Scottish Independence Referendum Data Map - <AUTHOR> http://vis.oobrien.com/indyref/ <comment><USER2> I was talking about Scottish Independence today while hiking with two friends. Both of them thought that independence was a bad idea, but could not provide much reason for this. Maybe a slant in USA news media, with a pro-England slant?

I bet England does make them pay short term if there is a YES vote, but if being a small and independent country saves them money on military spending then long term it might make sense, in addition to national pride.

Way off topic, sorry, but: it is really interesting to think about the USA someday balkanizing. After the dollar is no longer the reserve currency, and when we can't afford our gigantic military expenses anymore, it might make sense to have smaller regional countries, with EU style trade and mobility agreements. Small seems more efficient.

<comment><USER3> One reason against voting yes is quite simple: having no idea what will happen. There are definitely economic uncertainties with independence, and I think it's a valid viewpoint to be concerned about them.

There's no guarantee that change will be a good thing, and the actual benefit to independence is pretty intangible - it is primarily emotional rather than calculated (Scotland already have a parliament, that will be given more powers even if the vote results in a "no")

<comment><USER4> The guarantee is with the No vote. More of the same right wing policies, growing inequity and non-representative politicians.

Its interesting to note the high turn out for this referendum, where a simple yes / no vote means no pandering to swing voters, or tactical voting. Politicians have always claimed low turn out was due to voter apathy.

<comment><USER5> > The guarantee is with the No vote. More of the same right wing policies

The UK has entirely socialised health care, relatively high taxes and a large population on welfare. It is hardly a right wing country by international standards (you need to look at the USA to see what that means).

The reality is that compared to many countries and even its own recent past, Scotland is not doing so badly. That's the status quo offered by the no vote. In the event of a yes vote absolutely nobody knows what's going to happen because Salmond and co haven't thought it through at all. Anyone who asks him difficult questions gets labelled a biased bully. Anyone who suggests that separating a tightly integrated part of a country might be a teeny tiny bit complicated is labelled a scaremonger.

This absolute refusal to fill in the blanks means that the Yes campaign has instead let people fill in those blanks with their own hopes and dreams, indeed, Salmond has heavily encouraged this. Yes has come to represent everything to everyone regardless of what their actual underlying beliefs are. But that's not a foundation for a country or even a political party.

<comment> Tuna-Fish However, England is vastly more right-wing than Scotland. The only Scot I know supports yes simply because since WW2, Scotland has been under a Tory-ruled Westminster and having to implement their policies for roughly half the time, while never actually voting for them. As far as he's considered if Cameron and all his kind simply went away he'd be happy to be part of the UK.

<comment><USER6> You could say the same about every part of the country that did not vote for the current government. In a democracy you often don't get what you want.

<comment><USER7> > In a democracy you often don't get what you want.

According to Tuna-Fish's complaint, the Scots never got what they want for 70 years and now suddenly there's an opportunity to change that. Seems to be the better alternative than continuing with the status quo or following in William Wallace's footsteps.

<comment><USER6> Not true, there was a labour government for 13 years! Also many parts of England and Wales vote in a similar way to Scotland but they don't get to secceed.

<comment><USER4> The Labour party was corrupted by Blair. Its almost as right wing as the Conservatives. Inequality continued to grow for those 13 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Background blog post: [http://oobrien.com/2014/09/scottish-independence- referendum-...](http://oobrien.com/2014/09/scottish-independence-referendum- data-map/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just got back in from my visit to the polling station at a local scout hut a few minutes ago, with the largest population centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh declaring so late into the morning I'm not sure what large benefit is to be gained from live tracking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting map, but if the person who created it happens by, you should consider setting constraints[1] on your zoom, so that your subject remains in view. It's very easy to zoom out to continental zoom level, which doesn't show any useful information in this context.

1\. [http://openlayers.org/en/v3.0.0/examples/zoom- constrained.ht...](http://openlayers.org/en/v3.0.0/examples/zoom- constrained.html)

<comment><USER11> For the more sparsely populated areas (e.g. Highlands, Moray, Aberdeenshire, Perth & Kinross) placing the marker in the "geographical" center rather than on the main town looks a bit odd to me - especially as the Moray marker seems to be located on top of the Macallan distillery rather than at Elgin.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone able to explain how to read this?

</comment><comment><USER13> Why are the circles colored to indicate voting results if none of the results have been announced yet?

<comment><USER11> It's SNP voting levels from 2012 elections - not a particularly appropriate measure in my opinion!

Edit: The reason why I don't think it's appropriate is that it is a simple "Yes" or "No" and a lot of people who may have traditionally voted Labour or Lib Dem might be voting "Yes" even though the national UK parties have all been pushing the "No" side of the campaign.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. That's way off base. SNP voters won't make up half of the YES vote.

Its unpredictable as it's all down to how the Labour and previous non-voters fall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another version: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/scottish- referendum/results/](http://www.abc.net.au/news/scottish-referendum/results/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Pretty nifty map of #indyref tweets over the past 7 days [http://trendsmap.com/v2/Lf62/w](http://trendsmap.com/v2/Lf62/w)

</comment><comment><USER17> i'd have thought running a government is a massive hassle..if they could have the english do it for them for free, why would they want to do it themselves?

</comment><comment><USER8> The numbers in the circles at 21:00 BST time show the likely time when the results will be announced.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. Why is the Highland council area so red?

<comment><USER11> Probably based on the level of SNP support in either the local council, Scottish or UK parliament elections - traditionally the Liberal Democrats were strong in the Highlands.

Not sure picking SNP support in an area is a great basis for predicting tonight's results though - a lot of people who would never vote SNP seem to be supporting the "Yes" campaign.

I plan on fast-forwarding through the next few hours with some help from our local _water of life_.

Edit: This might be a good source for where those number come from:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/council/S12000017...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/vote2012/council/S12000017.stm)

As it was a council election there appear to have been a lot of independents - so the proportion of seats won by the SNP looks relatively small even though they were the largest political party.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Council_election,_2012](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Council_election,_2012)

<comment><USER18> So yeah, that's what I thought, but are there reasons why the Highlands don't affiliate directly with the SNP that are orthogonal to their likely vote?</comment></comment></comment>


Mouse considered harmful for most daily usage - <AUTHOR> http://cat-v.mit.edu/2019-10-15-mouse-considered-harmful.html <comment><USER2> Harmful is wrong word: "less effective" is more realistic. The title of this post is clickbaity. The "goto considered harmful" was the start of this and the overall pattern has not improved with age.

Most mouse GUI actions don't require complex curves even when they appear to. You can see this when you look at GUI recording and automation scripts generated or supported by tools such as Sikuli [1]. The better approaches don't even require precise coordinates for most actions let one complex curves/lines.

What the mouse does provide is a suitably generic input device that allows exploration and discovery. A strict CLI style user interface doesn't tend to have this level of possibility without rapidly becoming overly simplistic. Readline support is a good attempt for most realistic use cases but still requires a learning curve.

Final note for people who think mice are intuitive: back in the day I had to train people on how to use the mouse button to click a onscreen button. The two events are not inherently obvious - they just appear so now because our culture has now adopted it. The bar has been raised.

[1] [http://sikulix.com/](http://sikulix.com/)

<comment><USER3> > The "goto considered harmful" was the start of this and the overall pattern > has not improved with age.

I tend to agree.

Has someone made a

"considered harmful" considered harmful?

<comment><USER4> Here you go:

"Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful

Article: [https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html](https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html)

Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744916)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The argument makes sense, however for some things a mouse is simply faster than anything else, including a keyboard - and more compatible. For example, I browse the web mainly via the keyboard thanks to Vim bindings, however often it's simply faster to just click a link than doing it by hitting 3 keys. Not to mention many websites build their UI using some JS frameworks which somehow prevent the browser from recognizing any UI elements. This is especially frequent in cookie notifications and newsletter popups that usually can't be clicked away without the mouse.

And while I prefer the keyboard for most interactions, most users would probably find the mouse more convenient because the mouse is almost always easy to use without memorising any shortcuts. Every website and program is fully accessible with the mouse, but the same can definitely not be said about the keyboard nowadays.

<comment><USER6> "Using mouse is more effective because mouse is more popular with designers, and thus controls are mouse-only." Nope, that doesn't follow at all: "someone _made_ it artificially hard to use keyboard on their site, which proves mouse is more efficient" \- that just indicates laziness, not to mention ADA noncompliance.</comment></comment>


YouTube will ban channels for not being "Commercially Viable" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA1ZffGBO7c <comment><AUTHOR> Youtube response: [https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193988444873060352](https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1193988444873060352)</comment>


Show HN: I made a minimalist tool to automate approval workflow via Google Forms - <AUTHOR> https://performflow.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, creator here. I'm used to be a developer and now I have a small store in Shopify. Doing ecommerce is fun, yet managing purchasing workflow was frustrating.

I had searched the solution and there was a tool named Kissflow that could help me but it was costly and for bigger team. That's why I decided to build a minimalist tool myself and I chosed Apps Script, a free script from Google to build a Google Forms addon. (Google Forms is simple & easy-to-use and I always have entrepreneurial mindset so I planned to upload to Gsuite Marketplace to have external users too)

Then, Firebase is for database due to its realtime feature, low cost, and generous free quota. Also, I used Google Cloud Functions to handle small tasks (backup, utilities,...) and things that Apps Script can't do.

The final result is PerformFlow, an add-on that can automate approval workflow via Google Forms. It was uploaded to Gsuite Marketplace and till now, it has some users. Thanks to the good response from users, I updated a new feature to generate & send PDF based on the feedbacks.

It's just a simple tool that utilizes Google Forms so I'd love to have your comment & ask me if there is any question!

<comment><USER2> I was looking at HelloSign too. I volunteer with a non-profit that has forms for adopting orphans abroad. The amount of paperwork is insane. Being able to leverage same data points (date, name, address, etc) and apply it to multiple forms is a good idea. HR would benefit too. New hire paper work. In 2019, you'd think this would be all online and digital, but there's still paper involved for regulatory/legal reasons or because the old dinosaurs will not retire yet.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: PhD Machine Learning vs. MBA - <AUTHOR>

I am a 25 year old software engineer with a Masters degree in Computer Science from University of Cambridge along with a few years of Software development experience.
I have identified that my passion lies in startups - especially in the intersection of product, people and technology - hence I think an MBA in the future would be a good career option for me.
I currently have a PhD offer from the University of Cambridge in Speech Processing and Machine Learning and considering whether it would be a wise career move given that I'll be 28-29 when I finish.
Any advice from someone who has gone through a similar situation would be invaluable. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think Paul Graham's comments on the value of business school for entrepreneurship are very interesting at 32 mins 40 secs in Lecture 3: [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec03/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec03/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.</comment></comment>


FastMail Experiencing a DDoS Attack - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/FastMail/status/1138523513126608897 <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it's back up. Their web site was returning a 502 Bad Gateway for about an hour and the General availability on their status site [https://www.fastmailstatus.com/](https://www.fastmailstatus.com/) was "The service is unavailable".

</comment><comment><USER2> Sent emails to fastmail, went through right away. UI appears fine to me. Only 2 reports on downdetector [1]

[1] - [https://downdetector.com/status/fastmail](https://downdetector.com/status/fastmail)</comment>


New Facebook Layout Is Smart - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlesju.com/2008/07/new-facebook-layout-is-smart.html

<comment><USER2> It doesn't seem to be working, it just redirects to www.facebook.com

<comment><USER3> Same

Edit: K, this is bizarre, but try signing in at facebook.com, then exiting (without logging off). When you go to new.facebook.com it'll bring you straight to the new layout.

I guess it's the sign-in step that fudges things up.

<comment><USER4> It used to be that you had to be signed up as a developer to go to new.facebook.com, not sure if this is still in effect

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You have to go to www.new.facebook.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Screenshots, anyone?

<comment><USER6> just go to www.new.facebook.com and see for yourself.

<comment><USER5> I disabled my account years ago and then my school disabled my email so I can't re-enable it. Just as well though, I don't really want to go back. It's kind of like how when you start programming video games you don't play them as much anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can get an account now without a school e-mail.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Easy-to-configure Web Server in Go  - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/azer/boxcars <comment><USER2> A word of warning guys, I've had a look through the code and unless I've missed the obvious, there's nothing in there to change user ID; which means this would either need to be run as root, or would need to listen on a port > 1024.

In the case of the former, that's a huge step backwards in terms of security.

In the case of the latter, that would mean you'd need another reverse proxy hooked up - which would negate the need for this web server to begin with.

This can easily be fixed within Go though:

        import (
        	"log"
    	"syscall"
        )

        const (
        	user_id  int = 1000
        	group_id int = 1000
        )

        func secureDaemon() {
        	// set group id first as you need to be root to change group
        	err := syscall.Setgid(group_id)
        	if err != nil {
        		log.Fatalln(err)
        	}

        	err = syscall.Setuid(user_id)
        	if err != nil {
        		log.Fatalln(err)
        	}
        }

You can also add chroot to your code if you want to be ultra paranoid:

        import (
    	"os"
        )

        const (
        	chroot_dir string = "/opt/go-webserver"
        )

        func chrootDaemon() {
        	err := os.Chdir(chroot_dir)
        	if err != nil {
        		log.Fatalln(err)
        	}

        	err = syscall.Chroot(chroot_dir)
        	if err != nil {
        		log.Fatalln(err)
        	}
        }

This will need to be done before you change your user ID (as you need root permissions to chroot) and you may need to compile the Go without CGO because some of the standard Go libraries will have SO dependencies (I found this to be the case with domain name lookups).

(the above code is adapted from my own Go web framework that I'm in the processes of building)

<comment><USER3> A program run as a non-privileged user can access privileged ports using authbind:

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

<comment><USER4> Seems to be GNU/Linux only.

<comment><USER5> Come in, the water's warm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remain not-entirely-convinced (1) by Go, but things like this are turning the tide. If it is indeed slower than nginx, it is not dramatically so. Considering the amount of time that went in to writing each, the Go version clearly "wins" from the point of view of anyone thinking of writing new code.

(1) I find error handling just too tedious to get right (Edit: "I find error handling _in Go_ just too tedious...")

<comment><USER7> Looking at the benchmark ([https://gist.github.com/azer/5955772](https://gist.github.com/azer/5955772)), which measure suggests that its slower than nginx? I was looking at the transaction rate and the longest transaction. For reverse proxying, it seems to be as fast as nginx. For static file serving, it appears to be slightly slower. Between the two use cases, it seems like it's a negligible difference.

<comment><USER6> I would like to know how the benchmarks are generated, but my point is that it wasn't slower-enough to ignore it, and that's amazing considering how much micro-optimization has gone into nginx and how much easier the Go version is to write.

The Go version may in fact be faster, but I don't think that's necessarily fair either: if the Go version adds features to be more comparable to nginx it would definitely slow down.

<comment><USER8> > The Go version may in fact be faster, but I don't think that's necessarily > fair either: if the Go version adds features to be more comparable to nginx > it would definitely slow down.

Good point. That is often how alternative parallel implementations are started. A small example is written. Benchmarks are published. The new project is hailed as better than predecessor. Many jump ship. Request for features comes in. New features starts to slow down the product. Someone new comes, writes a simple benchmark and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it's a reverse HTTP proxy, which can also serve files locally? That's an interesting thing, no doubt, but it doesn't feel like a web-server.

I wrote a flexible reverse proxy[0] using node.js, a year or so ago, and haven't missed the ability to serve static files directly - so I'm wondering what the use-case for that is? I guess proxying to rails, or similar?

0- [http://steve.org.uk/Software/node-reverse- proxy/](http://steve.org.uk/Software/node-reverse-proxy/)

<comment><USER6> Did you benchmark your node.js version? I would love to know how node stacks up here.

I agree that static serving is not as interesting, but it is useful to be able to serve up a fail-whale page!

<comment><USER9> Honestly I never have. Because in practise it is fast enough that it just didn't come up.

I'm sure that if I were to pimp the project properly then that would be a good thing to do, but half the fun of my proxy is to allow "interesting" rewrites, dynamically.

To benchmark I'd be too tempted try to game the results by doing a straight pass-through comparison to mod_proxy, nginx, etc. That would lose half of the appeal of the project in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience, NodeJS was slow. I first write a boxcars-like server in NodeJS; [http://github.com/azer/door](http://github.com/azer/door)

and here is the benchmarks of it; [https://gist.github.com/azer/5946227](https://gist.github.com/azer/5946227)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always wonder with this kind of posts, is it minimalistic or is it an alternative?

<comment><USER11> The point is that it's written in language-du-jour and therefore fascinating and novel.

In fairness though, json will probably wind up being a common configuration format anyhow. And the idea of programmatically configurable system software is nice. I liked the Mongrel2 approach of having it in SQLite.

<comment><USER12> json is fine until your config system needs accurate numeric values.

<comment><USER13> Nothing in the json spec requires that numbers are limited to those internally representable in a javascript runtime. With the right tooling, you can encode/decode very accurate numeric values. I'm not familiar with the go libraries, but python's simplejson has a use_decimal flag that interprets floats using python's Decimal module.

That said, I can't think of any reason a web server needs super accurate numbers. All the config options I can think of require nice round ints. Maybe specifying weights to individual backends to proxy to (so all the weights sum up to 1.0)?

<comment><USER12> 99% of sites are CRUD apps, but we're math heavy financial software. We store a lot of reference data in configuration for performance reasons. This needs to be decimal format.

JSON is a subset of the ECMA JavaScript standard which declares only floating point.

Do "100!" on wolfram alpha and find me a parser that will load that as an example.

<comment><USER13> works for me: [https://gist.github.com/sirpengi/609711](https://gist.github.com/sirpengi/609711)

<comment><USER12> I get a 404. ?

<comment><USER13> Bad copy pasta (missing 3 at the end): [https://gist.github.com/sirpengi/6097113](https://gist.github.com/sirpengi/6097113)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm very interested in this because this is the kind of web server I was planning to write for my work, but from a quick glance I didn't find HTTPS support.

Is HTTPS supported or planned?

<comment><AUTHOR> have you tried it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Code organization question: is this a common convention in Go, to nest the main package in a subdirectory and put all of the 'modules' in different files but with the same package name?

(I'm more used to the Clojure namespace/filesystem symmetry, so this is somewhat new to me. I like the more shallow project tree but it's not immediately apparent where things are defined.)

<comment><USER16> In a package, main or otherwise, files are purely for programmer convenience. They define import scope but are otherwise transparent to the toolchain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see an alternative on the cards. Of course, we need some independent security reviews before this can be used seriously.

</comment><comment><USER18> json format is too limited for a web server configuration if you want to be the nginx alternative. Think about how you would represent conditional statements, how to include and reuse external configurations and how to have comments in json.

</comment><comment><USER19> The custom 404 page example in the readme looked incomplete - how do you ensure those pages are served with the correct HTTP status code?</comment>


Amazon to offer broadband access from orbit with 'Project Kuiper' constellation - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-project-kuiper-broadband-satellite/ <comment><AUTHOR> Amazon has the advantage that Blue Origin can be their launch provider, a capability that Bezos cleverly developed without having to justify the expenses to any stakeholders (running a public company can suck sometimes, as a famous business man once said about his electric car company). It has massive funds for this enterprise as well. While they are only getting started, I'd definitely take them seriously. Never underestimate Bezos...

SpaceX being their own launch provider has its own advantages as they could fully utilize the cost savings of reusability. On top of that, they seem to almost have a headstart. Two test satellites in orbit, the first batch scheduled for about june this year. Looks good.

OneWeb has launched their first satellites already but they'd have to pay the full price for their launches, so they're at a disadvantage here. OK-ish outlook, I'd say. I'd still place them behind Amazon if I had to rank these three.

I'm really curious how the satellite internet provider story will end but I'm rooting for SpaceX. They have the most compelling vision in the long term.

Bezos seems to be more like _sweatshops-on-earth-suck-let 's-put-them-in-the- asteroid-belt_ and frankly ... I don't like this one as much as the other.

</comment><comment><USER2> >> The filings lay out a plan to put 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit

>> Last year, SpaceX launched the first two prototype satellites for its Starlink broadband data constellation, which is projected to grow to more than 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

>> OneWeb had its first six broadband satellites launched in February, and plans to put hundreds more in place over the next year or two

>> Telesat put its first prototype broadband satellite in low Earth orbit last year, and plans to have hundreds more launched

Had no idea these networks would be so big. This sounds bonkers! I wonder large these birds are and how many go up per launch?

</comment><comment><USER3> What are some economics of this? I figure each satellite costs at least $100mm to build/deploy. I know Amazon has access to a lot of capital, but $300b is too much even for them.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are other companies trying to put cell towers in space so you can use a regular cell phone.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/25/ubiquitilink-advance- means...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/25/ubiquitilink-advance-means-every- phone-is-now-a-satellite-phone/)

I don't buy that a cell phone has the power transmit to LEO even with clear skies and line of sight, but seems interesting.

</comment><comment> wes-k I'm very hopeful about low orbit broadband. Both for more global access and to potentially escape the current oligopoly. With a few players we may get real competition!

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't normally support companies like Amazon, but in this case I hope they succeed. We really need all the competition we can get in the ISP space.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it really easier to build space internet than fight the landline Monopoly on Earth?

<comment><USER7> Ask Google that question. The answer is yes.

<comment><USER8> Google is just lazy. You can deploy community/muni fiber on a shoestring budget and with volunteer help.

[https://b4rn.org.uk/](https://b4rn.org.uk/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazon has more credibility in terms of delivering big projects than the other ones.</comment>


Show HN: Web development IDE running on Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.web <comment><USER2> I always dislike the negative comments in Show HN, but I have experimented heavily with writing code on mobile devices, and there are much bigger issues than the editor. This may be a good product, the screenshots look good (though the same number of people buying the app as the number of current upvotes on HN, so that looks fishy as all hell). Regardless, the form factor just isn't suited to content creation, and nothing in the description or screens addresses this.

<comment><USER3> The form factor of what? I could be sitting in front of Android running on a 21-inch display using a normal keyboard and mouse. And the CPU behind it might be the same one that usually runs OS X or Windows.

<comment><USER4> Guess, parent meant form factor of a typical _mobile_ Android device. An external display and HID devices aren't mobile.

Yes, I know, one could move their phone between docks and that would be mobile, but bet this is a very rare case. If one has stationary terminals, I think it would be very unusual if they're used solely as a dock station — one's likely to also have a stationary computer attached to them.

<comment><USER5> I have a 12 inch tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, its perfectly good for content creation, it comes with an office clone that makes creating docs a snap.

I have been using a bunch of editors, and while many of them are great the mostly suffer from 3 main problems.

1\. Capacity, most can handle a 200 file project, but they sieze up solid much beyond that.

2\. Git and github integration is often poor, for some reason they all get ocd about dropbox and google drive integration, but fall apart on git or svn integration.

3\. They need a good ssh client embedded, both to provide sftp capability, and to allow you to have one click access to your dev, staging and production servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using AIDE since the early versions and it just keeps getting better and better. It's actually very usable given it's form factor. They've taken a lot of the environment's constraint into account. I wouldn't do all my android development solely from the phone, but I wouldn't mind it too much if I had to. It's a pretty solid IDE with a lot of great features. Using hacker's keyboard helps a lot because of all the special characters but most of the time I get by with the character bar they have above the keyboard. Just depends on what's being coded. I also have a dock for my Note 2 so i can use a regular keyboard, but I rarely bother. I use dropbox to sync the code and usually I'll do the heavy lifting on the computer in eclipse and then make small changes while I'm away from the computer in AIDE. Also being able to compile and run right from the phone is huge for me. It's not for everyone I'm sure but it's a great tool to have in your toolbox.

</comment><comment><USER7> Their Java IDE for Android development is also nice. Amazing to be able to write Java on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER8> The same developer has had IDEs for Java and PhoneGap available for some time, with a good number of installs and decent reviews for the Java version. I have both, but haven't really used them since I have more need for a general text editor. That said, with an external keyboard there's no reason these couldn't be quite functional for programming.

There are other development options on Android devices as well, including Terminal IDE ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside&hl=en)) for a full command-line based development environment and DroidEdit (Free and Pro versions) ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aor.droide...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aor.droidedit.pro&hl=en)) for a more GUI-oriented programmer's text editor.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks interesting for a learning/classroom setting.

For comparison, check out [http://try.jquery.com/](http://try.jquery.com/) if you haven't seen the wonderful progress lately.

My current recipe for developing on mobile: iPad/iPhone + "ServerAuditor" app + bluetooth keyboard + vi

</comment><comment><USER10> It looks interesting but I notice that the in-app purchases range from £1.57 - £23.51 per item. Which bit is £23? Seems steep given that you can write code in Notepad / TextEdit and then load it in your OS-bundled browser on a non- mobile device (laptop/desktop).

I would agree that the tablet / phone is not an ideal platform for writing software or editing code; they are best suited for content consumption.

I also notice that the app is 19MB which seems massive to me for just a text editor and reuse of the built in HTML renderer?

Hopefully this does not seem too negative - just some issues I have with it before even installing it. The other AIDE interface (for Java) seemed alright when I briefly tried it on my Xoom, but it was most effective with a bluetooth keyboard; even then I quickly found the tablet UI limiting.

<comment><USER8> The internal lessons beyond the beginning ones are $4.99 for 1 month of access or $2/month if you sign up for 1 year, so that's the price range. There are also some "explorers" that look like they're designed for learning more about some areas, mostly in terms of Bootstrap demos.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the info. I perhaps have fallen into the trap of devaluing "app store" software given the effort needed to write it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> why?

<comment><USER12> Same reason writers tend to carry around a moleskine, or artists a sketchpad. Ideas don't always come when you're absolutely ready for them, and being able to get something out right then and there is a lot less frustrating than trying to remember that idea hours later when you're in front of a "proper" device.</comment></comment>


ZTE Will Soon Start Sales of Firefox OS Phones on eBay - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/08/12/zte-will-soon-start-sales-of-firefox-os-phones-on-ebay/

<comment><USER2> It looks like this phone takes a Micro SIM, but I was planning on getting the next iPhone when it comes out which will require a Nano SIM. Does anyone have experience in swapping a Nano SIM into a micro SIM slot with an adaptor and how big a pain is it to do?

<comment><USER3> Not sure about adaptors but I was able to get a new SIM card from my carrier for about $10.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that you can't have two SIM card's use the same number, so I'd have to call and activate/deactivate each time I wanted to switch phones?

<comment><USER4> I believe that is no longer the case, at least in Spain. Certain operators offer a 2nd SIM card (with the same number) for a few extra euros a month.

In that case though, you can only speak through one of the phones at a time; however, both benefit from the data connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It could be an exciting phone, but from the demo video two or three times there was tearing/slugging happening while using it. Also one or two times it was not responsive to the user touch.

<comment><USER6> The demo you're seeing is running a version of Firefox OS based on Firefox 18, which is quite old now. Soon, version 1.1 will be released which will include some optimizations to the front end and help improve performance. By the end of the year, though, you can expect an OTA update to be released ("B2G 1.2") which is based on Firefox 26 (the current equivalent of Firefox Nightly). The performance improvements you'll see will be very noticeable.

<comment><USER7>
      > The performance improvements you'll see will be very
      > noticeable.

What makes you tink so?

<comment><USER6> The version of FXOS that's presently shipping has a lot of rough edges. The B2G 26 branch includes all of the changes made between Firefox 18 and Firefox 26, many of which are performance related. Notably, JS performance is going to shoot up (new Spidermonkey goodness), SVG performance is going to get a boost (better hardware acceleration, better caching), and lots of general optimizations are going to land.

I'd like to think of the current FXOS builds as the Android 1.6 of the product, and the forthcoming versions as the Android 2.2/2.3s of the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one looking at the $80 price for an unlocked smartphone and going ZOMGWTFBBQ? I mean, what's the hitch?

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone in London looking for one? I may have a free one email me with your intentions.

<comment><USER10> Can't see your email on your page, but I've been interested in getting my hands on one since hacked.io. Want to see what webapps I can hack together for it. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com if you offer still stands.

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It will be available only in US and UK ebay stores :(

</comment><comment><USER12>
      Firefox OS smartphones literally change and transform with the user to meet their needs at any moment.

literally</comment>


The secret life of teen scooter outlaws - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/23/17882996/teens-electric-scooter-age-requirement-bird-lime <comment><USER2> So, in America where 15 year olds can get a driver license (and a full drivers license when they turn 16), are not allowed to ride a scooter which can go a lot slower then a car AND is a lot less dangerous to the public because they are not driving a three thousand pound death machine.

I can understand that the companies don't want underage kids driving it but why would the police enforce a breach of a private contract?

I really don't understand why riding one when underage is against the law. Sure, they are not very safe, and things such as blowing a red light are a lot more dangerous but doing that in your car is A LOT more dangerous and also more dangerous towards other people. Can someone shed some light on the issue because I really don't see a reason why it should be forbidden, given they know the rules of the roads. And that would simply require a drivers license which most teens in the US seem to have anyways.

<comment><USER3> Because these scooters do not have infrastructure designed for them, they might as well be more dangerous than cars, both for the rider and third parties.

For example, in the Netherlands, this is indeed the case, and in the Netherlands there are bicycle paths, although I am not sure if that helps or increases the amount of accidents or their severity.

Data: [https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/road- deaths-n...](https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/road-deaths- netherlands)

What is the risk of a fatal crash in Dutch traffic for different modes of transport?

<comment><USER4> >they might as well be more dangerous than cars

this is dumb. cars weigh 1000x more than these scooters.

<comment><USER5> A dumb teen isn't going to try to drive a car on the sidewalk. I've seen teens drive scooters on sidewalks. You can't lane split with a car, you can with a scooter.

Cars have a greater ability to be dangerous, but maybe scooters are more dangerous because of how they can be and are used. I do not actually know, I've never looked into numbers.

<comment><USER6> The exact same can be said for bicycles. They go the same speed, they have to be used in the street and not the sidewalk, and bicyclists can be just as careless and oblivious on the road. Yet there is no age restriction for riding a bike on a roadway; you can bike down a 45mph road perfectly legally the day you get your training wheels removed.

The problem is not the scooters and who rides them, it's the danger posed by cars. Cars have to be physically separated from other forms of transport. Buses should get their own lane to beat car traffic, bikes and other lower speed vehicles like scooters or even runners should stay in the bike lane. This is a transportation issue, not a scooter issue, and you can't fix it with an age restriction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You read the headline and think it's fine, kids shouldn't go crazy in traffic, and you click on the article and it isn't _bōsōzoku_ on Vespas, it's random teenagers on an electric-assisted kick scooter. If the parents don't take decisive action soon they'll buy bicycles and ride them to the library to read banned books. And the next year they'll listen to wild jazz in the park.

Being cooped up with tiger parents in exurbia can't be good for mental health.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are obvious parallels with the view on biking and biking helmets in the US versus the Netherlands: [https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/28/17789510/bi...](https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/28/17789510/bike-cycling-netherlands-dutch-infrastructure)

There are clear health and environment benefits to people biking, or taking a scooter like this. Even for the people who keep driving, it reduces traffic jams. The Netherlands has discovered that to make people bike, you need to not require helmets, and find other ways of making it safe: build dedicated bike paths, don't blame the victim when a car runs over someone without a helmet, etc.

Rather than ostracizing them as "outlaws", the same should be done in this case.

<comment><USER9> Looking around America generally and how things are done here and attitudes around driving and transportation just gives me little faith things will actually improve here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yesterday my fiancee and I went on a bike ride around the neighborhood. At one point, we heard music and the whine of an electric motor approaching from behind. A moment later, an adolescent on an electric scooter comes barreling along with headphones blasting music into his ears. Without slowing down or even a glance to either side, he enters the intersection to a relatively busy 30mph residential road (where cars frequently go 35 or 40+, easily, as it's a boring 1 mile straight shot). The kid casually swerves around as he crosses to narrowly avoid being t-boned by an SUV from the left. The blank expression on his face betrayed no concern or surprise, only casual indifference as he rode on as if nothing concerning had happened. The car didn't honk, maybe they never even saw him. Looked like they were on their phone.

I hate watching this kind of stuff happen. Makes me cringe.

What's that Seinfeld joke about people who's brains are too stupid to protect themselves? :P

PSA: Cars vs cyclists or other unprotected travelers are 3,000 pound weapons. Watch out and gear up.

<comment><USER9> I could take your experience (which is shitty, I admit) and multiply it by 5x or so times and that would be my experience with cars everyday.

<comment><USER11> At least the cars have a crumple zone. If I had to hit a tree at 40mph I'd rather be inside a recently built car than anywhere else. Cars are actually extremely good safety devices, it's really the whole "moving at 70mph" thing that causes the deaths.

The dislike of cars really is the dislike of having to move at high speeds for two hours daily just to survive in society. Fast-moving scooters would make that problem worse because they won't to much to protect you in a crash.

<comment><USER12> Vehicles are safer for those inside them at a given speed, sure. The problem is they're much _less_ safe for anyone outside them (i.e. pedestrians and cyclists), and they're also capable of getting up to much higher speeds too.

As a pedestrian I would surely rather be hit by a bike going 15 mph than a car going 45 mph. Bicycles also don't have blind spots, so they're less likely to hit a well-behaving pedestrian to begin with.

<comment><USER11> > _As a pedestrian I would surely rather be hit by a bike going 15 mph than a > car going 45 mph._

Remember, the topic at hand is motorized scooters: which are perfectly capable of moving at 45mph. We can't think of them like they're bikes.

<comment><USER13> TFA says they can only go up to 15 mph.

<comment><USER14> TFA says they'll do 25 mph downhill, actually.

<comment><USER12> Anything with wheels will go pretty damn fast on a steep downhill. Skateboards too. Not many people are riding them this fast because it feels terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's an American problem of treating 18 year olds like 14-16 year olds. Same goes for drinking. Why can't we trust (young) adults like other countries do?

<comment><USER13> >Why can't we trust (young) adults like other countries do?

Because higher drinking age leads to less drunk driving (in the US, at least). That's the reason the drinking age is 21. Unfortunately.

If we had a culture of responsibility around alcohol consumption, we wouldn't have such a problem.

Interesting, some states are raising the age for cigarette purchasing to 21.

<comment><USER16> > Because higher drinking age leads to less drunk driving.

This may be the cause of a poor or non-existent public transportation system. Once you have an efficient public transportation, you have alternatives to reach home after having drinks. Otherwise, it's your own car or Uber which is an expensive option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is another example of age-based discrimination. Take a random adult and a random teen and the chance the teenager is going to be more smart, agile, conscious and simply decent are fairly far above zero. There are a lot of decent and stupid people among both teens and adults. There is little reason for people above 13 to have more limited rights than people above 18.

<comment><USER18> Driving statistics would imply this is far from true for the general case.

<comment><USER6> How do accident rates compare for an 18 year old with 2 years of driving experience vs a 50 year old with 2 years of driving experience?

<comment><USER19> My wife got her license at 24 (after returning from China). I guarantee her numbers are far better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've heard a lot of scooter-hate - really reminds me of skateboard hate. The common retort is safety and driving rules.

My response is we should be teaching kids to drive (scooters/bicycles/motorcycles/cars) as if the environment were much more chaotic - like a race/motocross track, and like many countries in the world.

When I drove in countries where traffic was chaos - I found it was just as I learned to drive on the motocross track on a motorcycle as a kid: key rule try very hard to not hit anyone and try very hard to not be hit. Don't get bent out of shape - enjoy the ride.

I'm not suggesting that we change our driving regulations to be more chaotic - but a different approach to training and changing our attitude while moving through traffic might help.

<comment><USER7> In normal countries kids learn riding a bicycle from their parents at the age of 6 and ride to school at grade 3. Only _babies_ walk to school, regular people ride!

The demand for safe bicycling creates a demand for a safe road environment.

Also, when you are finally 18 and earned your driving license, you aren't going to go overboard and attack a cyclist for using the road, because a month ago you were one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the other hand, I watched a teenage boy ride a Lime scooter onto a highway 880 on-ramp yesterday.

<comment><USER22> Clever kid taking the safest route, 880's usually a parking lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> City planners and politicians in the USA would be wise to consider the root cause of the scooter surge rather than worrying too much about the side effects. People want to get around without buying an expensive heavy machine. Scooters solve the "last mile" problem of public transportation in sprawled areas.

It's clear that automobile-centric urban planning cannot work for large cities. Yet, there are always screaming loud voices protesting anything that affects their ability to drive in perfect comfort and speed.

I wish we had politicians with the courage to ignore those people and make the infrastructural changes we need to keep our cities functional and pleasant as our population continues to urbanize.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Most said they ignored the rules to use the scooters out of necessity

If it's "necessary", one wonders what they did last year when there were no scooters.

<comment><USER13> I don't know about these kids but I took the bus around town when I was a teenager.

A scooter would be far more convenient.

<comment><USER24> More convenient? Sure, but that's not "necessary".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How much does a good electric scooter cost that lasts a few years for an adult?

<comment><USER6> The ones used by bird and lime are around $500.</comment></comment>


Amazon and CIA ink cloud deal - <AUTHOR> http://fcw.com/articles/2013/03/18/amazon-cia-cloud.aspx

<comment><USER2> There is already a AWS GovCloud (US) Region [1], which is segregated from the conventional/general regions. This region is specific to US government agencies with improved security. Maybe the CIA would like something special for US intelligence agencies (i.e. an _AWS GovCloud (classified/top secret) Region_ )? There is obvious advantages to the cloud when it comes to government procurement/life cycle management headaches. There is also an _Introducing AWS GovCloud_ on YouTube [2], it's worth a watch if you are interested.

[1] <http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0av2mvYq5I>

<comment><USER3> Why was this announced?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow if there was one area where I thought the cloud would be the last to permeate, it was the federal intelligence and defense sectors.

I wonder what this means for Oracle/IBM/other on-site vendors over the next 2-3 decades.

<comment><USER5> You might be interested in Parallel Homomorphic Encryption [PDF: <http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/596.pdf>], a Microsoft Research paper covering MapReduce on encrypted data.

It's entirely possible to move encrypted data into the cloud, process it, retrieve the results, then decrypt. Welcome to the future.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but… If you had a $600million budget, wouldn't you just call up Amazon and say "Hey, you know your Availability Zones and Regions? How much to build me a couple of them, along with all your management and accounting software, so we can run pretty much all of AWS (front and back end) inside our own data centers?"

It'd be much easier for recruitment, to be able to advertise for developers/data-scientists/sysadmins with AWS experience, than just about _any_ alternative…

<comment><USER5> That's probably what someone asked for. By the time it got approved, GSA signoff, and past contracts and vendor management, they have a micro instance in us-east-1 to run www.cia.gov off of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we'll start seeing more deals like this. It is no secret that the government(at least the Obama administration) is, rightfully so, moving in a forward and open direction regarding technology. They are starting to accept the fact that government solutions can be found externally, and many times through citizens' softwares/ideas. If you don't agree, look at these facts: President Obama hired a CTO, the CTO opened up a fellowship program that is an applied-to program which purely looks to solving government problems. Now a CIA deal with Amazon. To me, this is all positive and forward-thinking...they can use everyday citizens and companies to enhance their operations securely and quickly.

And yes, we just have to hope it is not used to spy but hey, I'd take the risk in trusting that they care more about our safety than spying on us all the time.

<comment><USER8> > we just have to hope it is not used to spy but hey, I'd take the risk in > trusting that they care more about our safety than spying on us all the > time.

Given the federal government's past behavior regarding domestic communication, I think it might be more prudent to behave on the assumption that they ARE spying on us all the time. They tell us that they only look at the info they've collected about us if is connected with communications with overseas persons of interest -- but that implies that they will have already collected it. It's the only convenient way to have a well-populated history of activity for $Person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We sell to many federal/intel agencies and are seeing customers choose Amazon GovCloud over on-site storage 3:1.

While security is of great importance, it has more to do with the trust in your business relationship than where bits are stored at the end of the day.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not easy to be a vendor for Federal Intelligence with tremendous audit and compliance review, wonder how long it took for them to seal the deal?

<comment><USER11> _Not easy to be a vendor for Federal Intelligence_

I'm sure that a contract worth $600 million over 10 years would change one's tune.

The depressing thing, as a taxpayer, is that this AWS contract is probably just a fun $60M/year toy for TLA's to play around with.

<comment><USER12> TLA?

<comment><USER11> Three Letter Agency. It's a generic term to refer to CIA, FBI and NSA. Though these days it can probably refer to many other members of Homeland Security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> BarackObama.com is hosted with Amazon Web Services as well. We can know by examining the domain servers when you look at the [whois record](<http://whois.domaintools.com/barackobama.com>) for that domain. (On a related note, the domain registrar used is GoDaddy)

It makes sense - government needs to host their files somehow, as we are moving into this digital age.

I don't see anything wrong with it, though it will further cement Amazon's standing as a big business superpower.

<comment><USER14> Off-topic: (foo)[url] syntax only works on reddit, on HN I usually put something like this [1]

1\. url

<comment><USER15> It's markdown, a few more sites use that syntax. HN uses formatdoc which is a very small subset of markdown.

<comment><USER8> Thank you! I've been wondering how people do italics and the like. Your post helped me find an HN comment [1] which discussed the Arc source code for highlighting.

1: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=606843> 2: <http://arcfn.com/doc/app.html#markdown>

<comment><USER15> No problem, not sure if it's linked somewhere but there is this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who thinks this reads like an article in The Onion?

<comment><USER17> I was thinking the same, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It must be nice to spend $600M of taxpayer money without having to tell them what you're spending it on.

</comment><comment><USER19> This might make access to the rest of the data stored by Amazon more effective.

</comment><comment><USER20> Something I find darkly humorous about cloud data centers marketed to certain government agencies is how prominently they advertise that they are "outside the 50-mile blast zone" from DC. Do they know something we don't?

For example: [http://www.carpathiahosting.com/carpathia-hosting- announces-...](http://www.carpathiahosting.com/carpathia-hosting-announces- new-virginia-datacenter)

</comment><comment><USER17> Frigging auto correct. I meant _terrorist dicks_.

<comment><USER21> Once I got to the bottom, I finally realized what this was about: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404746>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ...It sounds like the CIA is being a secretive, but normal customer.

I came in here expecting firm proof that the CIA was using Amazon to spy on my Prime subscription.

(I guess I assume they can do that anyway.)

But where's my free outrage?

<comment><USER23> The fox is inside the henhouse now.

<comment><USER24> The fox was always inside the henhouse. The fox just agreed to pay discount prices for some of the chickens.

Kidding aside, doesn't this seem like exactly the sort of move you would want your government agencies to make? Take advantage of free-market services where appropriate, and not get all "NIH"?

<comment><USER25> >>> and not get all "NIH"

What do you mean by this? I did not get this reference.

<comment><USER26> Haha I work in the life sciences and I thought the GP was referring to the National Institutes of Health, which was confusing!

<comment><USER27> At one point in time I knew some people that did contract work at National Institutes of Health, and the way they talked about it, NIH might as well stand for Not Invented Here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Amazon is about to lose a lot of tin foil hat customers, but they are probably painful to have as customers anyway.

<comment><USER29> The tin foil type already assumes their images and routers are backdoored. Not that.. I could relate..

<comment><USER28> I am a bit of a recovering hatter, CSPAN junkie, misanthrope. It's pretty debilitating. Reality is too broad to fully grasp, just get a sense of it and filter if necessary.

<comment><USER3> Come on. Just admit that the tech could be beyond consideration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well, there goes my trust for Amazon.

Also love how the GAO's IT director is named Dave Powner.

<comment><USER31> It would be better if CIA just appropriated 3x as much money to build a cloud infrastructure that was 1/5th as good?

<comment><USER32> That's utterly unrealistic. There is no way there would ever be only a factor of 15 cost/performance difference in IT between a CIA contract and a leading commercial entity in a competitive market. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Now For Something Completely Different: Cringely is leaving PBS and throws in his name for US CTO - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081114_005505.html

<comment><USER2> Yeah. He thought he'd win the Lunar X-Prize too.

They must smoke some damn fine green down there at "The Pulpit".

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked _some_ of his articles. But he is just a technology journalist and not even the best at it.

And this issue wouldn't pass the screening the Obama administration already stated last week: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cringely#Stanford>

(Unless I'm failing to see a joke.)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that would necessarily block him in the screening process. I've never been through either one, but I've always imagined that these things are a lot like screening for security clearance: they don't much care what skeletons are in your closet as long as you don't mind having them taken out of the closet and put on display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be very surprised if a CTO position to Obama would be any more than an adviser with a different focus than the current raft of other advisory positions.

Most start-ups have a hard time defining the CTO role. I doubt a new white house position could be so easily defined.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please anyone but him...he'd put that $600B into things like hard drives made from metal foil that increase battery life on laptops by 70% (didn't realize HDs took that much power) and they "can spin up, read or write data, then shut down again, all in less time than it takes to perform the same task using flash while being just as resistant to shock damage and more resistant to heat"...riiiiight: [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061026_0011...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061026_001143.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you all missed the joke. He's leaving his job (probably laid off), and wanted to write a column about it. He doesn't seriously expect to be the "CTO."

</comment><comment><USER8> What's with the Cringely hate on this thread?

<comment><USER9> Cringely is pretty famously overblown and inaccurate about a lot of his statements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even ignoring his serial idiocy, writing vitriol under a pseudonym is not conducive to being confirmed by the Senate

</comment><comment><USER11> well his past false claim of a stanford ph.d is going to deep-six any plans for high profile positions. and he's also a supreme idiot who gets by on grand pronouncements that never amount to anything</comment>


Twitter Search is Now 3x Faster - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.twitter.com/2011/04/twitter-search-is-now-3x-faster_1656.html

<comment><USER2> There are two ways to interpret this: OPTION A) Omg, I'm not going to use Rails, even Twitter is ditching it. OPTION B) Hmm.. They built something really fast using Rails, got it out there, got massive popularity, made boatloads of $$ and now they're maturing and moving to a more robust infrastructure.

I go with Option B. If you're a new startup -- don't confuse this advice and start brewing your own Java-based server just because Twitter is doing this now.

<comment><USER3> Boatloads of $???

<comment><USER4> AKA: Investors giving them money for worthless pieces of paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Submission title is misleading. The main Twitter website is still running Rails and the article gives no indication that that will change. The article is about the Twitter _Search_ frontend moving away from an architecture where their application servers would synchronously query the search servers, which wasn't scaling with their load.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually you are right, I haven't read it carefully enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone from Twitter who can comment on the cultural/engineering ramifications of this?

I would be tremendously interested to hear from former Ruby hackers who have been shifting (back?) to Java via the Netty tool mentioned in the OP.

Definitely a different tack that we are used to hearing hear on HN . . .

</comment><comment><USER7> Flagged.

Ignore the gauche of sending me a link to your service instead of the story for a second--consider your audience! Why would a HN user who clicks on a link to a story want to read your summary first?

</comment><comment><USER8> If your system looks like it did the first day you launched, you're doing it wrong. It's difficult to communicate to this...

Am I the only one who reads it is only removing RoR from the search stack? It seems the rest of the front-end will probably exist as RoR in some form.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I'm reading between the lines here, but the feel of the article was "We got this code base from Summize and it worked great when we got it but now it's full of rot so we scraped it."

Twitter is big on the JVM and they have a bunch of Scala and Java engineers over there so this seems like the natural path. Besides, a lot of the big searching and map reduce frameworks out there are written in Java. This seems like a very natural transition.

The annoying thing is you're going to find a bunch of people who skim the article and start banging the "Rails can't scale" drum louder than they were 3 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER10> there's not alot in here about dropping Rails particularly.... it's more some Rails powered front end stuff for SEARCH that needed to be ditched to speed up the crazy insane search load they get.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is article is only talking about search.twitter.com, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER12> Expect them to drop RoR completely from Twitter soon. As far as I know they only use it for some front-end stuff anyway.</comment>


Sound Transit 3, the light rail initative, can bring mobility to Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://thatopinion.com/st3-bring-freedom-mobility-seattle/ <comment><USER2> WA's current Gov. Jay Inslee's opponent in this fall's election is running a great ad of him sitting in a car, stuck in traffic on what looks like the eastside of Seattle (aka Bellevue), promising that get "gets it" and that he will end gridlock, without offering a single solution.

He is against ST-3.

I chuckle every time it comes on.

<comment><USER3> I do too. Quite possibly the most vapid ad I've seen on actual traffic solutions, all the while opposing the best measure he could possibly support to mitigate the coming traffic disaster that accompanies growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really surprised by the responses here. It makes me wonder if any of the people opposed to this have ever lived in cities with good public transit systems (e.g. London, Tokyo, Hong Kong).

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea, despite enormous time we were promised for implementation.

However, I am worried, that the plan does not allow any kind of back out. Considering very high price and 10+ years execution time, I'd like a clear strategy for cancelling that if situation on the road changes significantly due to self-driving.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure we'll all be very proud of our shiny new fixed-rail tracks in 2046, when cars are self-driving, operated as a coordinated fleet, and available for hire in less than a minute in any street, driveway, or parking lot in the area.

<comment><USER7> How do self-driving cars deal with capacity? Even with self driving cars there isn't enough capacity on the roads for everyone. Highways are terrible at traffic throughput. To give you an example Crossrail in London has the capacity for 1 million passengers per hour while on two lines of track. An 8 lane highway struggles to manage more than 150,000 per hour. In terms of land use efficiency highways are terrible.

<comment><USER6> Yes, light rail is much better at getting people from one place where they don't want to be, to another place where they don't want to be.

You wouldn't judge an entire rail system based on the throughput of a single track, would you? Why judge the throughput of a networked surface vehicle system by the throughput of a single highway populated by human drivers?

The other person I'm conversing with in this thread makes the valid point that vast swaths of urban land are taken up by streets. What I'm saying is that this is a _feature_ of an effective transit system, not a bug. Nobody really wants to go from one light-rail terminal to another, but streets go everywhere.

<comment><USER8> Light rail and self-driving cars will operate in tandem. The backbone will be light rail and the "last mile" will be self driving cars.

A self-driving Uber car will pick up me in north Greenwood, then it will pick up another passenger, and we'll ride to Northgate Station. I'll take Light Rail to Downtown, and then walk the rest of the way to the office.

<comment><USER7> Honestly a city with a well designed public transport system doesn't really need cars for the last mile. Walking and cycling covers almost everyone.

Rural areas will always need cars but well cities shouldn't.

<comment><USER6> _Honestly a city with a well designed public transport system doesn 't really need cars for the last mile. Walking and cycling covers almost everyone._

It rains here. A lot. And not everybody is a twenty-something Amazonian, Googler, or Microsoftie in the best shape of their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now is a strange time to commit to spending billions on light rail. In multiple cities ridership is down even as more money has been spent on rail. Two examples are LA and DC.

[https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/california/...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/california/la- me-ridership-slump-20160127-story,amp.html?client=safari)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/met...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/metro- fourth-quarter-ridership- plunges-11-percent/2016/09/06/b94a2fa6-744c-11e6-b786-19d0cb1ed06c_story.html)

Transportation options are becoming more personalized with Uber, Lyft, and autonomous cars around the corner, but rail is and inflexible technology.

Without new ideas on how to make light rail more flexible and personal, these investments lock people it to inflexible transportation infrastructure and that is troublesome.

<comment><USER10> > In multiple cities ridership is down even as more money has been spent on > rail.

In other cities maybe, but not in Seattle. Ridership on the Link Light Rail has gone way up since the UW extension opened.

> Transportation options are becoming more personalized with Uber, Lyft, and > autonomous cars around the corner,

Uber and Lyft exist in Seattle today, and they clearly aren't enough to solve the problem, since commute times are still increasing (2x since 2010). Autonomous cars can't fix it either - the only way autonomous cars can actually decrease congestion is if ALL the cars on the road are networked and there can be a computer somewhere doing birds-eye planning on the whole fleet. That scenario is many decades away if it happens at all.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, Sound Transit is specifically investigating how to incorporate autonomous vehicles into their planning as part of this proposal.

<comment><USER11> >> the only way autonomous cars can actually decrease congestion is if ALL the cars on the road are networked and there can be a computer somewhere doing birds-eye planning on the whole fleet. That scenario is many decades away if it happens at all.

Did you know the UW has a big transit lab and actually has the equipment the track cars around the city. Same with SPD.

That future is coming quikcly!

<comment><USER12> Autonomous cars are still nor nearly space efficient enough for dense urban environments. Autonomous cars will be great for suburbs and highways. Cities will still need mass transit.

<comment><USER11> Sure. Though I would hardly qualify Seattle as "dense". We are mostly single family housing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article completely fails to mention how much of this initiative is mired in corruption and inefficiency.

A portion of ST3 is to pay for ST2 and ST1, which both went over budget. In those cases, union and industry donated massive amounts to work on the initiative to get even bigger contracts after.

It is projected that ST3 will carry __less than 3% __of the local traffic capacityou, at a huge cost.

We need VC thinking here, and more proposals with a clear eye on the ROI.

If my city dropped 5.4 billion on buses (a tenth of cost of ST3), we could have much more capacity that could be provisioned in a more dynamic way. That could be ready in a few years.

Instead we get rail in 25+ years at a massive cost now.

Having spent the last week in DC and been stuck on the Red Line for a trip that took 3x as long as normal, I am not convinced a rail line with it'so single points of failure is the best solution.

Transit is cool, but I am firmly of the opinion that this train wreck of an initiative is __NOT __the way forward and will vote NO.

<comment><USER10> > A portion of ST3 is to pay for ST2 and ST1, which both went over budget.

Completely false. ST2 (which isn't even complete; I'm not sure why you're referring to it in the past tense) is $100 million under budget and 6 months ahead of schedule (source: [http://www.masstransitmag.com/article/12171636/ahead-of- sche...](http://www.masstransitmag.com/article/12171636/ahead-of-schedule- under-budget-sound-transit-expansion)).

> mired in corruption and inefficiency.

Again, false. One of the reasons why ST2 is under budget is that Sound Transit got a lower interest rate than they expected on the bonds they issued, specifically because they're one of the best-run, most efficient mass transit agencies in the country (source: [http://www.soundtransit.org/About-Sound- Transit/News-and-eve...](http://www.soundtransit.org/About-Sound-Transit/News- and-events/News-releases/News-release-archive/423-million-bond-issuance-takes- advantage-of-low-interest-rates))

> We need VC thinking here, and more proposals with a clear eye on the ROI.

Ah, the hallmark of the uninformed public transit opponent. Lots of handwaving with "we need innovation and outside-the-box thinking!" with very few concrete proposals. The ST3 planning process went on for years specifically so people could propose alternative ideas- they weren't taken up because none of them were any good.

> If my city dropped 5.4 billion on buses (a tenth of cost of ST3), we could > have much more capacity that could be provisioned in a more dynamic way. > That could be ready in a few years.

Buses where? The roads (both the highways and the surface streets downtown) are already jammed. Nobody is going to take buses if it doesn't offer any decrease in transit time over just taking their car.

> Instead we get rail in 25+ years

Yup, construction takes time. I will only mention that we could've had this all today if your spiritual forerunners hadn't killed Seattle's transit plans in the 70's and 80's making basically the same arguments you're making now. We can either continue to make their mistakes or try to fix it.

> at a massive cost now.

No, the cost is spread out over the same multi-decade time span as the construction. Do you know how taxes and bonds work?

Behold the usual ST3 opponent: vague proposals that reek of concern trolling, combined with empirical falsehoods. Please vote Yes; Seattle is getting choked to death in traffic and we can't repeat the mistakes of the 80's by doing nothing.

<comment><USER13> So I haven't voted yet, but my two concerns are the additional sales and property taxes and I don't believe that ST3 does enough, in a short enough timespan. Do you have any comments on my 2 concerns?

<comment><USER11> Have you calculated out the costs for you? Sound Transit floats a misleading "average $169" figure, but for a property owner it is much higher.

Do you want to own a nice car? If you buy a 100k car you are on the hook for $800 extra to Washington's already high vehicle taxes

<comment><USER14> I'm not trying to attack you personally but you've stated very misleading things in your above post.

If the true reason you don't support light rail is that you own luxury cars that the majority of the population cannot afford and you wouldn't ever take public transit that's fine, but don't lie to make a case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law's "exhaustion doctrine" - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/patents-are-big-part-why-we-cant-own-nice-things-supreme-court-should-fix <comment><USER3> It's interesting to note Lexmark tried to (ab)use other kinds of so-called "intelectual property" laws earlier: the copyright law and DMCA. When they failed, they decided to use patents instead. And all this for what purpose? To prevent people from using cartridges manufactured by other companies, i.e. blocking competition and acting against free market and user rights. If this isn't abuse, I don't know what it is. If you can't build a superior product supported by good marketing, don't try to save yourself by legal action. If you do, you only alienate your customers, the very people you should serve first.

<comment><USER4> The thing is there are printers without the stupid on the market.

So the EFF is wrong, patents haven't savaged the printer marketplace, there are nice printers available that are not expensive. And it's wrong that the market will punish shitty products, Lexmark is one of the few survivors in the printer business.

<comment><USER5> It is almost impossible for new competition to enter the printer market because it is so patent encumbered. That's why you can only buy a printer from Canon (inc. HP brand), Epson, Lexmark (inc. Dell brand), Samsung, and Brother.

Anyone trying to start a new printer company will get sued into the ground or blocked by a US court from even importing their printers. That's why countries without strong patent protections have a local printer brand that costs half as much or less.

It is also why we witnessed such a strong 3D printer marketplace for a while, different companies entering an unencumbered market and trying to establish a monopoly via IP protections.

Printer innovation is non-existent (outside of innovate ways to make more money, like subscriptions). That's because there's no threat to their position, nobody can go near printers and they know it.

<comment><USER6> That hasn't been true for years. HP's original Inkjet patents are long expired. That technology was a major breakthrough. They had to do fluid simulations on a supercomputer to get the ink control to work right. Someone involved once told me that intuition totally fails on that problem - <USER2> behavior on that scale is not at all like what one might expect.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't mean that HP wouldn't sue you for violating any number of possibly-applicable patents that are currently valid.

<comment><USER8> If you make an exact copy of that first inkjet they cannot sue you.

<comment><USER9> _cannot_ seems like a strong term.

They'd very likely try (hard), even if they eventually end up losing. Then try again a different way using a different approach, then again (etc). "Drown the opposition" in legal fees seems to be a commonly used tactic by larger (bullying) companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I worked at Lexmark shortly after they spun off from IBM. As an intern in the early 90s I was tasked with researching crypto methods of securing their printer cartridges. Whoever bought or was running Lexmark from day one had these goals in mind as a key part of the value-add in buying IBM's old typewriter division.

My answer, at the time, was 'no' there is no foolproof way of using crypto because the keys would have to be stored in the chip that the refiller has access to. I'm sure there were actual engineers working on the same task, who I assume gave the same answer since they moved on to legal instead of technological means.

Even at the time, I was disheartened by the leadership's attitude and goals. Kind of amazing that for 20+ years they haven't abandoned this approach.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if the founder of Lexmark started the company with the big idea, "Hey, let's apply the razor/blade business model to printers!" If so, then "abandoning the approach" is impossible, and the approach will only be abandoned with company failure.

And you know, I have to say it: it's unethical, immoral, but it's not illegal to have a nefarious business plan, and I'm glad. To me, the larger issue is that _the justice system has itself become a weapon to punish competitors_ , particularly through the use of IP claims. Punishment occurs long before conviction, when the cost of defending yourself can mean a significant and ongoing expense. A justice system that ignores reality, including economic reality, cannot be just.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is just an extension of a tied sale. Tying agreements are already illegal under anti-trust law. The only difference here is that Lexmark (and other companies) are skipping the contract/agreement part of it and going directly to forcing the hand of the consumer by adding new changes and inserting technology that has no other purpose than to specifically limit the consumer to purchase a related product (in this case, ink), where no such restriction previously existed and therefore is not naturally occurring. This is even worse than a regular tied sale arrangement because the consumer never agrees to it.

The only wrinkle I can see is that the tied sale laws seem to relate to unrelated products or services. The ink that goes with the printer is obviously related, but I think that's irrelevant here because of the history of inkjet printers. We all know that there never used to be any inherent, natural limitation to obtaining ink from another manufacturer as long as it was designed specifically for your make and model. The new changes were deliberately put in by Lexmark and other printer manufacturers for the sole purpose of restraining trade/commerce. That is blatantly in violation of anti- trust law.

<comment><USER13> It's worth noting that tying agreements are no longer per se illegal in all cases. Courts have recognized procompetitive benefits in some cases. Now it's only under certain conditions. [http://www.americanbar.org/groups/young_lawyers/publications...](http://www.americanbar.org/groups/young_lawyers/publications/the_101_201_practice_series/the_wonderful_world_of_tying.html)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Thanks for this information.

Obviously, this wouldn't apply to the case at hand, though, as Lexmark is not a newcomer to the industry nor is the industry itself relatively new, thus requiring facilitation from tied sales.

If the USSC ends up ruling against Lexmark, the Justice Department should follow it up with indictments for felony violations of 15 USC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think patents are inherently evil; and I also believe that "obvious" patents will get less common with time (relatively speaking we're still in the early days of patent law for many areas).

That being said, I think the big issue we're seeing these days is that some patent categories simply last too long. Technology moves a mile a minute, a patent system with a duration of 20 years is absurd, something that was innovative in 1997 doesn't continue to provide the same level of value in 2007 let alone 2017.

At absolute MOST the patent duration for technology patents should be halved. Ten years is still too long but at least there's a chance the entire industry doesn't overtake the patent too much, five years would be better but realistically patents are fairly expensive to file so the whole system might collapse.

<comment><USER14> When I was at a start-up and had someone literally rip-off our product (including typos), we would have really liked some faster protection than the patent, which took around 2 years to issue.

As a business matter, we would have happily accepted a shorter lifespan in return for a quicker decision.

<comment><USER15> You say typos so I assume you are referring to software, which has an automatic copyright on creation, and can be enforced much easier and faster than a patent.

<comment><USER14> There were multiple paths we pursued in consultation with our lawyers. If you want me to take your advice over Fish & Richardson, okay.

<comment><USER16> They're a law firm that specializes in _patents_. When all you have is a hammer....

Also, presumably you failed to register your software with the copyright office before the infringement began. In such a case you're less likely to get a fat damages award. Which is actually a good reason to pursue a patent claim, but if we're being cynical it's also a good reason for a firm to _prefer_ a patent claim.

The fact of the matter is that if the case was a slam dunk as you say, you should have been able to get an injunction fairly quickly, depending on when this occurred. Step one to seeking an injunction would have been to register your software (or a component of the software, if you didn't want to divulge the whole thing) with the Copyright Office. Currently their e-filing website says it'd take 6-10 months. It used to be much shorter than that. A few years ago, IIRC, I received a certificate in less than 90 days. In any event, that's much shorter than 2 years.

It's also a good lesson: always register at least some component of your software with the Copyright Office; a component that an infringer would necessarily have to copy. To get through the courthouse doors you need a certificate from the Copyright Office, but it doesn't have to cover the entire, larger work. It's more of a procedural hurdle of the copyright statute that courts construe very liberally, so you needn't be afraid of having to publish all your source code just to get a certificate.

The nice thing about copyright is that it's simple enough that you don't really need to involve a lawyer. Of course, you don't do this to the exclusion of any patent filings, but it's a smart move that is almost zero cost. Paste your software into a TeX document, generate a PDF, and upload it to the Copyright Office website. Easy peasey.

NOTE: IANAL

<comment><USER14> > They're a law firm that specializes in _patents_.

What the fuck. Oh, you got that when you googled them, and you think the fucking top-tier national IP law firm had no other ideas at all because the patent hadn't issued yet.

> NOTE: IANAL

No shit.

HN is such a fucking clown show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in my 70s and I've seen a complete change of atmosphere since the 1950s when I first interacted with tecnology.

In 1950, apart from a small number of ready-made products, if you wanted something out of the ordinary, you designed and built it (I was a ham radio operator at the age of 13). I would build my radio gear out of the salvaged parts from neighbors' discarded TV sets (which in those days were very short- lived).

Decades later I saw people lose interest in either understanding technology or building/repairing their own. I found this change discouraging, but I failed to see where that was headed.

Now corporations are using the political/legal system to forbid people from closely examining their technical purchases or changing them to suit new needs. For most people the level of required knowledge is quite beyond imagining, so it may not seem much of a burden, but for a shrinking minority with technical skill, it nips creativity in the bud.

It's a variation on the classic Time Machine plot (H. G. Wells) -- the minority Eloi live on the surface, designing and building IPods for the troglodytic Morlocks.

To me personally, the real tragedy will be when people can't even imagine understanding, repairing or building their own equipment.

</comment><comment><USER18> Without the guarantee of a patented marked up drug, would drug companies waste the same amount of money that they currently do on R&D? I'm of the opinion that we would see a major slow down in drug innovation without patents.

R&D is very wasteful and expensive. Patents prevent competition for a short period of time to help the business recoup losses from failed experiments and to deliver profits which serve as an incentive for more innovation.

<comment><USER19> We just need shorter patents. For example drug companies spend far more on marketing than they do on R&D and a substantial amount of the research that generates new drugs comes from government funded research (>50%). Also, it's been demonstrated that taxpayer funded research drives private R&D up. So if I was dictator, I'd make it illegal to advertise drugs on tv/radio/web, double the current government budget for drug development R&D and make medical patents expire much more quickly. (And maybe something to allow Americans to buy drugs from overseas markets? Not sure on that one yet)

<comment><USER14> > We just need shorter patents.

This is nuts. By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left. How much shorter do you think it should be? When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing.

For software, sure, I'm really willing to hear arguments that 20 years is too long. But drug patents lifetimes are already very small. If something is too expensive, wait a few years.

<comment><USER19> >If something is too expensive, wait a few years.

Isn't that the point? In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal market.

>By the time a major drug is ready for market, out of a 20 year patent there are usually only 5 years left.

>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.

[https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced- drugs](https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced-drugs)

>When they are operating under that kind of deadline, they don't have time for word-of-mouth marketing.

Word-of-mouth marketing isn't really "slow" if the drug is very effective.

<comment><USER14> > In medicine, you often can't just wait it out. Healthcare is not a normal > market

Then you pay.

I have family members who are only _functional_ because of prescription drugs. When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will _probably_ be okay if we mess with this market, I read this really cool article online that said so," I see them no different than someone who decided on their own to start tinkering with grandpa's iron lung, because "oh, it will _probably_ be okay." You don't know what you are messing with. Stop it.

>And for most new drugs, patents expire approximately 12 years after market introduction.

I don't know what the HBR's source is because they don't tell me. I am telling you to find any drug you see newly on the market, particularly one you see on tv since you worry about marketing budgets, and look up when its patent expires.

<comment><USER19> >Then you pay.

And if you can't afford it? Does society pay? Do we let them die? I'm interested in your answer.

>I have family members who are only functional because of prescription drugs.

Me too.

>I don't know what the HBR's source is because they don't tell me.

And I don't know where your 5 year number comes from because you didn't provide a source.

When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we leave the market alone, I read this really cool article online that said so," I see them no different than someone who stood by a river and watched their grandfather struggle against the current, because "oh, it will probably be okay." You don't know what you are talking about. Stop it.

<comment><USER14> > And if you can't afford it? Does society pay? Do we let them die? I'm > interested in your answer.

The same thing that happens with the people whose lives could be saved _right now_ if we stopped funding roads, or basic research, or investing in the city's water system, or educating first-graders, or researching drugs, or enforcing the property rights of rich people, or a bunch of other things that aren't going to pay off for years and are not associated with one's political party. It's not that the parties being funded are all completely honest and trustworthy, but that the money still needs to be spent. Drug research is one of the small number of things society does that actually add to the public good forever. Every year amazing drugs that do amazing things go off-patent. It's an amazing system and our children should be awed by how much stuff they will have. "Hepatitis C" will be like "polio" for them.

There is no reason to think the years 2010-2025 are some magic perfect ground where the drugs from pre-2010 are completely unsuitable and all the drugs that will be invented in year 2025 and beyond are unimportant or will still be found if a bunch of people who understand neither biochemistry nor economics rebuilt the economic system around it.

Every generation has the option to quit investing in the future. There are always people who want to stop all the painful sacrifices that are required right now, and just live off of yesterday's accumulated sacrifices and then go to sleep.

There will always be some procedure that keeps people alive but that costs Too Much Money. It's how most countries have kept their health care costs under control without noticeably impacting QALYs. There should be no doubt that there are people who died sooner because of these decisions, but the system works and doesn't bankrupt them. If "but we can't let someone die for a reason as stupid as money" is your terminal argument, be thankful you weren't in charge, or else society would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. These are hard decisions but adults need to make them, and generally adults do make them and things work out.

> When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we > leave the market alone

I think there's a lot that can be improved about the market. I have a lot to say about that, but you are trying so hard to be cute and using children's arguments that goodwill can no longer be assumed. Good night and good luck.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately I'm one of those guys who just really enjoys having the last word lol.

>The same thing that happens with the people whose lives could be saved right now if we...

I'm just looking for an answer to the question. Right now society pays for treatments that can't be afforded. Furthermore, I'm actually pro drug development when most of your response seems to think I'm not. I actually think that the current system does not support R&D like it should.

>I think there's a lot that can be improved about the market. I have a lot to say about that, but you are trying so hard to be cute and using children's arguments that goodwill can no longer be assumed. Good night and good luck.

I'm a mirror, you're glue... :P But seriously, I am citing my sources, there's even a huge post in here a bit upstream you can read with all sorts of sources debunking a couple industry claims. The point of turning your quote around is to show that those sorts of diatribes aren't particularly useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The EFF chose a very bad / misleading title compared to what the article is actually about. A better one would be:

> Supreme Court to Rule on Whether Patent-Holders Can Control What You Do With > Your Stuff

or something like that.

<comment><USER21> The title is a play on the phrase "this is why we can't have nice things." To me, this reminds us that the things we have, we might not own.

"Control what you do with your stuff" sounds like the concept of ownership.

Yes patents do other things but according to Lexmark their patent means you don't get to do the things you traditionally get to do with the printer you bought.

<comment><USER20> To me, the phrase has always referred to a scenario where someone misuses a privilege, which is then taken away from everyone. And I don't see what that has to do with this circumstance.

<comment><USER21> We once had the privilege of refilling our machines with whatever we wanted. Now, because of the misuse of patents, we can't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Parents are also a big part of why we have anything at all.

<comment><USER23> There have been several historical studies done on the effects of patents on innovation, and the results are mixed. For an example of the "patents may hurt innovation" side, see [http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch.1.m1004.pdf](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch.1.m1004.pdf) , which argues that the steam engine patents actually held back the development of superior steam engines, reduced the total horsepower deployed, and even distracted Watt (the inventor) from his business.

I've seen more detailed studies of patent history (which I can no longer find, alas), and they make a good case that patents have an ambiguous effects on industrial innovation. I'm not sure if I _believe_ these studies, but I don't think it's an open and shut case either way. Also, steam engines may have different issues than drug development, and drug developent may have different issues than software.

<comment><USER24> If you're interested in a book length exploration of patents on the anti- patent side of the argument, I found this book to be well argued:

[http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=978052...](http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521879286)

<comment><USER25> I believe ewatt (edit: Sorry not ewatt, ekidd, the GP) referenced that same book. Here's my take on it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13930823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13930823)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would like to thank whoever changed the title of this post. The old title led this comment section to the generic patents are bad discussion while not addressing the substance of the article. It was clear the people commenting hadn't actually read the article. The new title has already started steering the conversation towards what the article actually says and people will be educated about the exhaustion doctrine.

</comment><comment><USER27> I initially misread this as, "Parents are a big part of why we can't own nice things." And could only agree.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't get it. If Lexmark is so hell-bent on preventing refilling, they could just simply change the purchase to a rental. Then, if don't return the cartridge to them you don't get your deposit back. They could even spin it as some sort of "we're being really green by making sure all of our cartridges are recycled" campaign.

The same goes for all of the farm equipment manufacturers that are fighting the right-to-fix movement. Why even have that fight and look like the bad guy? Again, I just don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lexmark and the Federal Circuit are now a direct and actual threat to the notion of the ownership of property, both real and personal, in the United States of America.

</comment><comment><USER30> Statute is cancer, long live common law.

</comment><comment><USER31> The title is typical EFF bluster. This case is about a relatively narrow question on patent exhaustion, not a referendum on patents in general.

<comment><USER32> while this may be, when it comes to the EFF I give them some latitude. I think they're fighting the good fight in general and if they get more exposure then I'm ok with that.</comment></comment>