Nelson Minar
somebits.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Nelson Minar is a software engineer who writes about web services, Google, patents, leap seconds and technology he finds harmful.
What HN saysHN links it for explanations of the 2012 leap second crashes, the FlightPrep patent dispute and why Scribd and Quora are considered harmful.
25HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
25stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
1 year agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Scribd and Quora considered harmful3 people · 513 points · first shared 2014 · 136 comments on HN
- 2Leap Second crashes half the internet (2012)3 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 3FlightPrep's patent bullying with 7,640,0982 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 4Why Soap Sucks (2006)2 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5No longer loving Google1 people · 246 points · first shared 2012 · 123 comments on HN
- 6Klout Is Odious1 people · 192 points · first shared 2011 · 84 comments on HN
- 7Facebook's Internet identity monopoly1 people · 77 points · first shared 2011 · 45 comments on HN
- 8Goodreads lost all of my reviews1 people · 51 points · first shared 2022 · 4 comments on HN
- 9UTC vs UT1 and Leap Seconds1 people · 44 points · first shared 2012 · 18 comments on HN
- 10Stop Making Social Networks, Facebook Won1 people · 20 points · first shared 2010 · 30 comments on HN
- 11Cancelling Facebook1 people · 18 points · first shared 2007 · 11 comments on HN
- 12The last TV Olympics?1 people · 10 points · first shared 2012 · 5 comments on HN
- 13Fixing toxic behavior in online communities1 people · 7 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 14The Mozilla Crisis1 people · 6 points · first shared 2014 · 3 comments on HN
- 15Script injection in whois responses?1 people · 5 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
NelsonMinar · 2010-12-15
This story is big news in the little world of general aviation. RunwayFinder was an excellent free product, well loved, and a lot of pilots are angry about it being bullied offline. RunwayFinder says they don't infringe. It seems likely to me, between the prior art, the obviousness of the patent, and the specificity of the patent claims (including language about using "housekeeping frames"). But they lack the means to defend themselves. I blogged some more analysis at http://www.somebits.com/weblog/aviation/flightprep-patent-7640098.html
FlightPrep tried to go after the deep pockets in the industry, too, Jeppesen. Jepp's apparently blown them off: http://www.aopa.org/flightplanning/articles/2010/101214AOPA_Flight_Pla…
luxpir · 2016-08-02
Some more info, posted only a year ago, saving you all that sweet, precious searching time:
http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bang-path-addressing-uucp.html
mtmail · 2015-01-09
The operating systems can already handle leap seconds. It's not the first time it got added.
Some background on when it failed
http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/leap-second-2012.html
Nexxxeh · 2014-05-27
I had to use the search to find out why people view scribd as evil.
http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/quora-scribd-considered-harmfu…
turbodog · 2010-12-11
A short summary that made sense to me:
http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/chrome-app-store.html
krosaen · 2010-09-24
I found this post from a year ago convincing that arrington jumps the gun sometimes, examples include "google apps free is done" to the last.fm debacle http://www.somebits.com/weblog/culture/blogs/techcrunch-wrong-again.ht…