skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on here, but clearly Arrington was an idiot if he didn't have any contracts in place.

That said, I find fusion garage's side of the story pretty suspect, and even if it's true, I highly doubt they'll succeed. They seem way too focused on the product and the technology and seem to think it will market and sell itself.

I hope TechCrunch sues. Even without a written contract, there must be heaps of verbal and written evidence as to exactly what the relationship here was. Letting the courts sort it out might be the only way to get close to the truth.
Yes, but now netbooks exist. I got mine for $279 and I can comfortably run Visual Studio on it. This device is significantly less powerful, not particularly more portable, and costs more. For the right price, I'd buy one -- this is not the right price.
PyPI link: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xapian-haystack/1.1.0beta
I disagree with this post. If you are so personally threatened by someone asking what your weaknesses are, then I guess I understand your reaction. But personally I just view that as another question relating to your experience. For instance, my two biggest weaknesses are time estimates and unit testing (I still haven't jumped on the TDD bandwagon), so instead of being offended or threatened by that, I will explain my weaknesses and what I'm doing to correct them or my views on them.

Everyone has weaknesses, don't run from them, embrace them as an opportunity to improve.
This is the best news I've heard in a long time.
I want to do something to help their case if I can. To any lawyers on HN: are there any aspects of this case that are likely to be amenable to crowd-sourcing/coding/anything I could do?
I bet the IP TechCrunch owns is simply the brand "CrunchPad." Good luck with that suit.

Fusion Garage's story is infinitely more believable than Arrington's. After both sides have spoken, I imagine it went down like this:

They show him their OS in hopes of getting press and subsequent funding. Arrington loves the idea and wants in on the concept. Fusion Garage goes and actually builds the thing. Meetings take place with Fusion Garage probably passively hoping for funding through Arrington's connections and Arrington monopolizing the conversation with "product ideas" that are more pie-in-the-sky thinking than actual engineering.

In the meantime, tablet fever grips the nation and a Fusion Garage with a working prototype has no trouble scoring VC meetings. They probably had to fight off the cash being thrown at them. Suddenly they don't need Arrington and those that actually came through with funding demand they end the charade of him being a participant. All they have to do is come up with a new name (Joojoo? Come on...)

What remains to be seen is how TC's audience will react. The idea that Arrington apparently tried to glom onto the project with no engineering contributions perfectly fits the tropes discussed on HN: MBA-types make a buck off the back of those who actually built the thing. I wonder if this tale will actually hurt his rep?

Who here will approach TC and Arrington differently after today?
I have to agree with you. With Arrington's resent openness about the whole issue, you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible to refute any claim like this.

He put up the lawsuits that were filed, but I haven't seen any contracts which lead me to believe they never existed.

This is definitely a story of botched communications, but don't be so quick to believe this guy. I think when the dust settles, the truth will be somewhere in the middle of the two stories we are hearing.
Lobbying and PR is a defensive measure that IMHO is justifiable without being evil. There are plenty more competitors out there who will use their deep pockets to curry politicians into doing things to harm you... having your own lobbying strength helps defend against that.
And notice that the website title is "The Joo Joo". So, is it spelled "JooJoo" or "Joo Joo"?
> a transhuman AI could destroy the entry human race

A perfectly ordinary human (wearing general's stripes) could also destroy the human race. Today. With 1950s technology, no less.

A biotech specialist with fairly ordinary training and a few $10k could probably achieve the same end with an engineered plague, also with current technology.

One or the other of these scenarios may or may not take place before we exhaust the non-renewable resources to which our civilization is addicted and regress into permanent barbarism.

Give me "death by AI" any day of the week, over that.
Oh man. Say goodbye to productivity with Civ II on a tablet...
Agreed, but wow, this thing really gets style points from me. :)

The thing has a USB port that could (presumably) be used for a keyboard if you required one. Wish I could get one with a full-fledged OS on it. In that case, I'd consider it.
That's a good point, but you can buy a legit laptop for $500 these days. I bet I could pick up a previous generation Thinkpad tablet for somewhere around there.

I wonder how things will evolve once Chrome OS hits the scene.
I get the feeling Techcrunch is doing a whole "Tomorrow Never Dies" thing here both with the "Twitter Leaks" and now this "argument about the Crunchpad"...
When the cost of production exceeds the market value you are unable to profit.
I find it interesting that this all apparently happened so quickly, but the timing still seems off.

The domain "thejoojoo.com" was registered on Nov 10th.

They told TechCrunch about the split on the 17th, and that day TechCrunch applied for the trademark.

I mean, who was running this show? Domain names and trademarks are supposed to be lined up and checked much further in advance. (Not to mention contracts...)

On a side note: this is the tech equivalent of celebrity gossip... I'm sure that much worse has happened in the past, but never this publicly.
I would like to think I'm a reasonably truthful person, and back when I was interviewing for a job, I always replied with the "work too hard" line. In part because I I sometimes do work too hard (don't we all?) but mostly because... how to say it? because the question is silly.

To be honest, I don't think this question will unmask any liar -- you may be missing on good job candidates if you keep using this as some type of polygraph test.

Oh, and I'm in my 40's by the way.
CrunchPad now called JooJoo; TechCrunch ownership claims called "ludicrous"
A ton of excellent developers work way to hard and are obsesive compulsive about perfection. This is so common as to warrant whole chapters about "the best is the enemy of the good" and so on.

And.. it is a weakness.. a big weakness. it is no bullshit.
Truth, though hopefully not insurmountable truth.

Maybe things would improve if more people volunteered time toward computer science research; I can envision something like the GNU Project, but for research rather than engineering, with proper administration, goals, tasks, and resources, to help establish purpose and vision, and attract volunteers to an overarching common goal.

Or maybe even establish something like Y Combinator for CS research, a small-scale NSF if you will. Give a small group of innovative folks a few months of funding to create something new, regardless of if it has near-term business viability.
More than that: Their competitor provided a direct comparison for their product. Selling a unique product is difficult, the customer really has nothing to compare with. That comparison process, as behavioral economics teaches us, is vital to decision making.

The entrance of a lesser competitor undoubtedly benefited them greatly. Leaving that hard copy of his presentation may have been the best thing he could have possibly done for that business.
Crunchpad was a far superior name. Unless theyre hoping religious puns bring it more press.
I always welcome ambitious goals - the fact that a problem has not been solved for half a century is absolutely no reason to call it quits. However, in the interest of spending money wisely, it's worth it to at least sit back for a moment and think about what went wrong before, and what we can do to steer ourselves towards the right path.

The article mentions revisiting fundamental assumptions, but doesn't mention a single specific thing that the team will do differently. I've studied AI on my own for some time, and the biggest problem (as far as I can tell) is that researchers can't agree on what "intelligence" means. AI research for the past fifty years hasn't been about building an artificial intelligence machine, it's been about precisely defining what "intelligence" means. Every time there was a breakthrough, after a bit of hype people realized that the program is actually pretty dumb, is a testament to the intelligence of the programmer, not the machine, and that the bar for "intelligence" simply shifts a bit higher up.

So, what exactly is this team doing differently? How do they define "intelligence", and what do they intend to build?
I disagree with the part about religion and family. Don't give them ammo to discriminate against you.
The real technical question is whether you'd be willing to pay a premium for the touchscreen.
I think CrunchPad was a great name, too. But with that said, I think the joojoo logo is pretty slick and makes the brand stronger. :)
Hasn't the Archos9 existed already at that price point?

http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/

Possibly with more features? Or is it vaporware?
We should take into account the reaction of the community when one or two of its members is found untrustworthy. Does the community condone dishonest behavior or condemn it?
And they don't even have joojoo.com How can you pick a gooft name like that and not even own the domain? It's a Korean site...
This is timely, as I've started working on an MMO as a side project.

Of note: I think your wiki has been hacked.
you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible

IANAL, but I suspect that from a legal standpoint his best plan is to say nothing. Even what has been said so far is much too much. If TC hadn't made such a big public push for the product that it was impossible to just let it quietly fade from view while the court battle was fought, I suspect TC wouldn't even have published what we've already seen, let alone more internal contracts and communications.

What a clusterfk.

The other obvious point that even a non-lawyer can make is: The absence of paper is not the same thing as the absence of contract.
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Indeed. You only need the appearance of impropriety to erode trust. Just because they can win a lawsuit doesn't mean they have a chance at making it.

Also, I love how the camera made the screen green. It's pretty much the worst possible thing you could do in unveiling a product. I wouldn't buy it unless I saw it in real life, but I find that unlikely.
agreed....paying $500 for a product from a company that may not even exist 6 months later due to litigation, is insane.
I agree this looks bad. In their place, I would have tried to smooth things over ahead of time, to keep Arrington from writing the incendiary blog posts which started all this. But who knows? Arrington isn't known for being the easiest guy in the world to communicate with. Maybe they tried to do just that and failed.

All things considered, if I really wanted one of these things, I don't think I'd let this flap deter me from buying one. But I don't want one, so take that with a grain of salt.
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Antiobjects
No doubt he'll cite "The Game." It's the new bible, don't you know?
The idea that Arrington apparently tried to glom onto the project with no engineering contributions perfectly fits the tropes discussed on HN: MBA-types make a buck off the back of those who actually built the thing.

The fact that you already have so many upvotes just perfectly illustrates how so many people still don't get that sales and marketing are just as important to product success as engineering. Maybe more. Characterizing Arrington's involvement as an attempt to "glom onto the project with no engineering contributions" is both unwarranted idle speculation and irrelevant, as there are many other contributions to be made beyond just engineering.
That's a fair question but it could be hard to pull off the follow-up question without it coming off as a gotcha. Tread lightly.
It would be interesting to go read that IPCC report and see what role that group and its data actually play. The reporting is that their role was very important but how do we know?

It should be possible to move on from conspiracy theories and questioning of people's intentions to some kind of fact finding mission.
I have made some harsh comments toward TechCrunch recently about this very issue (just check my comment history if you're unfamiliar). My suspicions were true. But now it's time to dish it out toward Fusion Garage. If I were Fusion Garage and an entity was marketing MY product as if it were their own, I would send a cease and desist letter immediately. Fusion Garage isn't exactly coming out of this story looking perfectly clean. TechCrunch probably does have some substance to a lawsuit should they file any.

My gut tells me the whole venture is going to crash and burn. One shady business practice is indicative of a whole sh*tstorm of shady business practices and I would bet the launch of this product is met with delays, unmet promises, logistical mistakes, etc.
There any many possible ways civilization could end. There are plenty of natural disasters (think supervolcanoes, or asteroid impacts) that could also destroy civilization. I don't see the harm in thinking about preventing one of them.
The lack of contracts seems to indicate that Fusion Garage's story is more accurate. It's entirely possible that the original idea, however, was Arrington's and that Fusion Garage simply decided to build it. However, Arrington says that they contributed IP to the project -- I wonder what that is supposed to be.
dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=981618
TechCrunch has already given the project tons of visibility. Maybe they just needed an initial press push. I guess we'll see...
Might someone explain to me why this device was ever considered interesting? In just what way is it unique?
Well, looks like Ruby just got boring.
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Yes, but it's not so bad.
That may be true but Fusion Garage has decided to go without Arrington's marketing. That may be a bad idea; I'm already not impressed with the name. But the point is that there's no evidence that Arrington has any claim to the product.
It is a bit pricey, but it's a nice size. I see Youtube in the photos so presumably it does Flash. If it handles HTML5 as well then the lack of local storage may not matter a whole lot. Much depends on the quality of the touch sensitivity.

Meantime, Chandra is certainly being assertive about his side of the TechCrunch saga. If his claims are true then Michael Arrington's business cred is going to take a major hit.
IANAL, but I highly doubt this is automatically the case. The lack of written contracts is troubling, but I suspect that a competent legal team could demonstrate significant enough contribution to warrant joint ownership, assuming such contributions exist.
Comments at engadget are really funny
infinitely more believable than Arrington's

Well, no doubt many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right.

I will make no such assumption; "infinitely" is more than a little strong. ;) All I will say is: What a lose-lose situation.
As an employee at an ad agency, I completely agree. (I mean JooJoo? Really?)

Perhaps I wrote that sentence a bit odd, but I don't mean to imply myself that this is what happened. The 'idea' central in this story simply fits similar tropes and themes I see on HN all the time. And you're right, the up-votes verify this.
The question then becomes how do you define what appropriate corrections are & what is fudging the data?
Personally, I wouldn't want to work for a company that expects a bullshit answer here. I'll give them the real answer, if they then don't hire me because they expected bullshit, that's fine.
> I don't see the harm in thinking about preventing one of them

There is indeed harm. Talented people are being diverted into masturbatory philosophizing rather than building the future.

My personal opinion is that human industrial civilization's goose is already cooked, and that a transhuman intelligence may or may not help us out of our mess. Human intelligence almost certainly won't.

The prevalence of the status quo bias of assuming that continuing as we are, AI-less, is "safe" - turns my stomach.
Laptops are increasingly people's primary computer. If you're going to buy a laptop anyway, the question becomes do "I even need a desktop?" If the laptop acceptably plays WoW or whatever other popular games, that gives it a significant advantage.
I agree. When reading those Arrington articles, it was obvious that he had no technical contribution to the thing.

That being said, Fusion Garage really fell on their face. The only thing they needed to do is come up with a name better than crunch pad, which should not have been too hard. And they come up with joojoo??? Ouch.
Orders of Magnitude
And of course the point is that there is nothing in the nature of the language and tools that forces you to use complex solutions.

While it is definitely true that there is nothing in the nature of Java that forces you to use the kind of complex solutions often foisted on Java programmers, there definitely is something in the nature of Java that leads to needlessly complex code and heavyweight patterns that are not needed at all in more powerful languages.

To me this article just seems like a justification to use Java where none is needed. You can do a startup in any language, and the best one is the one your dev team is most proficient with. Java is the 500-lb gorilla these days and doesn't need any advocacy.
TechCrunch is a technology blog, they give lots of products visibility. You're not going to claim they own everything they report on? They own the name Crunchpad, but this product isn't the Crunchpad.

If they had a business relationship, they should have had a contract. One that locks this product into using the Crunchpad name. But they (apparently) did not.
While the CS academy has many issues, the field itself is alive and well. Google and MS both do systems research, as do several financial firms and software companies servicing the financial industry.

As a person moving from physics to CS, I personally find computing to be a very interesting place right now.
I foresee a series of posts, "_____ from Node.js", where the blank is filled with any mundane technical action that is necessary to build web sites. Each one, like this one, will demonstrate how writing Javascript in continuation-passing style is the way to do things in a "non-blocking/evented" manner.
I've been asked this a few times, and my response is "what is your goal in asking that question". I wouldn't say it's stupid or inane, there's no point being rude. People who ask such a bad and cliched question obviously are not very interested (or experienced) in the job search/interview process, so I try to engage them and get them interested.

I've gotten a couple decent answers, and a couple bad ones. The good answers on their part have earned an honest answer on my part, and usually a much-improved interview. The bad ones, I usually clam up and try to end the interview as politely as possible.
Hopefully this turns out well for the community.

Some advantages I can see being based on ruby 1.8.7 is that now people will have a specific language to develop libraries for, also new people to ruby can have something specific to start with (rather than having to chose between 1.9/1.8).

Those that still want to move so quickly can still choose to do so and continue to use and support 1.9 they just might not have the same following as before.
What's new in Haskell? December 2009 edition
Yes, even if it would be a small step.
Looking at the pacman solution, there's a problem when two ghosts end up on the same square, then they might tend to follow the same path, whereas programming them as objects (and not anti-objects) you can include avoidance strategies.

To get that from the scent-following, hill-climbing algorithm requires some work.
(We've hit the reply depth limit...)

> I can only comment on Carlos Castro, the link of yours at archivefreedom.org. Near as I can tell, he claims to have come up with a unified field theory. As far as I know, the arxiv filters out proofs of P=NP, the Riemann Hypothesis, unified field theory and similar things. So what?

Uh... so, it's scientists banning topics that contradict the widely held scientific consensus. That's what. Why is it just fine in physics but a sign of conspiracy in climate science?

> That's not the same as trying to get JMP shut down or editors ousted because it publishes papers on Bohmian mechanics.

If they published, without substantial peer review, one of the 'scientists' I linked to, it would be quite justifiable to get them shut down or their editors ousted, wouldn't it?

> With regards to angry muttering, there is far more than that. There is conclusive evidence of a conspiracy

That is conclusive evidence of one guy being a jackass.

But for the purposes of argument, let's assume he was indeed conspiring, rather than ranting. Who with? Who takes his orders and follows them?

All of the field of climate science? Riiiiiiiight. Are all of the many independent centers who are reproducing CRU research in on it too? And the many thousands of scientists with the expertise to uncover fraud are all willing participants?

All of this, established by this one email? Color me skeptical.

> The fact is, Steve McIntyre is not a crackpot.

That's your opinion of his plausibility, not a fact. (If you define "crackpot" as someone who repeatedly asserts views widely outside of the scientific consensus, without substantially altering said consensus, then he is, tautologically, a crackpot.)

> The CRU folks conspired to keep data from him in order to prevent him from making further corrections to Briffa's hockey stick.

I think it's a matter of the public record that he's been highly antagonistic to them. Are they "conspiring" or simply beginning to respond in kind? The latter is far more plausible to me.

> With regards your point c), the people who conspired to hide data now claim that other data was lost.

With regards to my (c), it's more that you were speculatively (or dishonestly) implying something that isn't true.

> With regards to a hacking war, I wasn't advocating it. I'm simply pointing out that the recent incident does give us evidence that the consensus (which is not a substitute for solid science, BTW) is manufactured.

That is just one interpretation of the emails.

An equally plausible interpretation is that these scientists are under intense political attack, taking it personally and getting angry, and beginning to unwisely respond in kind.
To be fair here, a more accurate comparison would be people saying the same thing about the $500 Palm Foleo, a similarly limited device which was crushed by negative press and relative limitations compared to its launch rival the Eee PC.