browser in some piece of software would be cause for execs to encourage us to try to get a patent for it. It's insane. IBM will one day be the world's largest non-practicing entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not sure Twitter had a choice here. IBM is the largest recipient of patents.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_paten...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_patent_recipients)

<comment><USER4> As someone who used to work at IBM and generated 36 patents for them, I can tell you that the incentives at IBM are HEAVILY in favor of patents at the expense of your "real" work. At IBM, you can bust your A## off all year, work 60 hours a week, and get a PBC rating of 1 (top 10%) and get rewarded with a bonus of 5% (if you're lucky). Or, you can slack off and spend the majority of your time ducking assignments, getting a PBC rating of 2 (middle 50%) and get rewarded with a 2% bonus, and using your work time to submit patents, where you get $1000 per patent. Which path would you choose? Is it any wonder they have so many patents submitted by their employees?

<comment><USER20> I suppose it depends how many patents you can turn out annually... personally I would rather see my salary double each 14 years rather than in 36.

<comment><USER4> I said bonus, not raise. Your salary would never double at IBM unless you were one of the chosen few pegged for superstardom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Two questions:

1\. If a developer co-own a patent with his former employer (IBM), does this developer have the right to use his patent technology later at Google? I don't know how IBM handles patents with his or her employees.

2\. Developer does not own any patent but being the person who invented the technology does he have the right to invent a similar technology like his earlier invention at Google? People carry knowledge with them!

Regarding #2, since I really have zero idea how companies handle patent (except patent filing process), I think maybe patents have something to do in this deal ([http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire- paper-...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906310/the-no-hire-paper-trail- steve-jobs-and-eric-schmidt-didnt-want-you-to-see)). Maybe, maybe 1%.

<comment><USER16> 1\. No. Assumption being that any thing "invented" while working for IBM, belongs to IBM. The developer does not "own" it. He/she is only listed as basically the "(co)-inventer". He cannot go to Google and "use" it with out licensing / agreement from IBM. Now .. it is plausible that an employee invented something totally on their own time while an employee of IBM. That said, if this had any value (now or in the future), it is entirely likely and plausible that IBM could make a case legally for having rights to said invention. This is especially true if your "invention" is in the same domain you work in for IBM (e.g. if you are a middleware developer for IBM Software Group and you make a new type of messaging technology .. on "your own time" in the evening/weekends).

2\. This is a grey area that will ALWAYS be open to legal interpretation (enter the lawyers). There are different things involved in your question: Are there non-competes in your employment contracts?, are they actually enforceable legally?, will they be enforced legally?, what specifically is the "technology"? So .. this is not possible to answer beyond just saying: It depends. It is case-by-case and is balance between an business' intellectual property, any contractual agreements (non-compete) you may have signed, and your right to work / find gainful employment.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Correction on #1 - technically you "invent" whatever the patent is, and then assign its rights over to IBM, whereby the compensate you. That's why the inventors' names are on the patent.

<comment><USER22> The reason for that is that under the prevailing caselaw, companies can't be "inventors" of things, and therefore they don't fit under the clause of the U.S. Constitution that authorizes patents, which specifically mentions securing exclusive rights to an invention to its "inventor". Hence the legal dance where the inventors (specific humans who invented something) are named in the patent, but then they assign their exclusive right to the invention to another legal entity (their employer).

I think that might be a bit of a historical anomaly, though, related to when different doctrines were developed. Nowadays legal personhood is personhood- enough for most areas of law. One could imagine a court in 2014, looking at this issue for the first time, deciding that when a company puts a bunch of R&D money into something, and an invention results, through the actions of perhaps dozens of people working within the company's structures and facilities, it is in effect the company as an aggregate entity that has invented the invention. That might even fit a bit better (though still imperfectly) with modern scientific/historical understanding of invention, which generally views single-person "eureka!" moments as the exception, and collaborative efforts where some R&D "system" can be reasonably credited with the invention as the norm.

But this particular body of law was settled back in the days when the prevailing legal fiction around corporations was a bit different, so only humans can legally invent things. Due to the common dance around assignment, it doesn't make much practical difference anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for making the world a worse place, Twitter, by giving in to the patent bullies, and setting an example for others. It's sort of "understandable" for small start-ups who would be ruined by the trial alone, but for companies that have billions of dollars in their coffers to do this is just plain pathetic and cowardly. Instead of fighting the problem, they become part of it and accomplices to it.

This also completely devalues the credibility of their IPA [1] patent thing. If Twitter gave in, why would everyone else who might've been interested in the whole IPA thing not do the same, too?

[1] - [https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators- patent-...](https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators-patent- agreement)

<comment><USER24> Actually Twitter didn't just pay IBM, but bought the 900 patents from IBM outright, which hopefully Twitter will not then use offensively as IBM did, so this could be a good thing, and perhaps another way to deal with patent trolls: buy their arsenal leaving them with fewer extortion tools.

<comment><USER25> Twitter have a public agreement to use patents only defensively, so hopefully these won't be used offensively now. [https://github.com/twitter/innovators- patent-agreement](https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement)

<comment><USER26> Good thing 'public agreements' aren't binding.

<comment><USER25> I'm not a lawyer, but the documents look legally binding. They say to have a lawyer if you want to implement it. It forms part of their employee agreements and their patent filings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The patents that Twitter bought from IBM were mostly low quality assets. IBM, largest patent holder for the last 21 years straight, is known for having tons of narrow patents on every little feature they develop. This deal was a good way for IBM to get rid of some garbage and a good way for Twitter to get a Big, Scary looking patent portfolio.

I did a qualitative analysis of the patent portfolio here: [http://www.preferredembodiment.com/1/post/2014/03/twitter- bo...](http://www.preferredembodiment.com/1/post/2014/03/twitter-bought-ibms- junk-patents.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> According to patents, innovation is property that you must pay the "innovator" to use. The innovator is someone who bought the property of the innovation.

In most peoples' worlds, innovation describes the act to innovate. An act is not someone's property.

</comment><comment><USER29> _" According to the SEC document, Twitter now owns 956 patents — up from just nine before it filed its IPO in November."_

Twitter's been busy buying up patents with its' IPO capital by the looks of it.</comment>


At Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, MBA startup fever takes hold - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/01/03/business-school-startups-entrepreneurs/ <comment><USER3> This is a historically bad signal for market health but it's not all bad for hackers. More piranhas to watch out for but also more bizdev hustlers willing to help sell and/or raise money.

Edit: I've personally been taken advantage of by an Ivy B-schooler so the piranha thing is real. It was the typical thing you hear where I, an undergrad, had written a bunch of code with a verbal contract from the MBA student that I'd own 10-20% of the business. After a few weeks, when paperwork was being filed, I was informed that I'd get more like 1% to be the first engineer and finish building the MVP. It's not that MBAs are bad but a lot of the ones I've known have been indoctrinated into this way of thinking of creative people as resources to be harvested. It's not evil, it's approaching business like a game, knowing all the rules, and playing to win. It does look and feel evil when the rules are used against you before you know you're playing.

<comment><USER4> Being an early employee is an _incredibly_ bad deal. The first dozen people really should be equal partners, in writing.

<comment><USER5> To my understanding, being an early employee is the _best_ deal because they still get substantial equity, but don't face nearly the same level of risk as the founders.

Somebody did the numbers on HN a while back and showed that you have a higher probability of making it rich by being an early employee than by founding your own startup. I'm afraid I have no idea how to find that thread, though.

<comment><USER6> FWIW, the salary charts on angel list show the average startup equity offers there going for a bit more than a point.

If your hypothetical startup sold for $100 million dollars, after dilution and taxes, you could expect maybe $500k. In other words, ~$125k extra for each year of a 4 year vesting period.

That's nice, but it's certainly not substantial - it's about equal to the salary you'ld expect at the same jobs. And, we are talking about a hundred million dollar, moonshot exit - in other words, vastly, vastly more than most startups can expect to make. Most early employees make a modest, very decent, pittance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount of money and media attention around "startup" is eventually going to lead it to its downfall. There is no quick "make money fast" schemes in life. The reputation that the tech sector has created after the dot-com era was created purely on sweat and hardwork ( not mine but the veteran engineers in SV whose shoulders I am standing on). Now the vultures seems to back and many tech products on the markets seems to have a over-inflated valuation because of this dumb hype.

I am keeping my options open since I know this is going to lead to a crash in the next few year.

<comment><USER8> So how does this market crash? This is something I have struggled with for some time. Markets have typically crashed because public investors buy at very high prices and then the market loses faith that the future cash flows of the business will pan out. But IPOs aren't happening like they were. Facebook buying Instagram for $! billion is crazy, but Facebook continues to grow and generate revenue (because of or in spite of Instagram) to exceed investor expectations. If these acquiring companies continue to grow and succeed, then how does the bubble collapse? We have no idea whether Nest can justify the $3.2 billion Google paid for it, we just know that Google continues to beat estimates and the Nest guys continue to afford nice cars.

I also do take exception to the fact that MBAs are all vultures. I am trained as a computer Engineer, practiced as a materials scientist, and got an MBA. Now I am one of those exact vultures you speak of with a startup of my own that I, by the way, believe is going to contribute meaningfully to society.

<comment><USER9> Evan Spiegel's view of everything got leaked with the Sony Hack. Take it for what its worth:

Fed has created abnormal market conditions by printing money and keeping interest rates low. Investors are looking for growth anywhere they can find it and tech companies are good targets - at these values, however, all tech stocks are expensive - even looking at 5+ years of revenue growth down the road. This means that most value-driven investors have left the market and the remaining 5-10%+ increase in market value will be driven by momentum investors. At some point there won't be any momentum investors left buying at higher prices, and the market begins to tumble. May be 10-20% correction or something more significant, especially in tech stocks. Facebook has continued to perform in the market despite declining user engagement and pullback of brand advertising dollars -- largely due to mobile advertising performance - especially App Install advertisements. This is a huge red flag because it indicates that sustainable brand dollars have not yet moved to Facebook mobile platform and mobile revenue growth has been driven by technology companies (many of which are VC funded). VC dollars are being spent on user acquisition despite unknown LTV of users - a recipe for disaster. This props up Facebook share price and continues to justify VC investment in technology products based on abnormally large mkt cap companies (i.e. "If this company attracts just 5% of users that FB has, it will be HUGE" \- fuels spend on user acquisition as user growth is tied to values). When the market for tech stocks cools, Facebook market cap will plummet, access to capital for unproven businesses will become inaccessible, and ad spend on user acquisition will rapidly decrease - compounding problems for Facebook and driving stock even lower. Instagram may be only saving grace if they are able to ramp advertising product fast enough. Total internet advertising spend cannot justify outsized valuations of social media products that derive revenue from advertising. Feed-based advertising units will plummet in value (in the case of Twitter, advertising spend may not move beyond experimental dollars) similar to earlier devaluing of Internet display advertising.

<comment><USER10> Do you have a link to this?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegels- em...](http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegels-email- memo-2014-12)

It was submitted on HN couple of weeks ago, here is the discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8764135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8764135)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for this. I am not sure I am quite so gushing, but the analysis seems reasonable. Time to go and short Twitter :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, I am about ready to call it a 'bubble' :-) One of the things which became apparent about 1998 was that people who were interested in the "business" of technology were arriving in numbers to make all the right motions, say the right words, and get money to rain from the skies. Not that they had a product or solved a problem, but the incantation was good. I am always perplexed by people whose target is essentially simply a score.

<comment><USER13> I suspect that a bubble is preferably defined by investor behavior, not worker behavior, even if the workers call themselves "founders" or "entrepreneurs."

<comment><USER12> That is true, and it needs wide participation, but my observation from the last time was that "business people" who need an audience for their incantations solicit the necessary investors.

I am entirely unclear if the last bubble was caused by retail investors unilaterally deciding to "invest in tech" because they thought they would get rich, or caused by persuasive people asking folks who didn't know any better to invest in them with the _promise_ of riches.

But I have observed (at least one time, and past performance is no predictor Etc.) that when folks in business school, or fresh out of there, say they are going to do "startups" and they describe them not by their risk, their approach, or problems uniquely suited to them, rather they use a bunch of meta terms like "agile" and "MVP" and "social" and "sharing economy", they have lost sight of the notion of creating value, and shifted into the mode of "executing a process that seems to return more money than you put into it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sounds pretty healthy. I can't imagine anything we'd really prefer to see MBAs do, after all. Go be investment analysts or work at a hedge fund? Doesn't do much for the world. Go be a highly paid grunt in the finance arm of a corporation? Write business analyses? uh...

Go take a risk on introducing a new product into the world? Check. Sounds like "business" to me. This is a great trend, hope it continues!

Challenges to this change sticking long term - starting a boot company puts you on even footing with any other person who wants to do the same. The reason we decry "MBA" is the reason people earn them in the first place - <USER2> function like a $120k entry fee into a protected job class - like being an analyst as mentioned above. Using the degree to enter a business without protections is risky.

That said - to the extent that the university morphs into an incubator to make sure their students are successful - this will give their students an advantage. The MBA would then be weighed against dozens of other incubator type opportunities, or just going and doing it alone.

</comment><comment><USER15> Welcome to selection bias.

A lot of startups completely fail but that's not interesting, "<a startup you never heard of> has failed" won't get many clicks on TechCrunch.

People share stories about how they 'failed' (got great job offer afterwards, etc) and managed to come out with plenty of cash. But there are a lot of people who get burned. They simply don't make headlines, no one is interested in those stories except from small circles such as HN.

Startup is not a quick, and fail-proof way to get rich as mass media portrays it to the public.

Some people will end up seriously disappointed but real businesses will continue moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER16> I realize MBAs have a bad rap (disclaimer, I'm getting my MBA), but I think they can bring a lot of variety to the start-up scene. The MBA class is chock full of students from almost every industry who know very well the problems these respective industries face. Furthermore MBAs approach problems through different lenses that may be more sensitive to firm strategy, finance, operations, accounting, etc. These approaches may uncover new insights into the business or market.

<comment><USER17> It's also worth keeping in mind that a good chunk of MBAs come from engineering and other technical backgrounds. In fact, they comprise a full 40% of the latest HBS class (according to [http://www.hbs.edu/about/facts-and- figures/Pages/mba-statist...](http://www.hbs.edu/about/facts-and- figures/Pages/mba-statistics.aspx)).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people here seem to think this is the "end of start-ups" or that this is a leading indicator for a bubble burst.

I fail to see how that would be the case as there is no reason that a specific group of market entrants would crash a _business model_. I think if anything, it will be a wake-up call to people who think that "start-ups" are a get rich quick scheme.

The only way for this to turn out badly is if somehow this group sucks all of the angel/vc money out of the "start-up" ecosystem and into their own pockets.

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone currently getting their MBA (and coming from a tech background, been coding since I was 14), I feel that this is a good sign. I would much rather see MBAs try to create new value rather than get sucked back into the vicious cycle of investment banking or management consulting. Startups can offer people of all types the chance to have impact in a positive way. I see lots of startups fail because the founders don't understand basic business concepts and practices, so if some business savvy is injected into this market, great.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how they're going to repay their MBA tuition. Typically a tenure in consulting or high finance would pay for this. Perhaps some don't have this burden, but for many I assume tuition is paid in large part via student debt.

Are they planning to pay themselves large salaries from the get-go? Quite a culture to start a business on...

<comment><USER20> Unlike engineering degrees that no wealthy person would suffer through, MBA's are sometimes obtained by people from wealthy families or who are wealthy themselves. Not everyone starting a business is starting from zero either. Think Winklevoss twins who both did MBA's and are doing startups.

<comment><USER21> There are more wealthy people suffering through engineering degrees than you'd think.

<comment><USER20> Wealthy as in never have to work again wealthy, i.e. greater than $10 million personal net worth? If so I'd like to meet some of those people. The thing about research oriented degrees is that for the last few centuries wealthy people studied those things for status reasons. They were part of royal societies and the more time spent making esoteric discoveries, the more they displayed wealth and leisure. Engineering, though, is usually about applying things that are already known. So if there is someone who is set for life that has gone through an engineering program then they are not doing it for wealth, sustenance, or status. They must really like engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember Paul Graham once saying that 9 out of 10 startups fail, but it seems that nowadays outright failure is less and less common. Sure, only a fraction of startups get really big, but it seems like acquihires are becoming the default failure mode. With the upside of striking it rich and the downside of employment at another company with a generous signing bonus, it's no wonder lots of people want to hop on board the gravy train.

<comment><USER23> Do you really think that acquihires are becoming the default failure mode? What about all of the startups that fail silently? I'm seeing some selection bias here.

<comment><USER22> I don't know, but what actually happens is immaterial. All that matters is perception, and my perception (selection bias and all) is that starting or being involved in a startup seems much less risky than it did 5 or 10 years ago. I'm sure that there are lots of people at Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia that share this perception, leading to an increase in demand for programs about startups.

<comment><USER15> We should aim to keep the mass media out of our perception, because all it cares about is generating clicks :)

They don't care about plain simple failures, but they are large part of startup life.

One day they will move on from startups to some other hot thing, just like they did with Bitcoin, Ebola, etc.

Don't believe the hype!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Even in 2005, Chicago Booth GSB used to show their startup labs to prospective students.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if this will impact the mantra "don't hire MBAs"...

</comment><comment><USER26> If you want to found a startup, I can think of a lot better ways to spend 2 years and $100k than getting an MBA.

<comment><USER24> 1\. Most people don't go to HSW (Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton) to start startups. Well, for some edge cases, it is a way to get admitted. Many of the grads here love to get hired by PEs like KKR and Blackstone.

2\. Business schools are good at marketing themselves: they try to set up labs for new trends, fads, etc.

<comment><USER27> Are you coming from tech going into finance?

<comment><USER24> Nope, and am in IT. I had buddies who wanted to move from tech to IB, Consulting, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A little late to the show.

</comment><comment><USER29> This reminds me of the speech Peter Thiel gave about how MBA flocking to a sector is a good early bubble indicator. The reason is that MBA don't give a crap about an industry until it is at peak. Then shortly the bubble almost certainly bursts . Examples he mentioned, junk bonds, dot com, subprime and now startups...</comment>


Ask HN: Where can you ask Stackoverflow questions but for money - <AUTHOR> I feel a bit bad about asking this question here for free, but is there a version of Stackoverflow where I could offer people money for answering?
I have a dumb question about a popular PHP framework that I seriously am not able to Google. But I also cannot ask the question on Stackoverflow because I have no reputation (or points or whatever) to offer. Plus I would probably get slain by the mods for asking a dumb question.
I'm not looking for a subscription service, just a place where I could offer 20 bucks or so for answering a single question, kind of like Bountysource. <comment> ng-user You can try HackHands [0]. I got $20 credit with them through the GitHub Student Pack and only ever used it once. It seems like it might be the service you're looking for!

[0] - [https://hackhands.com/](https://hackhands.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> > I have a dumb question about a popular PHP framework that I seriously am not > able to Google. But I also cannot ask the question on Stackoverflow because > I have no reputation (or points or whatever) to offer. Plus I would probably > get slain by the mods for asking a dumb question.

If you can't easily Google the answer and it's not obvious it's not a dumb question. What have you got to lose by asking?

</comment><comment><USER3> Stackoverflow should start selling reputation, so you can ask a question and add a bounty to it. if you are serious enough to pay for it, it should be useful to somebody else too.

I've been in the same situation and didn't have much reputation to offer!

<comment><USER4> It would have to be a different sort of reputation though. Otherwise you get people with very little knowledge that have similar amount of reputation as somebody like Jon Skeet. Also, I feel like that would make rise to more very niche issues that people would feel entitled to an answer because they paid for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a "Who's mentoring" thread about 2 weeks ago. You can pick someone from there

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148619)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's fine to post dumb questions on Stack Overflow. It's not fine to post questions that are either incoherent or obviously have been previously asked. And you don't need any reputation/points/whatever.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.pluralsight.com/product/mentoring](https://www.pluralsight.com/product/mentoring)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried posting the question on Stackoverflow, but having had no responses I had to pay another user to place a bounty.

Then I got a response and it's all good.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could you give us an example of the problems you're not getting answered?

We might be able to give you tips to get it answered without needing rep points.

</comment><comment><USER9> Codementor.io would also fit the bill, in addition to what has already been mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't that what stackoverflow bounty is for?

</comment><comment><USER11> You can find someone on airpair to help you with it?

</comment><comment><USER12> Try posting at reddit r/webdev</comment>


Xkcd 838 - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/838/ <comment><USER2> You can check sudo incidents reports with;

      sudo journalctl /bin/sudo

<comment><USER3> Under Linux yes. FreeBSD and MacOSX sudo doesn't support 'journalctl', 'sudo' messages go to the log daemon.

<comment><USER4> On Linux sudo messages also go to devlog. It just happens to be directed to journald on many Linux systems.

<comment><USER5> Is there a good resource for understanding all the different logs available on different systems?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


30 Day Skill - <AUTHOR> http://30dayskill.com

<comment><USER2> Why would I want to spend money to learn something, I could learn for free in various free online tutorials?

Where is the difference to your business here? And also, why have a ridiculously slow loading site with a super ultra HD background image, just to be able to click a link that shows a site that is extremely hard to read properly and THEN find out that I have to pay to do it?

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a huge gripe with any feature that is "free". It's not free - it's _included_ as part of the $9.99 it's costing me to sign up. Also a Certificate of Completion is useless - putting this on my resume will do nothing for my value as a Swift programmer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Master a skill in 30 Days with a daily email that will include today's lesson.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using akka,actors,akka-cluster,akka-remote with HIGH scale? - <AUTHOR> How is it going with production high scale high availability, ease of troubleshooting, ease of other people such as devops, technical support understanding and troubleshooting the system? maintenance? is it just fun technology to work with or you actually have a large deployment for example with akka-cluster with real HIGH traffic volume, replacing a like 150 microservices frameworks? is it going smooth? any specific issues? i'm trying to understand if it's fun technology but for real high scale projects I should use standard bullet proof systems i used in past like microservices request-response with combination of load balancers, apps as microservices, kafka when I need replicated log message bus, and the rest of the well known standard stack.  baking in my usual recovery and retry and backoff, Future/Promise, when almost every programmer knows and if not, it's not a whole shift in paradigm.<p>one thing I can think of, with standard request-response model i can very easily troubleshoot my systems, for example when I have no logs (you never know what would happen at friday 2am when you have a problem in our case a problem and no logs to help you out because either someone forgot or your framework does not log for whatever reason) with request response - then any support engineer with http-text based request-response can just sniff the network and very easily understand the http protocol, i know which is the requesting microservices hostname (I can easily find out etcl..).  with actors its a different story.  This is just an example when I talk about supportability, production, high scale, just one. <comment><AUTHOR> anyone using it? :)</comment>


Reflecting on a year of making machine learning useful - <AUTHOR> https://www.shreya-shankar.com/making-ml-work/ <comment><AUTHOR> This post resonates (and mentions) with the Software 2.0 concept introduced by Andrej Karpathy, I guess key point is that data (slicing and dicing, and creating good tools to mange that process) can be more important than the modeling itself.

Also, a few points on interpretability, importance of reproducibility and a few thoughts on how ML tools should be built.</comment>


EFF You Yelpers - <AUTHOR> http://fuckyouyelper.tumblr.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I hesitated adding this but a few of the reviews are actually obviously pretty poor and some would actually hit the level of libel. Here is an interview with the creator:

[http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/09/13/tumblr- tuesday-...](http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/09/13/tumblr-tuesday-fck- you-yelper-takes-down-one-critic-at-a-time/)</comment>


Ask HN: Who are the most compelling blockchain naysayers? - <AUTHOR> Articles on the blockchain/ethereum are overwhelmingly in the bullish camp.<p>What are some of the most compelling, well-researched arguments for why blockchain is likely to fail? <comment><USER2> I literally wrote a book attempting this:

[https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/)

There's a pile of excerpts linked in the sidebar, and the Amazon "look inside!" shows you the first few chapters.

Honestly? Come by Reddit /r/buttcoin. The name gives you a good idea of the seriousness, and it's very much critics, _but_ it's turned out to be the only place on Reddit you can have a serious discussion of blockchainy stuff, 'cos all the others are filled with the frankly delusional.

</comment><comment><USER3> For currency: the fact that it is quite difficult for an average person to keep their keys both secure and backed up. For example choosing a secure enough but memorable password for their wallet. Not having their PC hacked while they type in such password etc. As the currencies go up in value so will the sophistication of attacks.

For other applications: Miners fees are high. Any data put into the chain is public and immutable and probably stored forever. So even encrypted messages may be attackable at a future date and the secrets leaked. So you want to stay anonymous there can't be too much interesting data stored in there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Blockchain is just a clever data structure, it can't succeed or fail.

Particular implementations of it can fail, financially, or due to bugs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I bet FT Alphaville has some good ones.

</comment><comment><USER6> Energy usage.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to screen share from mac to mac on local network? - <AUTHOR> I have a Plex server running on an old Macbook Air that I remote into currently with OSX's built in screen sharing. I only ever remote in from my local network, which is definitely not slow and is on a good router.
The Air is fine when connected directly to a monitor, but remoting in with screen sharing is just god awful, feels like a frame or two a second.
I leave the Air hooked up to my TV but ultimately its lid is shut all the time and I only ever remote in.
Is there a better way to screen share from one mac to another that isn't slow as shit? <comment><USER2> If it's that slow it sounds like something is wrong, I've only seen that sort of poor performance going international where bandwidth is limited (Thailand <> Australia)

</comment><comment><USER3> vnc of course</comment>