When ruling on aspects of a case that fall outside of their subject matter jurisdiction (eg. copyright rather than patents), the Federal Circuit is supposed to follow the local circuit's precedent, ie. rule how they think the Ninth Circuit would have ruled on those issues. And my understanding is that the Federal Circuit's rulings on eg. the copyright aspects of a case like this do not overturn Ninth Circuit copyright precedent and do not establish new copyright precedent anywhere, not even the Federal Circuit (since in future cases they will again be required to apply the relevant local circuit's copyright precedents as they exist at that time).

The Federal Circuit's copyright decision is binding on the parties to the case at hand, but the precedent for future cases is non-binding at best.

This was one of the arguments that the FSF and SFLC put forth in their amicus brief recommending that the Supreme Court not take up Google's appeal of the API copyright question:

> The court below predicted, on the basis of no compelling evidence, that the Ninth Circuit would depart from settled existing law in a novel direction which, as amici supporting the petition have said at length, would be destructive alike of commercial certainty and freedom to implement, thus inhibiting the progress of science and the useful arts. Neither the Ninth Circuit nor any other regional Court of Appeals is likely to defer to this improbable supposition, so the error is largely self-limiting. Such erroneous predictions of other courts’ holdings are not a suitable employment of this Court’s scarce resources in review by certiorari.

Actually ships are very water constrained. Especially Nuclear as they can't risk sea water contamination to the reactor cooling.

I get where you're coming from, but you could say the same thing about software purchased on any app store, your mobile phone and a bunch of other things.

What do you plan to do when you're old? Right now it might be simple to earn enough money to pay your bills, but if you don't earn enough to save a significant portion of it you risk not having enough once earning money becomes harder.

Wog ratio on HN... probably north of 98%

Back in the bubble days, all but a relatively few would-be founders found themselves crawling out of a hole and into the dark, as it were, in trying to figure out how to get from ground zero to a point of success: it was all super-bewildering and there were virtually no resources to help understand how it all worked: no helpful web-based forums to explain process or to share experiences, no solid resources for helping understand how best to launch, no easy access to funding, etc., etc.

Today, it is all different. We are all hyper-connected and the old barriers are much diminished. This means a founder in Silicon Valley, where the infrastructure is solid, can continue to do incredible things but, now, so too can founders everywhere. Yes, it can help to be geographically at the heart of it all but it is no longer an indispensable part of startup success.

I think Stripe's Atlas takes a huge additional step in helping to remove the accident of a founder's location from the list of barriers to entry in the world's startup club. I have explained my views in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166417#11168750

And what a felicitous teaming between Patrick and Stripe to help further that goal. Great people all round, working to achieve great goals! I cannot imagine a better combination. Very exciting and congrats to all.