A cult of extreme physical endurance among executives - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21684107-cult-extreme-physical-endurance-taking-root-among-executives-here-comes-superboss?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/herecomessuperboss <comment><USER2> I wonder if these superhero CEOs would be willing to be scientifically tracked for a few months to see how well they really perform. Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way.

The slightly more honest ones might be conflating a weeks of effort to a single day. This is the kind of "white lie" I could almost see myself doing (but not to this extreme). So perhaps one day this week they got up at 4:30. Or perhaps twice this week they did a navy seal workout. But in their reporting this is all a "normal day".

Or, since appearence is everything these days maybe they are just saying what they think they need to say. Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable. Imagine the CEO that was honest and said "I get up at 9:00am and relax with coffee and a newspaper while I get ready for the day." People would deride them. So like all people who make it to the top they play the part, and lie.

<comment><USER3> _An early start is followed by furious exercise. David Cush, the CEO of Virgin America, is on his exercise bike shortly after getting up at 4.15am. Tim Cook of Apple is in the gym at 5am. However strenuous the workout, it is often combined with other tasks. Mr Cush reads, makes phone calls and listens to a sports-radio station while cycling. Mr Iger once told the New York Times that, while exercising, "I look at e-mail. I surf the web. I watch a little TV, all at the same time." And all while listening to music._

These guys probably aren't really working all that hard. If you have time to read emails and surf the web then you should exercise harder.

A lot of adventure sports mostly require money eg sky-diving - cost of fuel, mountaineering - paying for the expedition. I know people who mostly spend their money on adventures. Anyone can do this if that's your thing. Otherwise get into some cheaper adventures like rock climbing or canyoning.

The triathlons and mountain-biking might be impressive if we knew their times. Lots of people have jobs and families and commitments and regularly compete in and train for endurance sports or any sport for that matter. Who do you think enters these competitions?

<comment><USER4> this is really the key line

       However strenuous the workout, it is often combined with other tasks.

If you can combine it with other tasks, it isn't strenuous at all. I mean really, is the person on the other end of that phone call just listening to someone breathe hard or pant? If not, he or she isn't exercising even moderately hard.

I think many of these stories are akin to Pat Robertson, televangelist, bragging that he could leg press 2000 pounds. [http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/pat_robertson_can_leg_pres...](http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/pat_robertson_can_leg_press_2000_pounds) For those of you who don't spend much time in a gym, Ronnie Coleman brags about leg pressing 2300 lbs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWgSTdkc2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWgSTdkc2A) One of those two men is a noted bodybuilder who got his start powerlifting, weighed probably 350 lbs in that video, and is on a teeny little bit of celltech =P.

<comment><USER5> I frequently am bothered by people able to talk (a lot) during their cardio, I'm thinking they could do a lot better. It's like they're just sitting there ticking a box (I did half an hour of exercise! woo!). Still, better than nothing I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reposting a comment from the article :

At the core of these habits are important avenues for self fulfillment: exercise, healthy relationships, and non-work pursuits. We should certainly aspire to include some of them in our lives.

The issue for me isn't how exaggerated or true these claims are, but how they are being used by C-suite executives to justify their pay scale, power, and prestige.

The goal of these image obsessed executives is to build a myth of superiority both inside and outside of their organization that they are fundamentally different and better (and willing to sacrifice more) than the lowly ones who don't make it to the top. Further reinforcing this is the difficulty us mere mortals have in achieving a good paying job, financial solvency, healthy lifestyles, and strong relationships, but these people do it breathlessly easily. What choice do us mere mortals have but emulate these super-people with ever increasing amounts of our time in working to keep up?

Is it that much different than the Pharaohs and Emperors who fed the myths of their own super human or divine heritage to justify their privilege and power? The truth is that these CEO's retain an ever larger piece of the organization's surplus to spend on nannies, maids, and every other service imaginable while we in the middle class must work longer and longer hours to retain our salaried positions, leaving little if any time left to pursue a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

When will we realize these CEO's don't deserve these sky high salaries, CEO's need us for these organizations to function, and force them to return some of the surplus to their employees? They have no monopoly on aspirations or working hard to achieve them.

[http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172](http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172)

<comment><USER7> The way to achieve this is to develop new forms of economic contract that allow independent collaborators to capture the economic benefits of their intellectual labor.

That and automate the CEO role in the company as much as possible.

The models for such organizations exist. We have the tools to build them. Why don't we see more of them around these days?

<comment><USER8> Can you show what model are you talking about? I am curious

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SAP India CEO who used to be proud of doing only 4-5 hours of sleep a night , and was an avid marathon runner died of cardiac arrest at 42.

[http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed- ranjan-d...](http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed-ranjan-das- and-lessons-for-corporate-india/)

<comment><USER9> Eat right, exercise, Live Healthy(tm)... die anyway.

<comment><USER10> Just "doing healthy things" does not mean you are healthy. If you run too much it's as bad for you as running too little (and now you also have put effort into it, which in my eyes makes it worse). And sleeping 5 hours or less is not healthy either. I think that's what the comment you replied to tried to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I call self-reporting bullshit.

Err... no, what I meant to say is that I (super successful CEO) also enjoy a 5-mile run before 6am. I've answered all my underlings emails before they've hit the snooze bar. I cook my children a nutritious breakfast before my VPs have taken off their slouchy pajamas. By the time I roll into the office at 7:30 sharp, the entire company --as well as adjacent buildings-- tremble beneath my superior stamina and efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER12> The modern idea of CEOs is basically a cult.

 _There is a inverse correlation between CEO pay and corporate performance_ [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a terrible article, and I have to say that I'm not enjoying the reaction here either.

Take out the alarmist language, the "SuperBoss" title and the fact that this article talks about CEOs, and what this article is saying is that some people get up early and exercise. Is that so horrible and unhealthy? Exercising in the morning sounds like a _good_ thing, even something most doctors would recommend!

But the article phrases everything to sound so ominous:

\- CEOs don't get up early to exercise, they get up early to "exercise furiously". Every day that the gym I see dozens of people with me, are they all exercising "furiously"?

\- They mention a CEO who, while exercising, "looks at e-mail, surfs the web, watches tv" [paraphrase, not direct quote]. No kidding, _everyone_ does that! There's music playing in the gym, there are TVs in the gym, and who the hell _doesn 't_ glance at their phones to check emails once in a while? This literally describes the behavior of 90% of the people at the gym.

\- The article keeps harping about the time CEOs get up, but they never even mention when they go to sleep. What if all these crazy CEOs that get up at 5am, also go to sleep at 10pm? Changes the picture somewhat, no? You'd expect a decent article to at least _mention_ this.

Seriously, most of the behaviors in the article describe me and half the people I know who try to live a healthy lifestyle by exercising in the morning, and all these prescriptions at the end of the article of how business will fail if the CEOs are always exhausted are just flat out ridiculous. Getting up early to exercise gives me and most people an energy boost, and we're definitely healthier for it.

<comment><USER10> If you get up at 5am you should go to bed at 9pm not 10pm and I really hope most people do it that way.

<comment><USER14> If you are a CEO that would be amazing, at a big corporate you need to be at social functions at that time (investor dinners, charities...) several days a week. My CEO takes calls late into the evening when he's not doing that (I know as I have to go on them sometimes). Additionally they are travelling 100 days a year or so.

It's madness, I wouldn't do it, nor would any of my peers I regard as either sane or competent (check the or).

<comment><USER10> Yeah, same problem here. Social functions and travelling make it nearly impossible. That's why I won't get up at 5am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really have to wonder: at what point do these people reach such a critical mass of attempting to signal high social value and rarity that they vocally renounce being human all together and effervesce into a kale scented cloud of mist?

The cargo cult of success is especially insidious for leaders, who tend to be extra impressionable; running a marathon is not a measurement of success in unrelated fields.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think self-challenge is a great thing, but I never understood CEOs whose understanding of self challenge is basically confined to the physical realm - training like Navy Seals, motorcycling, climbing difficult mountains, doing an ultra marathon, etc... You can challenge yourself on a lot of levels, but it always feels a little brute when it's only physical stuff.

Of course to truly broaden yourself, to grow in the deepest, meaningful ways, you won't have time to do it if you're a CEO.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't doubt that exercise promotes a healthy brain, but I sometimes wonder whether the endorphin high of exercise is really the best preparation for the day at hand. Sure, you feel great, but are you thinking great? Or do you just _think_ you're thinking great?

In some of the cases described in this article, it sounds like these execs are addicted to the exercise that they wake up so early for (granted not a bad habit). But addiction by its nature tends to invent a narrative for its existence and the promise of greater productivity is gold.

</comment><comment><USER17> 'Cargo' cult? Why not just 'cult'? Why cargo?

<comment><USER18> Cargo cults are behaviors that arise from observing something and then misunderstanding it being caused by a specific thing you control.

They first came into prominence during WW2, when native tribes would observe food and other goods literally _dropping from the sky_ for no apparent reason. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_World_War_II)

<comment><USER19> I've thought for a long time that a huge amount of business advice is cargo cultism, since the actual underlying determinants of success are so complex and hard to pick apart.

Anything far beyond the basics of value, product market fit, making something that costs less than you can sell it for, etc. is a bit suspect, especially if it starts to wax hyperbolic about ephemeral character traits and other wooey things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _This trend is likely to intensify: surveys of American university students suggest that one in six now use mind-boosting drugs to get through their exams, a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers._

Woah. _One in six_ use these drugs?

<comment><USER21> I find it most interesting that it's apparently no problem to find doctors willing to prescribe ADD medicines to healthy university students. (I can't imagine black-market Adderall being affordable for students.) Is there no sort of oversight here at all?

<comment><USER22> There are quite a few doctors out there who do nothing but write rx's for stimulants, all day long, and make a killing doing it. A semi-annual blood pressure check and once over to make sure the person doesn't look strung out seems to be all that really needs to be done.

Problem is, the diagnostic criteria are things that everyone has in some degree, and that frankly, for most people stimulants improve function - whether that function was a baseline negative or zero before.

<comment><USER23> A quick data point I have a close relative who is a primary care doctor and they've said that many many patients come in to the office and claim to have adhd sometimes they're regular patients other times they're first timers. At first the doctor would spend an hour explaining why they didn't really have adhd and they'd be okay - that never worked the patient would never return, they'd just find another doctor who was a little less tightfisted. So this doctor has given they just prescribe whenever the patient asks for it. Why should they lose a patient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was in Mendoza, Argentina a while back and met some guys who worked with these high rollers who were climbing the seven summits. They were of course climbing Acongagua in Argentina, one of the easier summits, from a technical perspective. Apparently, they were going to spend $25,000 PER PERSON to fly into a staging area near Vincent Mastiff, the highest mountain in Antarctica. It's so expensive because you've got to find some guy crazy enough to land a big plane on ice in the middle of nowhere Antarctica. There is no town there, nobody, nothing, for 100s of miles, completely desolate and uninhabited, yet these guys want to go there. I still don't get why they do that crap.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeah keep doing your exercises and early morning sex while the thousands of new generation workers slave their ways in their cube less stations for the glory of agile and devops and being different.

</comment><comment><USER26> > according to one CEO, several of his peers are now dabbling in mind-boosting > drugs such as Modafinil and Ritalin ... a habit they may continue in their > subsequent careers.

Even painkillers are being abused by executives.

Julie Hamp, Toyota's global communications chief, was arrested in Japan and forced to resign after authorities discovered oxycodone pills in a package she shipped to herself. [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top- toyo...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top-toyota- executive-resigns/29551369/)

From this article:

> Oxycodone is a widely prescribed painkiller in the United States. But > possession is illegal in Japan without a prescription and special permission > is required to bring it into the country.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is it a cargo cult? Or maybe it is keeping up with the Jones?

I wonder though how it compares CEO job vs. business owner CEO. With owning the company I imagine there is less politics and therefore less pressure to appear superhuman and more pressure to achieve genuinely good outcomes for the business.

</comment><comment><USER28> "I cycle to work every day, 70 miles! Both here and here are as red as a FIRE ENGINE."

</comment><comment><USER29> What is happening here is an extension of what social media is doing to us. To compete with each other for attention, executives have to find new ways to do social signaling.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting in the light of this paper

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) (with registration, read for no payment)

One of the key organisational stories is "Is the Big Boss Human" part of the "inequality/equality" duality identified by the authors. Sooooo... what message are Bosses sending to everyone?

</comment><comment><USER30> None of that sounds abnormal; it sounds like the discipline you'd expect from extremely busy and motivated people.

I always used to marvel at ex-military personnel that had this level of discipline. They accomplished more than most, all before everyone else arrived in the office.

BTW: The extreme sports isn't anything new either. For example, Robert Noyce was an avid hang glider.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if it is really such a new thing. Elite schools pushing students to learn 14h a day and indirectly to also use drugs to increase performance, that sounds like a typical elite youth story.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say the pushing of students to take performance enhancing drugs is a direct consequence of emphasizing competition rather than learning. Having met many of these people, it's not that they are incomplete or flawed human beings-- it's that they are largely foreign to themselves because their only mode is to "achieve" resume items, even if they flatly deny that is their life's purpose when questioned.

The biggest strengths that "elite" over-achievers typically have are a complete lack of existential pause and a rejection of non-practical introspection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This sounds like the schedule that I follow.

Wake, shower, exercise vigorously for 30mins whilst listening to podcasts / checking mail, then start working.

At the end of the day I exercise vigorously for 90 minutes then eat and put my kids to bed.

In 2 weeks time I'll be doing this whilst sleeping 2-6 hours a night _.

Of course most of my exercise is cycling to work, with three-five visits to the gym during the week.

_ Baby :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Paywalled

<comment><USER33> Delete browser cookies, and try again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> They're trying to emulate Putin, perhaps.</comment>


Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore's law apply to solar cells? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/03/16/smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-law-apply-to-solar-cells/

<comment><USER2> Does Moore's law apply to any technology?</comment>


The Best Photo Organizing App? I'm Still Looking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/technology/personaltech/the-best-photo-organizing-app-im-still-looking.html <comment><USER2> I'm a travel photographer in my spare time. I don't really need a photo organizing app, what I need is a photo metadata app. I already have a great way to organize my photos via the file system, but I don't have a good system to put metadata on each photo (where it was shot, what it is, etc.), personal rating (so I can grab the top shots and public them), etc.

The old flickr was perfect for me, I could group things by continent/country/city give a title, drop it on a map to geolocate it, etc. But now they've flattened out the structure a bit and it's not as good for my purposes.

<comment><USER3> Is there something like ID3 tags for pictures?

<comment><USER4> Yes, EXIF metadata.

<comment><USER3> I totally forgot about that. Though I thought EXIF just had technical info like resolution, camera mode, date, and location. Is it really as flexible as ID3?

I know next to nothing about photography, so maybe there tons of tools out there to manage your photo library EXIF tags that I have never noticed.

<comment> Brian-Puccio Beyond EXIF, there's also IPTC, which the afore-mentioned Lightroom is pretty good at managing. Couple that with built in geo-tagging of photos thanks to cameras with built in GPS (or do it after the fact with a GPS logger) and you can have a pretty decent system. Both the geographic feature and the keyword feature allow for hierarchies, not just strictly free tagging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've tried them all too, including the ones that cost $100+ (Lightroom, Aperture), the free ones (iPhoto and friends), and the doomed web apps (Everpix, Picturelife, etc.), and I fully agree that there is not one workable solution in this space -- which is _crazy_ since there are more than a billion people who need this.

This problem _cannot_ be reasonably solved with a web app. Or even a native app running off a mechanical hard disk. With 20MB photos common these days, you need the data coming off a blazing fast local SSD. Otherwise, you can't flip through your photos in a reasonable way. It takes too long to move from one to the next, and every web app does that thing where they load this horrid blurry version first while waiting for the full-resolution version to load. Unacceptable (to anybody who's ever experienced instantly flipping through a hundred pics off a fast SSD, anyway).

So a web app can't do it, but you _do need_ a web app component, and cloud storage strategy, to solve this problem. People's local SSDs are typically too small to store all their photos. Plus, you want your photos everywhere, on all your devices.

So not only do you do need to architect a web/cloud component, but you either need to create a native app for all devices, or at least create an integration with the local photo management facilities on each platform, so that the subset of photos people want are in fast local storage.

It's a hard problem. Meanwhile, my own 500GB of photos (I used to have only maybe 20GB, but then my kids were born) are just sitting in a big folder, with no organization at all, waiting for somebody so solve it.

<comment><USER6> Picturelife + Lightroom works pretty well for me.

Lightroom lets me do all the adjustments and metadata correction locally (something that only has to be done once anyway) and Picturelife gives me the cloud storage and browsing/sharing capabilities I need. It's not one application but it is a workable solution.

As for webapps being 'doomed', there's a pretty large spectrum between 'horrid blurry version' and 'full-resolution version'. Considering that my photos are generally ~4K in resolution and I don't own a monitor that can display them in full resolution, a 1080p scaled version is fine and loads entirely fast enough, even on my terrible ~8Mbps ADSL connection.

Sure it's not as great as flipping through an SSD locally but I think it's definitely acceptable and 'a reasonable way'. I think you're just setting your standards too high. Most of the world doesn't even own an SSD, let alone demand that speed in every application they use. Most users are entirely happy just flipping through albums on Facebook.

<comment><USER5> You are right to some extent, but I think the reason I have these expectations is not that I'm some kind of computing perfectionist, it's simply that all my machines have had SSDs and high-res monitors for a while now.

Once you get used to that (which doesn't take long at all) the old, painfully slow ways no longer seem 'reasonable'.

Right now, my equipment may be fairly high-end, but we are fast approaching the day when virtually all computers have fast storage and 4K+ displays.

In 1992, I thought it was reasonable to dial a modem, log onto the Interzone BBS, and have conversations like this one at 9600 baud in Zterm on a 512x342 pixel screen. Few people would accept that today, though.

Having said that, I do agree that Dropbox + Lightroom + Picturelife is about as good as managing photos gets today. (I canceled my own Picturelife subscription, though, because using it was too slow.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author didn't look very hard considering the article doesn't mention Picturelife.

(Disclaimer: I work there, but my position is supported by many other reviews.)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the mention. I didn't know about Picturelife, but now I do. This is pretty close to what I want. Namely, a "cloud" product that let's me get all my photos into the same account, download them back when I want them, and organize online.

I don't want ever want to "sync" to local storage, nor rely in anyway on local storage. Local storage is temporary. I want durable "cloud" storage.

But note, I want to be able to safely backup my entire digital collection wherever I choose. Perhaps backing up the Amazon Glacier, or something like that. I don't trust that a new dotcom is going to necessarily survive.

Thanks for the pointer, going to check it out.

<comment><USER9> > But note, I want to be able to safely backup my entire digital collection > wherever I choose. Perhaps backing up the Amazon Glacier, or something like > that. I don't trust that a new dotcom is going to necessarily survive.

I completely agree. One of the features that I love about Picturelife is the ability to setup your own storage. Instead of paying for the service, you can connect it to an Amazon S3 bucket. All the photos you upload are stored in a bucket that you own and you only pay the S3 bills.

Then, because you have complete control and access to the bucket itself, you could setup a backup to Glacier every week or something.

<comment><USER10> This is great. Had I known about this couple of weeks back, I would have opted for this instead of singing up for Dropbox and going to the initial painful step of uploading ALL my local photos (hundreds of GB) to it. Do you know if PictureLife works with Dropbox?!

<comment><USER11> Picturelife has an option to connect to your Dropbox account but I don't think there is an option to use Dropbox as a storage medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good Albums - Photo Organizer app: Easily organize your pics and safely show them to your friends.

1\. First of its kind to group photos by moments.

2\. Easy to organize your pics into awesome albums.

3\. SafeView, brilliantly hide your personal photos, and only show relevant photos to your friends

Get from Google Play: [http://goo.gl/L1myRJ](http://goo.gl/L1myRJ)

<comment><USER13> Are you the author? Here's my 2* review, just posted on Play:

\- Moments just seems to be organized by day instead of by month as in Timeline view.

\- No easy way to bulk-select photos to add to an album.

\- Curious overuse of radio buttons. Did not like.

<comment><USER12> I am the author :) It's a valuable feedback. Thanks. Moments are to group photos by event (taken in short span of time) and timeline view to group photos by month. Do you suggest me to switch the functionality, like timeline to show photos by event and moments by month? I'll revise the app to use other UI pattern instead of radio buttons. Also, bulk selection is very important. My mistake, I thought about it, must have implemented it, at least :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man What do you guys think of one of my creations (still in development stage) - Secure Digital Archive: [http://goryachev.com/products/archive](http://goryachev.com/products/archive)

While not strictly a photo organizer app, it does have a photo gallery, timeline, and raw file format support.

<comment><USER14> Trying it now. Opinions/bugs (not very well organized, sorry):

\- please allow multiple folder selection for volume source folder

\- the analysis phase is really slow and it looks CPU-bound on the ImageScaler.resize() method; try to find a faster resize library or at least allow user setting for scaling (smooth is quite slow) and multithread the resize - right now I have 7 idle CPU cores and you have a really slow application. This is bordering on unusable. I have ~2TB of jpg and raw photos, it would take at least half a month to resize them - and I didn't even ask for a thumbnail.

\- A snapshot cannot be stopped (there is no "stop" button/menu entry).

\- the persistent mode is called "Persistent" in one place and "Archival" in another

\- Not sure I understand the "persistent/archival" setting; I would expect that I can access the old/deleted files as long as they are in the repository files even if the source is deleted/unavailable. I now have a 2GB repository "backup" but I cannot access anything from it because I removed the volumes (the repository did not shrink). At least make it the default with a big warning if you disable it.

\- 64MB file chunk for the repository is quite small for something containing photos that cannot ever be deleted (a raw file can easily have 10 or 20MB); file access in folders with a lot of files is slow

\- please read EXIF data - it's way more important than Hex views; the metadata-extractor library[1] is stable and fast (I'm using it for my photo organizing application)

\- please rotate the thumbnails by EXIF data

\- corrupting/deleting a backup file doesn't give any warning (just that the backups don't work anymore and I cannot see the photos)

\- not providing a name for the volume in step 1 gives a warning when you want to leave step 2 (and not when you leave step 1)

\- raw image decoding is painfully slow; processing an 8MP Canon RAW takes 40 seconds; it estimates 6 hours for 480 photos.

\- try to buffer the DBInput/Output as RAF can be quite slow; check MappedByteBuffer

So it looks like a good idea but it's really slow and it can fill up disk space with files that cannot be recovered.

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/metadata- extractor/](https://code.google.com/p/metadata-extractor/)

<comment> java-man Excellent feedback, many thanks! The tool is still in the development stage, so a lot of things are sub-optimal or missing. But your comments are all valid.

Persistent mode idea is for situations where the user wants to accumulate a large repository piecemeal - for example, a photographer can dump a day worth of files in a folder, upload to the repository and then delete the files on the local machine. This way the next sync will not delete the files dring the next snapshot.

Can you email me an example of an image file that needs to be rotated (all mine have been rotated using windows preview)?

Again, thanks for your comments! Very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Xoopit. It does not exist anymore, but this was by far the best plugin I ever used. In fact it was one of the best software products I ever used, period. It would go through your email, and organize every photo, pdf, document you ever received and let you search through them.

Xoopit search was better than gmail search. Significantly.

Xoopit created a "personal media," [1] not social media, out of my inbox. This felt better than Facebook to me; when I had FB that is.

[1] I heard the term personal media from Tyler Crowley, which helped to change how I thought about this space.

</comment><comment><USER16> i consider myself a fairly smart and technical human being, but a good photo storage solution is something I still haven't figured out. I want all my photos on an external drive that is also backed up to backblaze. But I also want that external drive backed up to dropbox so that I can access my photos from my phone. Between dropbox wanting to auto-sync my phone pics, itunes backing up my phone, lightroom's photo library management, my external drive issue, etc, I'm at a loss how to organize everything.

<comment><USER17> Camlistore ([http://camlistore.org/](http://camlistore.org/)) is kind of an answer to that: just stuff all your data into it, and get back to it by searching. You shouldn't have to care about where to put what: what you have is Photos, Music, PDFs, and all are accessible through a search box. The content can also be synced between your computers, and there's some work started to sync with the phone (as far as I know, there's a photo uploader for Android at the moment).

The project is still in its infancy (as in "not widespread yet") but it's advancing at a good pace. For the moment the focus is put on how to run it in the cloud, so that people can install a simple instance somewhere for them, for their family or even for business (so you can run a public instance). But if you want to see it for yourself, you'll see that a good amount of work has been put on images (the golang's stdlib for image was improved from camlistore work) as you can see in the videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I'm looking for is a way to have multiple contributers to a photo album. I've got photos from a lot of difference sources, so I need the ability to merge those into one album.

<comment><USER19> We're doing exactly that at FOMO - we were fed up of missing out on great memories just because someone else happened to press the shutter. www.fomo.fm

Get in touch if you need anything and/or have feedback :) firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting to me that the author has photos on multiple devices. I sync mine to my PC, where they get placed in folders named yyyy.mm.dd - [location/event]. Since my kid was born I started adding folders named yyyy.mm, which contain the day-to-day photos for a month.

Given that I've been doing this ever since I started amassing digital photos, and that the author doesn't, and that her NY Times post is on HN, I have to wonder what others do with their photos.

<comment><USER2> I mostly shoot photos when traveling. So I do

       year\year-month location

Then under that yyyymmdd, then sorted by camera (I have multiple) and then location or subject and under that pictures of people I'm with (I like taking pictures of things more than people so my pictures of friends/family go in their own folder, while my wife likes pictures of people more) sorted by person or group of people.

So for example 2010\2010-11 Paris\2010-11-27\Nikon\Louvre

Is where all the pictures of the Louvre I took on that day are. If I need to find pictures of the Louvre, I just use Everything on the top level folder and search for "Louvre".

It works well enough, and I just sort everything back at the hotel while I'm copying off of my camera onto my laptop. I'm not _super_ strict about the specific locations, sometimes under "Nikon" will just be a pile of pictures. Depends on how motivated I am to sort. I'm usually really good about filtering out pictures of people from stuff though, and I post pictures of people to my G+ account so my friends and wife and can enjoy them, and I use my flickr for stuff. The best quality stuff I then publish through Getty. Maybe less than 1% gets professionally published, but I have almost 120,000 photos organized this way. I spend lots of time editing metadata in flickr and even more for the Getty material since they have very high quality control.

I don't really make much money at it, but it's a hobby and I get to call myself a "professional photographer" in some settings.

<comment><USER21> How do you deal with multiple versions of a single photo? Ones with vsrious adjustments, or cropped in different ways?

<comment><USER2> I don't. I just dump them all in the same pot and look at them. If I need to select some out for some purpose (making an album or something), I just make another folder inside there and copy out the ones I need for that purpose.

The ones I publish, I go through, pick the best shots from the group and when I go through and edit the levels and crops and such I usually do a little pruning of that set along the way and the edited versions go in yet another folder deeper (so I have a non-destructive copy). It's useful for me to publish several variations (like different zoom levels or crops) so they buyers can buy one that fits their need the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We tried at Photofeed, but decided to close it earlier this year.

It's not easy to make ends meet in this market: the percentage of users that are willing to pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee is too low to make up for the cost of storing the photos.

The big players provide online photo storage for free, so the user's position is understandable. But it doesn't make it any easier for a small business that wants to, well, make business.

<comment><USER23> Where you able to find anything users were willing to pay for related to photos? Maybe more on the physical side with prints, photo books, posters, postcards, etc?

<comment><USER22> That's a good idea. We did some research on that and, still, the net revenue we would generate out of those wouldn't make up for the costs either.

We started pushing some cool features like auto-magic clustering of photos into moments. Now Google and a few others do it too, so I know it doesn't sound all that impressive now.

<comment><USER23> Reading over all of the comments it sounds like trying to have a company that is simply providing a place to store photos is a losing proposition. The revenue would have to come somewhere else.

* By default the photos can be re-sold and the user gets part of the profit.

* Services such as photo restoration

* Selling physical goods such as mugs, tshirts, postcards, posters, puzzles, Christmas cards, photo books, etc

* Ads on top of a chat system based around photos ;)

* A social network that uses the photos to get your friends to join the network

* Now that you are backing up your photos for $ we could back up all your data

* Daily advertising games such as 1 random users that uploads a photo today featuring Taco Bell gets $1000 (aka advertisers pay for everything).

In fact any company that derives revenue secondary from having photos, but not from the users storing the photos is incentivized to let the users store the photos for as cheap as possible if not free (when possible). This is probably the number one problem with any company that is trying to sell storage for photos and will no doubt force them to pivot or close down eventually.

Alternatively the other option is to only cater to users that are willing to pay and have no free option at all. You would want to interview those users and make sure the problem they have is being solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Check out Mylio [http://mylio.com/](http://mylio.com/)

It has automated cataloguing, organization, and offline backup of large number of photos all synchronized across multiple devices.

Disclaimer - I work for the company, but I really feel that the product can help people manage their photos.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you store your images on a bunch of online storage locations, you could use [http://mazira.me](http://mazira.me) to see them all at one place (even from inside your email).

</comment><comment><USER26> Best DAM software is digiKam imo.

From online services I like (and fear) Google+ which let you search your photos via context without any prior tagging (e.g "show my photos of cats").

</comment><comment><USER27> Photoshop Elements has really great tagging functionality for people, places, events, time, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> are there any visual search i.e. search-by-example tools? or tools that automatically cluster images?</comment>


Android apps on the Galaxy Tab may be 'a little ugly' - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9186480/Android_apps_on_the_Galaxy_Tab_may_be_a_little_ugly_?taxonomyId=75

<comment><USER2> Experience with the iPad shows that you really, really don't want to use apps designed for a phone on a tablet. It's a stopgap measure at best, until apps are designed with that specific form-factor in mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> ... says Rob Enderle, the world's worst rent-a-quote analyst.</comment>


Hyundai launches car with a roof-based solar charging system - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/05/hyundai-launches-car-with-a-roof-based-solar-charging-system.html <comment><USER2> I see a lot of folks in this thread doing the math of how this works out, which is great, hard numbers == good. But as one who went to a considerable amount of effort and research to put solar on the roof of our RV camper (which has a _lot_ more roof than a Hyundai), and as one who owns a Nissan Leaf and knows how much an EV draws, I needed no napkin to know it was a gimmick before I even clicked the link.

Cramming a panel on every bit of usable space, using the best panels my money could buy me, got us 410W (26' RV, kinda small). That'll _almost_ run half a microwave under perfect conditions at noon on the summer solstice. It is a long enough way from running a car that I'll use the napkin to wipe burrito sauce away.

<comment><USER3> I get your point. So is roof-based solar pure marketing?

<comment><USER2> I mean, they're not _lying_. I just don't think it's worth the opportunity cost for the measly added mileage you get. If they can put solar up there, then I'd rather have a full-glass roof.

EDIT: And now that you make me think about it more, it's just dumb; or maybe an interim solution at best. Because solar panels on the roof of my house is much more scalable, efficient, and for the same power output, less expensive (no one does crash-tests on my house roof). The "interim" part comes from admitting that residential roof solar is quite uncommon, but hopefully not forever.

Let me edit some more with an extreme example: my electric scooter that I ride work every day. I _could_ squeeze some panel on there somewhere, and add a teensy bit of extra mileage. But I won't, because remember that RV solar I talked about? Most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing, so I ran an extension cord from the inverter to the scooter and electric bicycles. Now our Personal Electric Vehicles are solar-powered, and all I did was run an extension cord. (Tiny though it might be, the RV solar can easily handle a scooter and some bikes.)

<comment><USER4> Rooftop solar requires landlord permission and wiring a reserved parking space, which works if you own a house and garage but it's a pretty big impediment to wider apartment coverage.

<comment><USER2> I completely get where you're coming from. Buuuut, in this case it's as if you don't have availability at your apartment for a Level 2 charger, so Hyundai gives you one of those little hand-cranked generators.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it would take a lot of squirrels on exercise wheels to add up to what this unit can do.

But none of these are really going to move the car much more than pushing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be a lot more useful to just put up solar panels wherever the car is being charged - it's not like the car is going to be able to gain any reasonable amount of range from the roof-based solar between charges anyways, so there isn't much benefit from having the solar panels on the car itself. Why put them on something that moves when you don't have to, for the cost of the solar panels on the car you could probably build much bigger solar panels over your parking spot or garage. Interesting gimmick, but I don't see how it is useful unless you don't have anywhere else to put solar, and even then it isn't saving you much.

<comment><USER6> Plenty of people put there car outdoors but in places where solar on the ground is not feasible. I do. I leave my car for 3-4 days without using it. That is 18 hours of charge, that's a lot of energy.

<comment><USER5> Sure, so I suppose it can noticeably extend your time between charges if you rarely use your car, leave it outside in the sun for long periods of time, and don't have access to charging anywhere you regularly park your car. Seems like if that is the case though, an electric car isn't a great fit - regular access to charging is pretty critical unless you want to wait around at a charging station for an hour every time you need to fill up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see how the math could ever work out. GNI in the mohave is on the order of 1 kW/m2 for the daylight period. A car roof, perhaps 1 m2 if you are generous, won't be oriented well much if any of the day.

So is there any more than PR value to this?

<comment><USER8> This thing is very much a marketing gimmick, but the idea is not horrible.

A Toyota Camry is 4.9 meters long and 1.8 meters wide. That's almost 9m2, if they can cover ~2/3 of that with panels you're talking around 6m2. You don't get to tilt the panels, but you can put them on the sides which makes up for it.

Space is limited so using 30+% efficient panels is reasonable. That's 1.8+ kw in full sun which is about 5.4 miles of range per hour. These numbers are appropriate, but when you start talking 40+ miles extra range per day that's not worthless.

Use fewer lower efficiency panels and 20 miles per day should be cheap. This is well below that.

<comment><USER7> it's not like people haven't thought about this a lot over the years. I've worked in both industries (solar power and on the electrical engineering side of automotive) and have seen these calculations over and over.

On space: the car may be that size but the roof is smaller. The car tends to get dirty, be in absurd orientations, etc. Plus don't you want to park in the shade if possible? Ever driven in a city?

You're suggesting multi-junction cells which cost an order of magnitude more than mass production polysilicon cells. For a vehicle where they are trying to trim the BOM by pennies (e.g. resorting to 8-bit CPUs in the ECU).

I mean, great, more power (ahem) to them, but I can't make the math work.

It's like the BIPV roof that musk keeps promising for delivery by 2016 or sooner: people have been making them for years and year and yet somehow they don't get deployed. Why? Well physics and economic factors like labor to start, as well as safety (which is the killer issue for me) and, quite significantly, aesthetics, which a lot of people seem to care about (I don't). Having the idea, and even making them, is the easiest part of getting them deployed.

<comment><USER9> BIPV = building-integrated photovoltaics (for those, like me, who haven't run into the acronym before)

as for my 2¢, regardless of the technical merits, i'm all for more solar. it's earth's ultimate energy source. let's cut out the intermediaries, particularly the unrenewable ones.

regarding economics, it may not make a lot of sense on a cost basis, but as others have noted, it may make sense from a value basis (i.e., higher profit margins).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe a more useful application would be to use the panels to run air conditioning and keep the car cool in a hot parking lot.

<comment><USER11> Prius has had that for a decade: [https://blog.toyota.co.uk/solar-powered- ventilation-prius](https://blog.toyota.co.uk/solar-powered-ventilation-prius)

<comment><USER12> It is _hugely helpful_. My car is still very hot on hot days, but I'm no longer being burned quite as easily by my steering wheel, belt buckle, seat, etc.

The difference is quite noticeable. Especially on days/mornings/etc where it's relatively cool but the sun is hot. The air circulation really does wonders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Their claims are somewhat surprising, and I guess they reflect advances in solar cells. My 2014 Prius has a rooftop solar panel, smaller than depicted, and uses it solely to power a fan while the car is off.

Then again, the battery pack in the Prius (not Prime) is so small, perhaps it wasn't worth trying to connect the two.

<comment><USER14> "With six hours of charge per day, the vehicle could increase travel distances by 1,300 kilometers per year." (or 800 miles per year)

One of the things I do to keep myself accountable for all the subscriptions in modern life is to annualize them, so it's not "just $10/month!" but "$120". But in this case, I think we want to flip it around; at 6 hours of charging you're going to get... approximately two miles _per day_. Three if you're inclined to round up through the pile of lossy conversions I'm pushing that number through. And that's only going to be in play when the battery is not already full, and it probably won't work while you're charging, either, because the charger will be saturating the battery's incoming charge rate.

I don't find anything particularly unbelievable about that, but it's a marketing stunt, not a good engineering idea, as evidenced by trying to present this in terms of "km per year". That's worthless, swamped in the noise of how your driving style will affect your mileage on an electric car (or any car).

<comment><USER15> The idea of your vehicle sitting there and gathering "clean" energy has a feel-good thing to it, so it's definitely useful as a marketing gimmick to the green people.

<comment><USER14> More productively, if you are worried about this sort of thing, you can recover this amount of energy most likely today if you Google the term "hypermiling", read up, think, and then don't do anything stupid but tweak your driving style with what you read. Bonus, you can do this with any type of car, including whatever it is you are driving now.

This will cut your energy usage by wildly more than anything this solar panel can do.

However, please let me re-iterate, don't do anything stupid. That term will lead you to some stupid things to save trivial amounts of energy.

<comment><USER15> As long as it doesn't involve going 5km/hr down an offramp hill because you don't _have_ to use gas but there's a massive gap in front of you and a hundred cars behind you forced to go your speed (which is far more challenging at low speeds, especially with a standard vehicle like mine). It's a really selfish and inefficent move IMO and I see it all the time in the city from a small group of people.

If you want to save gas go into neutral and go as fast as everyone else or don't do it unless you're alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's obviously marketing and gimmicky, but I just wanted to note that I've used a portable 85W solar panel to keep my little 4-banger econobox running when my alternator failed on a road trip.

Saved me the cost of a tow and expensive repair wherever the tow truck took me to. Instead I was able to drive back to civilization proper and have the alternator rebuilt locally for $75.

So I think having solar panels for assisting the alternator on an otherwise conventional econobox could at least be useful in terms of redundancy. It would improve the MPG slightly in the daytime as well, offloading the alternator.

In a hybrid that can operate entirely off batteries, a rooftop solar system could get you out of an out of gas in the middle of nowhere bind if you've got plenty of time, food, and water on your hands.

</comment><comment><USER17> > With six hours of charge per day, the vehicle could increase travel > distances by 1,300 kilometers per year.

So a six hours charge adds 3.56 km. This does not seem very useful to me if one uses the car to commute and charges every night anyway.

<comment><USER18> Using 4.43 KM per kWh (based on the plug-in hybrid model [1]), that means the six hour charge is 0.8kWh.

At 12 cents per kWh, that means if you get six hours of solar every day (365 days), you'll save about $44 per year in electricity costs.

The average person has a car for 6.6 years [2], so that adds up to a whopping $289 in savings (assuming constant electricity prices, anyway). I wonder how much extra the solar panel costs?

[1] [https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/02/20180209-hyundai.ht...](https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/02/20180209-hyundai.html)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/28/car-owners-are-holding- their...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/28/car-owners-are-holding-their- vehicles-for-longer-which-is-both-good-and-bad.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We should stop and consider that Hyundai engineers know the energy math behind this design, and they know it's ridiculous, but management chose to pursue this line regardless. This says a lot about their perceived market.

</comment><comment><USER20> How much does this add to the cost of the vehicle and how long would it take for it to pay for itself? Would it take longer than the average lifespan of the vehicle?

<comment><USER21> 2 miles a day is about how much our Tesla m3 loses by self discharge and parasitic loads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> why not double the area by installing panels on hood and top of the trunk too? are panels very heavy? at least on hood since its not opened often.

</comment><comment><USER22> they should have tried this on a crossover type of a vehicle that has twice the roof surface compared to a sedan

</comment><comment><USER23> A gimmick for the innumerate.

</comment><comment><USER24> Stop with the math guys, that solar panel simply _feels_ right. Feels sell very well.

/Yes, its a tax on stupid.

</comment><comment><USER25> The real question is, how strong does the ramp that I'm going to drive two wheels up on to tip the roof to the sun need to be? Can I build it out of 2x4s and 3/4" plywood and how far apart do the offsets need to be? Is it OK to leave a car parked for long periods at a 30 degree angle?</comment>


Piracy is not a problem; SOPA is not a solution - <AUTHOR> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/piracy_not_problem_sopa_not_solution <comment><USER3> I still don't understand this mindset.

If one author wants to make the "new market" work for them by giving things away or taking donations, they can do that. If that's the market you like to shop in, then donate or take freely.

But if another author wants you to pay a specific price for their work when you want a copy, and you don't like the price, then you let them know that by not getting a copy. If your reason for not paying is because you don't like their publisher, then you let them know by not getting a copy. Lo and behold, the market will work itself out.

Where does the mindset come from that you're still entitled to those things you're not willing to pay for? Or that your right to have them is more important than the rights of the people who made them? This is to say nothing about overreaching solutions - this guy is saying who cares about the _particular_ solution, any one of them will require me to pay for things I want!

<comment><USER4> Ideas and the work of the mind are in the public domain; they belong to the public. If you come up with an original idea, even if this original idea cost you a year's work, this original idea that you and you alone built, belongs to everyone.

Now, in order to encourage people to work on original ideas, it was decided to give to authors a right to their own work, for a limited time.

This "right" is taken from the public domain (ie, the public). The justification is that by helping struggling authors, it lets them coming up with more original ideas, and therefore benefits the public.

The deal is this: the public gives a piece of their own property to authors, in exchange for more work from those same authors.

This system has grown out of proportion with its original intents. (The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system should have been considered broken).

So, although it's currently illegal, and I don't approve of "piracy", it's not illegitimate to consider that if someone says something, I have a right to know what they're saying (especially if that doesn't cost them anything to let me hear it).

You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should refrain from writing anything.

<comment><USER3> > _The minute dead authors could earn anything from copyright, the system > should have been considered broken_

The system was created to encourage people to invest in the creation of new ideas and products. It's not always just an investment of time, which means you have to make it property that can be owned, traded and sold, with a known term. In your system where copyright dies with the author, the interests of others who might invest in a project or stand to gain from it (like a creator's children) are not looked after. By this mindset, everything Steve Jobs helped to create would now be free for "the public" to do with as they wish, and I imagine a lot of people would have stopped funding Steve's ideas when they found out he was sick.

> _You could really turn your proposition the other way around: if someone > doesn't want non-paying readers to read what they write, then they should > refrain from writing anything._

I could, but it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated for making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever remaining works there are public domain.

<comment><USER4> > _it makes no sense to me to tell people who want to be compensated for > making something valuable to stop doing it so that we can make whatever > remaining works there are public domain_

It would be an interesting experiment, but I don't think people would stop putting out original ideas if they were to stop being compensated for it. People produce original ideas and original works of art because that's what they do, not because they hope to become very rich doing so. (And it could be argued that the best works of mankind have been produced before copyright was invented.)

The point of copyright was to prevent authors from starving; I think we're well past that point.

(There's a secondary argument in favor of copyright that's often aired by movie studios and the like, that it costs a lot of money to produce works of art, and that if there were no copyright then there would be no economic rationale to create new things.

I think that argument is flawed in principle ("so what? do we need expensive works of art so badly that we're prepared to alienate our freedom for having them?"), but more interestingly, it's also becoming false in practice: it used to cost a lot of money to produce a music album, or even simply to print a book; it will eventually be cheap to produce a movie.)

My general point is that copyright was an interesting idea that has gone much too far; we're not getting our money's worth and we should push back (i.e., make it much shorter).

<comment><USER5> > My general point is that copyright was an interesting idea that has gone > much too far; we're not getting our money's worth and we should push back > (i.e., make it much shorter).

That's a fair point, and one that I agree with, but it _is_ a compromise: if there were _no_ legal protection for "intellectual property", the only people who could afford to produce it would be independently wealthy "amateurs". I'm not sure that that is an optimal state of affairs either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let's pretend that some terrible remote exploit appears tomorrow, that allows anyone to get out the complete source of every SaaS server side app, which is the most prevalent setup here at HN startups. No harm is done to the server, no private user data escapes. No significant extra resources are used on copying the data.

What was previously impervious to copyright infringement, can now be easily copied. Illegal of course, but so is copyright infringement according to current laws.

You were just planning on selling the company for $5 million. But now, an exact copy is available on a site outside of your legal reach. They are able to do everything you do.

Will your potential buyer still offer you $5 million? Would you say that your pirate wasn't going to buy your company anyway and couldn't afford it, so he does you no harm? Your product was proprietary and hoarding data of users, he claims to be open and free. He claims that you are your code and ideas should belong to everyone, and you already got enough money from your first $2 million investment; asking for more would be greedy.

To me it seems that the only difference is that cracking a SaaS app is generally not technically possible, while removing the DRM on an installed app and then redistributing it is easy.

<comment> loup-vaillant You've just demonstrated that our society is insane (at least in this case).

If we were not crazy, what harm could such a copy possibly do ? None. You effectively (though unwillingly) donated your knowledge to the world. You deserve even more than if you kept your code secret.

But.

By "donating", you lost leverage. You can no longer threaten people with not giving them what they want if they don't pay you.

This is by the way the problem with basically everything: making something abundant will add actual value, while at the same time _destroying_ market value. It is most visible with Free Software, (vs Proprietary Software), but applies to anything. Say for instance that we could copy food the way we copy software.

Conclusion: our society in general (and the market in particular), is very poor at valuing things in the face of abundance. Somehow it needs scarcity. Paraphrasing _In Time_ , "For a few to be wealthy, many must starve". I don't have a solution, but this is nuts.

<comment><USER3> Nuts is saying that an artist trying to extract value from things they create is "threatening people". God forbid you be "threatened" with not having a copy of the latest Coldplay album. The fact that you liken it to starving, indeed, indicates our society may have slipped into the grips of insanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well first his metaphor doesn't really hold weight. Selling a Used Book is a one-to-one transaction in which the receiver is getting a less than perfect copy. Putting an e-book on a p2p network is a one-to-many transaction that transmits a perfect copy each time.

But that doesn't necessarily invalidate his overall point.

As far as his larger point is concerned I don't think I can say he's right or wrong. What I can say is he's not really looking at the deeper issues.

The real issue behind piracy is societal values. Those who advocate this opinion are basically saying people only have the right to profit from their creations to recover their costs. Beyond that the content belongs to society. That's the only justification for piracy (since you're arguing the cost of distribution is so low the user doesn't need to be compensated for it)

You can dress that up with arguments about fans loving artists and giving them additional revenue streams but since those additional revenue streams are separate transactions that may or may not occur you can't use them as justification for not paying an artist initially for his/her creation.

Beyond that there's the issue of choice. Even if all the pro-piracy arguments are true there will be some artists who simply don't want their work pirated. Even if it's irrational (look at artists like AC/DC who still refuse to sell their music digitally). By imposing piracy on those artists you're again saying their art belongs to society once created.

So that brings us back to the question of societal values. Do we as a society believe content should belong to the entire society upon creation or does it belong to the creator who can choose to distribute it in the way they see fit (even if that means handing it over to a record company or some other corporate entity)?

<comment><USER8> _The real issue behind piracy is societal values._

I disagree. Every time the discussion is going that way, I feel we're hopelessly lost.

There is very little Ethics debate on the industry behaviour: suing their customers, exploiting authors, and lobbying for draconian laws instead of using new business models. Hey, they are companies, they're just looking for their shareholders' interest! That's legitimate! It seems Ethics only apply to consumers.

Call to ethics is the last refuge of inapplicable laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In so much of this discussion, people seem to get distracted arguing whether pirating media is morally reprehensible or not. This is irrelevant to whether SOPA is a good solution to the alleged problem. I perceive two separate debates: whether piracy is a "problem" and whether SOPA solves that "problem."

SOPA is simply an industry of middlemen asking a heavier hand to come down and reinforce a business model the market has allowed to decline. Whether that is because customers demand better options and are not being satisfied or not is largely immaterial. The so-called act of piracy is already illegal, and what is being asked for is not legal recourse for this (that already exists) but a course of action immune from repudiation and challenge. It is a unilateral action without oversight or representation, and for this reason it is contrary to the foundation of the Constitution. Typically, the more egregious offenses carry the stiffest penalties, but all allow for some sort of defense and reasonable trial. If society has deemed that this is a more serious offense than previously evaluated, legislation increasing the penalty can be enacted, but legislation removing one's ability to defend oneself prior to punishment being enacted is unthinkable.

Private entities are being legislatively appointed to enforce public law, and this is unacceptable. It is a conflict of interest, as the public has no means to remove from "office" those serving the public in this manner. In all other aspects of public law, one has a vote somewhere in the chain to reconcile abuse of power. We can not vote on a private company whose enforcement of the law becomes corrupt, save economically, and economically our vote is severely disadvantaged.

</comment><comment><USER10> I say this as a copyright minimalist: the comparison to used bookstores is a bit disingenuous, for two reasons.

The fact that used bookstores exist, and that you can sell old books means that a new book is worth not just the value derived from reading it, but also the price you can get from selling it when you are done. In theory this reflected in a slightly higher initial price of purchase. (Not all readers will sell, of course, but some will, and the ability to do so should matter on the margin.)

The used book is also a substitute for a new book. Buying a used book increases the price, driving people who would buy the used version to buy the new one instead and at equilibrium raises the prices for the new version as well. In theory, of course.

<comment><USER11> Not just that, but only one person can have the book at any one time - <USER2> our current piracy system where one copy can spawn effectively infinite sub- copies. This means that when a given number of people want to read a book (and particularly if they want to read it in some relatively short period after the book's release), you need to have a substantial number of new book sales to support all those people. This isn't a requirement with modern-day piracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The copyright issue is at an edge of what allows the the market to work.

Until the internet, maximizing profit and maximizing value was more or less the same thing. That's not true anymore : when I copy something I'm actually creating value while destroying profit. The only way to do maintain profit is to create scarcity and define prices artificially as the most people would pay for it.

The ability to create copy of things at no cost is a kind of a miracle when you look at it. The issue is that the market doesn't seem to work well with limitless resources. Totally fixing piracy would require a market that can work for unlimited resources, but we have nothing of that kind yet ; it could be something like wuffies (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom ). Read it if you want to experiment what a society with limitless resources could look like.

Not saying that this is the solution still.

<comment><USER13> This so succinctly describes the problem that I created an account just to upvote you.

These laws are essentially fabricating scarcity - the medium has /solved/ the distribution problem, so of course anyone with an interest in monopolising distribution would try to stymie it.

This reminds me tangentially of software developers - especially iOS devs (of which I am one) - who get upset when their apps are cloned. It only seems unfair to those devs because they refuse to evolve with the available technology. You just don't make profits in the same way anymore. You want to take advantage of simple free distribution, but of course you don't want it to be TOO free!

I will now go out and buy that book...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You're also missing the part where someone had to purchase the book new in order for it to arrive at the used book store.

Now, I understand that even a used book can be sold back to a used book store, so the cycle might happen a few times, but in most cases, someone had to purchase that book new before selling it to the bookstore.

TomOfTTB's point about societal values is a good one if people who pirate content are actually trying to morally justify their actions, but I'm not really convinced that they are.

I do think, though, that if the industries backing SOPA put as many resources as they have towards suing customers and lobbying congress towards making new products and innovating the technology in their respective spaces that there actually _wouldn't_ be a problem.

But then, I still firmly believe that the reason people pirate content is because it's easier and more convenient than the "store" options. (DRM, transferability, etc)

</comment><comment><USER15> IT DOESN'T MATTER.

It doesn't matter how shitty the major labels treat musicians, or whether they get paid or not. To a musician, signing with a major label means you've "made it". If your shit gets leaked out there onto the internet, major labels will lose interest in you. They won't put up the money to promote you and won't sign you if you are perceived as a risk. There goes your career. There goes your opportunity to make a living off your music.

Every small-time musician I've talked to has expressed favor for stronger copyright controls, both in the form of legislation and technical measures like DRM. I bet the band you see playing gigs in your local dive bar are all SOPA supporters. If it means the difference between where they are now and playing the Hollywood Bowl, they'll support it.

<comment><USER13> > If your shit gets leaked out there onto the internet, major labels will lose > interest in you

I really don't think that becoming popular on the Internet would make you less appealing to a label. (I hope I'm not mangling your intended meaning too much.)

> Every small-time musician I've talked to has expressed favor for stronger > copyright controls

I know many 'small time musicians' and not one of them is in favour of stronger copyright controls. In fact they spend a lot of their time trying to get their names out by any means possible. This is one of the main things MySpace is still used for, I believe - the free distribution of indy music.

Music LABELS on the other hand, love controlling distribution because that's pretty much the main thing they do. They also love to make people think that the musicians beholden to them think this way as well.

edit to add disclaimer: I don't know anyone who is signed to a label.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Producing and distributing content ought to be decoupled. Distributors don't create content and content creators don't know how to work distribution.

Ideally, I pay the author for the book, album, movie or software and he'll then let me get my copy wherever I deem it's best available in the format I need it.</comment>


I Started a $5K/Month Backyard Plant Nursery Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/start-profitable-backyard-plant-nursery-business <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this. $5k/mo revenue (not profit) for 3 founders comes out to $20k salary for each assuming $0 in costs, so this is likely not even paying the bills for the founders yet.</comment>


Red Light Progress Bar - <AUTHOR> http://thereifixedit.com/2010/05/07/epic-kludge-photo-red-light-progress-bar/ <comment><USER2> Traffic lights in Bangkok have numerical count downs - not as elegant but still awesome.

I think they're actually more beneficial on green lights.</comment>


Washington partly confirms Chinese hack attack on White House computer  - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/10/01/washington-confirms-chinese-hack-attack-on-white-house-computer/

<comment><USER2> Fox says in its first line:

"White House sources partly confirmed an alarming report that U.S. government computers -- reportedly including systems used by the military for nuclear commands -- were breached by Chinese hackers."

whereas the USA Today via the AP says in its first line:

"The White House is confirming an attempted cyberattack on its computer system, but said it thwarted the effort."

Considering Fox's report then goes on to say that "there was never any impact or attempted breach of any classified system", I'm going to have to say Fox is running a little wide with their headline-baiting.

<comment><USER3> I'd say it is okay to be little wide in these matters, it is better to be safe than sorry.

<comment><USER2> In reporting, you should be exact. Misleading just to be "safe" isn't safe, it's misleading. How is Fox being safe by reporting there was a major, critical breach when there was not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Today was National Day in China. So, this sort of attack, at the very least, functions very well as propaganda fodder.

</comment><comment><USER5> Umm, yea. Fox News.</comment>


Snowden Meets the IETF - <AUTHOR> https://www.mnot.net/blog/2015/07/20/snowden_meets_the_ietf <comment><USER2> The more I consider the ramifications of these news reports, the more I realize we need full decentralization and total encryption.

We have the tech: Strong encryption, Tor-like relays, and the blockchain. What we need is a way to make services based on these technologies not just _as easy to use_ but _easier to use_ for the average Jane.

If the internet as we know it is to survive, we have to crack this nut.

<comment><USER3> That's necessary, but not sufficient. We need both sane policies _and_ technical measures to ensure that nothing less than those policies is possible. If we only have the technology, policy-makers can and will make life difficult both for the users and makers of these technologies; more draconian regimes will simply never allow those technologies to take root to begin with.

<comment><USER4> Either that, or they will simply intimidate and even torture people for their private keys.

May sound far-fetched, but it isn't.

<comment><USER5> Force them to intimidate and torture at least one side of every communication they want, instead of letting them intimidate and torture three or four centralized service operators to get everybody's communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It must have been an exciting surprise for attendees.

I'm glad Snowden said DNS should be encrypted. From the tweet stream provided by @conflictmedia, that was tied for 1st for most re-tweeted, along with making the Internet for users, not spies. (It should be noted that DNSSEC is not encrypted.)

Too bad his appearance wasn't recorded, but HUGE thanks to Niels ten Oever and Rich Salz for tweeting major points!

<comment><USER7> This is where I get to plug djbdns and DNSCURVE over DNSSEC. I think DJ has been ahead of the curve (no pun intended) on these things for quite some time. I am currently in the process of migrating from bind9 (and avoiding bind10 like the plague) to djbdns wherever possible. Quirks and lack of updates/extensions not withstanding, it's great so far.

[http://dnscurve.org/integration.html](http://dnscurve.org/integration.html)

<comment><USER8> I think that's a mistake. You are using abandoned software: djbdns 1.05 was released in 2001. It even has a published security flaw from 2009, for which the $1000 guarantee was paid by DJB, and yet there is still no official release to fix the issue (there is a patch available from other sources).

There is a fairly healthy ecosystem of BIND alternatives these days, but djbdns is not one of them.

<comment><USER9> This one? [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.djbdns/13864) It is a little disappointing he didn't issue a new release with the patch included. Perhaps it can be rationalized that the original fork is abandoned, but distro-maintained forks are fine.

As someone who runs tinydns to serve a few personal domains, I'd be interested to hear of another simple, solid option, if it fixes any concrete problems a recent Ubuntu build of tinydns has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, luckily for humanity this is exactly what I've been coding full time since December of 2014, dedicating my life to. I have been designing it for many years.

My vision is complete and planned, all the way until The World Brain! See: [https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html](https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html)

The first layer, MORPHiS, is a global secure encrypted distributed datastore that deprecates bittorrent, email and the web so far and is slated for release at the end of this Month!

See [http://reddit.com/r/morphis](http://reddit.com/r/morphis) for details.

Sorry for reddit; it is because I keep getting shadow banned here for being pro Snowden, Etc. Do not worry, MORPHiS is designed to deprecate hacker news! Anyways, the website is morph.is but doesn't launch until the 31st of this month. Read the only article in the /r/morphs subreddit for lots of details on MORPHiS!

Peace all!

</comment><comment><USER11> I find it interesting that people now consider Snowden the authority and source for all these things.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. He actually knows little about most of INFOSEC compared to other, serious practitioners. He seems to be a good IT guy, expert on NSA tools, and have anecdotes of what they had trouble hitting. Far as security engineering, I'd trust a source with a good track record of building and breaking stuff similar to what I'm assessing.

People are leaning on him way too much for way too many things. I'm not even saying my statements apply to the article here so much as in general for people interviewing or citing him. Anyone reading posts of high-security engineers pushing strong hardware and software security pre-Snowden would've survived almost everything in NSA's toolbox using such methods. Leads me to add that Snowden seems totally unfamiliar with that stuff and it's unsurprising given his job was SIGINT-related rather than strong INFOSEC.

My only failure was not focusing on clean slate chips and hardware design enough. My priority was software but prioritizing the kind of hardware I've promoted here & elsewhere would've got me further. Makes the software easier to secure. Just was too lazy to learn all the hardware engineering knowledge it takes to (a) do custom hardware and (b) do sub-micron, custom hardware. I'm making amends now, at least.</comment></comment>


Redis at Bump: many roles, best practices, and lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.bu.mp/how-we-use-redis-at-bump

<comment><USER2> Thank you for writing this article. As a way to show my appreciation I want to focus on the bad side of the matter.

The article mentions that with AOF persistence there is a problem about fsync. I'll try to go in further details here.

Basically when using Redis AOF you can select among three levels of fsync: fsync always that will call fsync after every command, before returning the OK message to the client. Bank-alike security that data was written on disk, but very very slow. Not what most users want.

Then there is 'fsync everysec' that just calls fsync every second. This is what most users want. And finally 'fsync never' that will let the OS decide when to flush things on disk. With Linux default config writing buffers on disk can be delayed up to 30 seconds.

So with fsync none, there are no problems, everything will be super fast, but durability is not great.

With fsync everysec, there is the problem that form time to time we need to fsync. Guess what? Even if we fsync in a different thread, write(2) will block anyway.

Usually this does not happen, as the disk is spare. But once you start compacting the log with the BGREWRITEAOF command, the disk I/O increases as there is a Redis child trying to perform the compaction, so the fsync() will start to be slow.

How to fix that? For now we introduced in Redis 2.2 an option that will not fsync the AOF file while writing IF there is a compaction in progress.

In the future we'll try to find even Linux-specific ways to fsync without blocking. We just want to say the kernel: please flush the current buffers, but even if you are doing so, new writes should go inside the write buffer, so don't try to delay new writes if the fsync in progress is not yet completed. This way we can just fsycn every second in another thread.

Another option is to write+fsync the AOF log in a different process, talking with the main process via a pipe. Guess what? The current setup at Bump is somewhat doing this already with the master->slave setup. But there should be no need to do this.

So surely things will improve.

About diskstore, this is I think better suited for a different use case, that is: big data, much bigger than RAM, but mostly reads, and need to restart the server without loading everything in memory. So I think Bump is already using Redis in the best way, just we need to improve the fsync() process.

<comment><USER3> Hi Antirez, thanks again for Redis. Despite our few problems with it, it rocks. A few comments:

> With fsync everysec, there is the problem that form time to time we need to > fsync. Guess what? Even if we fsync in a different thread, write(2) will > block anyway

Yep, but this could be avoided if a thread was devoted to all I/O incl. write() (and then line-level buffering really would be possible as well). Communication with this thread would be on a thread-safe queue--the main thread would never block on disk I/O, and only two threads would mean mutex contention for the queue lock would be low. This would be one solution, correct? This is a variation of your "two processes + pipe" suggestion.

> How to fix that? For now we introduced in Redis 2.2 an option that will not > fsync the AOF file while writing IF there is a compaction in progress.

Well, we enabled that.. but, we found that it's still a problem in a couple of circumstances:

1\. Something _other than the AOF recompaction_ makes the disk busy. Like, say, even a moderate amount of disk activity by another process.

2\. Redis's own logging to stdout, if redirected to a file, itself can cause the redis main thread to block if stdout is being flushed onto a busy disk.

Basically, if any I/O which may hit a disk (AOF record/flush or even logging) is being done on the single epoll-driven thread redis uses to process incoming requests, the system must make _very_ good guarantees that those I/O calls will not block. We have found these guarantees practically impossible to make on a very busy master, so we've given on up having the master do AOF work altogether.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the in deep reply,

Exactly the logging process can well be a thread for better performances, thanks for the hint!

About the other scenarios where fsync will perform poorly, indeed every other I/O is going to be a problem.

I guess the "all the AOF business in a different thread" is the most sensible approach to follow probably, unless there is an (even Linux specific syscall) that is able to avoid blocking but just to force commit of old data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get what is so difficult about AMQP. These are clearly talented programmers, so what gives? Even if you're not a bank, simple features like message timeouts can make your infrastructure tremendously more resilient.

<comment><USER3> I'd chalk it up to the general benefits of eschewing needless complexity.

I can say, empirically, none of the many, many challenges we've had building and scaling Bump, have been related to Redis's capabilities as a messaging bus. So "good enough" wins again.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I'd encourage you to still take a deeper look at AMQP, just because it includes features you may not know you need. While I can't pretend to know anything about your scaling challenges or the intimate details of how messaging is utilized, I can say that there are the lessons of deep experience with messaging baked into AMQP. You may have (or perhaps you already have) to implement some of these features in the future. I know that I gave AMQP the cold shoulder for a while, only to finally come around and find out it solved many of the frustrations we were facing.

<comment><USER2> Probably the less complexity also means a much bigger amount of messages per core.

With Redis in an entry level Linux box you can process 100k messages per second per core. I'm not sure if current AMQP systems can handle this amount of messages with commodity hardware.

Another reason why Redis can be a good approach I think is that it is a simple system: simple to understand, simple to deploy, very stable. There is support for Pub/Sub. It also supports many other data types, so for instance, want a priority queue? Do it with a sorted set. What some special semantic for your message passing? possibly with BRPOPLPUSH you can do it. And so forth.

A common case of this flexibility is shown by RPOPLPUSH (without the "B" so the non blocking version). Using this command with the same source and destination list will "rotate' the list providing a different element to every consumer, but the data will remain on the list. At the same time producers can push against the list. This has interesting real world applications when things must be processed against and again (fetching RSS feeds, for instance).

So Redis is a pretty flexible tool for messaging, and I think there are for sure great use cases for AMQP but with big overlaps with Redis, and also with use cases where Redis is definitely a better alternative.

<comment><USER4> Given the same semantics, RabbitMQ pushes 100k+ per core as well. It utilizes multi-core machines quite effectively too. Obviously as you tune nobs for more durability or reliability, you're going to take a performance hit. IMHO, Redis is a good tool for messaging if you already use Redis in a big way and don't need reliable delivery or any of the advanced AMQP routing. In sort of the same way a table in MySQL can be used as a queue if you already have a MySQL server and you're only going to be pushing a few hundred messages per minute.

<comment><USER5> I call BS on rabbit pushing 100K messages per core and I really like rabbit. But it is no where near 100k messages/sec per core.

AMQP does have extra capabilities and is a good messaging system and has advanced routing features, but you need to learn what exchanges, queues and bindings are and how they relate before it is useful.

I've used rabbit in production on multiple systems and it is still running on some of those. But I have switched to redis for most of my messaging needs because of the built in data structures and persistence. It makes it a much more versatile server and it is much easier to admin and much more stable. Rabbit is too easy to push over when you run it out of memory.

But I had to chime in and refute your 100k messages per core on rabbit. 20k maybe with the java client, more like 5-7k with a ruby or python client.

I can still get 80k/sec with a ruby client on redis.

The two servers are very different, redis is a swiss army knife of data structures over the network, that is why it is so useful. AMQP and rabbit are targeted more at enterprise messaging and integration where raw speed doesn't matter as much as complex hierarchies of brokers and middleware.

<comment><USER6> We do 120K messages per core per second with QPid (RHM), which includes an AIO transactional journal and multi-master clustering. Woo. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In January, Bump reported allocating a whopping 700GB of RAM for redis[1].

[1] <http://devblog.bu.mp/haskell-at-bump>

<comment><USER8> We (Bump) have 12 redis machines now with 72 or 96GB each. 6 masters and 6 slaves. The slaves are hot spares and persist to disk, per the blog.

<comment><USER9> Given the inherently small foot print of Redis, your data sets are HUGE. Looking forward to reading the Mongo article when it is ready and how it is performing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like the idea of pushing log messages in to a redis list and then flushing them out to disk with another process.

I've often thought it would be useful to have a redis equivalent of MongoDB's capped collections, specifically to make things like recent activity logs easier to implement. At the moment you can simulate it with an rpush followed by an ltrim, but it would be nice if using two commands wasn't necessary.

<comment><USER11> I don't know...that part sounded like a hacked-up, half-implementation of scribe: <https://github.com/facebook/scribe/wiki>

I'd be interested in hearing if they tried to use Scribe for the same task and found it wanting, or if there's some other story.

<comment><USER3> Could you say more about why Bump's implementation of network-based queued logging is "hacked-up" while facebook's (by implication) isn't?

To answer your question, simply put, no one here had heard about Scribe.

<comment><USER11> _"Could you say more about why Bump's implementation of network-based queued logging is "hacked-up" while facebook's (by implication) isn't?"_

Well, mainly because Scribe was purpose-built to do log aggregation on a large scale, and has nice features to prevent data loss in the event of network and node failure. It's also pretty well-tested at this point, given its origins and community. Check the wiki to which I linked.

I didn't mean my comment to imply anything negative. I was just trying to point out to the parent comment that there's now a better option than rolling a custom log aggregator on top of Redis. That may not have been true when you started your system. Mea culpa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OK, so I'm running mongodb on the same machine as redis.

I do have mongodb replicated across two other machines, but could you briefly shed light on what the problems between redis and mongo on a single box were?

<comment><USER13> The quick answer is that MongoDB mmaps it's entire data set, so if you've got more data than ram (likely) the OS is going to constantly have all excess ram allocated to Mongo. This becomes an issue because Redis (very reasonably) assumes that malloc will return quickly, however, if the OS decides it's going to give Redis a dirty page, that malloc call just became disk bound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was curious about the Redis sets used for social graph storage and using intersection of sets to find nodes in common. Would anyone have an idea about the complexity of this as both the number of nodes in the graph and the number of edges each node has?

<comment><USER15> You can find out: write a script to populate sets in Redis and run some commands. You'll likely find it's fast enough for your needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a note about logging: It seems you're making it harder than it needs to be. Syslog supports remote-logging.</comment>


Show HN: My simple project for Remembrance Day - <AUTHOR> http://poetryofworldwarone.tumblr.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A collection of poetry from World War One, distributed / accessible as Tumblr- hosted content and an Android app.

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them." — Laurence Binyon, 1914

Let us never forget.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for putting this up</comment>


Zero Width Shortener - August-Garcia https://zws.im/ <comment><AUTHOR> That's a fun proof of example. The reason why URL shorteners restrict the identifier to some ASCII subset is typically that people can enter it on their keyboard. The omnipresence of unicode (where the majority of characters isnt accessible by keyboards anymore) allows a number of nice interesting applications.

</comment><comment> August-Garcia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_non- joiner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-width_non-joiner)</comment>