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I know that hating on patents for being the cause of all the world's ills is hip these days... but this is about the worst submission I've ever seen on the HN f
by monochromatic 14y ago
I know that hating on patents for being the cause of all the world's ills is hip these days... but this is about the worst submission I've ever seen on the HN front page.
1. The author has lumped a bunch of utility and design patents together without apparently realizing that they aren't at all the same.
2. Many of these patents have expired.
3. There's no discussion whatsoever of why he thinks patents are to blame here. Just "I wonder why this is... I BET IT'S PATENTS."
4. Given the other painfully obvious issues with this post, I hesitate to mention it, but... come on, people. Look at the fucking claims. If you can't be bothered to even mention the claims, you have no business making wild assertions about patents. It just looks ridiculous and ignorant.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI have to agree with this, I think its a reasonable hypothesis that patents are the issue but doing the legwork then to figure out if in fact they are involved should be pretty straight forward. That said, I don't think the author of the post cares all that much, looks like they are just speculating. Which brings us to the question of why is it on the front page? My hypothesis for that is that people vote it up hoping that others who understand the patent system will comment and either validate or invalidate the author's hypothesis, thus completing the thought. The only way to prevent such abuse is to flag the link which doesn't capture a lot of nuance. Of course I can't do the legwork on my hypothesis without doing a poll, doesn't look like polls have been re-enabled and frankly I don't know how accurate such a poll would be.