This Guy Trademarked the Symbol for Pi and Took Away Our Geeky T-Shirts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/ <comment><USER2> What bothers me almost as much is that an actual, bar-card-carrying attorney demanded that a company cease "copyright infringement" on the basis of a trademark.

<comment><USER3> Do lawyers face any repercussions for representing frivolous cases that are used as an abusive tactic?

<comment><USER4> Theoretically yes, in practice? depends on who they piss off

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has no legs, obviously. As Lemley points out, one of the basic principles of trademark law is that the mark must function as a source identifier. You can't even trademark "t-shirts with 'pi' followed by a period" if it's used in a context where it's not functioning as a brand.

<comment><USER6> And yet despite it having no legs, here it is doing real damage to real people trying to sell real products they designed, while spending their real resources to fight this obviously toothless claim in the courts.

This is one of the many reasons why the US legal system is broken, and backwards.

<comment><USER5> There's no actual claim that anybody is spending any money to fight in any courts. Just a nastygram to a website that took down the products proactively. Every western country has trademark laws, and you could send a similar letter in any of them.

<comment><USER7> It has already caused people to do work they otherwise wouldn't have had to. And what are the odds that the trademark holder will give up without litigation?

But I agree that this isn't specific to the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this is a gimmick to highlight the incompetency of the USPTO it's a clever one. Not only has ineptitude been used to secure trademark of one of the oldest known symbols in common use but that legal status is being being put to work threatening companies into halting sales and opening their books. The corporate inconvenience and money flushing could theoretically escalate and result in at least a tiny bit more scrutiny of how trademarks are issued.

More than likely it's a very enterprising young man interested in getting into the same game as the patent trolls though using a different sort of legal monopoly.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing wrong with common symbols being trademarked. The purpose of trademarks is to prevent misrepresentation of origin and consumer confusion. If a company uses a common symbol to mark their products and this distinguishes them from competing products, it would make no sense to not allow them a trademark.

Keep in mind that trademarks are limited to particular areas of commerce. If someone got a trademark on π as the name of a line of condoms, for instance, that would not prevent anyone from using π as the name of a line of fishing poles.

The problem here is not with a common symbol being trademarked. The problem here is that "π." does not do a good job of identifying a line of clothing, because there have been plenty of prior lines of clothing that have included "π" on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what font was used for the mark and if it has been appropriately licenced.

edit - is the pi character from Times New Roman

[http://www.trademarks411.com/marks/85785006-pi](http://www.trademarks411.com/marks/85785006-pi)

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pi_uc_lc.svg](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pi_uc_lc.svg)

I'm gonna trademark _< a href=_ and see if I can get the internet turned off

</comment><comment><USER11> Time to get a trademark on Tau before it takes off.

<comment><USER12> 2π-ssed to do it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Crazy how these broad trademarks are allowed. Despair Inc (home of hilarious "demotivational" posters) registered the frowny emoticon some time ago ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despair,_Inc.#Other_works](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despair,_Inc.#Other_works)). They did it more as a publicity stunt to my understanding. The press release threatening to sue people who used it on their less favorite IM programs or in hideous font faces like comic sans was hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER14> Blessing in disguise- "pi" as a cultural touchstone is the dumbest thing. Nobody's impressed that you know one thing about a circle.

<comment><USER15> Admit that it's at least slightly better than seeing E=mc^2 tagged on everything though...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830737)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmmm I guess its about time that Greece starts claiming those copyrights! Who knows we might exit crysis at the end of the day! Lets start by copyrighting Democracy!...</comment>


Protestatars in France Planning a Bank Run to Collapse the Euro - <AUTHOR> https://247cryptonews.com/protestatars-in-france-planning-a-bank-run-to-collapse-the-euro/ <comment><USER2> "You really don't want to piss off the French."

That's right and don't anyone ever forget it. They stand up to short-sighted self interests and have a long tradition of going out to the streets to protect their rights. After all, that is why they are not a feudal empire but a democratic republic. There is a lot we can learn from the French and the Swiss.

Governments should be afraid of their people, not people of their governments.</comment>


The impact of color palettes on the prices of paintings (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-017-1413-4 <comment><USER2> > Our main finding is the existence of a strong positive correlation between > the price of a work and its surface occupied by colors from the blue-teal > and orange clusters.

The orange/blue contrast again: [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContra...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast)

</comment><comment> phoe-krk [https://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/s00181-017-1413-4](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1007/s00181-017-1413-4)

</comment><comment><USER3> Abstract: We emphasize that color composition is an important characteristic of a painting. It impacts the auction price of a painting, but it has never been considered in previous studies on art markets. By using Picasso's paintings and paintings of Color Field Abstract Expressionists sold in Chrisite's and Sotheby's auctions in New York between 1998 and 2016, we demonstrate the method to analyze color compositions: How to extract color palettes from a painting image and how to measure color characteristics. We propose two measures: (1) the surface occupied by specific colors, (2) color diversity of a painting composition. Controlling for all conventional painting and sale characteristics, our empirical results find significant evidence of contrastive paintings, i.e., paintings with high diversity of colors, carrying a premium than equivalent artworks which are performed in monochromatic style. In the case of Picasso's paintings, our econometric analysis shows that some colors are associated with high prices.

[My comment] The ability to extract the colour palette seems much more interesting than the observation that some palettes were correlated with higher auction prices.

<comment><USER4> > The ability to extract the colour palette seems much more interesting

It's trivial to extract colors from images.

The biggest challenge might be lighting conditions affecting the hues, but if you have standard lighting or even close to it it's pretty easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice little touch in Fig.7 (actually, all of their visualizations) is that it uses the Orange/Blue contrast they identified!

</comment><comment><USER6> I just gotta say it - I'm disappointed that a Springer publication got to the main page of HN.

<comment><USER7> Huh? Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER8> The article is paywalled, unless you have access through a university or other library.

The high price you'd pay for paywalled papers goes in large part to the publisher for no real tangible benefit. Most research, and likely the linked article, are funded either directly or indirectly through public funds like taxes. So it is especially obnoxious to see an interesting article like the one linked be locked down.

As for why it's bad etiquette on the front page of HN, the free-and-open ethos common among hackers (at least, old school ones...) would usually see someone link directly to a pdf, instead of this.</comment></comment></comment>


Cookie Consent – The most popular solution to the EU cookie law - <AUTHOR> https://cookieconsent.insites.com <comment><AUTHOR> Cookie Consent is a free JavaScript plugin for alerting users about the use of cookies on your website. It is designed to help you comply with the hideous EU Cookie Law and not make you want to hurt yourself in the process. So we made it fast, free, and relatively painless.</comment>


Responsive design works best as a nip'n'tuck - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3745-responsive-design-works-best-as-a-nipntuck <comment><USER2> In my experience there are times when using the same element in all the different layouts becomes unwieldy, and it becomes much easier to have two versions of it which are hidden and shown with media queries, then altered for the specific layout. So at that point it's really not much different than actually having different templates on the server side.

About the conclusion (one performer/many tricks), I agree in that now that responsive design is our new toy, designers can go a bit crazy with vastly different layouts for different viewports. This may distill over time to an approach that aims for one layout that more or less works for all viewports, with only small differences between them.</comment>


Why I use a 20-year-old IBM Model M keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/why-i-use-a-20-year-old-ibm-model-m-keyboard/ <comment><USER3> If you are interested in an IBM Model M I recommend the Unicomp UB4044A ([http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/UB4044A](http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/UB4044A)). It's a IBM Model M with USB. I bought one over a decade ago (build date 4/20/2007).

Also, Ars Technica updated the URL date in this story. The original URL is [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/why-i- use-a-20-year-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/why-i- use-a-20-year-old-ibm-model-m-keyboard/) and it redirects to the 2018 link here.

<comment><USER4> I will also recommend Unicomp.

 _> I bought one over a decade ago (build date 4/20/2007)._

Awhile ago I remember hearing that they were having some financial problems because essentially they never had repeat customers: buy one keyboard and you'll never need another.

<comment><USER5> They need to make a new Spacesaver model (one without the numpad) and not only will they have a lot of new customers, they will also have each one of their old customers come back to buy one.

<comment><USER6> > They need to make a new Spacesaver model (one without the numpad)

Yeah. I'm in the market for a new keyboard and am thinking about a TKL. Just spent some time on the Unicomp site looking for a TLK version to no avail.

<comment><USER7> These are very high-end buckling-spring reconstructions, including TKL layouts: [https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/](https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/) .

On the downside, no idea when it will actually ship, and significantly more expensive than Unicomp.

<comment><USER6> I did see those from a link elsewhere in the thread. The cost and uncertain delivery timeline make that a non-starter for me, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something else is going on here... Let's look at the reasons given:

\- Noise

\- Pleasant to use

\- Accurate

The real reason is because the author is a hipster programmer and wants to elevate his status. It is well known that "real" coders who set up ISP's in the 90's and accomplished other badass feats of superhuman programming use clicky keyboards ([https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/40897/how- do-i...](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/40897/how-do-i- confront-coworkers-about-their-loud-annoying-mechanical-keyboards)).

This goes back to the bullshit nature of most technology jobs. It is such an empty life to work on abstract intellectual problems with no discernible results in the real world, as noted by David Graeber:

"Crucially, the realization brings a delight, the pleasure at being the cause, that is the very foundation of our being." \- [https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/punching-the- clock/](https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/punching-the-clock/)

The key (pun intended) component here is the theatre of a loud keyboard. It FEELS like you're getting work done! The author readily admits it, "This thing is loud, which really makes me feel like I'm getting serious work done when typing."

So the noise and being pleasant are really one in the same. The feedback make him feel better about being able to make something that produces change in his environment. Even if he is his own audience and only fooling himself, that is enough.

Finally, I question the accuracy piece. I grew up typing on mechanical keyboards, and therefore can appreciate the haptic sensation and noise aspect, but I'm happier with my keyboards' accuracy today. Most of my typing errors are not an issue of incompletely depressing a key, but typing the incorrect key. Mechanical keyboards do nothing for improving this kind of accuracy.

Theatrics for an audience of one. That is the reason. Plain and simple.

(edited for formatting)

<comment><USER9> I've come to understand that the most fashionable form of status seeking is loudly espousing the belief that other people can't possibly enjoy things, so _they_ must be status seeking.

<comment><USER10> Good observation. Please enjoy some genuinely earned status from me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Next article in the series, "Why I killed my co-worker"

<comment><USER12> I remember those days. One is annoying. A dozen or so all going at once... well it just sounded like work was happening and as strange as it sounds it was kind of nice.

Now the big Epson impact printer in the eggcrate-foam lined coffin (meant to contain the BZZZZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZZZZT! noise) was never something I adjusted to. We eventually moved it to a storage closet. God bless the silent laser printer!

But then I do recall buying a Walkman so that I could listen to music (casette tapes and the radio) while working, consuming batteries rather quickly. Perhaps nostalgia is making my memory of keyboard sounds seem less annoying that it really was.

<comment><USER13> You obviously never heard a twin head long track daisywriter going full out.

I was doing a long print run on one and put ear defenders on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "For starters, the sound. This thing is loud, which really makes me feel > like I'm getting serious work done when typing."

Someone should immediately start building super noisy pens, pencils, erasers and markers. But, like, really loud.

And loud brushes of course! Loud post-its!

<comment><USER15> It's not the noise, it's the feedback, this is the same reason people like keyboards that have tactical feedback. Having fast feedback signals to our senses when working can keep us working longer without fatigue.

<comment><USER16> Yea, like the feedback of a loud buzzing sound a pen could give every time it feels pressure on the tip. Could even make it vibrate!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As an Emacs user I'm ALWAYS struggle to find a good keyboard for my setup. Actually I'm using a K550 Yama simply because it have enough extra key to have many things work's at a single keypress (and does NOT require any software to program/use those extra keys), I'd like some Maltron keyboards but they are (IMO) too expensive and without backlight, other "classic Emacs user's keyboards" feature simply too few keys to be comfortable.

Perhaps I'm looking for something like [https://i.redd.it/z5knt99vpbsy.jpg](https://i.redd.it/z5knt99vpbsy.jpg) but...

A trend I noticed is however that substantially all new keyboards tend to have less and less keys than ever, while ancient keyboards tend to offer more keys in various fashion, like SUN type [67] keyboars or $I_do_not_remember with a full function key row + another S-function key on top etc. And that's IMO it's a bad sign: keyboards means production, mouses means consumption. Having big keyboard IMO means produce many thing, having mouse-centric UI means being a consumer of someone else service.

</comment><comment><USER18> For those interested, there is a guy selling old-school re-creations of "Model F" keyboards (circa 1981-1983) here: [https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/](https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/)

Sadly, they do not have the 103-key layout.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've got a Unicomp 104-key purchased at least twelve years ago. While I'm a big fan of the feel and sound, as a daily driver the actuation length and force becomes tiring, so it's been mothballed.

I'm using a steel backed unit with Cherry Browns and damper rings (it's a Ducky — WASD/Code were always OOS when I was ready to buy) and it's okay, but it honestly doesn't feel that much nicer than a fresh, cheapo rubber dome unit.

I've been curious about the Topre keyed boards which reputedly have a solid, but damped, "thwumph" response — that sounds right up my alley, but they are a lot of cash for a blind buy, since I've never seen or touched one.

Anyone here have experience with the Topre boards?

</comment><comment><USER20> He mentioned three cheap keyboards that came with his computer - who has a comparison between this keyboard and a modern mechanical?

<comment><USER21> I've tried several modern mechanicals, and have one with Cherry blues, and used to have one with Cherry brown, which died after just a few years. My 25 year old M is still feeling as good as new, and aside from a little shine on some keys looks pretty new too. Most modern ones have plastic that ages far faster.

I still pick the M when there's a lot of typing needed. It's about as loud as blues, but a little less annoying (for me anyway) from the slightly less plasticky sound, but has a distinctly nicer typing feel. Partially because it has a back board that's heavy steel meaning there's no flex at all - <USER2> modern mechanical has some degree of flex, sometimes lots and partially it feels a little different to Cherry blues. Something hard to describe but probably when and where on the keypress the click and release happen.

Having the extra Windows/Cmd key on the base row would be nicer sometimes. I wish I had gone for the one with combined trackpoint though.

I fully expect it to outlast my need for any keyboard and still be in as-new condition. :)

<comment><USER22> I used model M in the 90s, I wouldn't use one today though unless I wanted to drive everyone around crazy mad at me. As for the cherry blues, it gets on my nerves far quicker than model M could ever do. It has to be down to the nature of the switch itself the sound is artificial and the feedback is awful even with the good key caps on a sturdy board.

> Something hard to describe but probably when and where on the keypress the > click and release happen.

Exactly this, there are some mods that can fix this icky release, never tried those. If I remember correctly it shortens the key travel as well so it might not be to everyone's liking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm typing this on an M0110 (keyboard from the original 1984 Macintosh) that I rewired to a Teensy ([https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/8q4o4n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/8q4o4n/my_m0110_build/)). I won't say that it's my favorite keyboard to type on, but it's loud and definitely cool.

My keyboard at work was built from an Apple Extended Keyboard II (I harvested the switches/keycaps and built it up from a custom PCB - [https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/4xr1wv...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/4xr1wv/finally_finished_my_aek64_build/)). A lot quieter than a Model M, but IMHO it feels better than most of the modern switches.

</comment><comment><USER24> I use a KB9910. It's not a mechanical keyboard, because I don't like the clicks.

But the amazing thing is how reliable it's been. It's probably 23 years old and works absolutely perfectly. I have a second one just in case, but I've never needed it.

<comment><USER16> Not all mechanical keyboards are clicky. I hate the sound, but love my mechanical keyboard with black switches. No tactile feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My first serious job was four and a half years in the mid-90s with an RS/6000 for a desktop machine. I _loved_ that keyboard. Nothing else has ever been as good.

<comment><USER26> The RS6k wasn't too shabby either, but perhaps without quite the same longevity..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love these things. We used to affectionately refer to to these as "Taka- Taka's" for the beloved sound they make when typing. I miss these.

<comment><USER28> Unicomp bought the tooling and makes a full n-key rollover usb version of the M [http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT](http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "For starters, the sound. This thing is loud, which really makes me feel like I'm getting serious work done when typing."

We're all a bunch a little code monkeys. We can't imagine programming without a keyboard, that's why we're still programming with keyboards.

Eventually, someone will invent the future, and we will all be happy and wonder why it didn't happen sooner.

<comment><USER30> What would you program with other than a keyboard? Block diagrams are the only serious programming tool I know of that calls for a mouse to do most of the action and even then there is a good deal of keyboard work on the components themselves.

<comment><USER31> Brain computer interface, that gloves thing in Minority Report, contact lens monitor and virtual keyboard by monitoring your hands like in Rainbows End, lots of other stuff I'm sure. All you need is some interface between you and the operating system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am enjoying my K70. RGB lightning is a major advance, regardless your level at typing.

This should be doable and fun to bring to oldies, corsair uses this TI chip family: «TLC5958 64x64 Led driver matrix». [http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDA-00161](http://www.ti.com/tool/TIDA-00161)

<comment><USER33> Had 2 clicky model M's, now have 2 K70s - K70 has everything I loved about the M. With the K70, you've got the 4 different kinds of switches (linear/non haptics, clicky/not) - I'm on the red, linear, non-clicky. The build quality (made in Germany) is definitely solid. I've been driving LEDs from my .vimrc - that's a trick the M couldn't do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I dumped mine 4 month ago (half the letters were gone, there was a hole in the E key) because it was time to do so as I moved and changed country.

It was a heartbreaking moment for me, and I'm happy to read here in the comments suggestions for equivalent. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER35> I shelled out ~$600 for two new in-box model Ms from the 80s last year, worth it.

<comment><USER36> I haven't used a model-M in a long time, but I luuurbe my Das Keyboards. Makes using a mac almost tolerable (even comes with volume itunes doodads).

My pals all think I'm nuts for "spending so much on a keyboard" but I'm hammering on the damn thing all day, and using a chiclet keyboard or some other inferior keyboard would make me crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I also have a keyboard from the 80s that I really like, but these days I switched to the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard (UHK). Lack of modifiers is a problem: I really want at least three on each side of the space bar.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have a short (no numpad) WASD keyboard with the quiet red switches and custom key labels and love it.

Only feature I'd like to have is the ability to split it somehow.

</comment><comment><USER39> To be picky (besides clicky ;-)), that specific keyboard:

>Mmmm.... manufactured in 1985, just like Ars Features Editor Nathan Mattise.

was manufactured (on 28th August) 1992, and only copyrighted 1985.

Neither 1992 nor 1985 are "twenty years", for the record that is respectively 26 or 33, or more like around 30 years.

This said, you'll have to take my Model-M (and my HP28C pocket calculator) out of my cold, dead hands, it is good to see that some of the younger folks still appreciate the reliability and sturdiness just like some of us old dinosaurs still do.

Long life Model M!

<comment><USER40> > From the archives... registered May 10, 2012

<comment><USER39> May 10, 2012?

Yet another date, the Wayback Machine Cache has it Nov 17, 2013.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> See [https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/659798006208856064](https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/659798006208856064) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17435899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17435899) for my experience with Unicomp.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd be more impressed if they were still using the RS6k it originally shipped with.

</comment><comment><USER42> i am using Razer BlackWidow keyboard - the closest thing to IBM keyboard that i could find.

<comment><USER43> Check out Unicomp, they bought the rights to produced Model Ms: [https://www.pckeyboard.com/](https://www.pckeyboard.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> As you grow older, you'd better switch to Matias Alps Quiet Click and Cherry MX Red or even Cherry MX Speed Silver.

</comment><comment><USER45> I love the Model M, but it has a Caps-Locks where the Control should be, so I don't use it anymore.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension for GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-text-search/pligfddkdofoidbejpmjimcjfdkjlcem <comment><AUTHOR> The code is available on GitHub at [https://github.com/Cereal84/github_text_search_chrome_ext](https://github.com/Cereal84/github_text_search_chrome_ext)

For anything (bug, feature, etc) please contact me here or opening some issue on project's page.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the future of Google? - <AUTHOR>

in 10 years? in 100 years? <comment><USER2> In the short term, I think Google founders as the people buying online ads from them become increasingly aware that the real value of online ads is far far lower than what people are paying at the moment.

As the ad and research industries catch up to the web and figure out real metrics for these things, people will not keep paying the prices that prop up Google's cash cow.

At some point in the next 5-10 years, I think the bottom drops out of that market and Google gets caught flat-footed. Same goes for Facebook, incidentally.

At the same time the ad market is bottoming out for Google, I expect something like Duck-Duck-Go to hit them on the search side of things in a big way.

The result of this 1-2 punch is that 10 years from now, Google is about where Yahoo! was before Marissa Mayer took over, and where it is a hundred years from now depends on what direction they go from there.

The key for both Google and Facebook is when someone cracks the code on doing something useful with all the data they are collecting. To me, this isn't a technology problem; it's a science problem. Classical statistics doesn't do well at this scale. Collect enough data, and you can find evidence for any correlation you might happen to search for. That doesn't mean it's real. We need real scientific advances in the way that we prepare, ingest, test, and interpret data at this scale, and we are literally at the infant stages of imagining how that might work.

If Google hangs on through the hard times ahead, they are well-positioned to lead the way in that scientific advancement. But they will have to get out of the mindset that some new technology innovation can solve this. It can't.

Personally, I think we're 25-30 years away from being able to deal effectively with data at Google's scale. While it's possible that Google could still be around at that time, collecting data that way will no longer be a novelty that only people like Google and Facebook can do. Everyone will have that capability. Mountains of data treasure will be the commodity that processing power is today.

So, yeah, 10 years from now, Google is throwing out press releases that sound like recycled PR material from Yahoo or Microsoft in 2008, and most people are looking at them thinking: "How did that happen?"

That's my 2 cents.

edited for typos.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with much of what ianamartin said. Google is unlike most big companies in that it thinks 10 to 20 years out (but pays scant attention to short-term strategies). Their problem as I see it is not to have great products in 10 years but to build a bridge from here-and-now to the 10-year mark. Clearly, their ad model is fading in significance. Ad spends are shifting (rapidly) from classic PPC search ads to timeline ads (on FB, TWTR, Pinterest, and other "timeline providers") and "native" content ads. In the meantime, Google has suffered a lack of focus, spreading itself rather thinly over a large surface area of products and projects that haven't become big moneymakers. Its efforts in social media (Google+) have brought mixed success. With the decline of classic PPC search ads, the SEO value of Google+ has become moot. Google is attempting to compete with Amazon in cloud services but is unlikely to get further than "also-ran" status.

Over the short term, Google will remain profitable, but whether it can build a bridge to a future of driverless cars, etc., is less certain.

$0.02

</comment><comment><USER4> Google confounds me. They are one of the largest tech companies as far as just pure reach, they own the top search engine, email service, and mobile operating system, as well as a host of other properties both hardware and software(and a huge pile of money that they're sitting on), yet still to this day make 99% of their revenue from assaulting people with ads on Youtube and in their search results. They attempted to get into hardware by buying Motorola, but later ended up selling it to Lenovo at a loss. They have the capital and resources to expand into pretty much any field that they so desire(including taking another crack at hardware), so why do they put all their eggs in the advertising basket?

<comment><USER5> It's pretty telling that in the 20+ years that the Internet has gone mainstream, web companies still haven't found a business model that generates as much revenue as advertising - a lesson that old media learned a long time ago. It boils down to the problem that Internet users are conditioned to expect services for free, and advertising appears to be the only way to provide sustainable "free" services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well according to Larry Page, what they are actually building is actually an Artificial Intelligence [http://www.artificialbrains.com/google](http://www.artificialbrains.com/google)

Sounds like Skynet to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a perspective: [http://blog.launch.co/blog/googlewinseverything- part-1.html](http://blog.launch.co/blog/googlewinseverything-part-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8523218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8523218)

Past that point, irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google is one part of several companies that will form like Voltron to become a real life version of "Buy n Large" from Wall-e

</comment><comment><USER10> Semantic Search, is the goal. Perhaps in 10 years time, that may be possible.</comment>


Chrome's Plan to Distrust Symantec Certificates (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2017/09/chromes-plan-to-distrust-symantec.html <comment><USER2> Maybe add [2017]? I was confused why they were saying things "will" happen in 2017 until I read the date.

<comment> forgot-my-pw Starting with Chrome 66, Chrome will remove trust in Symantec-issued certificates issued prior to June 1, 2016. Chrome 66 is currently scheduled to be released to Chrome Beta users on March 15, 2018 and to Chrome Stable users around April 17, 2018.

<comment><USER2> I was referring to this sentence:

> Additionally, by December 1, 2017, Symantec will transition issuance and > operation of publicly-trusted certificates to DigiCert infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> full history of Symantec CA issues: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Symantec_Issues](https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:Symantec_Issues)

</comment><comment> forgot-my-pw This is pretty big cause it also involves all Symantec issued certificates including those operated by Symantec like GeoTrust and Thawte.

"...an initial set of reportedly 127 certificates has expanded to include at least 30,000 certificates, issued over a period spanning several years."</comment>


Britains first Bitcoin heist: masked men held crypto-currency trader at gunpoint - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5322171/Pictured-barn-raiders-committed-bitcoin-robbery.html <comment><USER2> Also here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251390)</comment>


Debunking common misconceptions in SSD, particularly for analytics - <AUTHOR> http://bigdatacraft.com/archives/252

<comment><USER2> From 2010. A lot has changed since.</comment>


Hawking & Mlodinow: No 'theory of everything' - <AUTHOR> http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/09/hawking-mlodinow-no-theory-of_30.html

<comment><USER2> Personally I think that the physical reality can't be described in a finite Theory of Everything (ToE) for the same reason as that there is no ToE for mathematics? See <http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/omega/index.html>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link to that article. Very interesting. But I disagree with the language of this sentence; it contradicts the rest of the article:

"we can distinguish a world which can be explained by science from one that cannot."

"The sentence, to me, should be "we can distinguish a world which can be explained by [mathematics] from one that cannot."

"Mathematics" and "science" are not synonyms. But I agree with Leibnitz that, to paraphrase, "line explains the dots."

And also, I would like to note that; physicists use "theory of everything" to mean two things; and they exploit this meanings anarchy that they created: Even in the same sentence; by "theory of everything" a physicist may mean "a theory that will conform three famously incompatible physics theories" and "a theory that will explain the entire reality." These two definition are not the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "we adopt a view that we call model - dependent realism"

I have been writing for years that nature is definitional; <http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/true-knowledge/> I am glad to read that Hawking realizes this now.

But this is not enough. He needs to give up his materialism; and reject the materialist physics.

But what this quote reveals is that; study of nature is not a "physical" process; study of nature is not a monopoly of physicists; anyone who is curious can study nature without professional doctrines developed by physicists.

All you have to do is to develop your own model.

I welcome Hawking's statement.</comment>


Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/joint-statement-department-justice-department-army-and-department-interior-regarding-standing <comment><USER2> Some more coverage, that people might find relevant:

Democracy Now! was on-site reporting on the use of pepper spray and attack dogs:

"FULL Exclusive Report: Dakota Access Pipeline Co. Attacks Native Americans with Dogs & Pepper Spray" [http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_d...](http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_dakota_access_pipeline)

And was rewarded with an arrest warrant for their reporter: "North Dakota issues arrest warrant for Democracy Now's Amy Goodman" [https://usuncut.com/news/amy-goodman-charged/](https://usuncut.com/news/amy- goodman-charged/)

Comment on ruling (linked in this hn story), from the activist side: "Erased By False Victory: Obama Hasn't Stopped DAPL": [https://transformativespaces.org/2016/09/10/erased-by- false-...](https://transformativespaces.org/2016/09/10/erased-by-false- victory-obama-hasnt-stopped-dapl/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Furthermore, this case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on > whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering > tribes' views on these types of infrastructure projects.

I find this whole statement strangely moving for a government memo.

I'm sure there will also be a popular cynical reading of this, and I can understand given the history, but hope springs eternal.

> Therefore, this fall, we will invite tribes to formal, government-to- > government consultations on two questions:

</comment><comment><USER4> Tl;Dr

Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time. I hope this is the start of mineral and property rights for the land. We have people living and dying because they cannot use their land productively. This is socialism people. It kills people.

As a Sioux native, let us use out land white men do, collateral on loans, to build business, but you string us up telling us what we can and cannot do with our land. I why can we not be allowed to do what the white man does?

As a Sioux I approve.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain what you mean by this being socialism? It doesn't appear to be the socialism I'm familiar with here in Canada.

<comment><USER6> I imagine he means that the natives/first peoples don't have full property rights like those outside of reservations have. If I understand correctly, much of the land on reservations is "communal" (communist or the extream end of "socialist"). Apparently, there's a big issue getting title to land which according to the following article, explains the abundance of mobile homes on reservations:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2011/12/13/why- are-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2011/12/13/why-are-indian- reservations-so-poor-a-look-at-the-bottom-1/#739b8eee337a)

Part of the typical "bundle of rights" in property ownership is the ability to abstract natural resources (plant, animal, mineral, energy). Without true property rights and ability for land to serve as collateral, the risk of capital lending is very high. You can't finance a home, you can't invest in a manufacturing plant, you can't get a farm loan, you can't mine the land, (both due to lack of mineral rights and that no bank will loan money for the equipment).

This is why reservations are poor; same reasons socialist/communist states were/are poor: Tragedy of the commons. This type of land socialism should not be confused with "social" safety nets like health care and social security. If I were a native, I'd be pretty pissed if the "white man" were running his pipelines through my territory, ancestral or not, while I got little in return. In my opinion, the reservations should be brought under the legal jurisdiction of the United States and treated as US territories.

Also, learning about Russell Means, a Lakota libertarian activist, is worthwhile: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sufficiently versed to have this opinion probably, but why are we building pipelines all over the place? Isn't oil a dinosaur (heh heh) at this point? I mean, no, obviously the world runs on it, but I expect to in my lifetime see insane leaps in solar tech and rollout, huge jumps in the percentages of electric cars on the roads, driverless cars reconfigure if and how people buy cars, and so on.

Is the US really growing its oil use so much we need two or three new pipelines?

<comment><USER8> This pipeline removes 7 unit trains a day from the rails through Minnesota to Illinois, the bakken makes about a million+/\- bbls a day, and will for quite some time.

<comment><USER9> The solution seems to be to drive the price of oil up then, no?

<comment><USER10> Higher oil prices are _good_ for the Bakken. It's not economically feasible to get at that oil at lower prices, which is one possible reason for the recent over production from the Middle East. Drive the price down low enough and the companies working in the Bakken fold, send their workers home, and it takes a long time to build back up.

<comment><USER11> But higher oil prices do drive down the use of oil in general.

<comment><USER10> Oil has highly inelastic demand in the short term. People need to drive to work. Goods need to be transported either by train, ship, or truck. Planes are still jam packed with people.

In the long term high oil prices will modify demand because people will start buying more efficient vehicles. You can see this happening in the decade starting in 2001 because prices spiked and stayed above $3/gal for the entire decade and fuel efficiency rose to match it.

<comment><USER2> Not to forget one of the most "insidious" uses/dependencies of oil: food production in general and agriculture in particular. No oil, means, as far as I know, without radical change, less (as in not enough) and (much) more expensive food. That's even before one considers transport etc.

<comment> 08-15 I really wonder why farmers don't run their equipment on biodiesel or bioethanol.

(Actually, the answer is bloody obvious. Admittedly somewhat off-topic, too.)

<comment><USER2> AFAIK there's been some success in Germany with being able to combine a big enough crop devoted to biodisel along side a meaningfully size crop for food - but oil, especially subsidized oil, is _really_ cheap energy.

But there was recently a big scare connected to farmers taking subsidies to produce biodisel - and biodiisel production out-competing food production and/or leading to hike in food prices... so yeah. If you have X square meters in which to grow food, you can't readily use some large percentage of that for "growing" biodiesel, without cutting into your food grow area.

I'm sure there are certain biomass that will work as both, but it's not trivial to "just use biodisel".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "...construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time."

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm almost certain that construction will continue at some point in the future.

<comment><USER9> Lots of ways still to prevent it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been trying to find more details on the tribe's claim of burial cairns in the pipeline's path. Anyone have any links? How is it possible that these were missed after 15 years of court battles and planning?

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow! What was going on over there? It must have gotten pretty big. Of course, the mainstream news barely mentions it.

Anyway, some Good news, for a change.</comment>


How the Travis Central Appraisal District Purchased Home Sales Information - <AUTHOR> https://www.kvue.com/mobile/article/news/investigations/defenders/how-the-travis-central-appraisal-district-purchased-home-sales-information/269-6f816687-035d-4b49-b86d-65fde9f49fe0 <comment><USER2> Privatization of land records and public data is a shitty thing, if a potential buyer is scared away by a public record of their transaction being published, they shouldn't be buying the property in question.

I'm proud that my state mandates free, open access to property ownership records and county/city maps & GIS data. Property appraisal in Washington State sounds much easier to do than in Texas where this data is locked away from the general public, as another thing counties and cities do here is rate structural build quality, integrity, and also have a bank of photos of the property over the years (generally whenever a permit is pulled or the age of the last photo set is over a few years old) as part of the public record.</comment>


Private infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/private-infrastructure

<comment><USER2> I think the general point to take away from notions like this is that many of these very profitable opportunities (Uber, airbnb, instacart, even private MOOC to replace education) are all responses to public infrastructure failures as our voting population becomes more and more self-centered and focused on individualist (i.e. extremist capitalist/Libertarian) economics and less willing to fund public infrastructure, be it in transportation, education, any public good really.

The solution that is always suggested is some form of leaning in harder to Libertarianism and trying to explain away how private control of infrastructure with a profit motive is somehow a good thing. Which makes sense taking the world view that [private profits == good, market economics are the only solution to any problem] for granted and if you're likely to be the private person controlling the infrastructure and its corresponding enormous untouchable profits. Incidentally, the private structures are even certainly better for everyone than the broken dilapidated infrastructure that exists right now (see: Uber) and so it's a net gain for the public in the short term, but it's dystopian in the long term.

<comment><USER3> The public infrastructure which you've described didn't 'fail' because of lack of funding, it 'failed' because of lack of aligned incentives. Please specifically outline how Uber and similar services are good for only the 'short term' and will be 'dystopian' in the long, I'm very curious.

<comment><USER2> Of course it did -- public transportation, the alternative to mass widespread use of taxis/private cabs most certainly dies in most of the US because of a lack of funding.

And you're right I left that dystopian comment vague -- let me clarify, having a large private monopoly own a necessary piece of transportation infrastructure is my idea of a dystopia, incidentally especially when their business model is built around using ownership of the name and app to exploit people who really need to use it (i.e. surge pricing) and people who work to provide it (i.e. the "technically private contractors but really just employees without benefits").

The point is transportation is something we all require and should be provided by the public (it already is in the form of roads, but that's not good enough): taxis are a crappy but elastic solution that's there to fill in the gaps. I think their awfulness is a good thing: private cars driving people around are a terrible solution to the real problem which is transportation infrastructure. As soon as a terrible solution starts to look and feel okay to a lot of (wealthy or middle-class) people, that's dangerous. Because things like Uber don't look and feel okay to the very poor. That's why I describe it as dystopian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another self-serving Libertarian-themed post that works under the flawed premise that market forces can replace all natural monopolies efficiently, as well as surpass the laws of physics.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why you don't want infrastructure to be privatized, the biggest of which being because infrastructure will not be profitable everywhere, yet that doesn't take away its strategic value not the idea that there are some fundamental services that should be reasonably available to all citizens.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I didn't seem to read the same vulgar libertarian subtexts that you did. It was more an outline of computer technology enabling an easier proliferation of alternatives to state-provided services. There isn't much of a value judgment being made, in fact it notes that "opportunities are being exploited by a range of startups and companies who are essentially building private infrastructure, mainly for the relatively wealthy".

<comment><USER4> I see the absence of a value judgement in the observation of the infrastructure of a developed country falling apart and as explicitly saying that it doesn't really concern him.

As a citizen, investor, _whatever_ , that fact should be frightening for all sorts of reasons. The investment opportunities are, if anything, a minor consolation.

I don't think you'll find a lot of people cheering for obscenely bad causes, but you'll definitely find a lot of people who have very neutral opinions and opportunistically seize business opportunities without much regard of the externalities and systemic effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really see how Instacart can be considered "infrastructure", at best it's a marketplace-driven service. There are lots of examples of private infrastructure - e.g. the internet - which don't suffer the various problems described, and all the examples cited still rely on actual infrastructure to exist..

<comment><USER6> I don't think Instacart is, or ever wanted to be an infrastructure. At least not as a transportation infrastructure. There is an argument to be made that it is becoming an infrastructure "within" a supermarket, mainly because of their pick & pack infrastructure (this is probably what Aaron is referring to) and understanding of inventory. Compare that to what we're doing at Postmates. We're in the process of creating a transportation layer by combining tens of thousands of people with cars and bikes or on foot into a "programmable layer" that can be accessed through our API and utilized by third parties. Both have huge potential.

<comment><USER7> It's infrastructure so far as it is a supplementary good to physical infrastructure. You could think of it as virtual infrastructure. By the time you are cooking dinner, there is no difference between having an accessible grocery store vs Instacart. Similarly, when you are at your destination, there is no difference between having taken the subway and having used Uber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The food desert comment was interesting but I guess it depends on your definition of a food desert. I imagine if everyone is delivering their food then food deserts (as defined as regions with walkable grocery stores) would increase as there would be less grocery stores around (replaced by gigantic food warehouses).</comment>


Berkshire Hathaway - <AUTHOR> https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html)

>linking to this website without written permission is prohibited

Looks like you and I are in violation :)</comment>


A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a Covid-19 Antibody Test. It Cost $10,984 - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/a-doctor-went-to-his-own-employer-for-a-covid-19-antibody-test-it-cost-10-984 <comment><USER2> This is why the virus is spreading like wildfire in countries without universal healthcare, like the US. For those who are against it, now you can see very clearly that the health of others affects your own health. No one lives in a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like things are so screwed up in the US, that if someone can get the details of hospital visits they could send bogus invoices to insurance companies and be paid much of the time. :(

<comment><USER4> Probably there needs to be some education effort. In Canada we consider tax- paid healthcare to be the norm. The vast majority of us would never want to have what the US has. There are people who want a hybrid system though, but we also recognize that trying to do both has always failed everywhere that's ever tried. We do occasionally revisit the idea to figure out new options, but they always end up with the Universal plans suffering since it triggers nearly everyone to demand that they don't pay for "the others" and would rather use their money elsewhere (always until the day they discover they actually still _need_ that healthcare they weren't willing to pay for, but its no longer there because they didn't want to pay for its existence.) It's pretty much impossible to come up with a plan for both since everyone naturally wants to keep their money when they can, then complain after-the-fact about what they lose as a result. And everybody _will_ wind up needing it eventually, no matter how generally healthy they are, and won't be stuck with those multi- thousand dollar invoices and health-related bankruptcies as a result of not paying beforehand.

Our taxes are higher, but we get a lot of mileage out of it. And nobody can honestly say the tax is crippling. In Ontario our minimum wage is $14 (was going to be $15, but our Conservative premier made cuts to everything just to piss off the Liberals, as they are wont to do in Canadian politics. It's like your Dems/Reps in many respects.) It makes sense that "sin taxes" for things like alcohol, tobacco and gasoline pay for things like medical care and maintaining roads. Who cares if it costs more to smoke and get drunk every day if it pays for your eventual liver and lung care?

Every Canadian eventually appreciates that we can get cancer screening, non- elective surgeries, and so many types of physical and mental therapies for "free" because they're already paid for. But for whatever reason, Republicans have succeeded in convincing Americans that social medicine equals communism. It's that scary word "social" and that scarier concept "tax."

Sure a lot of Canadians complain about wait times. But that's because more people are able to use the healthcare system as designed, so there are times the hospitals are flooded - the very times you'd expect and hope American hospitals would also be flooded, since people aren't weighing paycheck-to- treatment ratios and avoiding treatments that might cause financial hardship or bankruptcy. And knowing general populations the world over, it would be impossible to come up with anything besides "Biblical miracle workers for all" that wouldn't be met with complaints and crazy voter crises.

PS: About those dreadful wait times: I had a cancer screening return "abnormal" and so I had to set up an appointment for a more in-depth procedure to check. My wait time? 2 weeks. And it's pandemic time, so I'm pretty impressed.

Years ago when my doctor discovered I had a cyst in my ear and wanted to dig it out (same thing Stephen Colbert had, except I can't do his famous ear clicky trick - I tried!), my surgery wait time was 2 months, since it isn't as dire and immediate. My out-of-pocket cost for all? $0. So I'm not one of those people complaining about it. There might be room for improvement, but I wouldn't want to see it step backward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It worries me a lot that even if there is a vaccine the US health care system will find ways to rip off people and so hinder widespread use. Every time I go to the doctor I am worried that they will find a way to charge a few thousand extra so I rarely go. I bet a lot of people will not get vaccinated because they may get screwed.</comment>


2009 Rubyist's guide to a Mac OS X development environment - <AUTHOR> http://giantrobots.thoughtbot.com/2009/3/30/2009-rubyist-guide-mac-os-x-development-environment <comment><USER2> My version:

Git: sudo port install git-core

Aliases: do not want. sudo port install bash-completion

MySQL: sudo port install mysql5 +server

Capistrano: sudo gem install vlad

ImageMagick: sudo port...

Quicksilver: out with the old, in with <http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/>

I don't get the anti-macports attitude. Why go through the hassle of downloading a bunch of stuff when it can be just a command line away?

<comment><USER3> Indeed. MacPorts has the additional advantage of using upgradable and removable packages, rather than polluting /usr/local (or worse, /usr) with unmaintainable detritus of various .pkg installers. MacPorts packages do occasionally fail to build, but (1) the maintainers do respond to tickets opened in their Trac system, and (2) most problems I saw had to do with Python packages, and MacPorts handling of Python apps seems to have improved recently.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, I now have a new rule: MacPorts provides everything I need except for Ruby and Python, which are always compiled from source into a separate location where they can pollute all they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me: Ubuntu/Debian VM image = same env for dev and deploy. Fewer moving parts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read this, spent most of the day struggling with Vim and then went back to Textmate defeated. I still can't understand why I should move to Vim/Emacs when I spend 99.99% of my time infront of a Mac.

<comment><USER7> Emacs and Vim have ridiculous learning curves. Their practitioners wouldn't be so fanatic about them if anyone could unlock their powers in a day. However if you're ready to make a real commitment to learning it, you might get a great return on investment down the line. Learning about all the great programmers who favorite those editors might give you enough faith to give it a serious try.

<comment><USER8> disclaimer - Im a daily vim user.

I think the {derivative of the} learning curve has a long tail.. I keep finding new cool things I can do with it, I guess emacs is the same, or even more so as you can start hacking lisp...

I recommend printing out a cheat sheet with the most common commands - you can start small and get work done.

Things like <esc> :E for browsing files is handy and youll forget them at first. I map a hotkey for :bn :bp so I can flick through the open buffers.

Good tuts on the web. It packs a punch.

oh, on ubuntu youll need to install vim-full

      sudo apt-get install vim-full

.. thats annoying, but you'll be crippled without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently bought a Mac Mini and since the installed version of Ruby was a year old I opted to just install from source.

I do the same on my Ubuntu boxen. Is there an argument for using pre-packaged, but not current, installations?

I like the convenience of tools like apt for many things, but prefer to go to the source for certain key items.

</comment><comment><USER10> I gotta say, that vim syntax highlighting theme looks awesome.

<comment><USER11> Do you know where the vim configuration files are in macvim? I'm curious to see how they did that.

<http://repo.or.cz/w/MacVim.git?a=tree;hb=refs/heads/master>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> excellent guide, will be running through it tonight</comment>


Ask HN: What can I do so that Monkeys do not chew my fiber optic cable? - <AUTHOR> Where I live Red Bottomed Rhesus Macaques chew the single mode 2 fiber drop cable resulting in loss of the internet.
I am writing this from a 4g internet as they've again chewed through the cable for the third time and split it into 4 pieces.
The wire comes overhead from the utility pole.
They come in groups and occupy the whole terrace where the cable lands. They ignore you and if you try to scare them away they charge towards you. As it's a group, one comes from left, one comes from right and they make a circle around you.
What can be done to prevent them from chewing the cable?
They do not chew the power or telephone or even TV coax cable but only fiber cable, why? <comment><USER2> See if you can't get a steel armored fiber cable, try to get the ones that are essentially a cable wrapped in a thin narrow sheet of steel. They are pretty common for electric cables to prevent accidental damage and to prevent rats from chewing through the cables.

Alternatively there are nail polishes for sale that are supposed to stop nail biting by being very bitter tasting, maybe monkeys also find the compound very bitter if you coat the cable?

</comment><comment><USER3> Electric fence? Bitterant? Maybe some of those bird-prevention spikes that get put on trees or buildings in cities? Re-route the cable through steel conduit/electrical boxes? Armored cable? Motion sensitive alarm/lights/water spray? Really depends on your budget and how silly/effective you want this to be.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not switch to LACP + DOCSIS/DECA/MOCA + TV CoAx cable? Cheap DirecTV DECA Adapters can carry speeds of duplex 100Mbps quite well. From marketing material, Motorola's MM1000 Adapters promise a 1000Mbps connection over CoAx.

You could try adding a plastic sleeve to the cable - but I've always considered CoAx to be resilient for rural/jungle Internet, especially because they are way easier to patch after cable cuts. It also doesn't make a difference if the chopping species is 'Cable Mafia Men' or 'Red Bottomed Rhesus Macaques'.

At this point, It is unreasonable to expect monkeys or humans to understand the subtleties of optic fiber cold crimping.

</comment><comment><USER5> So I've oddly enough had somewhat of a similar problem with my cats chewing through our various cables as well, though they don't surround me threateningly...

One solution might be creating an unpleasant texture on the cable (by using a cable sleeve). If it's sufficiently unpleasant and not the same texture as before, it might be enough of a deterrent.

[https://www.amazon.com/Polypropylene-Computer-Management- Ele...](https://www.amazon.com/Polypropylene-Computer-Management-Electrical- Protector/dp/B07DVZ3W38) was what I was thinking.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps they like the fiber cable because it's tougher than other cables. I think many animals have an instinct to do stuff like this to sharpen their teeth perhaps or to clean them.

Perhaps do some research, find something they'd like more, like something they'd find in their natural habitat and put it near the cable so they use that instead. Like a sacrificial anode on a ship.

You could also just try buying a spool of fiber cable (not sure of the cost) and constantly put a length somewhere easier to get to. Make sure you replace it as it gets damaged.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try pouring panther piss all over it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have a solution but I'm reminded of this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230904)

</comment><comment><USER9> Get a couple of big dogs? Not sure who is more territorial. Maybe coerce them somewhere else with a snack they like so they occupy someone else's yard. Carrots and sticks.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have you considered putting a tarp on it? Or spraying it with something flavored with something monkeys don't like the taste of?

</comment><comment><USER11> Can you put that portion in a plastic pipe/conduit when they come to re- install it? At least the portion they are chewing?</comment>


Discrete Structures for Computer Science: Counting, Recursion, and Probability - <AUTHOR> http://cglab.ca/~michiel/DiscreteStructures/ This textbooks is being taught as a second year discrete math course at Carleton University. I found it to be really high quality, and on par with similar sections from the Rosen or Epp texts.<p>Oh... Also, it is free! <comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

This textbook is being taught as a second year discrete math course at Carleton University. I found it to be really high quality, and on par with similar sections from the Rosen or Epp texts.

Oh... Also, it is free!</comment>


Transparent object proxies in Python - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2014/08/transparent-object-proxies-in-python.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Related to Armin's "The Python I Would Like To See" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8186008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8186008)</comment>


RestCurt: provides a simple, fast, minimalist RESTful web framwork for Java - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hamidsamani/restcurt <comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on designing a RESTful framework for Java.It will be my final project for earning master degree of computer science. I would greatly appreciate it if you give me your opinions.</comment>


Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System [pdf] - happy-go-lucky https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> It's a classic paper everyone doing serious distributed systems should read.

</comment><comment><USER2> Umm should be tagged 1977?</comment>


Hate Your ISP? Maybe You Need Community Fiber - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/hate-your-isp-maybe-you-need-community-fiber <comment><USER2> I once lived in a city with a community run fiber network. It was pretty damn amazing. They still have great rates for what you get: [http://www.sfcn.org/sfcn/internet/](http://www.sfcn.org/sfcn/internet/)

I paid about how much the "Plus" plan cost, without TV, just for 3Mps down/1Mps up in the next two places I lived. It really does spoil you when you've had a proper ISP compared with the TWC/Comcast/Cox monopolies that run in other locales.

Edit: and note, this was a tiny (less than 30k residents) at the time I had it. Incredible value for the service. I'm sure there's lots of happy customers there still.

<comment><USER3> I think it's telling that they list the cost of a static IP on their home page. My local provider doesn't even list it as a service; and if you find a rep who can sell it to you it's a "business-only" service AND costs you around 60 USD per month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if there is a way to adopt something analogous to a franchise model here. It strikes me that only the communities that are really, really engaged are going to be able to pull this off (which is true of most public works projects). That being said, it would be great to not have every small town and borough have to figure everything out for themselves. A franchise operator for a fast food restaurant doesn't have to worry about where to buy burgers, the brand of deep fryers, or even the optimal amount of time to fry the tater tots. If there was a full on recipe for doing this that is proven to work, a small number of citizens might be able to make it happen even in places where the local government is ambivalent. A proper setup would include some national branding to help with PR (I.e. Every article in every newspaper about community broadband would use the same name for it). It would include marketing materials for the public as well as briefing packs for local officials, legal briefs for attorneys, etc... On the technical side it would recommend specific hardware, suppliers, and designs.

The advantage to such an approach would be to harness economy of scale at a national level, but allow local communities to drive the process and own the network.

I'm not sure how you would structure it to avoid creating another monopoly in the parent company of the franchises. But perhaps a nonprofit or a corporation 100% owned by the community franchisees would work.

<comment><USER5> I am involved in a local community fiber project- DadeCountyFiber.org and I have been thinking along similar lines. I think an association or coop model may work best. I am actually considering a proposal to organize a Fraternal Society that would operate with local chapters controlling the local networks, and leveraging the resources of each other. The Fraternal Society would provide education and social activities to members, and encourage the open development and collaboration of the network.

Any thoughts or ideas are always welcome!

<comment><USER6> The main need for community fiber is because we've proven that private companies cannot be trusted with a broadband monopoly/duopoly and yet to allow more companies to run lines would create chaos. For that reason, the community needs to control the last mile. But the community doesn't need to be the ISP. Without the barrier to entry that is running lines to residential customers, many smaller ISPs will be able to compete with each other and you'll see the market actually work the way that it's supposed to.

So run the fiber to people's houses and charge ISPs a fixed fee per customer that covers the cost to maintain the network and, potentially, recovers a bit of the initial expense of the network. But then let customers choose their ISP based on speed and features. The worst thing you can do is replace the crap fully-private system we have now with a slightly-less crappy government monopoly.

<comment><USER5> I tend to like the open access model you are proposing. I am very inclined to operate the network on an open access model. However, depending on our funding sources, we may be forced to be an ISP and phone company to get the funding. Right now we are exploring the FCC's Rural Broadband Experiments. In theory, we could have a partner service provider handle the phone service requirement, but it may not be as easy to do in practice. Thanks for commenting. Even if we do operate our own ISP/Phone Company, it is strongly likely the network will be open access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've thought the "open access" type model would work for a couple years now and I'm glad to see it being discussed here. Community Fiber may work in pro- active cities. However problems may reveal themselves in other cities when the politicians make campaign budget promises and usage statistics make some people angry they're paying for people who use more internet than they do. You can't expect every mayor of every small town in the US to understand enough about fiber equipment to make the right purchases for their local infrastructure.

The fundamental problem is the cost of the last mile infrastructure is too great to allow much competition. (Though existing companies have worked with lawmakers to further cement their position.) Open access would allow companies to compete with their service, knowledge, and connection to the internet at large, while reducing the cost of gaining you as a customer to plugging you in at the central hub.

At one point long ago our nation decided that broad communication networks which included every household benefited the whole enough that shouldering the upfront cost was far worth the rewards. We wired up every household with a copper line and access to phone service. Now that the internet has surpassed and commenced the phone we have forgotten the lessons of the past and are struggling along with "good enough" copper instead of again shouldering the cost and laying down fiber lines. It would cost a lot to reach rural areas and connect every last household. However fiber is great in that you can upgrade the equipment at the end to continue to increase speed, and in a country where websites can assume all of their potential customers would have very fast internet radical technological advancements could occur.

The technological advancements will occur in the end. The biggest question is whether or not the US will reap the rewards that it has been these last several decades, or if another country will. There is no faster way to irrelevance than doing nothing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Where it only makes sense to build one of some piece of infrastructure, isn't it really obvious that it should always be owned by the people? I suspect that this applies to quite a few things: cable data networks, wireless data networks (phone masts), electricity transmission grid, railway lines, roads, etc.

Historically, national infrastructure seems to tend towards becoming a monopoly anyway under private ownership. Further, when these are privately owned, we seem to end up with a lumbering private company regulated by a lumbering state bureaucracy which duplicates a large part of the accounts department of the private company to keep them in check.

This means that we have the worst of both worlds; no real choice, patchy service, high prices for the service and a whole load of hidden regulatory costs which come out of our taxes.

Anecdotally, I've consulted for a state regulated privately owned monopoly company, there is no way that private sector efficiency is driving these places, the bureaucracy is intense. Example: A decision from the company on whether it was acceptable to use a different, cheaper but better looking style of suspended ceiling took 6 months and went all the way to the board of directors of this multi billion pound company.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm especially enthusiastic about their endorsement of open access.

I'm generally skeptical of such things, but I can see the point in local government (community != government, that's newspeak) taking a lead in running fiber in much the same way they do electricity and plumbing, mostly because it seems that fiber is sufficiently future proof - it seems plausible that transmission technology on fiber can keep up with domestic applications without having to rely on horrible stop-gap tech like ADSL.

But one thing is laying a cable, that's a largely neutral and objective undertaking, another is running a good ISP - that's a completely different beast. I strongly doubt a government run ISP is going to be great, especially if something happens and it turns into a cost centre, or if it's "awarded" to the highest bidder to run, or stuffed full of overpaid incompetents by way of political nepotism. As with anything government run, when first things starts going down that route, it's incredibly difficult to reverse.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is exactly what we've been doing in Sweden the last 10 years, at least.

Local electrical companies usually offer a city wide fiber grid in small towns. Sometimes housing companies that own a few apartment buildings have their own fiber grid. And ontop of that there are communities in more rural areas that come together and pay for the work to have fiber dug to their houses.

But that's just fiber, they still need an ISP for internet service and there we usually have at least a dozen different companies to choose from.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Community fiber" is working towards a practical implementation of ambient connectivity that Bob Frankston's been talking up for years through IEEE and elsewhere. Some of his essays lay some good groundwork for governance and expansion. [http://frankston.com/Public/](http://frankston.com/Public/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been wanting to push for community fiber in my area, but I have no idea where I would even begin. Are there any resources available for those of us who want to get involved?

</comment><comment><USER13> Just as an aside on one of the points they try to make (not about residential internet access):

"Imagine the Director of Public Works using her smart phone to reschedule all the sprinklers in the city with just a few clicks."

This makes me really uncomfortable. I think infrastructure needs to be physically separated from the public networks. Everything else just asks for somebody to cause mayhem, un- or intentionally.

<comment><USER14> So, would you propose a dedicated physical wire for every service?

You have to begin weighing the differences between physical vs. logical separation in network design at a point. MSR did two really good studies on network reliability, when they found that larger Aspen trees are significantly more reliable than smaller ones. If you're to build a large tree for every system, you're going to have a prohibitively expensive infrastructure.

In addition to this, the complexity of having multiple bespoke systems for every time someone calls something special, and dedicated results in higher system, and network administration cost. Because the scales of various networks are going to be different, their implementation will probably vary greatly as well, giving your engineers massive headaches. It's been shown that engineers, and software result in the highest number of failures in production systems.

Lastly, physical separation is no longer an easy excuse for security. At some point, that separation, intentionally, or unintentionally is going to get broken. It's best to begin operating from an idea that shared infrastructure will be more resilient, cheaper, and easier-to-operate.

<comment><USER9> > So, would you propose a dedicated physical wire for every service?

That's actually in a twisted sense what the article is advocating. Instead of relying on commodity communications, they advocate the city putting in their own infrastructure _so_ they can do things like this.

The article is generally good, but that section is strange. You unequivocally do not need to run high speed internet to homes in order to move towards a "smart city" \- wiring up those things they mention is orders of magnitude cheaper than running fiber to every home (funny how surveillance cameras is a suddenly a good thing, by the way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I live in a small village (2,000 people) and would love to implement something like this but the costs, as mentioned in articles about communities that have done it, seem prohibitive in the extreme (many millions of dollars). The article talks about underserved rural communities but how in the world do such places afford this (aside from the wealthiest locales, anyway)?

<comment><USER16> The main thing is economy of scale.

Fibre that has rolled out in Australia by the Government owned NBN Co averaged around $2300 per premises (for the access nework - you'd need to add on a bit for the transit backhaul and interconnection point with providers). We have a ridiculously high cost of labour too so I'm sure it can be done cheaper. So while it would cost millions, it's actually not that much when you spread it out across enough people. 2000 subscribers would probably be enough to get around that ballpark if most people were up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Community fiber optics is the way to go. In Bucharest, in 2000, when fiber was really expensive a small community, like a block of apartments, would get much better quality service by sharing a business type of connection than buying for each apartment a "home/personal" service. The initial cost is that someone needs to step up, build the infrastructure and start the sharing service. In Western countries this might be a little bit more difficult than it was in Bucharest in 2000 because of the regulation regarding wires, cable tunnels etc. However it is not impossible and the benefits of such a service in the community exceeds the initial pain of setting up the service.

In Bucharest, experience showed that once a community connected to internet via a dedicated fiber service, self maintained, the neighbouring blocks and adjacent residential areas start to press for connecting to the same service. Soon a network serving 30 families, grew to 100 then 500 or even more. A single connection became 4 load balancing the load. You had a problem with your connectivity? Just pick up the phone and call a guy 10 houses away from yours.

I may not be very accurate about the prices in 2000 but the first connection we had in our block was a 350 euro/ month + 150 set up fee for a 100Mbs bandwidth with no traffic limit. In my block 27 families out of 36 decided to join the network and the initial set up of the fiber + local ethernet infrastructure cost was split among residents. No filtering, no connection throttling, no interference. We were paying 15 euro per month to cover some maintenance cost and future failures of cables and routers. These 100 Mbps are not much they were 100 Mbps were steady. The thing is that when we upgraded our link to a 500 euro/month we got 250 Mbps. So bandwidth and cost don't scale linearly. The more people in your network the better the service.

Maintaining a large network can be a pain. However, if you give incentives to the sys admin, and the does a good job by deploying a network with little quarks, he can actually have a passive income without much of a hassle. Networks with more than 2000 families generally had a team of 1-3 sys admins taking care of the network full time.

We also had the traditional cable companies offering a package of TV + phone + internet based on coaxial cable. Their offering was so inferior to the "neighbourhood network". The large companies ended up by stepping up their game and offering similar quality services. They were actually struggling to keep up the pace. The local networks, created around 2004-2005 a backbone network which allowed every "neighbourhood network" to connect to the other networks via high speed 10Gbps fiber cables. This became later the ANISP a national association. Yes, the small networks were in the end bought by large companies but at least the standard was set high enough so that it cannot be rolled back.

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

<comment><USER18> How would these Internet "coop's" deal with the tech support? I would worry that regular users would constantly have all sorts of problems with spyware, viruses, cheap APs/routers and broken network configurations.

<comment><USER17> There are indeed a lot of problems with individual users. Small networks as such were generally maintained by sysadmins like teenagers/students/grads which sometime fix these config problems for a small amount of money. Plus, good tech guys were always requested by neighbours to fix problems as such, change a HDD, change a cable or a faulty plug.

It is indeed a local community type of network. Plus, in every family there is a teenager willing to step into network configurations. Teenagers, students and young professionals were those that made these networks so popular because they were demanding high quality connection and they were tech savvy. People like them are generally willing to do the hard work of learning something about setting a network IP to a router or AP. Setting a DHCP server in your network was something that released a lot of pressure in my network. Mac addresses were also used quite often to block unauthorised devices from accessing the network. You had to call your sysadmin and send / spell over the phone your mac address.

When everything was at very beginning, during storms a lot of equipments connecting two blocks were getting burned, UTP cat 5 cables broken and required fixing. People who started this kind of networks were to become country's first big generation of top notch dev ops who faced networks growing from 3 users connected by a BNC cable to thousands of users distributed all over a large neighbourhood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "People love to complain about the speed of their Internet access and with > good reason."

I'm sorry, but no, in my experience, they don't. I can't think off hand of any non-tech person in my area complain about their Internet speed. People pay $42/mo here for 9/2Meg and because it will play Netflix and get them on Facebook, it's good enough. I'm not arguing against a fiber upgrade, I'd love to see it, but in the end, non-techy people don't seem to see much advantage. You're not going to build a community network unless the community is engaged. How other non American countries have done it I don't know, how you get that level of engagement in the most individualized culture in the world is beyond me. Sadly, I feel the only way this would really happen in most of urban America would be to beat the incumbents on price. Which sounds possible, but not by much, especially with the fact that if you don't offer bundled cable- vision, people then have to break their other provider's bundle and pay more for cable elsewhere so the difference is even less. I hate to be pessimistic about it (I think gig everywhere could have huge economic advantages), but this is a major hurdle. People often hate their providers, but it's often due to price or customer service, not speed.

<comment><USER20> It has been my experience that "non-tech people" do complain about their internet speed because the major ISPs actually don't provide good enough service for them to play Netflix and get on Facebook as consistently as they want.

More importantly, what "non-tech people" don't realize is what they will want in the future. In 2008, they didn't know they would want to stream Netflix over the internet. I don't think there's a big chicken and egg problem with faster internet; people will want faster internet when they start using services that the current infrastructure doesn't support well. It has happened before and it will keep happening.

<comment><USER19> I was really hoping to see someone have a different experience than me, so thank you ;). Not sure why the difference though, perhaps we have the speed around here but just not a decent price. I've heard more non-tech people complain about the data caps actually, especially families with children who watch kids shows on Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My community might get Google Fiber soon. I still am pretty excited about that, but the more I read about community fiber, the more torn I feel.

</comment><comment><USER22> I may be missing something but is the suggestion that local municipalities dig their last mile and run their own fiber?

That's ... Not likely to succeed surely? I assume the actual dig out is a specialised job, with no private hire market, the back haul ... To where and to whom? Do most towns know where their nearest telehouse/interconnect is? The support tasks are difficult - and scale pretty well, but not if you have no scale.

Ultimately this sounds like "hey let's build a public ally owned nationwide fiber network!" Why not start at that point?

<comment><USER23> A common approach is to incorporate a municipally owned subsidiary that hires the appropriate expertise. That's how the electric and plumbing networks were built in many towns, for example. A number have since been sold off (turned into privatized utility companies), but some are still city-owned. Other cities have gone for a pooled model, where the each city owns their utilities, but rather than administer them directly, pays into a nonprofit organization that provides the service/maintenance, thereby gaining some economy of scale (e.g. [http://www.ncpublicpower.com](http://www.ncpublicpower.com)).

<comment><USER24> That's what some of us in Seattle are pressuring the city to do. Seattle City Light is a power company owned by the city and is already doing extensive work for the smart meter rehab. The idea is, while SCL is out digging around, lay last mile fiber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do we have something like this in SF Bay Area?

<comment><USER26> Actually the article includes a link to a study on Community Fiber which included San Francisco: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2439429](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2439429)

I haven't read it, but maybe this means there is an SF neighborhood that's rolled this out or at least was studied?

<comment><USER25> I just skim through it, pretty good reading to understand where we are now. Main key-points:

\- fiber has been rolling out for library, public housing, schools and public Wi-FI. But not on community / businesses.

\- SF has the infrastructure, it just needs to build "the last mile" to connect with the houses / buildings

\- there has been effort for community-fiber since 2011, but as of 2014, the city is still not in favor of this kind of development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The sad thing is it is taking local community governments to compete with broadband 'providers'. You know you need some competition when local governments are the tip of innovation and your biggest competition. I hope many more communities and Google Fiber wake up the slumbering cable companies and telcos.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am currently involved in a community project to build fiber in our rural Missouri county- DadeCountyFiber.org

We are hoping to participate in the FCC's Rural Broadband Experiments for the Connect America Fund.

Any ideas or feedback are most welcome!

</comment><comment><USER28> Definitely hate TWC, but no other option.

</comment><comment><USER29> No shit?

</comment><comment><USER30> Wheeler is still a dingo.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd love to have fiber dropped to my home but this article glosses over the privacy implications of having a government entity have direct access to everything you do online.

<comment><USER32> Indeed. Taxpayer-funded broadband has its allure, but the risks of something going very wrong with private data are much higher, in terms of what is at stake if not in terms of odds of a breach.

<comment><USER33> The solution here is SSL everywhere, at all times. We should be just as concerned about Time Warner and Comcast having access to our private browsing.

It'd be nice to have an intermediate step between HTTP and CA-validated HTTPS. Yes, my ISP could theoretically MITM me, but it'd at least allow websites to prevent casual snooping.</comment></comment></comment>


Staples First Major U.S. Retailer to Announce Availability of 3D Printers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130503005116/en/Staples-Major-U.S.-Retailer-Announce-Availability-3D <comment><AUTHOR> I do wonder if there will be a neighborhood 3D print shop where I can take a disk and get it printed?</comment>