Rain and Water Effect Experiments - <AUTHOR> http://tympanus.net/codrops/2015/11/04/rain-water-effect-experiments/ <comment><USER2> Nice! But the initial drops are too similar to a perfect oval. You can try to make some randomness to the initial shape to make it more realistic. (It's much easier to say this than to make a simple model that looks good.)

<comment><USER3> I did try that, but weirdly shaped drops looked weird on the animation! I was meaning to add a couple of drops close to each other to mitigate that but had no time for experimenting anymore.

<comment><USER4> Another issue is that when a big drop falls, the small drops that it leaves behind are equally sized and equally spaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great job! I'm wondering if you'll post the source before it was transformed with browserify?

<comment><USER3> I will - I have to clean up some stuff first though!

<comment><USER5> Don't worry about that! Just post it and have other people work on it for you ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want this as an Android Live wallpaper.

I've been wanting this for years. All the "rain" live wallpapers I've found out there were basically video players. I wanted something you could apply your own backdrop to, control rain amount, stickiness, and possibly even angle of flow depending on phone orientation.

Unfortunately, my specialty is embedded dev, not GL, so I've been waiting for someone else with the skills to do so :)

</comment><comment><USER7> When I download the source and try to open index.html in Chrome, it doesn't work.

"Unhandled promise rejection DOMException: Failed to execute 'texImage2D' on 'WebGLRenderingContext': Tainted canvases may not be loaded."

Does anyone know how to get it working? Thanks!

<comment><USER8> You need to run it from a web server. Open a shell on the root directory and run `python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8888` on it. Browse to `localhost` on 8888.

<comment><USER9> Why wouldn't (or shouldn't) one be able to make it run standalone?

<comment><USER10> It's to do with the browser security model and JavaScript restrictions on file:// paths.

I'm not entirely sure of the class of attack that it prevents, but it's been that way for quite a while now.

<comment><USER11> For a while, browsers allowed unfettered Javascript access to local files, so malware sites would just get users to save the site, and run it.

Tada, access to local files, or unlimited XHR requests for DDoSing, etc. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how many slo-mo rain-on-glass videos you guys watched while making this.. Looks very impressive!

Something about the large droplets' trails is a bit uncanny valley-ish, I think it's the regularity of distances between the trail spots?

<comment><USER11> > Something about the large droplets' trails is a bit uncanny valley-ish, I > think it's the regularity of distances between the trail spots?

Yeah. I think it's due to that, _and_ the low terminal velocity of the droplets.

Still very convincing, IMO. If I wasn't looking for it, I would have just assumed it was a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool, I love it but one point though is that the rain drops look to me like they're being observed from some point (vantage point) outside in the rain and not from inside behind the glass.

Any of you guys have noticed this or it's just me?

</comment><comment><USER14> For reference, you may want to check this out (2 to the right) [http://californiawaterfoundation.org/](http://californiawaterfoundation.org/)

<comment><USER15> Some long class names on that page!

      class="they-say-its-never-too-late-to-change"

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks ridiculously cool. We will definitely have to add this to Goo Create somehow, either as a fullscreen post-effect or as a special shader to apply to windows or other transparent objects.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now all it needs is to be combined with [http://rain.today](http://rain.today) for the ambient sound, and it'd be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does the background show Singapore's Marina Bay for everyone else, or is it based on IP geo-location? (obligatory "I can see our house from here!")

<comment><USER18> I get Marina Bay as a background and I'm not in Asia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome. I'd like to see more of this stuff

</comment><comment><USER20> I am very impressed, great job!

</comment><comment><USER21> incredible work</comment>


What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/12/what-if-tunisia-had-a-revolution-but-nobody-watched/

<comment><USER2> Ethan had a followup a couple days later at [http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/14/brocks- insight...](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/14/brocks-insights-on- the-tunisia-media-attention-disparity/)

Josh Shahryar also had a great piece on Enduring America on Friday, after Ben Ali fled the country:

"Today, as dismayed as I was, I got an answer to my question: What happens when the media ignores a revolution? Sometimes,the answer is: Nothing. The media can help mobilize support for victims of earthquakes like the one in Haiti. The media can also help create an atmosphere where people can feel that they should care about those overseas. But, when the media refuses to cover a revolution, it really does not carry any impact.

That's what people in Tunisia proved today by forcing their dictator to jump ship and leave the country. In a few hours, those US outlets who paid no heed will tell you how important it is that, for the first time in decades, a country in the Middle East has forced out an autocrat. Then you'll have analysts telling you how important it is for US interests that this wave continues or maybe doesn't continue. There will be cute little graphs that Anderson Cooper can pull around on those big computer screens. Hey, it's all going to be happening!

But this will be too late. The mainstream will not be part of the global wave of online support who witnessed a ground-breakingly inspirational event that will live on in memories for years to come and that could influence views on the Middle East, democracy, and human rights for decades."

More at [http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/14/tunisia- specia...](http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/14/tunisia-special-what- happens-when-an-uprising-is-ignored-sha.html)

<comment><USER3> Well, to be fair, Al-Jazeera played a somewhat important role (but lesser than mobile phones and self-organization) on Tunisia's movement.

And we can all agree that Al Jazeera is 'media'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe the issue is more than Tunisia is not a country of interest, even for people who are interested in foreign policy. Take a look at the average person who actually follows foreign news - countries like Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt rank much higher than Tunisia, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Guyana.

Some countries have just been in the news more, so have been noticed more and have more 'fans' or interested observers than others.

Even for the educated crowd here, if I said that the government of Sao Tome had been overthrown, that would be a lot less interesting than if I said the government of Libya had been overthrown.

<comment><USER5> That's most likely an American bias. In Europe, it has been followed quite heavily, especially of course in France: Tunisia is very close to Europe, and there are strong ties between several European countries and Tunisia (political and economical).

It is also the only country from Northern Africa ("magrheb") which is secular, with all the ensuing geopolitical consequences w.r.t. terrorism of islamic ideology. That's one of the main reason why European union supported Ben Ali quite heavily (EU represented 2/3 of international trade for Tunisia).

<comment><USER6> Secular in what way? The Tunisian constitution states that Islam is their official religion and that the President must be Muslim. Religious freedom is granted by their constitution, and 99% of the country practices Islam.

Algeria might be considered more secular. When the Islamic Salvation Front won the first rounds of the Algerian elections in 1991, the military took control of the government in order to stop Algeria from becoming an Islamist state under sharia law, which caused the civil war. The Algerian constitution also states that no political party may be formed if it is "based on differences in religion, language, race, gender or religion". Still, 99% of Algerians practice Islam.

<comment><USER5> You are right that Islam is the official religion. But I don't think it means much.

Tunisia encourages women working in official positions _not_ to wear the hijab in public places. Same restrictions for men. Indeed, you could say that the rules is stricted than in France (the most violently anti hijab of my friends are Tunisian muslims). It is only of anedoctal value, but within most of my friends who are muslims, most of the ones not practising the religion at all (eating pig, drinking alcohol) are of Tunisian descendant.

You are the first person that I know who claim Algeria is more secular than Tunisia. I would be curious to know what you are basing it on, the fact that the military took control does not mean much: what matters is the society.

<comment><USER6> Well I guess i'm more basing it on semantics -- secularity typically is defined by a state being separated from religion, and I was just pointing out that Tunisia has explicit mentions of religion in regards to its state and president, whereas Algeria explicitly states otherwise.

RE: Algeria, I have a lot of family there, and my immediate family travels back at least once a year. Overall it's a very liberal, secular country, especially compared to other Arab nations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> it was big news in europe and got a lot of coverage. also because 10000 german (among french, belgium, british, etc) tourists were in tunesia at that time and had to be brought back with specially chartered flights. almost everyone of my friends knows somebody who was stuck in tunesia until today. tunesia is like florida for the europeans. you go there when you want to enjoy some sun and beach in the winter time.

<comment><USER8> It was indeed big news in europe. but i have to add, that none of the coverage that i've seen, provided what i wanted to see in it: an urge to support the protesters. It didn't mention if these protesters were 'the good ones' at all. and i didn't see any european representative supporting them, at least none in germany. we use this country as our own florida for generations, but don't seem to care that their generations have to live in some sort of soft-lybia.

<comment><USER9> The coverage on BBC Radio 4 this morning certainly made it sound like the outgoing regime was pretty corrupt and that the protesters had legitimate grievances. As I am about 90% asleep when listening to the news in the morning they couldn't have been very subtle about this message.

<comment><USER8> Seems to be that the bbc takes a better stand on this. in german tv and radio 50% of the coverage is about the tourists being brought back home. the rest tends to be focused on the turmoil and chaos, rather than the purpose of it all.

Also, there ARE european officials siding with the tunesian people: [http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2011/january/eu-us- expr...](http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2011/january/eu-us-express- support-for-tunisian-people-/69943.aspx)

Though, in my opinion, if Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, says something, it only means that no one else want's to say it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am watching the main evening news on the BBC and it is the lead item (as it has been for days now).

It was the major multi-page article in all the Sunday Papers here.

<comment><USER11> I too have been following this on the BBC News (UK) website for several days. Does it appear on the US version of the BBC website?

<comment><USER12> The American version of the BBC website, bbcamerica.com, is devoted to entertainment for the most part. Scrolling the top are plugs for The Tudors, Ramsay's Best Restaurant and Anglophenia.

As far as I know, the BBC News site for us yanks is identical to the version served to you in the UK. I don't believe bbc.co.uk uses geolocation content filtering or modification. bbc.com and bbc.co.uk appear to be resolving to the same address as well.

bbc.co.uk does have "Battles in Tunis as key aide held" as its top story as I write this, so it is not like Americans are blocked from seeking out information using the same sources as the rest of the world.

<comment><USER13> Only thing the BBC do is serve ads to non-UK viewers. The website is the same for everyone otherwise.

BBC America is just a TV channel; that's why that website is entertainment- based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The news are also being intensively covered in Turkey and Russia. It is just United States media that does not cover the events for some reason. May be moves toward democracy are not interesting for the States if there is no oil involved.

<comment><USER2> George Brock had some interesting thoughts about why this didn't get a lot of coverage in the US: [http://georgebrock.net/the-power-of-social-networked- media-i...](http://georgebrock.net/the-power-of-social-networked-media-in- tunisia/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As far as I know every French newspaper made his first page about Tunisia since one or 2 weeks.

<http://www.liberation.fr/>

<http://www.lefigaro.fr/>

<http://www.lemonde.fr/>

Spain: <http://www.elmundo.es/>

Germany: <http://www.spiegel.de/>

I suppose that the US media don't focus on news that are not on the national political agenda and they tend to be more focused on the inside.

<comment><USER16> It might also be locality. Tunisia is what, 300 miles from France? No matter how inwardly focused they are, you can be sure US newspapers would cover a revolution in Mexico or Guatemala.

(Admittedly, CNN would wait until after the revolution had a twitter page.)

<comment><USER17> > _It might also be locality._

It is. It is also that Tunisia is a former French colony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license, Bouazizi set himself on fire. He died in hospital on January 4, 2011._

That's not true, Bouazizi put his degree in front of his cart, which annoyed the authorities. So they confiscated his wares. No one really here have a license for selling fruits.

Edit: I'm a Tunisian (born and living here), if you have any question about the situation you can ask me.

</comment><comment><USER19> The author concluded with "because real change in the world is a rare thing, and it's a shame that people would miss the chance to watch it unfold."

I really hope that real change happens in Tunisia, most of the revolutions even though successful in short term do not bring the real change, because people falsely assume that removing a single dictator will change the course of a country, however its only the end of the beginning.

The hard part comes next where the society as a whole has to make a concerted effort to create independent political and economic institutions which keep check on each other. Most of the time, specially in Asian and African region, this step is forgotten and the only result revolution achieves is replacement of old dictator by a new dictator.

</comment><comment><USER20> Could you please rename the title of this post to "...nobody _in the US_ watched?" - the topic is well-covered in European news.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Revolution will not be televised. It had to be said. [Edit: if you missed the cultural reference, this will bring you up to speed: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0>]

</comment><comment><USER22> I found out about the events in Tunisia through the Wikipedia homepage, which lists significant current events.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> the revolts and demonstrations, and even murdering of journalists, continues to get very little attention in the US media. Despite blogs, social media and video sharing sites being part of the vehicle of dissent. I wonder if mass media feels a bit burned by the previous Iran 'twitter revolution' not leading to a greater outcome.

<comment><USER23> what is "very little attention" ?

I saw it on CNN at a pizza place a few days ago.

Not saying that people shouldn't talk about it more, but whenever somebody says something isn't being covered by the "main stream media" I can usually show otherwise with a quick google search.

Often it is just code for: "Why aren't people caring about this issue that i care about?"

Not always the case, I'm just tired of hearing people say that.

<comment><USER24> Here in Europe, it sure has been in every newspaper and every newspaper for quite some days.

<comment><USER25> Here in Paris this is a huge story. In addition, Tunisia is a major source of programming talent for French companies - if you work on the web in France you are sure to meet Tunisians on a regular basis. Tunisia is very "real" place for us.

<comment><USER11> A former French colony too.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/French_occupa...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/French_occupation_of_Tunisia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It was pretty big news here in Montreal Canada. We have a large tunisian community(they had a celebration march a few days ago downtown) so the news did cover it (french CBC did give the story a lot of time) I'd like to see how this influences the.events in Algeria.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't get this. The story has been in the NYT every day last week, and it's been front-page news there since the weekend, with articles on the Wikileaks cables' relevance and possible similar effects in Egypt.

Was the NYT 2-3 weeks late in giving this story a focus? Were they just waiting to see if it would become relevant among the US wars and domestic political violence? Or did they get caught off guard until Al-Jazeera scooped them? Either way, it doesn't look like they egregiously sandbagged the story, they were just later to it than they could have been.

</comment><comment><USER28> Well. I don't watch TV. But I guess my friends do. And pretty much everyone is talking about in facebook status in France.

</comment><comment><USER29> As far as I can tell there was (and still is) continuous coverage on all major Arabic media channels.</comment>


Tech Founders NYC Inaugural Meeting - <AUTHOR>

Hey all,
We are putting on a pitch event by hackers and for hackers.  We filter out a few entrepreneurs each time to come pitch our group.  This is our first attempt at an event like this and as such will be a learning experience.  I am interested in hearing from other developers what types of things/questions/pitch points they think would provide the most value.
Overall goal is to get great engineers and great entrepreneurs together to keep up the NYC startup momentum.
http://techfounders.heroku.com <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://techfounders.heroku.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool idea. I'd love to see more of this happen, compared to events like the NY Tech Meetup.</comment>


Taxpayers Fund Cancer Study, but Profit Will Be Private - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/health/harnessing-the-us-taxpayer-to-fight-cancer-and-make-profits.html <comment><USER2> There are a few markets where people's demand are very inelastic: food, housing, health care.

Food has gotten cheaper because competition is trivial.

Housing is becoming more and more expensive since it's a positional good and we have been doing our best to make sure supply doesn't increase.

And healthcare costs are being held high due to monopoly rights in the form of patents and drug companies' general unwillingness to compete with each other.

In light of all this saying that pricing is a question for the marketplace seems naive at best.

The part about companies not being willing to invest is true, but maybe that means we should stop relying on them for this; the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) has been doing a lot of good by focusing on drugs that drug companies are not interested in since there is not a large enough profit motive. Maybe that should be a model for taking publicly funded research and bringing it to market.</comment>


Tor website needs your help - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-website-needs-your-help <comment><USER2> >Our users deserve beautiful, clear, and comprehensive graphics to allow everyone to quickly understand Tor better.

Personally I think every OSS project needs this. I think a lot of users might consider switching to OSS alternatives if they were a little more polished.

<comment><USER3> Why can't we create something that generates good landing pages that also allow it to be very tweakable to create a custom feel (as oppose to a standard template like gh pages)

<comment><USER4> We can - it's called bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Join the mailing list for www-team: [[https://lists.torproject.org/cgi- bin/mailman/listinfo/www-te...](https://lists.torproject.org/cgi- bin/mailman/listinfo/www-team)]

There is an open request to export the current blog entries for use with some kind of static site generator [[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10479](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10479)], so if anyone wants to take a crack at that with me, could be fun.

<comment><USER6> Import the database dump (once provided) into Jekyll?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will suggest to use #tor-dev IRC channel @ OFTC for more info.

</comment><comment><USER8> Saw the blog was drupal. Is the site in drupal as well?

<comment><USER9> Source is so short, it can only be handcoded ;)

<comment><USER8> hahahah. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


I Declare To-Do List Bankruptcy (and You Should Too) - <AUTHOR> https://doist.com/blog/todo-list-bankruptcy/ <comment><USER2> "archive it, and the important stuff will bubble back up"

That's a very interesting observation.

It seems I have inadvertently done pretty much that. I split my files into two categories: my /home/USER directory keeps all that ready-to-hand or important stuff which is used on a daily or weekly basis, and then there's 'archive' stuff.

The archive stuff can also be described as 'write once, store forever' or maybe more accurately 'shoved away in the basement'.

My /home directory stays at a steady 9-10 gig size which is is a size that is capable of being completely completely backed up daily.

My 'archive' now runs about 4-5 terabytes. And it can be a bit disconcerting to look into it and find files that were originally written nearly 40 years ago. But hey, they're readily to hand (and searchable) whenever I happen to need them.</comment>


Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today - <AUTHOR> http://patentsexpiringtoday.com <comment><AUTHOR> The majority [1] of patents are never commercially exploited or licensed - <USER2> wanted a way to browse recently expired patents to find hidden gems and get inspired by existing inventions. The site uses the recently released USPTO-API [2] to fetch newly expired patents each day.

NB: The reason the most recent patents displayed are from 12/31 is because no new patents were granted during the first few days of January 1997.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/06/18/13633/#7...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/06/18/13633/#799ec00c4183)

[2] [http://www.patentsview.org/api](http://www.patentsview.org/api)

<comment><USER6> I run Google Patents (patents.google.com) - we've thought about including a way to search by expired patents (we have the expiration indicators), but in my opinion it gives a false sense of security. There's also [http://freeip.mtu.edu/home/index.php](http://freeip.mtu.edu/home/index.php), which searches over only expired patents.

The patent in question could have been improved upon, and that improvement can still be in force. Say someone patents a widget A + B, and later files a continuation A + B + C ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application)). The first patent could be expired, but while building your copy of A + B you might come to the same conclusion that the invention also needs to include C (which is still in force) to actually work.

Google Patents focuses on improving patent quality. There's still uncertainty if a granted patent is actually valid. If we can improve the prior art finding process for inventors and examiners, then fewer overly-broad patents will be granted, and it will be easier to tell if an invention actually infringes a patent.

Then we can start to think about making patent information more useful for part of the original purpose - as a transfer of knowledge to the public domain in exchange for a temporary exclusive right.

<comment><USER7> > Say someone patents a widget A + B, and later files a continuation A + B + C > ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application)). > The first patent could be expired, but while building your copy of A + B you > might come to the same conclusion that the invention also needs to include C > (which is still in force) to actually work.

This is a perfect example of why patents are harmful. The patent on C did not in any way help the person copying A + B, it was invented on its own. But now this new person can be punished simply for being equally as creative as the other guy. It's a huge disincentive on innovation. I understand the theory behind patents, but I have a really hard time believing anyone in history has ever actually used a patent to find out how a thing was made and then improved on it; or could not have done this equally as easy without patents. Even if you can point to one or two such examples, that still has to more than balance out the loss in innovation and increased legal costs created by uncertainty of IP legality.

<comment><USER8> Without patents, inventing would not be profitable. All products would have exact copycats and ripoffs.

<comment><USER9> The majority of software companies don't hold any patents (aside of copyrights). As such, it doesn't seem necessary that patents are the only means to profit from "inventing."

<comment><USER8> But as you say, they have intellectual property protection. Isn't the copyright protection that software developers get over their software analogous in this sense to the protection that patent owners get over their inventions?

Unless you just meant to split hairs over copyright vs. patent, in which case I agree. I should have said something like "intellectual property protection" instead of "patents".

<comment><USER10> Patents and copyright work quite differently and patents aren't really appropriate for software. Patents allow you to be too granular in what you protect to make sense for software. I think a good comparison would be protecting combinations of two musical notes in music. This would dramatically impact creation of new songs because you are protecting something too trivial. The equivalent happened when software patents first were introduced.

<comment><USER8> I feel like you're attacking our specific implementation of patents (and especially software patents) in America. I'm talking about the idea of copy protection. Is it an incorrect assertion that in a world without any copy protection, people would be free to copy any invention they wanted? Thus, the original inventors' version of the product (which would be exactly the same as the copied version) would have no differentiating factors, and there would be no guarantee of profit from invention.

Yes, there are a lot of flaws in copy protection. There are a lot of instances where patent trolls and patents are detrimental to innovation.

But the main point that I was originally making was: Wouldn't a world without copy protection be a world where every invention gets literally copied, resulting in lesser gains for the actual inventors?

I think you may have misunderstood me: I did not mean to support software patents or our current implementation of software patents at all. Instead, I was countering the gp assertion that (patents are rare in the software world + software world doesn't have rampant issues with ripoffs) implies that patents are not necessary to profit off of inventing. My counterargument was that the software world may not have many patents, but it does still have copyright, and thus their counterargument does not invalidate my overall point/question: "copy protection is necessary in order to not have a world full of ripoffs"

<comment><USER10> Yes, that's a very different point that I mostly agree with. In addition the secrecy that also gets caused by rampant copying also would be/was a massive issue and was the driving force behind the introduction of patents. Of course patenting "XOR" and protecting the stupid mouse forever are a totally different issue as you pointed out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fellow hackers, a word of advice... always start with the marketing before building a product.

I too think a power actuated toilet seat sounds like a fantastic foundation for a business, but it's what the market things... not what your gut thinks.

<comment><USER12> _what the market (or anyone for the matter) thinks_ is not what drives the _hacker mindset_. The moment science, hackers and other kind of _free thinkers_ start narrowing their ideas because of _market or XYZ acceptance_ we're toasted.

It's the entrepreneur mindset that you're talking about, which equally rare and valuable :-)

<comment><USER13> The entrepreneur is just a hacker/scientist/free thinker who deals with a few extra constraints.

Just like an artist is a free thinker who deals with a few less constraints.

<comment><USER14> It's not the constraints that change, but the goal as well.

For a hacker/scientist, the goal is that the solution must _work_. For an entrepreneur who embraced the entrepreneurial mindset, what matters is if the solution _sells_ well. Those two goals are very often at odds with each other.

The problem is that if everyone optimizes for the market value, we'll all drown in bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Mole Gassing Device"\- [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588252](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588252)

Brilliant stuff.

<comment><USER16> Better mousetrap: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588249](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588249)

<comment><USER17> This is one of the better written patents I have seen.

<comment><USER18> The mechanism is massively overcomplicated. It almost looks like a joke.

<comment><USER19> It looks like the design goal was "How can I turn a traditional mousetrap into a humane mousetrap?" There would be more efficient ways to build the same product from scratch, but it's a fun thought experiment.

<comment><USER20> There's far simpler, already existing humane mouse traps. Where you have a small cage with an opening at one side, the opening as door pulled up against a spring which would push it down, and then locked with a lever. If the mouse touches the cheese, the spring-release of that activates the lever of the door, and traps the mouse in.

[https://www.knauber- freizeit.de/mam/celum/celum_assets/88041...](https://www.knauber- freizeit.de/mam/celum/celum_assets/8804179476510_05340_5801_jpg.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Huh. Work firewall won't let me access. I'm assuming that the problem is the domain: "patent _sex_ piringtoday.com".

<comment><USER22> I think it's time to stop taking jobs with firewalls like this.

<comment><USER23> The ironic thing is, these jobs tend to pay the best.

<comment><USER22> I took a 3x pay increase to move away from the overly-restrictive firewall. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Coming soon: the sister site softwarepatentsborntoday.com listing all software patents starting today that will stifle innovation for the next 17 years

</comment><comment><USER13> I actually want to explore patents whose protection expires in the time I need to implement them.

Perhaps 6 months would be a good compromise.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to say I like this; personally, it will probably just be entertainment for me (like I need more distractions), but I can easily see it being useful for others. Great job!

One suggestion - can you put the page selector at the top of the list as well (and maybe add an option to allow more than 10 items on the list)? That was just a small thing I noticed...

</comment><comment><USER26> Awesome site, this is the best one today. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588175](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588175)

Word of warning, privacy services like Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes block the data tables cdn your using so your users using those services see no data at all

<comment><USER27> Foot vacuum, interesting.

The patents expiring today website seems to have a simple view of patent expiry, based on 20 years from publication date. The legal expiry date is more complex, and often much earlier.

The patent owner is required to pay maintenance fees [1]. Google patents shows this information under "Legal Events". In this patent, the owner allowed the patent to lapse after 3 years, but eventually petitioned the office for reinstatement and paid the tolls for the 3rd and 7th years. One might expect that this patent term actually expired 11 years after filing, in 2006.

Some patents are given a patent term adjustment (extension) based on administrative delay not caused by patentee. Other patents have their expiry tied to another patent by terminal disclaimer. The USPTO provides a calculator (Excel spreadsheet, meh) for calculating, and additional explanations. [2]. This patent doesn't appear to be subject to term extension or terminal disclaimer.

This patent's term is more complex because the Uruguay Rounds Agreement Act significantly changed the rules for patent terms, for patents filed after June 7, 1995. This patent falls into one of the exceptions. This is described somewhat in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure section 2701. [3]

The original website is a _very interesting_ concept. It could be even more interesting by incorporating more rules about patent expiry, allowing filters on patents allowed to go expired, patents that were revived, and so on. It would require incorporating additional information from the USPTO Public Pair database.

[1] [https://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain- yo...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-maintaining-patent/maintain-your- patent#General%20Information)

[2][https://www.uspto.gov/patent/laws-and-regulations/patent- ter...](https://www.uspto.gov/patent/laws-and-regulations/patent-term- calculator)

[3] [https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2701.html](https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2701.html)

<comment><USER28> You're quite right--determining a patent's expiration date in the general case is a very involved inquiry. And even after it appears to be expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, it can sometimes be revived...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is epic. Love it. I'm going to share this with others. I see this as a great way to learn about patents in general, and as a way to get inspiration for new ideas. I've always found patents fascinating, even if they're a little over-hyped as a business moat. Ask Apple. Have any of their ideas from their beginning until now, not been copied? Windows GUI vs Mac OS GUI, iPhone vs Galaxy, Android vs iOS.

But I still think patents are at least stimulating to read and apply for. It's proof of invention, which I still think is pretty cool and useful.

</comment><comment><USER30> Those shoes were actually great: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588227](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588227)

<comment><USER31> Ha, I also liked those shoes. Looks like the patent for the competing Reebok Pump also expired a few years ago: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5113599A](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5113599A) . It's interesting to see that LA Gear filed for their Regulators patent 1 month before Reebok was granted the Pump patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Finally, after years of stifling innovation, the power actuated toilet seat is public domain.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a great idea! There are undoubtedly many great solutions to be found through here that were either before their time, or simply ignored after filing.

Great work!

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a great way to find ideas that have all their obvious improvements covered by newer patents, and get sued anyway.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there an analogous service for copyrighted works? "Explore books whose copyright expires today"?

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, if you live in the US, the answer is nothing: [https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2017/pre-197](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2017/pre-197)

"no published works will enter our public domain until 2019."

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can't believe that this was a patent [1]. Surgical gown? Really? In 1995? A suit with a ventilator? [1] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588153](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588153)

<comment><USER38> How about this one, a shirt with reflective material on it! [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588156](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588156)

<comment><USER37> This patent, owned by George S. Panton, Jr., also includes Pants.

Edit: Mr. Panton, firmly rooted in the clothing industry, has other inventions, like this spandex necktie: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US4839925A/en?inventor=Geo...](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4839925A/en?inventor=George+S.+Panton%2c+Jr).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> An expired patent is of public domain or it is just free to be patented again by another person?

<comment><USER40> It's public domain, see also:

[http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/5766/is-an- expire...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/5766/is-an-expired- patent-in-the-public-domain)

The idea of a patent is that for a given number of years your invention is protected, even if public, you cannot re-patent it "as is" (as it would not be anymore new or non-obvious) but you can sometimes patent a derivative (like an improvement of the same base idea).

The generic issue may be that often behind _something_ there can be a number of patents, often interlinked, so it is far from easy to determine whether you can "use" that expired patent.

<comment><USER41> Would that apply to very old technology like 8-bit CPUs and support chips? Would it apply to old operating systems like CP/M?

I heard of some people making a toy that had expired patents on it that was a hit in the 1970s or 1980s like Rubics Cube, Mood Rings, Tinker Toys, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I was randomly clicking and found this one: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588162](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588162)

The Legal events at the bottom says it expired in 2001. Seems strange?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback :)!

The patent in question was granted on 1996-12-31, which means it should have expired on 2016-12-31. The status on Google Patents says "Expired - <USER3> Related" so I'm guessing they didn't pay a required fee somewhere down the line?

<comment><USER43> Unlike copyrights, patents don't have an invariable lifetime: they have to be renewed, usually for an increasing fee. In the US, the schedule of maintenance fees is:

        (A) Three years and 6 months after grant, $980.
        (B) Seven years and 6 months after grant, $2,480.
        (C) Eleven years and 6 months after grant, $4,110.

This allows patents that are not being profitably exploited to lapse early.

<comment><USER25> > This allows patents that are not being profitably exploited to lapse early

It also allows larger companies to sit back, and wait out small inventors to "give up" on a patent (due to it becoming too expensive to renew) that they are trying to sell to these same companies.

You might ask, though, why would somebody invent something that they didn't then market and manufacture themselves? Well - it happens, more often than not: Some inventions are created by hard work, sometimes at a large expense to a lone inventor, sometimes not, or a prototype or model can be made to illustrate the invention (which I don't think is a requirement anymore (?), but used to be) - but a full-scale implementation is beyond the inventor's finances or capabilities.

So they try to shop the patent around to companies or investors to get it to market. Sometimes, they succeed - and they sell it or otherwise license it out - and make a lot of money in the process. But often, these other parties just elect to "wait it out" \- for the whole 20 years of the potential patent life if needed. In other words, rather than help someone else gain from their hard work and idea(s), and bring something to fill a possible need to market, they would rather "save that money" and wait it out - then when it expires, suddenly "bring a new device" to the market (perhaps even with their own extra patented bits attached to foil others!). All of this is legal, of course - nothing says these companies -must- purchase or license patents - but I personally find it a distasteful side-effect.

I posted another comment earlier on this - about something which happened in a similar manner to my brother-in-law. In his case, his up-front costs consisted of not only creating prototypes, but also having to create them by having a company manufacture plastic injection-molding molds for these prototypes - this wasn't cheap then, and still isn't cheap today. Today, though, it would be easier and cheaper for him to just 3D print his prototypes - but that wasn't the case back in the 1970s when he was working on his invention.

Between those costs, and the costs to patent and renew the patent over its life, he only broke even (roughly) after settling out-of-court with Bell when we found them infringing on the patent by importing infringing devices from a Chinese-based company (we were in a Walmart one day, and saw them being sold in the store).

<comment><USER44> _It also allows larger companies to sit back, and wait out small inventors to "give up" on a patent (due to it becoming too expensive to renew) that they are trying to sell to these same companies_

This does not seem realistic. If you can't afford the $900 to renew a patent after 3 years, you likely can't afford to produce the patented device either.

Further, your example doesn't hold water. If I'm (an executive at) Toyota, and someone offers to license or sell outright a patent for $X, I stand to make $Z __X if I agree to it, or $0 for 20 years if I don 't.

So either $Z __X isn 't enough profit to move my needle, or I flat out just don't care about the product. Either way, I have no interest in pursuing it. It's not about "saving money:" even in the most old-school of industries, I can't imagine that waiting 20 years for an unrealized patent to expire makes any sense if it would be profitable to license it.

It's far more likely that either (a) the patent isn't particularly useful or (b) the owner is asking too high a license fee.

<comment><USER25> The thing is, my brother-in-law was able to afford and renew the patent for it's entire lifetime, until it expired. But he couldn't afford to manufacture it, nor market it properly.

To be honest, he didn't have the knowledge or understanding of these things (he's a heavy equipment operator and one of the best welders I know). He's not the best at math or spelling, but he's smarter and more motivated than many people I have come into contact with. At the same time, he's naive about some things, and a bit unworldly and unaware about others.

If the patent wasn't particularly useful, then why did Toyota and Bell both infringe upon it? For this particular invention, my brother-in-law holds two patents; the second building on the first. His patents build upon, and reference earlier patents that describe similar solutions to the problem at hand, and how his is a better solution, etc.

Now - you may be wondering what kind of device is this - so I'll tell you: It an answer (maybe not a perfect one, of course) to the question of "how do you keep your drinks cold in the summer, and hot in the winter, inside your car?"

His answer was a cupholder designed to be fitted in front of the air- conditioning vents of the automobile. Cold air in the summer from A/C to cool the drink, warm air in the winter from the heater to keep the drink warm. Do you not think that is useful?

Toyota - in the 1980s when my brother-in-law's patent was still valid - <USER4> several models of vehicle with a slide-out cupholder in front of the A/C vents which infringes my brother-in-law's patent (it clearly anticipates such a system). I own a 1996 GMC C1500 pickup which has a similar vent-located cupholder (and was sold during the time my BIL's patent was in effect). I'm sure that you've seen similar cupholders as well.

Bell imported and distributed (to Walmart mainly) clip-on cupholders from Chinese manufacturers which essentially were duplicates of the designs in his patents; I still have his original prototype, plus the examples we obtained from Walmart and used in the court proceedings which led to a settlement with Bell.

My brother-in-law never approached either company with an offer - <USER5> infringed before he even thought about it; he found out about it after the fact. So - if the patents weren't for a useful product, then why were they infringed upon by at least three (Toyota, Bell, and GMC) separate companies?

Couldn't they have simply sent a letter or something to my BIL to offer to license it instead, and help him as a small-time inventor? Yes - they could have. Instead, they chose the more profitable solution, knowing that the "small guy" wouldn't be able to afford the time or money to fight it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I had thought of doing something like this. I thought it would be great to have countdowns for popular patents such as the one Apple uses for MagSafe, as these would mark dates of "freedom" that would benefit the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER46> Now I can safely launch my "decorative stone encrusted zipper teeth" [1] startup!

[1] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588185](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588185)

<comment><USER47> This exists.

My wife had one of those zippers on a white overshirt/sweater thing. It actually looked nice. It matched the drawings exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I like this one - backpack vacuum cleaner. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588177](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588177)

<comment><USER49> I'm pretty sure the people who clean my office use one of these...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone think there are viable/profitable business ideas in there? If the original inventors didn't bother to build something out of it, I wonder if it's because the patents themselves are "good thought experiments" or if the inventors lacked the business wherewithal to make it happen.

<comment><USER51> Most definitely. In my experience ideas are rarely valuable by themselves. Rather an idea is valuable when implemented by someone who have what it takes to see it through.

Simply put, not a lot of people have what it takes just because they filed a patent.

<comment><USER52> At least the ideas are put on record and able to be accessed by someone who could see it through once the patent has expired, which fortunately is a reasonable amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This IBM patent is practical and viable: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588199](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5588199)

<comment><USER54> It also expired at the end of 2000

[https://fees.uspto.gov/MaintenanceFees/fees/details?applicat...](https://fees.uspto.gov/MaintenanceFees/fees/details?applicationNumber=08339523&patentNumber=5588199)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> You get interesting things when you type Linux[0].

[0] - [https://patents.google.com/?q=linux](https://patents.google.com/?q=linux)

<comment><USER56> Question: Aren't Android phones a violation of this [0]?

[0] - [https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040244008A1/en?q=linux](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040244008A1/en?q=linux)

<comment><USER54> Using the instructions I previously provided on how to investigate patents[0], it can be seen that this is a patent application (not an actual patent), and its status is "Abandoned -- Failure to Respond to an Office Action" after a non-final rejection in 2008. This doesn't say anything about whether or not they refiled or not, just that this application was abandoned, and never granted.

So save some trouble, the application number is "10/797557"

Edit: Even more context. This application was rejected on claims 1-4 due to "rejected under 35 USC 102(b) as being anticipated by IBM RedBook, 'Linux For S/360', 2000", and claim 5 is rejected under 35 USC 102(c) from the same source.

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12981882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12981882)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm so curious, what's your lead source/ is there a USPTO API feed that you're parsing?

<comment><USER58> Check out IPStreet.com

<comment><USER57> <3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Is it just me (it's not) or are 80% of these fairly trivial?

Patents don't make sense when you think about it.

<comment><USER37> I thought the same. It's interesting that this kind of comment gets downvoted without explanation. Is there some kind of culture on HN that implicitly forbids us to voice criticism?

<comment><USER60> They seem trivial now, 20 some odd years after the fact.

<comment><USER59> I once wanted to build a system, and decided to browse through patents. I realized that my system would easily infringe 100+ of patents. Many of them were actually very recent.

<comment><USER61> What if my human body infringes a parent?

<comment><USER62> I think a convincing case could be made that the human body is prior art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I thought all domain names with the word "sex" in them were already taken.

</comment><comment><USER64> Time for some word2vec to explore them without having to crawl through them manually

<comment><USER58> IP Street's got you covered. Semantic patent search as an api service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Good idea - perhaps you should patent it!</comment>


Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w <comment><USER2> There was the whole sub-industry in late Soviet electronics industry focused on reverse-engineering chips obtained from Western countries. Physically photographing dies, restoring logical schemes, reading microcode... I guess the skills, methods, equipment used for that could be useful for modern farmers - and others trying to actually own what they've bought.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So these guys apparently get hacked versions of software from Eastern Europe (according to the film). It was also reported that some in rural American areas developed sympathy for Russia and Eastern Europe (though that is probably very much over-reported). Can these things in some way be related? (Note: I am not claiming they are; just wondering out loud.)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to get business cards made? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting as a freelancer and am going to get some business cards printed (maybe a couple of hundred to start). I was wondering if someone could recommend a printing company? Like everyone else I tried Vistaprint at one point and the cards I got looked terrible so I didn't feel I could use them. I've heard good things about http://uk.moo.com and I think they're who I'm leaning toward at the moment but at 30p ($0.47) each (including postage to the UK) they're quite expensive.
Who would you recommend or have used in the past? Are they're any novel modification I should consider? Moo offers rounded corners for 36p ($0.56) but I can't find any photos of them. Spot UV looks good but I can't find anyone that offers it and I'm not sure how much it would add to the cost.
Any input would be appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read. :) <comment><USER2> I'm half wincing because this seems like a shameless plug, but it does fit the context. (I would have sent it directly, but there are no contact details for you in your HN profile.)

Anyway: the latest release of [http://leanpub.com/freelancedeveloperbook/](http://leanpub.com/freelancedeveloperbook/) has a 'Developer Deals' section, including a coupon code for 50 free Moo cards (with Moo logo on the back, or you can upgrade to get no logo). You just pay shipping - that should bring down your average card cost while starting out. You might find the other deals/promos (accountacy software, code hosting, PM tools) useful, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would argue top of the line business cards aren't going to matter a whole lot for your type of business. I would think it's better to collect potential clients business cards and follow up with them on a regular basis. The companies I've seen take client managers out to lunch ever couple of months and build relationships, scope out any work on the horizen network for other people to contact at the orginization, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Moo myself, and whenever the time comes for a gathering I'm at to pop their cards into a bowl (for a competition or the like, not swinging) I find myself recognising a whole bunch of them as Moo cards too. They certainly seem to dominate the market, and rightly so.

Great thing about Moo is there's always a chance to try before you buy. Here's one of their free cards deals from a partner, just pay for postage and put up with the watermark, but you at least get to see the quality of their regular cards: [http://uk.moo.com/partner/crunch/](http://uk.moo.com/partner/crunch/)

I've also tried their NFC cards cos I'm a nerd, gimmick, but fun!

</comment><comment><USER5> Vistaprint cards are terrible, in my experience. I've had excellent results with Moo, even if they're slightly more expensive I've always been happy with their results.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you can wait a couple of months, Moo show up at Silicon Milkroundabout, a startup jobs fair in London. You can order your business cards and get them sent there. In fact, I think the last few times you get 100 free or something. The event is free plus it might be a good networking event for you.

Here's the link in case you're interested: [http://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/](http://www.siliconmilkroundabout.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of Moo, but they are everywhere now. I ordered some letterpress personal business cards from Blush and constantly get compliments on the quality of my card, I'd definitely recommend those but they are even more expensive due to the letterpress.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used Moo before and the rounded corners was a great addition. The touch and feel of the cards is really professional as well. I'll continue using Moo for my future business cards.

</comment><comment><USER9> What kind of cards did you order from Vistaprint? Matte, gloss etc. I'm just wondering what you didn't like about them because I am considering them as a supplier.

<comment><USER10> I can't in good conscience not mention how bad of an experience I've had the three times I've tried VistaPrint. The good news is they will always reprint when you point out the problem but I have sent things back 2-3 times. One time they printed out 1000 brochures with the middle pages completely blank and then said it was a problem with the layers in the image I provided. Another time they printed business cards crooked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used 123print for mine. I barely need them but 123print let me make a custom card and was the cheapest that I found.</comment>


Show HN: Hyperfine – a command-line benchmarking tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine <comment><USER2> Nifty! Step up over just using time. Unfortunately, timing things in general isn't going to be a very effective benchmark.

Without understanding what a program is doing, you don't understand what is impacting your results, and have no real knowledge on how things are going to differ when you go to use them in the "real world". Is one process faster when single threaded vs. a low core count, but another is massively parallel, and loses out until scaled higher? Are your commands testing the thing you think they're testing? What is your limiting factor? If you don't know why the results are what they are, instead of higher, you don't have a good benchmark.

[http://www.brendangregg.com/activebenchmarking.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/activebenchmarking.html) / [http://www.brendangregg.com/ActiveBenchmarking/bonnie++.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/ActiveBenchmarking/bonnie++.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice, that looks very handy especially the analysis of multiple runs.

Just today I was playing with /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, I'd never used it before, it makes a massive difference reading from a spinning disk!

For example to read tens of thousands of files (using 8 processes), it would take me

        real	5m33.048s

Then if I ran the command again, without flushing the cache, it'd take:

        real	0m6.502s

<comment><USER4> If something like my .ssh got into disk cache, could another user read that or is it not a kernel or RAM thing?

<comment><USER5> The page cache exists to speed up access and it's transparent to processes.

If another user/process tries to access your SSH files directly, it'll go through the traditional file permissions to determine if it has access or not. If the disk block is in the page cache _AND_ access is allowed to that inode, then the kernel will retrieve the page from the cache and give it to the process.

To read the whole page cache, you'd need code sitting in kernel space. If something manages to load itself in the kernel space (e.g. kernel module), you have bigger problems to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When given multiple commands, can it interleave executions instead of benchmarking them one after the other?

This would be useful when comparing two similar commands, as interleaving them makes it less likely that e.g. a load spike will unfavorably affect only one of them, or due to e.g. thermal throttling negatively affecting the last command.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion! I have opened a ticket here: [https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/issues/21](https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/issues/21)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tangentially related, look into rt-tests (from linux-rt) for scheduler latency tests.

See: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Realtime_kernel](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Realtime_kernel)

The effect of the linux-rt patchset is dramatic.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks excellent. Does it have a non-TTY/no—color mode that I could use in a CI environment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback!

Not yet, but I've just created a ticket here: [https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/issues/20](https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine/issues/20)

Should be easy to implement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is a use case for command line benchmarking?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whenever you run 'time <command>' you could consider running 'hyperfine <command>' to get an answer that has been averaged over multiple runs.

I personally use command-line benchmarking to compare different tools. You might want to compare grep, ack, ag and ripgrep. I currently use it to profile my find-alternative fd and to compare it with find itself ([https://github.com/sharkdp/fd-benchmarks](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd- benchmarks)).

You could also use it to find an optimal parameter setting for a command-line tool (make -j2 vs. make -j8).

<comment><USER10> I'd use fd if it didn't require a blackbelt in regex, maybe by adding more comprehensive examples?

How could you do something like:

find . -iname "<asterisk>any<asterisk>thing<asterisk>"

HN won't let me use * so I had to tag them accordingly.

<comment><USER11> add four spaces at start of line

        find . -iname '*any*thing*'

<comment><USER10> Great. I'm officially a user!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks cool!

Could it use dtrace to measure other metrics besides time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback.

Hyperfine currently tracks real time (= wall-clock time), user time (= time spent in user mode) and system time (= time spent in kernel mode).

Unfortunately, I have never heard of dtrace. What kind of other metrics would you be interested in?

I believe I would like hyperfine to focus on timing-aspects.</comment></comment>


The Significance of OS X Lion - <AUTHOR> http://josephmcohen.com/post/8070992038/lion

<comment><USER2> If only I could have a FireGestures-type interface connected with the Windows desktop environment. I would probably throw out my MacBook.

<comment><USER3> Windows!?</comment></comment>


China to cancel college majors that don't pay - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/11/23/china-to-cancel-college-majors-that-dont-pay/

<comment><USER2> As a native Chinese who graduated from a 211 & 985 college in China just few years ago, I think there are really some media manipulation going on here.

It's not they are _going_ to do this, the Ministry already started this rule in as early as 2004-12-10.

The problem it trying to solve is that, there are too many low-level buzz-word fancy term majors created in Chinese universities, like "nanotech", "earth science", or "life science".

These majors often only covers a superficial fraction of the subject, and allows quick rote learning only on some intro theory, then quickly issue a diploma. The hardcore part of knowledge is hard thus left to other traditional majors

Why do Chinese have diploma greed? Because diploma is a hyper-inflation profitable industry in China. Nearly every bullshit job requires a BS degree, they employer just want to make the company staff looks "better educated"

These "hot" majors are not really teaching any knowledge, but an easy way to grab a degree, so the students can gain their entry to various job titles. The college make lots of money by expanding cheap majors.

But the students learns too few to start a serious career, so in a competitive job markets these students have much higher failure rate than similar harder majors.

In fact, corrupted officials/businessman can order famous univ. to create a special, private major for themselves, their daughters and sons. They don't even have to spend full 4 year time school to get a very high degree.

In addition, "new & new" majors" name is very similar to other authentic ones (aka ShanZhai majors) but requires a lot less effort to accomplish.

So the Ministry started to ban major frauds, under the name of "low employment rate".

Are they going to cancel or stop funding traditional liberal arts majors? I don't think they are really that stupid. Are there humanities majors effected by this rule? Sure.

<comment><USER3> I've lived in a communist country for 10 years of my life so perhaps I am biased, but I've had a similar suspicion that there's a media war going on against China and their policies (whether intentional or as a side-effect of stereotyping).

Certainly there are some Chinese policies which deserve serious criticism, which is why I get really suspicious when numerous articles mockingly talk about about other, less-relevant flaws in China's society such as imitation (fake Apple stores, imitation American jets and cars), developing advanced tech in a careless, half-assed way (high-speed train crashes), or carelessness about the environment (3 Gorges Dam) and then applying this mindless, careless progress as something unique to China.. or dare I say communism. The truth is if you looked at the advancement of any modern superpower you will see nothing but the same kinds of flaws. I'm not saying this kind of crude, unstoppable progress is a good thing.. but passing it as something that's just part of the Chinese mentality is probably a poor representation of the true values of the culture as a whole.

<comment><USER2> In this specific piece, Chinese domestic media started the bias first. The Chinese media (including the State-run ones) industry always bend things to a most ridiculous dramatic angle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, all those arts graduates filling prisons with dissidents. There are already calls in the comments for a similar system in other countries. Why should university be about getting a job? Shouldn't university be about learning, and being recognised for learning. A history major or a poetry degree may not be the best way to get a job but I would prefer to live in a society with poets and historians.

Jobless, educated young people are copping a lot of flak from the media everywhere at the moment. They are a drain on the economy, "they are the 99%", they are having Arab springs where spring lasts all year, they are making molotovs in Greece. They are agents for changing society.

The underlying current of this idea in education is that we should all be happy little workers. Universities have been commercialised away from being the places that brought about the Enlightenment to places for turning out more advanced labourers. Universities are becoming (some have already become) an extension of the standard school system.

I found university to be a cacophony of ideas and viewpoints that until that point I had never really experienced. It introduced me to thoughts and ideas I may have never of experienced if I stayed in a small country town. Degree- mills rarely ever have this sort of environment and if all universities are reduced to churning out technical apprentices the world will be a worse place for it.

<comment><USER5> I didn't see any mentions of banning "poets and historians" in the article (though I just skimmed to be fair). What I saw was China cutting public funding for some majors.

If someone wants to be a poet, or a historian, or anything else, more power to him. Why on everyone else's money, though?

To be honest, if your calling to become a poet is stopped by a government's funding decision, you wouldn't have made much of a poet anyway.

<comment><USER6> How do you quantify the importance of a major compared to another? Certainly poets, historians, artists, and writers have more than a monetary importance in society. How do you measure the inspiration a great writer generates? How do you objectively compare the societal benefit of a mathematician versus a historian so that you can mete their funding accordingly?

I see a lot of "bootstraps" comments in the tech field— specifically about the liberal arts— and it's a shame. I wouldn't be in this field if it weren't for some of those "worthless" degrees like English (great writing helps the learning process) and Design (people are attracted to good-looking websites).

My apologies if I got a little ranty. It just irks me to see someone putting down another field of study as though they're a drain on society.

<comment><USER7> _How do you objectively compare the societal benefit of a mathematician versus a historian so that you can mete their funding accordingly?_

From the article: _The government will soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which less than 60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work._

Setting aside the question of whether that is a particularly good method, I'd like to suggest that it's at least more objective and quantifiable than just presuming that a degree in any given subject is equally the cause of or prerequisite to greatness in a given field, and therefore of equal value. Great art doesn't depend on art degrees to the same extent that great science depends on science degrees.

<comment><USER8> The problem surely is that your evaluating by employment rates _right now_ , this will not necessarily be so in the future and the govt probably isn't the best at predicting future demand. Geography is also a factor here.

What you risk doing is grossly over subscribing 'boom' fields and driving down salaries of competent people within those fields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was going to try participating in this discussion, but instead I'm just going to say:

Wow, as a computer scientist, most of the comments in these kinds of discussions leave me disheartened and embarrassed with the arrogance ("useless", etc.) of my fellow technical folks. A discussion about where to allocate graduates makes sense, but the kind of unjustifiably arrogant invective here doesn't.

I think people might want to look at whether their house is made of glass a bit more as well, before denigrating "useless" historians and throwing around phrases like "contributes to the country's advancement". Is the webapp you're working on _really_ a great contribution to society? Is Zynga producing value that will move our civilization forward?

</comment><comment><USER10> I am really glad the Chinese are doing this. Not because I think it is a good idea, it is an astonishingly bad idea, but because in doing it they will demonstrate just how bad an idea it is.

I am very much a free market type person, I think anyone should be able to get any degree they want. And I think that people should understand that just _any_ degree doesn't mean they will be employable after they graduate. But we do need folks who are passionate about lots of different things, and take those passions rigorously to the highest level.

The Chinese may find that someone who would excel in Art History and who would have, had they been allowed to, enabled others to develop deeper insights into their culture by looking at the art that their culture has created, may be really crappy business majors, or science majors. And making it harder for businesses to discern between people who wanted to be in business and those who were 'forced' into it, also harder which will make those businesses less efficient at employing folks.

I hope at that point everyone will look back and go "Gee that was a stupid idea." and we won't have to debate hypothetical 'what if' type arguments.

<comment><USER11> Why was the sibling comment from sinope [1] down voted to death, when it was highly relevant, and factually more correct than those around it.

Seriously HN, do you want to share knowledge and discuss things, or filter out people with differing views?

Edit: added link for clarity.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3276199>

<comment><USER12> FYI, that comment was not down-voted; the account is hell-banned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It doesn't get much more short-sighted than this. What happens in 20 years if engineers are everywhere and can't get work?

Instead, let's make liberal arts degrees cheaper. There's no reason why a Philosophy or English degree needs to cost 15k+ a year. It's been said before, and it needs said again: a liberal arts _education_ is just as valuable today as it was 300 years ago. The current problem is one of cost, not of value.

<comment><USER14> I've wondered how necessary it is for colleges to force a $50k tuition on students. Where does the money actually go? I'm skeptical. The administration at university just seems like one big, disgusting fraud.

<comment><USER15> I was curious too, so I dug around and found this report from the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit that studies this question (for US universities): [http://deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlig...](http://deltacostproject.org/resources/pdf/trendsissuehighlights.pdf)

That is just the summary, there is a more complete report available too. The high points for me was that employee compensation accounts for 60-70% of costs, with increases there being driven by benefits (I assume this means health insurance costs rising), and that only 30-40% of that 60-70 is spent on instructional staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would like to see the US government stop subsidizing majors and colleges that don't get results for their graduates.

Now there arises the problem of inadequate funding for the liberal arts majors. But as it is way too many people major in liberal arts and other impractical subjects. Lib arts should be a highly selective group, limited to scholarship recipients and any rich kid whose family has the money.

Treating all majors the same really hurts kids who come from working class backgrounds and might not know how society really works. Rarely will you be rewarded for learning for learning's sake. Major in engineering, accounting, nursing, etc. Then your future is pretty solid. Let's stop kidding ourselves about how our society values education.

<comment><USER17> As I and other have pointed out (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197437>), it's the liberal arts majors that subsidize the STEM programs at the undergraduate level because the per- credit tuition is roughly the same but it's cheaper to educate historians than molecular geneticists.

On another note, it's pretty distressing to see all these calls to drastically overhaul the university system when we're not even five years away from what was essentially an economic singularity (no pun intended).

<comment><USER18> You completely ignore the fact that STEM brings in research grants, which the university loots in the name of "overhead". I pointed this out also in a similar discussion. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2799626>

At every university I've attended, STEM grants are used to subsidize university operations.

<comment><USER17> Addressed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3197531>

(btw, it's an honor to cross swords. You're one of the people I most frequently CTRL-F on any threads even vaguely related to economics or finance)

<comment><USER18> Delirium makes interesting points, but he neglects the fact that universities wildly overcharge for overhead.

The university basically provides two services in return for overhead: commercial real estate and outsourced HR. They vastly overcharge for both, and the excess beyond market rates for these services goes directly into the university budget.

Some real numbers (I was the grad student): a professor gets a $50k grant which he spends on a graduate student to be a research fellow for 1 year. The grad student gets $20k + benefits (roughly another $10k).

The university pockets the remaining $20k for incidentals and overhead. You seriously think loading the grad student into the HR system and making 24 direct deposits costs $20k?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> way too many people think that the only purpose of education is to earn money. It isn't. Education has intrinsic value.

<comment><USER20> Education's general value is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Once you have learned to critically study and learn a subject of your choosing the value of education is mostly related to the value of what you produce from what you've learned. A hermit who learns the secrets of the universe and doesn't share is of no real value. A history (or engineering) major who doesn't learn how to apply what they've studied is of little use. I think it's just generally easier for engineering majors, or business majors to apply what they've learned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Someone should start a website to anonymously survey the following for US grads:

1\. Years since graduation 2\. Major 3\. University 4\. Employed/Unemployed in related field 5\. GPA

At least this way, there could be some basis in informed decision making by potential students.

<comment><USER22> There is a WSJ table that lists data for majors, but not universities.

<http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/>

There's a website listing more detailed data on UK grads.

<http://unistats.direct.gov.uk/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a little disheartening. It'll prevent people from expanding their mind in the subject area that they _want_ , and instead, they're told that they should be studying sciences, engineering, business, or something else that'll be more "useful."

Undoubtedly, I can see why China's doing it. It's utilitarian. College is already (wrongly) seen as "job training," and this will deepen that. But the number of jobs filled is one of many measures of "useful," and this threatens to make it the only one. Nobody can predict what will come of that. Telling people that they can only pursue a certain set of majors because they're useful, and if they don't like any of them, then _too bad_ , seems a little nearsighted.

</comment><comment><USER24> From the piece:

 _Chinese have questioned whether someone like Apple founder Steve Jobs could ever emerge from an education system that seeks to push down students who stand out from the crowd._

Do they not realize Jobs was a dropout??

<comment><USER25> Sounds like they're looking for a system where the Steve Jobs' of the world have what they need in school to become successful. There are probably a lot of Steve Jobs' who do drop out, but going through years of college drained their enthusiasm.

<comment><USER26> What Jobs needed to become successful was to drop out, start a company, get kicked out of said company, hit bottom, and wander around in India for awhile. None of that requires a degree.

Woz also lacked any sort of degree when he worked for HP and Apple. He only went back for his BSEE after he'd already made his mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the most interesting question here will be how will they account for people who don't end up working in the subject area they studied. There are tons of those in the west, I can't imagine it's very different in the east. How would those stats be calculated and would it hurt or help certain majors? Sadly, not a lot of info available.

</comment><comment><USER28> This graph (linked to from the article) on majors and popularity/salary/unemployment rate is quite interesting: <http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=>

</comment><comment><USER29> est's comment (which may be true) notwithstanding, this does not surprise me. China is a communist country of the Cold War mold, if not in all the particulars, then at least in some of its centralist, autocratic ways. Communist countries of this type have outright told people what they should study, to fill particular state needs. That there is freedom to choose in China is a sign of course that this is 2011, not 1970, but still... it makes this kind of thing not at all shocking.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every day, I see more and more evidence that the Chinese economy is going to _eat us alive_.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think more industries need to adopt the tradesmen style apprenticeship before allowing someone to pursue post-secondary education. They should also be forced to employ apprentices before being able to hire someone with a degree -- too many students exit university with no real-world experience or any idea what their work will be like once their degree is complete.

If you really, really want to do a 3 year philosophy degree, I think should at least have to do a year as an apprentice philosopher.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would love if the United States modified and did this. Do the research on what majors pay and lead to what outcomes - and then shove those results in high school senior's faces often (instead of forcing the majors closed).

<comment><USER33> why? college is not a job training facility and shouldn't be treated like one. high school's goal is to provide a broad education so a graduate can have the basic knowledge necessary to function in society. not everyone goes to college.

<comment><USER34> In the US, people are encouraged to go to college so that they can get higher- paying jobs. It's seen as a job training facility.

<comment><USER16> This discussion reveals one of the problems with our system of higher education: for some people it's one thing, for others it's something else.

Colleges are like companies that are trying to do two very different things at once: broad education and job training.

In the world of startups we know what to do when that happens: Choose one direction and go with it, stop trying to be all things to all people. Blended business models rarely work.

My guess is that something similar will eventually happen in education. Some institutions will specialize in getting you a paycheck and others will specialize in broader education.

I view purely academic coursework in the same category as other luxury goods: it's something some people find fun and exciting and if they want to pay for it, so be it, but society should not foot the bill.

Whereas practical "get a job" coursework I view as something that just about everybody needs and maybe there's a good argument for public subsidies or other policies that encourage it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Market forces aren't good enough for them :P</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a netsec career from scratch, after depression and at 30? - <AUTHOR> After spending a few years unemployed treating my depression, and finally finishing my degree last fall (BA in geography), now it's time to get a job - problem is, I've never had a full-time job and I have no recent work experience or portfolio.
I would like to get into the cyber security / netsec field. My most recent part-time job was at college, making forms in Drupal and updating websites - very basic stuff that I wasn't interested in. I've been programming and using computers, though, for 20+ years. Fizzbuzz is simple, I've set up routers to break into with Metasploit for fun, I can easily throw together a LAMP stack... but I feel woefully unprepared for a career or even a technical interview (eg. recently I've worked a few side gigs installing printers or setting up filters in Outlook). Reading about sample interviews just makes me feel like I know next to nothing, and my long period of unemployment doesn't help.
What would be the best steps for me to take to get some sort of junior-level job? Should I focus on a sample application, a personal website? I'm located in the Atlanta area and would relocate to New York. Thank you for any and all advice! <comment><USER2> First, forget about netsec or cyber security. It's too niche of a field and usually it's usually seasoned programmers that transition to security. There's little for junior people.

If you think you have aptitude, sign up with [https://www.hackerone.com/start- hacking](https://www.hackerone.com/start-hacking), start finding vulnerabilities, get paid for them. After finding a few vulnerabilities, it'll be so much easier to get a job.

But if you want a high probability of getting a job as a programmer, do [https://lambdaschool.com/](https://lambdaschool.com/).

It's an intensive, 6 month, full-time programming education.

The best part: you don't pay unless you get a programming job that pays $50k or more.</comment>


Show HN: Multi-Arch Templates for OpenFaaS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexellis/multiarch-templates <comment><AUTHOR> Since publishing this yesterday I've also added Node.js - these are fairly reusable examples around Dockerfiles and buildx. Feel free to copy the approach as required.</comment>


Games and Culture in Afrika [audio] - tefo-mohapi http://weekly.iafrikan.com/9-adebayo-adegbembo-on-games-and-culture-in-afrika/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I'm really grateful to see positive Afrikan resources on HN!

</comment><comment><USER3> I closed the tab as soon as the audio started playing automatically. If I want to watch a video or listen to an audio clip, _I_ will indicate that by pressing a play button. Until then, please stop shoving your unwanted sounds into my ear holes.

<comment><USER4> I understand your point, but in this case it's a direct link to a podcast that you would normally reach through the main website or a mailing list - <AUTHOR> normal visitors autoplay is the wanted behaviour.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's basically the same as a youtube link.</comment></comment></comment>


Unfinished TV Web App Looking for New Owner - <AUTHOR> http://loopj.com/2009/07/13/unfinished-tv-web-app-looking-for-new-owner/

<comment><USER2> it seems more or less finished, I don't see why the guy doesn't spend a weekend to finish it(or work on it in his spare time). It seems to be the type of service that'll grow fairly slow at first, so why not run it on the side while working full time?

<comment><AUTHOR> As with any project like this, that last 20% completeness takes the most effort, and spending a couple of hours a week on it just won't be enough to take it to success. Building the product is just the first step, getting people using it and iterating is what matters to me.

I'm working with a startup now (Heyzap, YC W09), so that's where all my energy is being directed!

<comment><USER2> Why didn't you try finding a co-founder, and giving up the code in exchange for a portion of the equity. Giving it completely away just seems wasteful.

10-20% would guarantee decent payout in case the site becomes a success. You pretty much did all the hard work already, might as well ensure that you get rewarded for it eventually.</comment></comment></comment>


Open-source vulnerabilities plague enterprise codebase systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-codebases-plagued-by-open-source-vulnerabilities/#ampshare=https://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-codebases-plagued-by-open-source-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER2> s/open-source/external/g

And maybe patch that notion about "doing it for free". Commercial doesn't mean "free from vulnerabilities", especially when using outdated versions (e.g. because management decides all those support contracts are becoming too expensive).</comment>


Back-To-Basic Reading: Byzantine Generals - <AUTHOR> http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2017/02/byzantine-generals.html <comment><USER2> For some reason I thought that the Byzantine Generals problem was all about coordinated action and TCP handshakes and stuff. I.e. two Byzantine generals are besieging a city from opposite sides. In order to successfully invade it, they have to attack at the same time. General A sends a messenger to General B saying "attack tomorrow at 1 PM". But the messenger might be captured, so General A wants to be sure that General B got the message, because if General A attacks alone he's doomed.

So General B sends a messenger back saying "i got the message!". But now General B is unsure that General A got the return messenger. If the return messenger was captured, General A will think that General B didn't get the original message and will not attack, so if General B attacks, he's doing it alone. General B thus needs to know that General A got the return message. So General A sends a return-return messenger. And General B sends a return- return-return messenger. And on and on and on.

<comment><USER3> That's the Two Generals problem which is a special case of the Byzantine Generals problem.

<comment><USER4> Could you explain further, e.g., why this is a subset of the general Byzantine Generals problem and what the BG problem is exactly? Because both descriptions don't really match the same problem set, as far as I see.

<comment><USER3> From Lamport's paper:

> two generals have to come to a common agreement on whether to attack or > retreat, but can communicate only by sending messengers who might never > arrive. I stole the idea of the generals and posed the problem in terms of a > group of generals, some of whom may be traitors, who have to reach a common > decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the "solutions" to the Byzantine Generals Problem required a centralized server of some sort.

Bitcoin was able to solve the problem without a centralized server by using a blockchain. It isn't perfect, but it's good enough to prove consensus.

What makes it possible is the financial incentive to mine or build upon the blockchain.

That's the reason why Lamport et al could not envision a decentralized way to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem--there wasn't a way to tie "money" to proof of work.

<comment><USER6> Bitcoin solved it with a _distributed_ , massively replicated yet ultimately centralized database. There is only one blockchain, consensus driven, and if you're disconnected from the blockchain you can't participate.

Truly decentralized systems are like BitTorrent or git. There's no singular BitTorrent source, no single server for git. Anyone with a git repo can push/fork/share to their heart's content, even offline, even with other people on isolated networks.

<comment><USER5> I suppose you could argue that, but it's just semantics.

In the Byzantine Generals Problem the generals are trying to achieve consensus. Their messages to each other need to be stored in a cohesive form, like a log file.

The very definition of the Byzantine Generals Problem _requires_ a single truth center. Call it a centralized database if you will, but the problem needs a single source of truth.

When independently acting miners or mining pools that do not require a centralized host or server to "bless" their contributions to the single source of truth is indeed a decentralized system.

Git and BitTorrent are decentralized too, but they don't have a single source of truth. I may have 100 git repo servers but which copy is the truth? Is Github's copy of master the ONE TRUE master or Bitbucket? Or is it my local repo?

In source control it all works out in the end. The developers come to a consensus of where they will push their work. The maintainer will deploy code to production from one of the many repositories.

But when you're dealing with financial transactions you definitely need to have a single source of truth. It doesn't mean it _isn 't_ decentralized to have a single source of truth.

<comment><USER6> The single truth center is the blockchain. Without that you have nothing.

Git and BitTorrent may not have a single truth center, but they _are_ decentralized and can operate autonomously. Bitcoin cannot. I'd argue it doesn't really solve the generals problem, it just provides a mechanism that _can_ solve it by narrowing the problem down and ignoring some of the ugly edge cases.

A true solution to that problem would work in "offline" mode, that is you don't need a persistent link to some authority to ensure you're working with correct information.</comment></comment></comment></comment>