According to 18.37.3 and 4, microorganisms cannot be excluded from patentability. I assume this is to allow patenting of things like probiotics. However, all humans rely their skin, mouth, and gut floras to be healthy. If the bacteria and yeast in that flora can't be excluded from patentability, are they considered not a part of the human animal? I understand that probiotics should be protected, but I wonder if someone could take advantage of this and claim patent on any naturally occurring microorganism by just isolating it and showing that it has some use.
Something else not specified in this section are viruses. Viruses are not strictly microorganisms, and no mention is made of them, but yet they can be manufactured and used for treatments- recently even for cancer:
If viruses could be excluded from patentability since they aren't mentioned, then any research or manufacturing done would not be patentable, and therefore some companies may hesitate to invest too heavily in research.
I think the spirit of this to allow for drastically modified yeast that produce, say, anti-cancer drug X to be patented. To make the biological equivalent of an industrial methods patent. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to protect your IP even though significant effort has gone into creating a chimeric yeast, because its just a collection of natural products (natural product's are currently not patentable).
Still, seems a little odd / slippery slope-y to me. On the one hand, I understand and, to some extent, agree with the need to protect / profit off what you've developed. On the otherhand, USPTO is pretty bad at biological patent screening and I can see a huge landrush to patent bacteria for no good reason.
(Full disclosure, I am in the process of patenting a modified natural product made by a bacteria)
I've never understood why people patent organisms. That's not an ethical thing --- I understand why people want IP protection.
It just seems like the wrong mechanism. Isn't the goal of restricting copying of your engineered organism better suited to the copyright system, rather than the patent system? Patents are for processes, right? But an organism is a thing, not a process. Isn't making an illegal copy of that thing a copyright violation?
Patenting an organism that you've tweaked, tuned and bent to your will is, in the end, no different than patenting a unique alloying mix or manufacturing machine.
They aren't patenting the organism per se, they're patenting the processes they've developed that make use of the organisms as the scaffold/factory. In the case I outlined previously of a yeast making a drug, you would want the patent on the cellular machinery that you've built to make the drug, which is the process.
No, they're patenting the organism, or the end result. If you come up with an entirely different process to tweak the same organism by happenstance it's still covered by the patent.
This is pretty much the definition of how patents differ from copyright law, if I word-for-word write come up with the same work as you and I can prove that I didn't copy yours, it's not covered by copyright law.
With patents it doesn't matter that I came up with it on my own, you own the rights to the end result.
That's an argument against patents existing at all. It's not really relevant to a discussion of what counts as patentable, because such a discussion assumes that patents are a valid mechanism.
Patents aim to trade a temporary bad result (monopoly) for a permanent good result (incentives to invent stuff).
Discussing exactly how bad the temporary bad result is informs discussion of when that trade-off is worthwhile. And this is true whether or not your conclusion is that patents are never OK or only sometimes OK.
When discussing whether X should be patented, it is appropriate to discuss the trade-offs specific to X.
It is a poor time to discuss trade-off generic to all patents. Focusing on them shifts the discussion away from the issue at hand, and toward a political stance that people have already heard.
avar's post does the latter.
Just like in a topic about whether to vote for a specific tax levy, it's inappropriate to talk about whether property taxes as a whole should be abolished.
>Just like in a topic about whether to vote for a specific tax levy, it's inappropriate to talk about whether property taxes as a whole should be abolished.
Making the argument that a given problem is recurrent is very constructive: consideration of the generic problem can provide arguments for prioritizing your problem as it relates to X. This is especially true when present instances of a problem affect future probability of the same problem occurring.
This is notably the case in law where jurisprudence makes laws progressively more difficult to repeal.
>That's not true for most of these patents, they're patenting isolated organisms, compounds or genes. I.e. the end result, not the process.
Organisms and genes are machines. There's nothing new about patenting specific machines.
Could they really get a patent on "bacteria that secretes X" that would stop you from doing it in a completely different manner?
But if you insert the same gene into the same bacteria using different equipment, that's no better than making the same patented gear with a different manufacturing method.
There's nothing stopping you from doing that, even with a patent in place, so long as your mechanism for secreting X (such as using a different base organism) is different.
To give an analogy, if somebody invented and patented the reciprocating piston engine, and then somebody else came along and invented a rotary engine, such as the wankel engine, the inventor of the former wouldn't have a claim against the latter because, while the result is the same (a drive shaft gets turned), the mechanism is different. Sure, it's possible that the inventor of the former could threaten the inventor of the former, as many patent trolls do, but legally they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Now, if the gene itself is the critical part of the 'invention', and not the organism, then taking that same gene and inserting it into a different organism still leaves you open to patent infringement. But that assumes the gene itself has been engineered, as opposed to having been found in an existing organism.
I'm not so sure, how is the end result any different than patenting a better manufacturing technique? That happens all the time in the macro-world.
Again, I'm not sure how I feel on whether it should be patentable or not. But, at least as I understand it, their intent is protection for something they've spent millions/billions developing -- no different than the process patents we have now.
I guess I'd prefer it to a situation where anyone at all could make a clone of me on their 3D printer slash uterus.
There are an awful lot of ethical and legal considerations when custom-designed intelligent organisms become possible, I'm not sure if IP is high on the list.
If you want to copyright an organism, you had damned well better remove its ability to copy itself without your permission first.
As much of the utility in modified organisms is that they do copy themselves without your help, it seems as though the patent system would be much better suited, because there the enforcement burden is to prevent a human from using the organism to accomplish a specific purpose.
People sometimes forget that laws are pointless if they are not enforceable.
In seeking to patent an organism, they are treating the novel organism as an invention. Copyright doesn't protect purely functional elements, only creative ones, which is why we have the idea of patenting inventions — so patent seems like the right system in this case.
This alone is a strike against humanity: Now local patent laws that are widely criticized are even protected by international contracts (and thus have to be implemented by all signers -- and can not be changed, even the US can not change it's laws or regulations, when the top courts want to change patent ability regulations, they can't.).
Is this about "free trade" or about profit-maximizing and guaranteeing for some big corporations?
The latter, of course. Novartis and other pharma giants are heavily behind the TPP because it would send their profits through the roof relative to currently.
Also, the drug market and ISP market in the US are explicitly exempt from the free market and ISDS policy – meaning, in the US, you can still have monopolies, but in the rest of the world, protectionism becomes impossible.
Very dangerous, and sounds more like "Empire – Colonies" than "Equal partners in trade"
That is exactly the impression I got from the TTIP negotiations. The EU "partners" where supposed to sacrifice any of their positions, but the US (and US-corporation-) side always insisted in theirs.
Unbelievable, that the EU does really accept all this! Only explanation: Those politicians are already bought.
What confuses the hell out of me regarding the TPP - and maybe it's just because I'm in the HN/Reddit echo chamber on this - but if the TPP is so damn important to reigning in China in the 21st century or whatever, then why did they load it up with a bunch of unrelated antagonizing bullshit?
It doesn't seem to me that the intellectual property provisions of the agreement are all that important to the overall stated goals of the TPP. Yet they are so fucking regressive and antagonistic that there is some chance (I guess? Again, echo chamber...) that they will sabotage the rest of the agreement. After SOPA, etc., if it were me and I wanted to be sure that the TPP passed in enough Pacific Rim countries to make it effective, I would keep anything remotely like SOPA as far away from my precious treaty as I possibly could.
Instead, the IP portions of the agreement are basically the language that was in SOPA all over again, which pissed a whole lot of people off last time. It's really hard to take seriously the claim that the TPP is so important, when the people drafting it are including language that is pretty much guaranteed to stoke vigorous opposition, for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their goals.
Either they know, that the other countries will follow anyway (because the politicians are (select one or multiple): incompetent, bought, blackmailed, Pro-US, incompetent, ignoring their own countries interests) -- or the things told about the importance of the treaties are not true, but it is just a vehicle to transport the antagonizing bullshit, because some big corporations want this to be installed.
In the EU (TTIP), my impression is, that at least at the high levels of politicians, the list above just must be applied. Many leading politicians are just hitting so hard to get this installed, that it seems they are mad, when I see what negatives they are ready to swallow. They let the US dictate the treaty and just don't seem to recognize, how the EU is hornswoggled.
>Is this about "free trade" or about profit-maximizing and guaranteeing for some big corporations?
If the West is moving towards an information economy and is going to let the developing world take over manufacturing, the West wants to protect the information economy. The idea is we want to sell information for goods/services.
Of course, some types of protection for own inventions is necessary ... but what here shall be protected, are the building blocks of life!
This is not about protecting own inventions, but about land-grabbing things that we did not invent, but nature!
The same thing, corporations try again and again. For example, once they copied cures of traditional Indian medicine, patented them in the USA and tried to forbid the free usage.
When this goes on this way, we all will soon have to pay a life-tax for having some type of DNA or bacteria in our bodies. Already, many cures are not invented, because to many patents on life building blocks make the creation to financially risky.
"In the first step by a developing country to stop multinational companies patenting traditional remedies from local plants and animals, the Indian government has effectively licensed 200,000 local treatments as "public property" free for anyone to use but no one to sell as a "brand"."
Re: "I wonder if someone could take advantage of this"
I believe that microorganisms patentability would indeed introduce a whole lot of problems for any human being. Starting with what's apparently already happening with plant patents -- see e.g. the story at:
Probably more important than probiotics are patents for biologically engineered bacteria, like those made by Ginkgo Bioworks. A lot of work goes into engineering bugs to execute specific chemical synthesis pathways, and it's trivial to reverse engineer.
Human Genome patents are no longer recognized in the US[0], but my understanding is that they were used to protect genetic tests and treatments. For example, Myriad Genomics held patents against the BRCA genes (which can indicate breast cancer risk) which they used to prevent competitors from creating BRCA-based panels.
Wild-type micro-organisms are not currently patentable, while genetically engineered ones already are. And 18.37.2 requires a new use, method or process involving any "known products", so it would be the use not the organism that is patentable.
So if 1990s Russia and Pinochet's Chile are examples of extreme free market experiments, I'd take the human misery they cause over the human misery of extreme no-market experiments any day.
> So if 1990s Russia and Pinochet's Chile are examples of extreme free market experiments
You're confused. They're examples of free market experiments, however the Pinochet's deaths had nothing to do with the free market and all with his political power.
If you want to see deaths caused by free market, look at e.g. homeless people who freeze on the street during winter.
Why is this relevant? The proximate cause for the decreasing life expectancy is massive alcohol consumption. You could assign the blame by drawing long, tenuous chains of social causation from policies you don't like. Or, not unreasonably, you could just fault those destroying their bodies through substance abuse.
why the need to narrow complex set of factors affecting each other into a single bullet point? it doesn't work, not only in this scenario.
General Russian mentality is a prime example of one f*ed up beyond repair, for quite a few generations to come unless some miracle happens (and Putin is making sure it won't happen during his reign).
> Why is this relevant? The proximate cause for the decreasing life expectancy is massive alcohol consumption.
IIRC, this is not true. It's a contributor, certainly, but Russian life expectancy is substantially lower than other nations with similar alcohol consumption.
Has any philosophy in human history caused more death and suffering than collectivism and its offshoots? ... and its adherents take the free-marketeers to task for their "cruelty" and "heartlessness"!
You have presented a logical tautology. Killing another human being is always collectivist according to your definition.
However, that doesn't say anything about validity of ideas of free market or communism. What does say a lot though is that some free market proponents have the need to advocate Pinochet.
OK, consider this. Every (moral) philosophy exists to motivate other people, as a code to follow (if it didn't you wouldn't have reason to tell anyone!). This means there is a group, or a collective, which supposedly holds these values and is to be protected. If fulfilling this philosophy (or its protection) requires killing other humans, then this is (ostensibly) done in the interest of the group.
In other words, if someone is killing for individual reasons, he is not following any philosophy, because he doesn't need any; he's just crazy or psychopath. Killing for philosophical reasons always happens to protect some social order (albeit sometimes fictional).
If you don't agree, there is a simple solution. Just provide an example of philosophy that causes killing of people and is not in fact collectivist (by any definition you choose, it doesn't matter very much, and that's why I was able to do the bold claim I did).
Or to put it even simpler, it's contradictory to kill another human to fulfil any philosophy of individual freedom.
Hitler killed because he wanted to protect Germans from Jews, Pinochet killed because communists were danger to his social order, and so on. Even Winston Smith from 1984 was willing to kill in order to replace the social system (which is the passage in the book I really like, because it's one of the places that makes it actually morally ambiguous, just like real world).
You said, "Killing another human being is always collectivist according to your [ctlby's] definition."
Now you argue that killing another human being for philosophical reasons is always collectivist according to your [asgard1024's] definition. That does nothing whatsoever to make the quoted statement true.
[Edit: For that matter, I see nowhere where ctlby gave his/her definition of "collectivist", nor where he/she assented to yours definition.]
To your point in this post:
You are kind of arguing a tautology. If someone expresses a moral philosophy (no matter how twisted), but they are the only one who believes it or adheres to it, they're collectivist, because they're trying to motivate other people to follow their code. But if someone doesn't express their reasons as a moral philosophy, "he's just crazy or a psychopath". You dismiss any possibility that such a person is following an inexpressed philosophy. In fact, you have pretty much defined out the possibility of there even being such a thing. From that starting point, you argue that your position is correct, but in fact it was contained in your starting assumptions, so your argument is of no value.
> Now you argue that killing another human being for philosophical reasons is always collectivist according to your [asgard1024's] definition. That does nothing whatsoever to make the quoted statement true.
What I said is true of (almost) any definition of "collectivist", including ctlby's.
> You dismiss any possibility that such a person is following an inexpressed philosophy.
Yes, because any inexpressed philosophies were not subject of the discussion; we can't assign killings due to inexpressed philosophies to any philosophy, since we don't know which one.
I mean, show me one non-collectivist philosophy according to which is OK to kill human (except in unavoidable self-defense). There is no such thing - all of them are collectivist.
> What I said is true of (almost) any definition of "collectivist", including ctlby's.
No, your definition of collectivist is so expansive, everything fits. My reply is trying to communicate something to you, therefore my reply is collectivist (or else I don't understand your definition). But presuming I do understand, I reject your definition as being so broad as to be meaningless.
> I mean, show me one non-collectivist philosophy according to which is OK to kill human (except in unavoidable self-defense). There is no such thing - all of them are collectivist.
The Marquis de Sade had a philosophy. Since there is no God, whatever is, is right. And, hey, nature made man stronger than woman. Therefore man has the right to do to woman whatever he wants. I can't find any sane way to describe that philosophy as "collectivist", but de Sade lived out his philosophy to the extent of torturing women. (To my knowledge, he did not actually kill any, but certainly he was free to do so, according to his philosophy.)
Now, I will agree with you that collectivist philosophies (conventionally defined) are much more likely to say that it is OK to kill an individual, because those philosophies start from the group being important, and the individual not. (That's kind of the definition of collective.) From that starting point, it's really hard to find a way to stop short of "It's OK to kill an individual if it's for the good of the group."
> I mean, show me one non-collectivist philosophy according to which is OK to kill human (except in unavoidable self-defense).
Individualistic (as opposed to ethical or utilitarian) hedonism: if it brings the holder of that philosophy net pleasure to do a thing, it is right to do it.
Pretty much the most anti-collectivist philosophy possible.
Yes, but it is also kind of trivial. I mean isn't this philosophy something that every agent ultimately follows?
I would like to see an example that would be useful to classify social systems, as ctlby attempted to do. But I don't see it. Once you put "social system" into it, killing happens for collectivist reason.
So your argument is "Stalin and Mao were monsters, therefore fuck the poor"?
Life is not black and white. The hardline communists were awful. That doesn't mean that hardline capitalists can't also be awful. Maybe they're less awful, in a "rather be kicked in the face than shot in the head" kind of way, but that's not a positive recommendation.
Dude, you cannot compare a country the size of Chile (8m in the '60s) with a country the size of Russia (120m in the '60s) or China (600m in the '60s).
No, because you also have to account for duration and for a number or other factors (e.g. Chilean population was concentrated in very few cities, so the effect of one death was relatively higher than in a place like Russia, where things often happen "at very long distance"; and so on and so forth).
This is not a rational historical comparison (if such a thing can really exist), these are just random numbers shouted in a pub argument, "My guy killed less people than your guy!"...
There's a distinction to be made between rapid neoliberal deregulation policies which naively attempt for a full "shock therapy" solution in an economy already devastated by accumulated allocative inefficiency from central planning and oil shocks (in the case of the USSR), and the general concept of laissez-faire which is separate from a particular national policy and can emerge by counter-economic means (e.g. crypto-anarchism), or others.
Chile and the Chicago Boys is a bit disingenuous to regard as outright failure, it's a controversial subject. Keep in mind that the Chicago School are a unique economic position, but they've been oversimplified to "free market" in common discourse.
What makes the Chicago Boys unique, to a large degree, is that they seem to have made a choice to trade analysis for position advocacy. A lot of them are better thought of as taking part in politics rather than academics.
If you want sources, just scan Brad Delong's blog; there's a decent chance he's making this point at any given time. There was a wonderful example I can't take time time to dig up right now in which an (Chicago-aligned) economist published a paper with outright deceptive priors and when confronted, explained that his goal was to promote an argument, and it was the reader's problem to make counter arguments. You can call that a lot of things, but academic inquiry isn't one of them.
Anytime a government exists, you can find a way to blame anything that happens on the government rather than the deer market, since the government certainly intervened in there market in some way, and that always influences market conditions and decisions. Free market fundamentalism isn't falsifiable, it's an axiomatic quasi-religious article if faith.
Of course, the exact opposite dynamic also exists in full bloom - when did you last see an advocate for government action invite falsification?
Mariana Mazzucato's work on The Entrepreneurial State makes frequent appearances in these parts, typically in the shape of references to internet startups not really being innovative, because the internet/GPS/touch screens/Siri have roots in government research programs.
> when did you last see an advocate for government action invite falsification?
All the time: very often advocates of government action tend to predict an association between specific government actions and specific results, rather than ascribing bad results to "government" generally and good results to "the market", drawing both bad and good results from scenarios where government regulation shapes the market; while anti-government advocates like to pretend that there is a symmetry between their non-specific advocacy against government and some opposing advocacy for government, that's not actually the case.
Well, all right, but how often do you see the loop closed? "We predicted results X from this government program (with these error bars), actual results were Y, which were/were not withing the error bars."
I have literally never seen that kind of analysis of a government program, still less a group of them. But it's essential, so that we can tell whether the predictions of what the next program will do have any basis in reality.
While this isn't necessarily the exact kind of analysis you're talking about, it's very close to what the Government Accountability Office was set up to report on -- and from what I can tell, they do their job pretty well. We don't hear about them very often in large part because what they do isn't very "sexy," politics-wise.
The misery Russians suffered after the collapse of the USSR, was from the collapse of the USSR. There was an immense price paid for the failure of the Soviet Union.
The notion of blaming the ills of 1991-1999 on free markets is absurd. Were free markets going to magically turn the nation of Stalin right around into a bastion of prosperity? Impossible.
You know what turned Russia's condition around? A debased US dollar and the high oil prices it caused. It wasn't Putin or central planning.
And as for Pinochet: a 17 year, violent military dictatorship in a free market. If that's your political system, what you inherently cannot have is a free market. The two are mutually exclusive.
Yeah, me too! Any time anything bad happens under my econo-political regime of choice, it's not really my regime, since my regime ensures bad things can never happen. So any example that makes my regime look bad is by definition not an example. The two are mutually exclusive.
The very first (more deaths than all the rest combined) one in the list (Bhopal disaster[1])...
"Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake."
The government and public quite literally owned half of Union Carbide company at the time of the disaster. Fault can't really get more directly placed than that.
The hopes of private industry are that an entirely private corporation, in order to protect its brand's value, needs to avoid this sort of thing. Add government funding to the mix, and everything is up in the air. Lockheed's F-35 project is another example of a disaster, but of the financial sort instead. If funded by another private company, rather than the government, this project would have been shut down and Lockheed would have already been sued into bankruptcy. Instead, Lockheed continues to be paid billions, while their treasonous corporation holds our national security hostage.
Note: All content in this comment is my opinion only.
Emacs is still my favorite text editor when in a terminal window, which is most of the time. Maybe one day I'll really embrace vim also, but it's always been a struggle.
And, for completeness, Chong Yidong, how co-maintained together with Stefan for quite a while (and did a great job as well). I think both of them were quite a big part of the "emacs renaissance" of the last few years.
And Stefan was a great maintainer. I was sad when I heard he was stepping down, but I can't think of a replacement that would make me happier than John.
So you're saying that no nuclear plants are going to be built because of the threat of renewable energy sources becoming cheaper or perhaps other tech like fusion?:
Are you comparing an experimental technology like Germany's fusion reactor to proven wind generation that is driving commercial reactors out of business?
I couldn't guess what energy producing and distribution technologies will be most prevalent in 100 years.
Advancements could just as easily be made relating to fission reactors, so I don't think it's fair to say that large power companies shouldn't invest in more reactors. But, I agree there is probably risk in investing in them.
It's not clear from that what the other operators are doing, but there seems to be some work put into replacing smaller turbines with larger ones that are less disruptive to birds.
Instead of just recommending one across the board, I wish they'd be specific about the requirements required for it to be considered the best choice. For example, is it the best choice for computing a hash on a RPi A+ that has a max of 256MB memory?
Also, the benchmark it includes only benchmarks Argon2. Would be nice to have a benchmark that compares it to a variety of commonly-used hashing algorithms that could be run on lower-end systems along with a way to report them, then those reports could be collected and published.
I also worry when I read something that sounds like whitepaper-speak in something trying to pass itself off as a scientific paper:
"Our solution We offer a hashing scheme called Argon2. Argon2 summarizes the state of the art in the design
of memory-hard functions. It is a streamlined and simple design. It aims at the highest memory filling rate
and effective use of multiple computing units, while still providing defense against tradeoff attacks. Argon2
is optimized for the x86 architecture and exploits the cache and memory organization of the recent Intel and
AMD processors."
Most of the motivation of a password hash function derives from the attacker's resources, not the defender's. Realistic designs will nod to the defender's constraints (Argon2 is designed to work especially well from x86), but the bulk of the design work is in thwarting attacks launched from optimal hardware dedicated entirely to the proposition of breaking that hash.
So it's not entirely a great idea to try to find a password hash optimized for e.g. low-power ARM applications. You should just use Argon2 (in a new design, if the reference code works for you), or bcrypt/scrypt/PBKDF2 if you don't have good code for Argon2.
Following that, wouldn't the best idea be to increase the requirements such that you need something ridiculously intense to compute it, like a Tianhe-2? Something that requires more intense hardware may be the best algorithm, but at some point you need something practical.
If all other methods are insecure, then you wouldn't want to encourage those and would want to warn others. But, is it really that much more secure than the others?
You can do this in practice by simply increasing the cost parameters. Actually requiring this would be a fantastic way of authoring a spec that nobody uses in practice. The point of a password hashing function is not to simply produce the hardest possible hashes to crack — it's to do so given the resources the defender has available to allocate.
> it's to do so given the resources the defender has available to allocate.
That's my point exactly.
For any popular currently-sold piece given hardware, it would be nice to know which algorithm should be used rather than to just say, "This is better. Use this which requires better hardware."
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all of the work, but there are people that run on hardware that isn't as capable, so I think making blanket statements about what's best may not be the right idea. Qualify it at least.
I think you're missing a subtlety of the design here. When we talk about the hardware it takes to "run" these constructions, we are (mostly) talking about the requirements we impose on attackers.
So, when it states, "Argon2
is optimized for the x86 architecture and exploits the cache and memory organization of the recent Intel and
AMD processors," and "We recommend Argon2 for the applications that aim for high performance. Both versions of Argon2 allow to fill 1 GB of RAM in a fraction of second, and smaller amounts even faster," that does not indicate that Argon2 might not be the best choice for something like a RPi A+? Because that confused me. It really seemed like something that assumes better hardware to be a good choice.
I believe so. If you're memory-limited, then no matter what hash you use, you might be limited in how high you can turn the memory-hardness pain crank. But you still want that dial turned as far forward as you can.
But the situation you're describing is why all password hashes, including the three "legacy" hashes (bcrypt scrypt PBKDF2) are parameterized by cost factors.
But on hardware for which the hash function implementation is optimized, you will be able to crank up the cost factors higher than on comparable hardware for which no optimization was done. So a different hash with an implementation optimized more for ARM could give more protection than Argon2 on ARM because you would be able to use higher cost factors while still using the same amount of wall clock time. But I don't think such a hash function exists, and if not you could as well create a more ARM optimized implementation of Argon2.
Well, yes - better hardware is a better choice. You're in a race with an attacker trying to reverse your password hashes.
You should feel safe in assuming that this algorithm will turn your CPU cycles spent into the highest attacker burden that any algorithm will. In this case, they're saying that they've used the new hardware features efficiently so they're able to increase the cost multiplier even more by doing harder work in the same time.
Just use whatever number will make it complete in a second, it's what you're gonna get.
But wouldn't the problem be that you would be exposed to a DDOS attack? All the attackers would need to do is to try to login many times to your servers and they would be buried calculating hashes.
One of the ways for embedded devices to address this is require a hardware resident key is part of the hashing process (handled in hardware). Otherwise, if someone can get the hashes, you're not going to be able to find cost factors that provide good user experience and are also resistant to off device attacks.
I think I'm having trouble coming up with the embedded hardware use case that requires real-time validation of lots and lots of different passwords. Because if all you have is a couple of passwords, you have a lot more wiggle room for your hash performance than most Rails apps do.
He also tends not to view websites like HN, GitHub, etc., at least as of a few years ago. I'm not sure if it is because he is still in text mode all the time, because he disagrees with using sites that might somehow involve something that isn't free source, or because he just delegates to others the task of surfing the web and getting information for him. He definitely spends a lot of time emailing though.
I admire him a lot. From some discussion with him and what I've read, I have the feeling that he is in a constant battle with much of the world to try to get them to free all software. I really can't say for certain whether he is really going too far, but his dedication and courage go far beyond what most people are capable of. Even if you disagree with him, it's difficult not to admire him for that.
He also tends not to view websites like HN, GitHub, etc.,
at least as of a few years ago. I'm not sure if it is
because he is still in text mode all the time
just as a side note, not that I think he's wasting his precious time like us anyway:
at least for vim, there's a nice plugin [0] for reading HN. most probably there would be something for his emacs/org-mode as well.
For personal reasons he doesn't have a personal internet connection at all.
He has some sort of bot that he emails links to and it sends the source (or plaintext?) back to him for reading.
(At least it was like that a couple of years ago)
I believe he also has issues with non-free JavaScript which I suppose precludes him from using websites that use JavaScript (or I guess he could block it).
I used to think his browsing/emailing habits were silly, but then I started working in the park about 5 years ago on nice days. My phone data plan at the time was pretty crappy, so I rigged up a system using a local imap server and offlineimap/msmtp/msmtp-queue to effectively work offline. I'd get my batch of emails once at the beginning of the day, and I could attend to them (reply, forward, copy, etc) over the course of the work day, and batch-send them all out when I'd be connected again.
I never got to the point of having a bot fetch web pages for me, but I can see it as an extension of what I had set up. For someone who travels as much as Stallman, I think it's a very efficient way to browse and email when internet connections are either spotty or not to be trusted.
I wonder if he realises that browsing over Tor with IceCat will be causing him to have quite a distinct browser fingerprint. He should just use Tor Browser.
There is a lot more than just the useragent when it comes to Tor Browser versus any other browser. Tor Browser has many changes to try and make every instance of Tor Browser look identical, everything from the HTTP headers to window size to timing functions being rounded uniformly. Although I am guessing he browses with javascript turned off, which does defeat most of the fingerprinting techniques.
I looked for example projects in Ceylon with step-by-step info on how to setup/deploy:
* Hello World web application
* Simple online store implementation (authN, database access via ORM layer, logging)
* Todo MVC implementation
* RESTful/XML/SOAP web services
* RESTful/XML/SOAP clients
* Examples for writing AngularJS and React front-ends with Ceylon back-end services, with info on how to host such as to minimize and cache assets and server-side query caching and either side-loading or multi-table joined/extended data structures, updating and reading/accessing those data structures partially.
* Examples for easily timestamping and userstamping models
* Examples for using testing frameworks: unit, integration, (web) acceptance
Also, I'd want to see benchmarks. Show me how much it is "like" performance of equivalent Java, Dart, and JS as is claimed by comparing to maybe a Play Framework app, the Dart example client-server https://www.dartlang.org/server/google-cloud-platform/app-en... , and a simple MEAN stack and/or full-stack example using ReactJS.
In addition to those examples, I'd want to see a larger community behind it with a variety of projects, e.g. specialized ORM, larger web app/services framework, simple web app/service framework each that have their own communities using it.
I think it is cool, but I don't think it is even in the same ballpark with solutions/combinations like Play+Scala, MEAN, Rails, Elixir+Phoenix, etc. for wide application in web/services.
I used to regret not putting cat5 in, but now that it would have been considered old, and I'm pretty sure messing with conduits to replace those cables would have been a pain and I would use wifi anyway, I think the main things are:
1. Plan on a spot for wifi and cable modem.
2. Assume that single wire to your cable modem will need to be replaced, so don't make it too hard to get to, but I'm not sure if I'd bother with a conduit. It's possible that even the main net connection will be wireless one day, but for now it's cable, satellite, DSL, or Google Fiber, typically.
3. Large conduit for what they call "low voltage wiring" (HDMI, etc.) to where you always want your T.V. may be a good idea, but wireless video being normal is not far off.
4. Wireless power is not happening anytime soon, so be sure that you have outlets everywhere you'd need them, including in the ceiling if you think you'll need a bridge or repeater. Note that repeaters kind of suck, so hopefully you can just get by with one or more wifi routers instead. If you can't then that is the one (or so) cat6e cables you'd need to run, because POE isn't a great fallback.
The non-networking stuff to think about:
* Putting holes in a countertop for wires if you want to hide outlets. Only recommend that for places where the outlet is easily accessible, otherwise the wire going into the outlet would get in the way of storage space or cause fires.
* Insulation! Get the best you can, imo. Most builders skimp, but you'll regret it. Insulate all doors, etc. to storage space. Might not want to fill electrical boxes with foam unless you really need it, since that can be a mess.
* Get a nice garage door opener and consider insulating garage door.
* Go ahead and get a recommended gutter helmet for your gutters and put in nice siding and roofing.
* Be careful with ceiling fans. If the blades have a weak point in the connection with the blade like a centimeter of brass or similar, that will shear eventually.
* Don't skimp on ventilation, HVAC/furnace.
* Go ahead and put decent windows in if you can afford it. Otherwise they'll get stuck and you'll not use them.
* Plan on cheap carpet rolling up and needing to be retightened, or buy good stuff.
* Go ahead and put in decent countertops and tile backsplash in kitchen. You will eventually if you don't do it now. Put in undercabinet lighting and dimmers for those and most other lighting in kitchen and common areas.
* Plan a "mud area" in some area of the home and place for kids or you to put stuff and hang it as you come in.
* Even if you like natural wood, consider getting the hardier stuff for decks, etc. or stain and treat. Same with hardwoods- use more gloss than you might want.
* Dark hardwoods and counters hide dirt. With dark you get more cockroaches, with light you get more work.
Plenty of other things, but those are just the main ones.
It is tough to decide whether or not to call out someone when they blatantly steal your code.
On one hand, you want to take the high road and not have to squeal. But on the other hand, if you don't speak up, that person will just keep on stealing from others, in theory.
Personally, I think the best thing to do is to call them out in a public but quiet way that doesn't make it sound like you are offended, e.g. posting a link to your work in the comments with a "Glad you could use my code: (link)". That way they know that you know that they did it, and that anyone who looks at the comments will see but maybe not make the connection that they stole it. This way you get the point across without having to publicly beat them over the head with it.
I think OP's actions were proportional to the offense. You slag someone (or someone's work) off in public, and/or rip someone off publicly, you should expect to be publicly flogged.
Other than that, all looks good!