I disagree. Silly patents ["A planetary deflector shield to repel bubble gum pellets from Martians"] cost little to "process". But, a legit patent [that should/will be granted] by a small inventor might have highly variable costs, depending upon which examiner decides what amount of prior art s/he should investigate. A good examiner will zero in on what limited prior art should be taken into consideration. A poorly skilled examiner might look at many prior patents that really aren't germane to the given application.

Should the applicant have to pay for all this, not being able to calculate, up front, what the costs will be?

The patent office now allows for [post-grant] administrative review. That is, if a patent is granted, and there's clearly prior art that invalidates it (i.e. it should never have been granted), but the original examiner wasn't skilled enough in the given area to know about it (or where to look for it), an "amicus" filing can start a review (possibly, pointing out where to find the prior art). This was intended to reduce [and seems to have been good in practice] the legal costs of challenging an "obvious" patent. A "bad" patent gets retracted without having to resort to the legal system at all.

The [aforementioned] administrative review process has, generally, been regarded as a success in nullifying troll patents. Before that, a legit company that knows it is not infringing a bogus patent would have to spend serious legal fees to defend against a patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Now, it has a way to [cheaply] defend itself. That is, if the patent office had done the right review in the first place, the patent wouldn't have been granted.

IMO, the patent office is a public service like road building or police response. We should be able to call the police when we're in trouble, without them saying we must pay a fee for their services up front [this or something similar does happen in some other countries]. That said, clearly "frivolous" police calls can be charged for (and are if a court determines fault).

[In theory :-)] the patent system helps spur innovation that produces new medical treatments, medicines [vaccines], stronger/safer building materials, etc. This stimulates the economy and produces jobs. Yes, I know there are abuses, but that's the idea.

We all benefit when we ride on the same [gov't/tax subsidized] roadways. To me, this includes the patent system as well.

The fact that an "everyman" can apply for a patent, in theory, is a good thing. Just like it's a good thing that an "everyman" can vote (without "poll taxes" of the past). To me, any filing fee other than a small one seems like a "poll tax" on patent applications.

nber.org requires a fee to view this paper.

It allows 3 free papers per year. But, do I really want to burn one to view a paper that I've not seen in full?

Maybe they should either remove fees altogether or switch to nber.com and not abuse the .org domain?

Ironic, no?

I played with it, too. I was able to "stack it" where its response got longer and longer because I added a question about it's response. I got to maybe five levels before it reverted to a generic response.

Maybe, we could have a stacking challenge: longest response with the dialog that got it.

A long time ago (when I was in my 20's), I was working for a small H/W company and I wrote the low level SW/firmware. During a temporary crunch [of a month or so], the programmers were authorized to do (and got paid for) overtime.

I experimented with various amounts of hours/week. Up to 60 was doable [when I was young :-)]. Beyond that it was burnout [I tried 80 hours ;-)] and, more importantly (for the company) mistakes/bugs.

I discovered that staying at or below the threshold [60 hours], I was about as productive / hour as I was at a normal 40 hours.

After that, the rate of mistakes was high enough that productivity dropped because creating extra bugs (and fixing them) took longer than writing [relatively] bug free code in the first place.

The extra hours actually reduced "throughput" because the "error rate" grew.

non-compete agreements until now ...
California: not enforceable
Massachusetts: enforceable

Recently I read an article that venture capital firms [even those based in Boston] would not fund a startup based in Massachusetts because of its non-compete. They would say (e.g.) "Base the company in New York ..."

Maybe one reason why Silicon Valley is 10x the size of the the Rte 128 belt ... [Also, maybe the weather :-)]

The draconian good ole days ... https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fopencasebook.org%2Fcaseb...

Wow! Bravo! When I saw the announcement, I immediately thought: "Now, I'll be able to see Frank(lin) Deremer's SLR CACM paper". I had to be content with a smudgy copy of his Phd thesis. I'm delighted to see someone else remembering this landmark paper.

UEFI wouldn't help your issue. You still need a device driver within the boot/bios (e.g. uboot) that can boot off the given device. On smaller systems, there may be limited EPROM, so adding a bunch of drivers doesn't make sense. And, as a workaround, you can image the SD card with whatever second stage boot loader you want, with whatever capabilities you want (similar to grub), so you needn't reflash the boot/bios.

IIRC, originally, fortran didn't have types. If you wanted an integer, the symbol had to start with a letter in the range I to N [from INteger]. All others were real.

Here is a CNN article that recommends that DST be eliminated. That is, rather than going to daylight savings time year round, it recommends staying with standard time year round.

The title is: "Permanent Daylight Saving Time will hurt our health, experts say" and the link is: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2022%2F11%2F06...

It makes a number of points:
- Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth’s rotation.
- Your body clock stays with (natural) light not with the clock on your wall.
- There’s no evidence that your body fully shifts to the new time.
- Standard time, which we enter when we move our clocks back in the fall, is much closer to the sun’s day and night cycle.
- Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.

When President Richard Nixon signed a permanent Daylight Saving Time into law in January 1974, it was a popular move. But by the end of the month Florida’s governor had called for the law’s repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.

By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.

A similar backlash occurred when the US first implemented Daylight Saving Time in 1918, as a way to to reduce demand for electricity usage by adding sunlight to the end of the day in response to World War I. (Studies since have found little to no cost savings from the practice.) The time switch was so unpopular that the law was repealed the following year.

The United States has tried permanent daylight saving time twice before and ended it early. The UK tried once before and ended it early. Russia tried it once, so did India and ended it early.

Drilling deep into the earth to release the limitless energy from the earth's magma ...

From the 1965 film "Crack in the World":

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftubitv.com%2Fmovies%2F6396...

It did not end well ...

I'm sorry you've had such a negative experience.

But, there is more review/moderation to actions than you might suspect unless you've spent some time on the site.

Unfortunately, it can be all too common to get "knee-jerk" downvotes or [less common] votes-to-close, usually by people that don't have the domain experience to know whether a question can be improved/fixed (e.g. a python programmer downvotes/closes a C language question based on a cursory examination of the question--it happens).

I'll upvote questions that have been DV'ed if I see "itchy trigger fingers". A DV is -2 rep points, but a single upvote is a +10. So, not as big a deal for rep points. But, users without sufficient rep can only see the net total of upvotes/downvotes and not the number of upvotes vs downvotes. So, you might see a net count of -1, but not know that it got 3 downvotes but got 2 upvotes (i.e. there was a disagreement amongst the voters). OP's rep points would actually go up: ((-2) + (-2) + (-2)) + ((+10) + (+10)) for a net gain of +14.

If I see a question that has been closed, as a dup. Or "lacking in detail" and the question is perfectly answerable by someone with specific domain expertise [e.g. I can answer it], I'll vote to reopen. And, fight to get an answer for the OP (original poster).

While there isn't a review queue for downvotes, there is a review queue for close votes [particularly, if someone has voted to reopen the question].

And, I'm perfectly willing to flag snide comments to moderators. I did that for a commenter that was unfairly hammering an OP with abusive comments. I checked the commenter's profile immediately and, again, next day. Apparently, there was a history of such abuse as the commenter got a one year suspension from SO within that 24 hour period. This is the maximum penalty short of account deletion, reserved for repeated offenses. The commenter would have been warned multiple times, both on the site and in email, and have received shorter suspensions in the past.

If a question needs work (it is missing necessary code or needs a better statement of the problem that the code is trying to solve, etc.), I'll frequently post comments with edit suggestions or ask clarifying questions (always politely), rather than downvote/close.

If a responder posts an incomplete/invalid/bad answer to a question, it gets the same [or worse] scrutiny/process as the question, including comments, downvotes, forced edits, and [sometimes] deletions. Mostly a comment under the answer and the responder will fix/improve the answer.

Frequently, with a bad answer, there is a comment pointing out the error, and the responder will voluntarily delete the answer if they feel they can't fix it.

Or, the responder [after rereading the question] realizes that the answer they gave doesn't answer the question or doesn't answer it "well enough" and they will self delete the answer. Sometimes within minutes of posting it.

Without sufficient rep points, most viewers can't see these deleted answers, but there are more of them than you might believe.

Not all OPs are created alike. And, sometimes this can be frustrating for [potential] responders.

Some OPs respond and edit their questions and provide the needed/requested info. I (and many others) will repeat the process until the question becomes good/answerable and the OPs do get useful/valid answers [sometimes in comments if the solution is simple enough]. It is [can be] a collaborative process between OP and responders to improve the question and get OP the answer they want/need.

However, some OPs just go "radio silent" when they are asked for clarification.

Some get argumentative (e.g.):

Although I remain polite and continue to try to be positive/helpful, there are times when I'd like to say: "If you knew what information was needed, you wouldn't need to post a question here". But ... Such a response would [probably] be a violation of SO's code-of-conduct, so I don't do that. But, sometimes I am thinking that.

So, some OPs can frustrate responders.

If enough time passes [a few hours], and the OP has not responded, or ignores repeated requests [by multiple responders] to edit the question and provide info/clarification, or becomes abusive, then, yes, the question will be downvoted and/or closed [or for _extreme_ cases, flagged to moderators].

And, in certain cases, by that point, one of the closers could/would be me.

As a regular SO responder, I check for both my kidneys before going to sleep at night and upon waking in the morning ...

Thank you for your concern about my well being. I do appreciate the love ...

I was wondering if anybody was going to mention the Monica controversy [which being a regular SO responder, I'm familiar with].

Perhaps, the acquisition will allow for the reinstatement/apology/exoneration. It has been difficult for the present management to admit that they may have over-reacted or that guidelines need to be revisited/refined, possibly with a more formalized/open [less opaque] review process.

Some of the guideline/help pages are unchanged/static over time and too generic/vague. And lacking in specific examples of good vs. bad conduct, questions, answers, commentary.

Not specific to Monica, for example, the MRE (minimal reproducible example) help page, gives general advice about how to create a good, detailed, answerable question. But, it has no examples of a progression of a poorly framed question that was revised with edits into a good question. This is a big issue for new questioners because they can read the MRE page and still not know whether their question is a good [enough] one.

So, if new management keeps the good and addresses/improves the bad/lacking/stoic parts, then, being acquired might actually be beneficial ...

Um ... No ...

Many of the people that answer are experts with decades of experience [myself included].

And, sometimes, I do a [google] search looking for an information/answers to a problem I have and the best results frequently are from SO.

That was how I found out that the site even existed [5 years ago]. After a while, I just signed up [because, being an "old" programmer, I wanted to mentor younger programmers].

There are already some alternatives. A web search of "stackoverflow.com alternative" has links. One I've seen is on https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.codeproject.com%2Fsc...