Swap Your Laptop for an iPad + Linode - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-linode <comment><USER2> First of all, kudos to this guy. He's happy with his set-up. It works for him and it works for a lot of other people.

That said, I feel the need to warn others who are considering switching to a cloud-based development environment. There are some significant disadvantages to doing development on a remote machine. The biggest issue is that you are dependent on Internet connectivity. If your connection is down, you are dead in the water. If it's slow, you'll get frustrated. Connectivity is only going to get better, but the occasions when you're offline can be very memorable. Additionally, your choice of editors is rather limited. Whatever you use, it has to be terminal-based. A GUI editor like Xcode, Sublime Text 2, or Coda is right-out.

Now let's take a look at the advantages. Cost is mentioned. An iPad is $500-800. A cloud server is $20/month. A maxxed-out 11" MacBook Air is just under $1800. If you throw it away after 2 years (instead of selling it), that's $75/month. In the same time, you'd spend $40-55/month for the iPad/cloud combo. Assuming normal bay area wages, the cost difference isn't worth caring about.

The iPad/cloud setup has one big advantage: battery life. An iPad will last 10 hours. Most laptops can barely do half that. But that's pretty much its only advantage. The laptop beats it in performance, capabilities (you can run VMs and test other OSes/browsers), ergonomics, and expandability. Laptops can also output to larger monitors.

After considering all these things, the best solution is whatever you're most productive using. If you find yourself away from power often, the iPad is your best bet. If you often have slow/nonexistent Internet connectivity or you like to plug into external displays, go with a laptop.

My most productive times are when I'm offline, so my weapon of choice is the 11" MacBook Air. I load it up with the right documentation and virtual machines beforehand. Then I spend the next 5-7 hours writing prodigious amounts of code. At that point both myself and the Air's battery are spent.

Again, I don't mean to imply that the author is mistaken. I simply want to manage expectations for anyone considering following him.

<comment><USER3> You can actually still use a GUI editor with cloud-based development.

The majority of my code is stored on a Linode server. I use SSHFS to mount my working folder and edit in whatever editor I like (typically Geany). Connectivity is still an issue, but can be mitigated by tweaking the cache timeout.

<comment><USER4> Some editors support editing remote files. Emacs and TRAMP (<[http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/#Overview>](http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/#Overview>)) does this perfectly well. BBEdit 10 also does it (<[http://www.andre- aulich.de/en/perm/edit-remote-files-using-y...](http://www.andre- aulich.de/en/perm/edit-remote-files-using-your-local-bbedit-app-and-a-secure- ssh-connection>)). That editor is completely underrated.

<comment><USER5> Vim supports remote editing too, with netrw: <http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pi_netrw.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 11" Air weighs 100 grams (10%) more than iPad + wireless keyboard and for that 10% you get much higher effective resolution, no compromise keyboard and trackpad, option to connect external monitor, up to 128gb storage, USB, etc, etc. Why compromise?

<comment><USER7> The iPad gets double to triple the battery life, has a higher DPI; the wireless keyboard is probably better than the MBA (or at least on par).

Both (all) choices involve compromises. It's a matter of choosing which compromises matter.

In my opinion, battery life is a very very important feature. I can see that factor alone swaying my decision...

<comment><USER8> I don't see why battery life would be that important for coding. With the iPad+wireless keyboard setup, you're already committing to using a desk or table -- won't those typically have a power outlet? Also, depending on the case/orientation, it'd be harder to keep the iPad in a stand with the charging cord in the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting to contrast this ubiquitous-connectivity model with the development style of Joey Hess (git-annex, et al) modeled on extremely sporadic connectedness.

Not a comment on which is better. We're in a world of ubiquity. I've worked for months at a time in a purely remote-connection style. But speaking purely as a child of the modem, you can pry my local processing power from my cold, dead system chassis.

</comment><comment><USER10> Swap your laptop for a chromebook + ec2

<comment><USER11> I'm honestly seriously considering this. I'm still trying to figure out if Ubuntu on the Chrome book is stable enough for SSH, VNC, X, and web work.

Moreover, something I just thought of now is that I do a lot of mobile app development. Wondering if I can run the debugger remotely and "export" my local USB over SSH and have it run that way. That would be pretty cool...

<comment><USER11> Looks like I answered my own question: [http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-set- up-a-usb-over-ip-server...](http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-set-up-a-usb- over-ip-server-and-client-with-debian-lenny)

Just ordered my Chromebook from Amazon. Now to wait 8 weeks for it. :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previously discussed at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3186476>

<comment><USER13> Here as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4543345>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One point I'm not sure this article mentions is how gracefully you can switch between apps on the iPad with gestures. I do a lot of (non-development) work via Prompt and when I need to consult documentation I just swipe over to a PDF or web page. Not being able to see the two side-by-side is almost a blessing simply because when I switch over I read the documentation carefully and only switch back when I'm ready to actually resume my work. This helps me out a lot because instead of skimming the documentation as I go I actually spend a few minutes reading it all and absorbing it. When I'm ready to switch back to my work I'm less scatterbrained about what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm way less prone to skimming the documentation just for the relevant parts. I'm starting to think uni-windowing is way underrated. When I work on my Mac I often do the same thing with full-screen apps now. I feel like it's made me more productive.

The one feature I really need added to iOS is a multi-item/history based clipboard system. This would make working between apps in a uni-window environment much easier.

<comment><USER15> It's the same reason I don't use multiple monitors simultaneously. I feel really productive having full screen apps. But even better is the fact that I have keyboard shortcuts set up to switch between apps.

It started with XMonad on Linux, where alt+n (where n is 1..9) would take me to a separate workspace, each with it's own apps. Workspace 1 is always my browser, 3 is the terminal, 8 is my editor, etc.

I set this up on OSX as well - workspaces are called desktops on OSX and I just set up 9 of them, with command+n being my desktop-switching shortcuts. It works remarkably well, it almost makes me cringe seeing people alt-tab repeatedly, or using the mouse and overlapping windows to try to switch between different apps.

<comment><USER16> How did you bind command-(1..9) to the different spaces on osx?

<comment><USER17> System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Mission Control -> Switch To Desktop (1..x)

<comment><USER16> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes swap my 129GBP ThinkPad T61 running debian for a more expensive, less capable device with a pissy screen that falls over if you let go of it, rubbish keyboard, short shelf life, non replaceable battery, subscription based, lock in promoting glorified vt100 terminal that only works if you have an internet connection available.

I can't take this working methodology seriously, nor anything which contracts out every last egg to one basket. It's trendy but entirely batshit.

Ignoring the cost model which is broken, if all shit breaks loose, which it does in real life regularly then this is just going to screw you properly then.

</comment><comment><USER19> I recommend creating a reusable 'development vm' (or lxc container if you swing that way) for your entire team. It really cuts down on development time and you can generally host it anywhere (locally, 'the cloud', whatever).

Not(or rarely) having to ponder 'is it my environment?' whenever something breaks is nice. It's also usually easy to share the folder and work on a remote vm's filesystem locally with whatever editor you like. (some exceptions are java+eclipse because of the need for a shared maven repo and general eclipse slowness is compounded in this type of setup)

</comment><comment><USER20> Something I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned so far is a comment regarding this:

 _> The hardest part of setting up an SSH client on a tablet is getting your private SSH key on there without entrusting it to a third party. I split mine across multiple services and removed it after recombining it, but a better way would be to SSH in with a password first, then use copy and paste to copy the key inside iSSH itself._

Ideally, you shouldn't be transferring a private key in the first place, and instead, generating a _new_ private key on the tablet itself, specifically for the tablet.

Once you've generated a private key for the tablet, it's trivial to push the public key for it to the server (and safe to entrust the public key to third parties, since it's specifically intended to be public).

It also means that if, say, your tablet got stolen, you could just revoke access for the tablet's key, rather than having to redo everything for your existing key.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is no reason to force yourself to one solution.

I have access to this setup, but also to multiple laptops, desktops, tablets, phones. I use what works for the situation.

When does the ipad+keyboard shine?

When you don't have easy access to wifi, but can get 3g.

When you don't have power. iPad battery life is awesome.

When you want to have a tablet with you for reading, drawing, notating.

When you want your keyboard to be detached from your screen to have a more comfortable position. (e.g. you can put the keyboard on your lap, or even offset the screen while having the keyboard in front of you. Many possible configurations)

When you want the above features, but don't want to have to carry a backpack or some kind of bulky bag to fit a laptop or convertible laptop+tablet or carry around a few different devices.

The iPad is a very general purpose device. A lot of people are saying, "Just use a laptop" and completely missing the point. The author is specifically using this setup for 3g+battery life.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're going to go full cloud, a tablet like the Asus Transformer seems like a much better fit than the iPad.

It has a few key advantages:

1\. it has a physical keyboard/trackpad dock which the OS fully understands.

2\. the dock contains no actual PC, and is 99% battery, effectively doubling your battery-time.

Why would you chose an iPad over this?

<comment><USER23> The most likely answer is because of the heavy, ongoing advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While this might be working for the author, I couldn't take this approach, since there is just too much compromises I'd have to take.

Being a Rails developer, I have to constantly run tests, refresh browser and write code, and to do this as efficiently as possible, I'm using dual monitor setup with the guard gem, which makes two things _while_ I write code: runs tests and refreshes browser (both appear on second monitor). The machine is slightly customized Mac Mini Server (SSD + additional RAM) which also comes around $1000 plus the two monitors.

Laptops are simply not fit for any serious Rails development, not only to the small amount of screen real estate, computing power but also because I can rarely get _into the zone_ outside my home office.

</comment><comment><USER25> I couldn't live without AWS or my litte VPS. As a developer and fellow HN fan, I'm always reading about the latest frameworks and projects. I love demoing them, but I feel it's risky on my laptop because the 500GB I have fills up quick if I'm not paying attention, so I avoid installing anything unless it's going to be used with a real project at work. I do my best to run all examples on AWS or my VPS first, the reason for this is so if ruby blows up or my recently configured kernel panics, I can easily reset or reinstall the instance and we're back in business.

While I do believe the future is in cloud based development, I think right now's solution is a duality of the two.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm waiting for the Android port of Emacs to mature. It currently has issues with hardware keyboards and with Tramp. But once it works well, then I'm getting a Nexus 10 and a Logitech K810[1]

Emacs-TRAMP will let me edit files locally so it will work well even if you're in a location with spotty internet.

1: [http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/27/logitech- bluetooth-i...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/11/27/logitech-bluetooth- illuminated-keyboard-k810-review-yes-you-want-one/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh, cmon, let's check the inventory: \- tablet \- wireless keyboard

Right, I stopped reading after that. So he has a "small laptop" which is what the ipad+keyboard is and a vps.

<comment><USER28> [http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad- li...](http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad- linode?page=0,3)

The photo suggests several items to carry and keep track of, and then assemble to work. A small light laptop is one box. Seems easier to me (chuck the one box into the bag and off).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Soon, a tablet will be fast _enough_ to compile locally. But the article's setup still has the benefit of someone else managing OS/backups.

Is is possible to have both? i.e. a " _remotely managed local system_ ". (1) auto-updated OS e.g. chrome; (2) auto-backup e.g. dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER30> But how do people connect their Model Ms to their iPads?

<comment><USER31> Yeah the hardest part of the article to stomach for me is that someone could type on one of those keyboards for 3 months and not get frustrated.

<comment><USER32> Those Bluetooth Mac keyboards are absolutely horrible, but so many people use them because they don't know that there are better keyboards out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've read a few posts on various sites about Ubuntu running on jailbroken iPads, if it's a full Ubuntu experience I'd love to do that.

<comment><USER34> I can't find any, and I'd be surprised if it exists (it would mean drivers written for most of the ipad's hardware). Are you sure you aren't thinking of ubuntu on nexus (which is available, and easy because android IS linux)?

If you ARE talking about the ipad, care to share a link?

<comment><USER33> You clearly didn't Google hard enough.

[http://www.shoutpedia.com/linux-running-on-ipad-and- iphone-c...](http://www.shoutpedia.com/linux-running-on-ipad-and-iphone- complete-how-to-guide-coming-soon/)

[http://www.ifans.com/forums/threads/how-to-compile-and- insta...](http://www.ifans.com/forums/threads/how-to-compile-and-install- openiboot-on-ipad-1g.321963/)

[http://forum.iphone.cz/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=52521](http://forum.iphone.cz/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=52521)

So, yeah. There's stuff out there. From what I can gather there's not much work been done recently.

<comment><USER34> I actually have android on my iphone 3G (as a "recovery partition"). But I was asking specifically about ubuntu; perhaps I should have been more clear.

And that android, BTW, is completely unusable - I just keep it there in case my 3G gets borked in a need-to-reinstall way (like it did two years ago).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hehehe, how about NO?

</comment><comment><USER36> Glad to see this article made it into Linux Journal!

</comment><comment><USER37> But I just bought a new mechanical keyboard!

</comment><comment><USER38> The sad thing is, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 could be full powered Linux tablets (the Nexus 10's SOC is used in numerous places with Linux). Put that in a keyboard dock or something like the Transformer Prime dock...

ARM linux is more than great in my opinion, battery life, tablet-when-you- want, laptop the other times.

Plus, you know, the Nexus 10 is cheap and has a gorgeous screen.</comment>


The Global Debt Bomb - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0208/debt-recession-worldwide-finances-global-debt-bomb.html

<comment><USER2> Nice strategy but exposed to forex risk. Some got burned when the JPY rose by 30% compared to USD and so did their USD-denominated-equivalent debt.</comment>


How an introvert networked their way to a few million in revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.techstars.com/content/startup-weekend/networking-not-overrated/ <comment><USER2> What are some ways to "provide value" to people you are just meeting for the first time?

<comment><USER3> Listen to them with genuine interest.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Startomatic – domain, logo, email, website, legal formation in 48 hrs - <AUTHOR> https://startomatic.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, Developer of Startomatic here (Automated Insights previously). I know Stripe Atlas is popular with the HN crowd, but we think they didn't go far enough. Our goal is to include EVERYTHING you need to get a company launched, not just legal formation. Right now we include name suggestions, domain name registration, logo creation, legal formation, email/calendar set up, a "coming soon" website, SEO set up, and social media account creation. And all within 48 hours. We've got more coming soon. I'd love your feedback.

Thanks! Robbie Allen (email@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Congratulations on the launch. I like the approach you mentioned in the head line. Would love to read some introduction to your service here.

If you ever want to have a chat or pick my brain, reach out via email mentioned in my profile. I love chatting about this topic.

With firma.de we are helping founders in Germany with the company formation and most services founders need during the first years of their entrepreneurial journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to be posting a more complete overview of the service soon. I'll check out firma.de....</comment></comment>


"My world is a little darker." RIP Martin Gardner - <AUTHOR> http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/995-my-world-is-a-little-darker.html <comment><USER2> I'm sure many of us here on HN were influenced by Martin Gardner's brilliant puzzles. He taught us that a mathematical challenge could be a joy rather than an assignment.

As Ronald Graham famously said: "Martin has turned thousands of children into mathematicians, and thousands of mathematicians into children."

<http://nytimes.com/2009/10/20/science/20tier.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> My introduction to Martin Gardner was his book "The Annotated Alice," from which I learned about Lewis Carroll, Alice, enantiomorphs, Oxford, logic, how to read closely, and much more that I can't recall off the top of my head. He was a fascinating writer and man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. I bought that book some time ago, and it's been on my Must Find Time list for, well, some time. I completely forgot he was the editor.

Damn.

<comment><USER4> Do read it. Martin Gardner's notes are so enlightning and funny. Alas, sad news indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a subscription to SA in high school. His column was the first thing I read in each issue. He will be missed. He can rest easy knowing his life touch many, many others.

<comment><USER6> I went and auction-bought a pile of Scientific Americans going back as far as I could, back to about 1968 or so, just to read his columns and the Amateur Scientist articles.

Free e-book from the 'gathering for gardner' here:

<http://www.g4g4.com/contentsmmpp1.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite people and the reason I got into math in the first place. This is a bit of a shock, and one of the few "celebrity" deaths which have made me feel actual sadness. I just looked at his latest book in the basement of the Strand in Manhattan. I assumed he would live forever. He will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Man that sucks.

It was to be expected one of these days, but still to have it come true is a real pity.

Thanks for all the the insights, the brain teasers and the subtle humour.

</comment><comment><USER8> How can you be sad at the end of such a brilliant and full life? I'd give anything to have a tenth of his accomplishments to my name when I die. He introduced so many people to the beauty and sheer FUN of mathematics, it's hard to estimate his overall influence on the world today.

So how can you be sad? And yet I am. Rest in peace, Martin.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What a loss. He made math far more approachable for me, after the conceptual corruption given to me by grade-school teachers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, am I the only one that got into reading Gardner for his debunking pseudoscience? A half dozen comments so far and no one has even mentioned that. My introduction to him was the classic "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science". I still have a copy of "Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus".

<comment><USER8> Actually, I suspect the opposite is more common, as it was for me -- i.e. that it was from reading Martin Gardner that I became aware of the skeptical movement.</comment></comment>


Google's authentication-less, on-the-fly image resizing service - <AUTHOR> https://carlo.zottmann.org/2013/04/14/google-image-resizer/

<comment><AUTHOR> Demo of it working: [http://jsfiddle.net/ph7cghLd/](http://jsfiddle.net/ph7cghLd/)</comment>


Razorpay (YC W15) raises $20M in Series B funding - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/indias-razorpay-nabs-20m-led-by-yc-tiger-global-for-its-stripe-like-payment-gateway/ <comment><USER2> Super news! Making waves with solution</comment>


Bloody Plant Burger Smells, Tastes and Sizzles Like Meat - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/21/482322571/silicon-valley-s-bloody-plant-burger-smells-tastes-and-sizzles-like-meat <comment><USER3> I've been a vegetarian for the last decade and change, and I simultaneously think that finding a cheaper, appealing alternative to meat is both a fantastic opportunity for the world and a really difficult thing.

I used to love meat when I was a meat-eater, and I'm a fairly picky eater that dislikes many vegetable options. (Green peppers are nasty and food-destroying in my opinion, which immediately removes over half the vegetarian options out there, just as an example), so I consider myself a decent bellweather for people who like the tastes of meat but want to actually eat less of it for various reasons.

The options that already exist today are quite varied. Boca, Morningstar, Beyond Meat, and Quorn are all big names that offer meat alternatives that taste VERY different from each other. Most of my meat eating friends won't even try any of these, sight unseen. (When they see them, they tend to have even more reluctance). So, while I think it's absolutely worthwhile to make alternatives that seem more "real", there is still a stigma to overcome just by virtue of being fake. And in america, at least, where meat-eating is tied to masculinity and bacon is worshipped, that's a tough stigma to shake.

Decent imitations of highly processed meat exist already - I've had chicken nuggets that meat eaters had no idea were fake, and I fed my in-laws a "turkey loaf" dinner for Thanksgiving for years without them realizing - but matching the taste of "quality" meats hasn't yet happened.

<comment><USER4> When I visit India and eat vegetarian food properly prepared by a culture that has refined vegetarian cuisine beyond "fake meat", I don't miss meat at all.

Much of Western food is only expected to be an accompaniment to a meat dish, which is why you can't just cut meat out and eat the vegetable dishes you're used to when you're eating meat as well, imnsho.

<comment><USER5> Not a vegetarian but I do go out with many Indian colleagues who are vegetarian and have family members or friends who dont eat meat.

I do agree with the assumption that western vegetarians tend to want meat replacements. The biggest difference for me was seeing how a lot of Indian cuisine is actually unhealthy. Most everything is fried in oil or has so much clarified butter its unhealthy. The Indian diet (at least the people in my office) seems more unhealthy vs the western vegetarian diet and several people in my office have had heart attacks.

<comment><USER6> It is true for most of the restaurants serving different cuisines. Home- prepared Thai food is healthier than the food at Thai restaurants. Replace Thai with Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indian, and it would still hold true.

<comment><USER7> Having eaten a lot of home-prepared South Indian food, I'm not sure I really agree. Home cooked food has the ability to be healthier than restaurant prepared, but I don't know if there's enough data to really claim one way or the other - homecooked is not healthier just by virtue of being homecooked.

<comment><USER8> For south Indian food the problem is excess rice and starch.

<comment><USER9> I'd say most vegetarian Indian food has the problem of excess starch and carbs. One potential reason for the wide prevalence of diabetes in India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Meat enthusiast here. There is no one who wants a viable meat alternative for meat eaters than me. The bleeding heart (pun intended) in me cares about the sustainability of meat and the sheer cost of ethical farming. Fact of the matter is though, I won't give up eating meat. I love it, so so much. And I have a leery eye towards meat substitutes. This product for example:

\- How well does this product replicate the Maillard Reaction [0]? This is key when we're talking about taste and texture.

\- Why did the author taste the burger with 82 toppings slathered on top by a professional chef? That's like testing out a new 21 speed, strapped to the top of an SUV.

\- Why are they (presumably) trying to recreate chuck? Ground chuck is a terrible thing to replicate. It's like burger meat designed by committee[1].

\- Is the sizzle coming from only extracted water from the plant burger (water vapor, decreasing heating temp)? Or are their lipids present spiking the flame, positively contributing to the cooking process?

That said, I'd love to give it a shot. Proper seasoning, a nice medium rare with a slice of American. But I'm not holding my breath. Meat is very hard.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction) [1]: [http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/the-burger- lab-b...](http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/10/the-burger-lab-best- burger-blend-profiles-of-eight-cuts-of-beef.html)

<comment><USER11> It's quite hard but not impossible (pun intended). Full disclosure: Patrick Brown was on my committee in grad school. I've had many long conversations with him about these things and he's quite aware of all the challenges. The talk of scientifically breaking down the problem and figuring out exactly what makes meat meat is not just talk, it's actually the way he and the company operates. I think the heavy duty science they're putting into this is going to eventually yield a "burger" that is functionally indistinguishable in many applications.

I think there's always going to be a place for The Counter or other such premium burgers, but what about the zillions of patties used by the likes of Burger King, McDonald's, In-N-Out? Those are cooked heavily, and flavor engineered six ways to Sunday. The top of the SUV analogy is nice, but realistically most burgers are not terribly subtle flavor experiences coming from the brilliance of the meat substrate.

How many millions of gallons of water and tons of greenhouse gases would be eliminated if 10% of patties at big chains were vegetarian? Even small shifts in consumption could have incredibly positive impacts on the environment and perhaps even overall health.

<comment><USER10> > The top of the SUV analogy is nice, but realistically most burgers are not > terribly subtle flavor experiences coming from the brilliance of the meat > substrate.

Are we talking about fast food burgers? Then yes, flavor country lives in the lab, not the burger. But this article seemed to be strongly hinting at a meat substitute, not just a burger substitute for fast food chains (which I agree with you, would be wonderful). If the flavor experience isn't coming from the meat, than why is it so hard to find a widely excepted meat substitute?

That's why it seems strange the author loaded up their burger with exquisite toppings to taste the meat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would definitely like to try the products (another reason to make a trip back to Colorado).

Lots of questions long term though. Is this the "Ethanol of Meat" ? Where the total cost/impact of producing the good overwhelms the benefits? Ground chuck roast is $7/lb and currently this stuff is more expensive than that. Can it be less expensive than that? Way less expensive?

The fundamental question is does this move us toward a more efficient use of the resources we have to feed us, or is it more the high tech / high energy lifestyle? I am always wondering is this this increasing the kilowatt / person ratio or decreasing it.

<comment><USER13> Ground chuck roast is heavily subsidized; it would be surprising if any fake meat product could actually rival the energy and water costs needed to raise and process beef. So one solution would be to price both more fairly, in which case lots of consumers might be happier to choose the vegan option.

<comment><USER14> How exactly is ground chuck roast heavily subsidized? Is it any different than the subsidies for agriculture that make up meat alternatives?

<comment><USER13> They are both subsidized, clearly - but since it takes 8lbs / 3.6kg of grain to produce 1lb / 0.45kg of beef [1], and the livestock then receive additional subsidies [2], the effect is magnified.

1: [https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic...](https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29892) 2: [https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=live...](https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=livestock)

<comment><USER14> If it takes more agriculture product to produce meat, the plain plant version should then be cheaper.

<comment><USER15>
         cost of meat/plant version = real cost of producing - <USER2>

Since subsidies in meat version are bigger, end result can be cheaper despite having higher "real" cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "When I tried a mini burger slathered in vegan mayo, mashed avocado, > caramelized onions and Dijon prepared by San Francisco chef Traci Des Jardin > at the company's headquarters in Redwood City, I was floored."

Honestly a good chef can make cardboard taste good. But as a daily meat eater I'd love a good ground beef alternative.

<comment><USER17> _Honestly a good chef can make cardboard taste good._

Which is exactly the core operating principle upon which the fast food industry (including much of what is put on the shelves in larger grocery chains) basically works these days:

low-quality base ingredients + sugar, spices, MSG + gratuitous fats/oils + marketing == profit

<comment><USER18> But to be fair, MSG is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Meat that you buy in a store, including ground beef, doesn't have blood in it. The red color is almost entirely myoglobin, not so much hemoglobin. Your burger doesn't _bleed_. What comes out is just water with some protein including myoglobin.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a noble effort. Animal agriculture is pretty terrible. It's massively wasteful in terms of land use and water use. It's incredibly inefficient when it comes to energy use (beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1 [1]). And, of course, there are the animal welfare concerns.

Even given all the problems, I'm convinced that people won't stop eating meat unless there is a market alternative that's at least equivalent in terms of price, taste, smell, texture, and nutrition. While the plant-based alternatives are getting better and better and I'm a big fan, I'm much more excited about the cultured meat alternatives.

Basically, you can think of a cow as a biological machine inside which certain processes occur which lead to things humans like to eat (milk, meat). If you can replicate those process in the lab instead of in the cow, you can get real meat without the negative side effects mentioned above.

Until very recently, this field had been relegated to academia, but there are now several companies working on commercializing it, like Memphis Meats, Mosa Meats, and Modern Meadow. In my mind, this is the only solution: give people real meat, made without the animals.

[1] [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could- feed-80...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could- feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat) [2] disclaimer: I'm an investor in Memphis Meats ([http://www.memphismeats.com/](http://www.memphismeats.com/))

<comment><USER21> /disclaimer/disclosure/

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I eat meat, love the taste of it, but would be the first to switch to a plant- based alternative.

I know it's tough to acknowledge it, but lots of people like me are a bit hypocrites when it comes to meat: we hate killing animals, but we love the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice to see how HN sentiment appears to have shifted towards greater acceptance or even excitement towards meat alternatives.

For comparison here is the thread from 2012 on the Twitter founders investment in Beyond Meat

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4330247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4330247)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm super excited by these startups. It seems to be the most promising meat alternatives around at least judging by the articles I've read. The faster we can stop maintaining livestock for meat production the better. It takes the 'middle man' out from plants to people. I love meat and I'm hopeful they can make a steak someday.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've had the good fortune to try an Impossible Foods burger. It really does taste like meat. I'm not sure I would say it's indistinguishable from a beef burger. But I would definitely have a hard time telling it apart from a ground turkey burger. Or an ostrich burger from Fuddruckers.

<comment><USER26> If someone came to your house with it and cooked it on the BBQ, would you have been able to tell that it was an Impossible Foods burger?

<comment><USER25> Well, yes -- but only insofar that it looks like beef but tastes more like turkey (at least to me).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've tried the beyond burger[0], which is similar in that they're both trying to be meatless meat burgers. I don't know if they taste anything alike.

The beyond burger was interesting. It was the closest to a meat patty I've eaten, of all the beef substitutes. It cooks and looks like a beef burger. However, the taste and texture is only reminiscent of meat. Against, it's the closest I've seen anyone get. But it's not a beef burger, and it's worse for inviting the comparison. I'll stick to bean burgers for now. I hope this impossible burger is better.

[0]: [http://beyondmeat.com/products/view/beyond- burger](http://beyondmeat.com/products/view/beyond-burger)

</comment><comment><USER28> Adding heme is a brilliant idea - and I think high amounts of iron would make it a great product. There are a few things that are important to watch to make sure you get enough of when you're a vegetarian, and iron is one of them. (Women who donate blood have their blood tested for iron, and are sometimes surprised the learn that they're low in iron.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excess iron consumption is a risk factor for heart disease.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423170903.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423170903.htm)

<comment><USER29> Glancing at that I'm guessing it's just that people who pig out on steaks and burgers tend to get more heart attacks and it correlates with iron consumption.

<comment><AUTHOR> No there's more to it than diet. Similar findings have been found in multiple studies. There is evidence to indicate that this is why pre-menopausal women have a lower risk of heart disease than men and post-menopausal women (after controlling for other differences).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Awesome! If this is close to meat in macronutrient profile (no carb, protein/fat based), I'd be fine switching >90% of my ground beef consumption to it as soon as commercially available as long as it is less than $10/pound (cheaper would be better, though).

Even if a great steak is still better/worth eating, no one will say that fast food hamburger patties, taco bell mystery meat, etc. are in any way exemplars of amazing meat. If an animal is going to die for me to eat, it should be something like steak, not the lowest quality ground beef possible.

They're really smart going after the carnivore market.

</comment><comment><USER31> Family member made me watch Cowspiracy on Netflix, a documentary on the effects/unsustainability of large-scale animal agriculture. I'm sure someone on HN can prove the movie wrong, but it did scare me into wanting to reduce my meat consumption. If these faux meats can be produced large-scale sustainably and with significantly less negative impact than raising the real meats, I'd say that's a win.

</comment><comment><USER32> I took part in a taste testing for a "revolutionary new vegetarian burger" in the past few months in the SF Bay Area. It was marketed for upscale locations.

That said, it was incredibly good to the point I asked one of the researchers who was making it so I could buy it. Unfortunately they couldn't disclose to me that information, maybe it was this product.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm of two minds about this.

On the one hand, I love the science and I love watching these engineers get closer and closer to mimicking meat with each passing year. If they can succeed in creating a cheaper, tastier alternative to real meat, there could be untold benefits for both our health and the environment.

On the other hand, the article mentioned that this particular patty uses coconut oil. Well, I happen to be allergic to coconuts, so that leaves me out. I'm weary of encountering in daily life yet another highly engineered foodstuff that requires close scrutiny. I'm especially worried about eating something like this on accident someday, if they get close enough to the patina of the real meat, and having an allergic reaction.

There's a part of me that hopes the mimicry is a passing fad, and instead they use the techniques to create new tastes and experiences. That's more fun in general, and it's easier for guys like me to distinguish and avoid if needed.

</comment><comment><USER34> interesting, but

>chef Traci Des Jardins served the Impossible Burger (pictured uncooked) with vegan mayo, Dijon mustard, mashed avocado, caramelized onions, chopped cornichon, tomato and lettuce on a pretzel bun.

I think I'd probably enjoy a single postage stamp served in the above configuration (in place of the patty). Obviously my review of the postage stamp would be heavily influenced by these trimmings.

Given the rest of the article, they should have just browned it and served it on a $0.50 store-bought hamburger bun [http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/hamburger- buns](http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/hamburger-buns) with some lettuce and ketchup.

Or is it not _actually_ up to the task? The rest of the article fawns that it is, but they don't put their hamburger where the reviewer's mouth is. They put mashed avocado, carmelized onion, and chopped cornichon on a pretzel bun there.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a vegan, I'm very excited by this news because it might convince others to give it a try. Today someone told me that they recently ate a chicken burger at Veggie Grill and she didn't know until later that it was not chicken. She said at the time she thought, that was a really good chicken sandwich!

</comment><comment><USER36> The SF Bay Are Vegans in Technology meetup group organized a Future of Food panel last month featuring some local biotech companies in this space ([http://www.sfvtech.org/oakvegtech](http://www.sfvtech.org/oakvegtech)). Memphis Meats is one of the SF Indie Bio accelerator companies that is working on cultured meat ([http://sf.indiebio.co/mentor/memphis- meats/](http://sf.indiebio.co/mentor/memphis-meats/))

</comment><comment><USER37> I was a vegetarian from 14 to 32 or so. I think eating less meat (than most people currently do) is definitely desirable, both for the planet and your own health, but you don't need to stop eating meat altogether.

There is so much we don't yet understand about nutrition or metabolism that I would take a very low tech approach to diet. The more we process things the more chance there is of things going wrong.

I find it fascinating to look at diets of groups people who live relatively long and disease free lives. It's almost always minimally processed food

<comment><USER38> > The more we process things the more chance there is of things going wrong.

Actually the whole point of factories and assembly lines is consistency and efficiency. There's a huge amount of variability with current meat based on how it was raised, transportation, age, butchering conditions, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Last year, Impossible Foods turned down Google's offer to buy the company > for $200 million to $300 million.

Looks like there isn't any business that Google won't get into.

</comment><comment><USER40> Do we really believe our body's are going to process 'fake meat' as 'real meat'? I am highly skeptical of that aspect as well. Moreover, we are removing a very natural element out of food (killing an animal for meat) out of the picture by growing meat in a lab, this is a very primal element that technology has forgotten.

The problem stems from current livestock farming practices. Fixing that problem is far easier than trying to create lab grown meat, and in the end will be healthier as it doesn't require a change in our biological system.

Plus food is not complicated. Humans have made it complicated over the last 50-60 years. Food has been a basic necessity of life, yet most struggle with every aspect related to food, from acquiring it to cooking it.

Don't get me wrong I see this type of innovation as being very important to long-term space travel or planet colonization but for everyday human consumption I view this as a waste of time and energy.

</comment><comment><USER41> IMO they need to not only replicate flavor, but also macro nutrient profiles and a few other things like omega3s and CLA found in grass fed beef.

I think we're better off cleaning up the meat industry than trying to make plants into meat. Fixing things like CAFOs and our corn subsidies could go a long way to a more sustainable meat.

<comment><USER42> Out of the set of mean eaters who this market would target, I really think the subset that thinks about or considers omega 3 and CLA in their meat is minuscule. I'm a very health conscious omnivore and honestly didn't even know there were omega 3s in beef. Guess that's another excuse for me to eat hamburgers...

<comment><USER41> Omega3 - Omega 6 ratio in fats (more omega 3 is better) may be healthier. It seems that grass fed beef has better ratios [http://www.mercola.com/beef/health_benefits.htm](http://www.mercola.com/beef/health_benefits.htm)

I'm regularly surprised by how little the average person knows about the things that make/keep them healthy. If I really wanted a car to last I'd be sure I knew all about the gasoline and oil I was putting into it.

<comment><USER43> There is always a link to Dr. Mercola's articles when people try to defend the health benefits of eating meat, but no one mentions that is an anti-vaxxer and has many other unscientific claims on his website.

<comment><USER41> It was just the first hit in google tbh and I already knew it to be true, just needed a link to attempt to satisfy haters.

Seeing as you'd rather attack than do some useful work, I'll do it for you. See below:

"A healthy diet should consist of roughly one to four times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. The typical American diet tends to contain 11 to 30 times more omega -6 fatty acids than omega -3, a phenomenon that has been hypothesized as a significant factor in the rising rate of inflammatory disorders in the United States[40]. Table Table22 shows significant differences in n-6:n-3 ratios between grass-fed and grain-fed beef, with and overall average of 1.53 and 7.65 for grass-fed and grain-fed, respectively, for all studies reported in this review."[1]

[1]: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846864/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846864/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Everyone is talking about the environmental effects, but what about the huge economic shifts that would come with the introduction of a viable meat substitute?

If the substitute is cheaper and tastier, a large chunk of the agricultural industry will disappear almost overnight. For many poor countries agriculture supports a large percentage of the workforce.

And if the company that develops the meat substitute can protect their manufacturing process from being copied through patents or simply keeping it a secret, then it will become enormously rich and powerful.

So you'll effectively have a transfer of wealth from poor farmers to a large US corporation on a massive scale.

Is that a good thing?

(And yes, I recognise that poor people will also benefit by having a cheaper source of 'meat')

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't the point of being a vegetarian to avoid eating meat? Then why would you want to eat vegetables that look and act like meat?

If you really prefer your food to look like meat, maybe you're not actually a vegetarian and your body is telling you to get some meat.

<comment><USER46> Because there's different motivations for being vegetarian. Some do it, because they simply find meat disgusting, in which case, yes, they probably don't want their food to look, taste or feel like meat.

But others do it for moral reasons, and to them, meat might be the tastiest food in the world, they just choose to abstain from it, because well, you know, animals have to die for it. So, if they can eat something which tastes like meat, but doesn't require animals to die for it, that's the best of both worlds to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I feel like I see these posts regularly on HN and reddit from various companies with "meat killing" veggie meats, but they are never for sale. I sign up for the newsletters and no one ever has products for sale, just more hype. When can I try these?

<comment><USER31> As mentioned in the article, another company Beyond Meat makes some products which are currently available in some stores. Their website has a locator for which stores carry them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wish they kept the fat.

I try to eat Paleo / Ketogenic and it is so hard to find quality fat in foods because of an unjustified fear of fat.

Cholesterol is correlated with health issues in the same way that firemen are correlated with fires. It's not a causal relationship.

<comment><USER41> You could add fat yourself quite easily. Coconut oil/butter for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Looks like a pretty neat "engineering feat". I'll certainly try it if it ever becomes available here (I'm an avid meat eater and low&slow bbq lover).

Since I'm sure many vegetarians/vegans will read this thread I'm curious why so many v-products try to imitate the look and feel of meat. This has always startled me a bit. Why not create awesome new/distinct stuff instead of the typical "tofu shaped like a piece of meat" I see so often.

(apart from the fun engineering/optimizing aspect of recreating something with different ingredients which is fun).

</comment><comment><USER49> The Impossible Burger is made with wheat protein (source: the NPR article). If this is indeed gluten, then there's a lot of hopeful people that can't eat this burger, myself included.

Also, why call it wheat protein instead of gluten? That's like food manufacturers calling sugar 'cane juice'.

</comment><comment><USER50> Tastes like meat is something I'm really doubtful of... Resembles the taste of meat maybe... but the coconut oil, while relatively mild definitely adds a definitive flavor. And while I appreciate the sentiment, saying something tastes like something else doesn't make it true. Similarly, I think bison tastes better than beef, and that alligator tastes better than chicken.

I'm also not sure if this is better than processing mealworms and similar actual meat that can be fed algae and mass-produced would be, if at all.

</comment><comment><USER51> There seems to be a lot happening in this area lately.

There's a new soy based meat substitute called Oumph, which I believe is only available here in Sweden so far. The texture and taste is fantastic. It's the first time I've tried a meat immitation where I don't just feel like I should have gone for the real thing. I'm not a vegetarian but I've actually found myself buying it more often than real meat lately.

It wouldn't work in a burger though - it's more chicken or pork like.

</comment><comment><USER52> From what I've previously read, the challenge isn't creating meat-alternatives that taste and smell like meat. The challenge is recreating the texture of meat.

</comment><comment><USER53> Interesting. As somebody who is not at all familiar with the "alternative meat" industry, my first question is, why not use real cow blood?

You wouldn't need to kill the animal to use its blood and you could extract more blood from an animal than meat. Presumably the environmental impact of a blood only farm would be substantially lower than that of a meat farm. Or is that not the case?

<comment><USER54> I think draining an animal of blood over and over is also pretty cruel.

<comment><USER55> It could be done in a way that isn't cruel. Just take a little at a time, like we do with humans. It might not even be less efficient if the rate of blood production is fairly constant. (I don't know enough biology to speculate.)

<comment><USER56> It's cruel to take a human's blood without their consent, even if done painlessly.

<comment><USER55> I don't think it would be cruel for animals, because once you remove pain as a factor, the only suffering left for humans exists on a psychological level that I don't believe animals would experience.

<comment><USER56> Okay, I don't believe you would suffer at a psychological level either, does that give me the right to take your blood without your consent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Possible benefit. Less chance of food poisoning over real meat? If a cow has a soul it has been clearly exorcised in most fast food beef patties by the lengths they go to to make them safe.

Humorous but relevant: [https://vimeo.com/18160094#t=665s](https://vimeo.com/18160094#t=665s)

<comment><USER58> Judging by the number of salmonella outbreaks from fresh produce recently, I don't think you'll get much food safely benefit.

<comment><USER59> You only way to get salmonella or E.coli on vegetables is if it has been exposed to animals or animal extraments.

<comment><USER60> Or human excrement, say from the underpaid, most likely illegal farm-hand that is picking them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> > And because it's plant-based, this "meat" has no cholesterol.

This statement is loaded with judgment. In response, I'd love if the author could provide some good data that shows a link between dietary cholesterol and blood serum cholesterol, let alone between dietary cholesterol and mortality.

<comment><USER62> Also see: [https://chemistry.osu.edu/~gopalan.5/file/7B.PDF](https://chemistry.osu.edu/~gopalan.5/file/7B.PDF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> It's disturbing how much they focus on blood and sizzling. I'm not a vampire. I just want something that tastes really good.

Honestly, if plant-eaters took a fraction of the time they take replicating meats and just spent it making _tastier vegetables_ I think we'd all have different diets by now.

</comment><comment><USER64> No one has a problem with releasing hemoglobin producing yeast? No one? That sounds terrifying in that many _other_ industries rely on wild yeast.

This goes beyond the general case for GMO (where wild growth is generally crippled) and involves actively modifying the wider environment. This is a serious problem.

</comment><comment><USER65> Pulled Oats are also aiming for same market. [http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/pulled-oats-are-newest- meat...](http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/pulled-oats-are-newest-meat- substitute)

</comment><comment><USER66> "So, he decided to use yeast instead. By taking the soybean gene that encodes the heme protein and transferring it to yeast, the company has been able to produce vast quantities of the bloodlike compound".

So it sold out at Whole Foods, and it's GMO. LMAO.

<comment><USER29> They have a bunch of GMO stuff [http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/faqs- gmos](http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/faqs-gmos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I was excited when I saw the Impossible Foods burger on Hacker News—my wife, who's Hindu, could finally enjoy a what I've been enjoying for years… I showed her the video and she said: "gross!" wtf lol

</comment><comment><USER68> Taste is also a matter of habituation. The easier, healthier and better solution is to learn to love natural vegetarien food. I went this way. I do not miss meat at all, although I ate a lot of it years ago.

</comment><comment><USER69> I hope it becomes half the cost of meat.

That's the only motivation I fear will change people.

Maybe it will be like gasoline and it will double in price giving electric a chance to become more robust and popular/adopted.

</comment><comment><USER70> > By taking the soybean gene that encodes the heme protein and transferring it > to yeast, the company has been able to produce vast quantities of the > bloodlike compound.

GMO is OK now?

</comment><comment><USER71> It sounds like they also have ended up producing synthetic blood. Someone should package that up for the vampire groupies.

Oh and incidentally, could it be developed into a medical blood replacement?

</comment><comment><USER43> I think most people are already 95% vegan, since they are against causing unnecessary suffering and inefficient resource management. The issue is that there's a variable level of sacrifice that goes into making a practical transition to plants.

For some, there's enough motivation to do it; for others, the inconvenience of changing habits and their emotional attachment to certain foods are greater than their desire to reduce animal suffering and environmental degradation.

I hope that plant meats become so close to animal meat that the complete experience can be replicated, except for the slaughtering. I know some people like the slaughtering part, but that's a small minority.

</comment><comment><USER72> For those of us looking for something similar that's actually in the market _right now_ , what's the closest alternative?

<comment><USER73> I haven't tried Gardein's burgers, but their faux chicken products are excellent so I would expect their burgers to be good too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> No mention of what the price will be. The best way to get converts is to undercut the price of meat.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm a content carnivore but have no problem enjoying vegetarian meals on a regular basis. I don't understand the market for fake meat. Give me a salad or give me a proper steak, but you can keep your slimy tofu substitute. Garden Fresh in Palo Alto, I'm looking at you.

</comment><comment><USER76> Interesting topic. Not a vegetarian here, but when I'm eating outside the home I'll often act as one (no chicken/red meat. Fish/seafood acceptable but I'm not adventurous. Egg dairy okay). I went to a local chain restaurant that opened in a nearby shopping center that serves meat substitute. It's called lord of the fries (does this exist in other countries?). They dont specify on their website what substitute they use. My views (tried in burger form):

\- Beef. This was terrible. Texture was best described as processed mush. Nothing like beef, even the processed type. The taste was worse. it was for some reason sweet. Didn't feel like I was eating beef at all. You'd fool no one with this. The appearance was convincing, but thats all the praise I had for it.

\- Chicken: Actually pretty good. Friend was convinced it was real. It did taste pretty good, actually a little milder than 'real' chicken and without the sometimes unpleasant strong chicken-y taste (my opinion, im referring to the slight offputting taste that old/non-fresh chicken sometimes has). So i could definitely see the utility in this. It still didn't feel indinstinguishable, if you were paying attention I think you can tell the difference. Arbitrarily i'd give it a 90% there.

I havent seen the brands other posters discussed in my supermarket (Australia here). I wonder if meat substitutes are more of an American thing?

A point I wanted to bring up was safety. The experimental nature of these substitutes leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. The primary reason I never went back to the above discussed food outlet despite liking their fake-chicken was because I am unsure what is really inside it. Yes I know its vegetable based. My guess is soy protein? But how do I know that it's safe, for example too much soy milk has been shown to have increased estrogen like hormone and potentially a risk factor for cancers in females, and altered hormonal profile in males. Ideally I'd like to eat something that's been tested and through a strict approval process (treated like a pharmaceutical would get my confidence) to make sure I'm not shooting myself in the foot later. Yes I'm aware the verdict currently out on red meat isn't great either. But between chosing the devil I know vs the devil I don't know, i'd rather know what I'm getting myself into. Interested to hear what others think about this. I admit I'm not as knowledgeable with the regulatory processes for these things. I inherently dont trust companies on face value (they have too much conflict of interest, see tobacco companies or even meat companies for example). I've kept myself basically informed via documentaries, but so far it feels like we're all in an experimental phase.

</comment><comment><USER77> so being allergic to wheat, peas (beans) and parsley (celery, carrots, etc) all this stuff is pretty much poisonous. if they replace the wheat proteins perhaps...

</comment><comment><USER78> Believe it or not, some of us don't want to be vegans. I quite enjoy the taste of meat. I harvest my own by ethically hunting when I have the time. No I do not want a vegan substitute.

<comment><USER79> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947747) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Ahhhh vegans.

Hate meat.

Keep trying to replicate it.

Seems like a bit of a mental disconnect there.

Me?

I'm an omnivore.

</comment><comment><USER81> If they can do it close to zero carbohydrates per serving, I'm in.

If they can't, it's just another over-processed frankenfood greasing the slicks to a diabetic future.

<comment><USER82> Is there any proper (peer reviewed) evidence that carbohydrates are bad?

<comment><USER83> Carbohydrates in excessive amounts, yes. Meats and cheeses are basically the last bastions of non carb-laden foods. Pretty much everything that's not "diet" or meat/cheese is jam packed with carbs for flavor/cost cutting/fat reduction.

And there's plenty of evidence that this is a bad thing.

<comment><USER84> Plenty of low-carb things that aren't meat and cheese. Avocados, nuts, etc.

<comment><USER85> Ive been an atkins follower for... 20 years. I eat mostly meat. The few things I indulge in other than meat are mama lupe low carb tortillas, blue diamond almonds almost all flavors, and some veg like cauliflower because its LC. And cheese. I am a cheese addict. :/ Other than that I don't touch anything from a grocery store. I do make paneer cheese and butter from raw milk I get from a sweet lady that has a small farm 30 minutes from here. Love paneer! And let me tell you if you have NEVER had butter made from RAW MILK by hand your missing out. That garbage in the store called "butter" will seriously make you rethink what the EFF you are eating if you taste raw milk butter you make yourself. It's not a subtle "eh I can kind of tell the difference." Its more of a "HOLY SH!@# What the @#!$ have I been eating?!?!" moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why waste all this money and time designing something that is great the way it is? Give a cow some land, feed it some grass, wait a few months, kill the cow and now you have real beef. Nature intended it to be this way.

<comment><USER86> Nature also intended humans to use intelligence when sharing thoughts with others. If you bother to dig a little deeper than your mindless appetite for cheeseburgers and attempted internet wit, perhaps you'll discover the answer to your own question.

<comment><USER40> There wasn't any Internet wit in there. The problem stems from current livestock farming practices. Fixing that problem is far easier than trying to create lab grown meat, and in the end will be healthier as it doesn't require a change in our biological system.

Do you really believe our body's are going to process 'fake meat' as 'real meat'? I am highly skeptical of that aspect as well. Furthermore, you have taken the very natural element of food out of the picture by growing meat in a lab, this is a very primal element that technology has forgotten.

Plus food is not complicated. Humans have made it complicated over the last 50-60 years. Food has been a basic necessity of life, yet most struggle with every aspect related to food, from acquiring it to cooking it.

Don't get me wrong I see this type of innovation has being very important to long-term space travel or planet colonization but for everyday human consumption I view this as a waste of time and energy.

<comment><USER86> What are you talking about? The burgers are made from plants and natural ingredients, it's not "lab grown meat" did you even read the article?

Further more, if you think "fixing livestock farming practices" is easy, then you're missing the big picture issue where billions of people demand meat on their plate every day for little cost. The environmental cost of the meat industry is not on your average meat eater's mind. Is it on your mind? Doesn't sound like it if you say things like "hey just fix it hmmkay cos I loves my meat".

<comment><USER40> I read the article and made from plants and natural ingredients still requires a lab to get everything in the right state to get laboratory meat. Can you make this your kitchen with easily purchasable appliances? No. Lab produced meat. I can put a cow on my land and have meat pretty easily in a few months.

Personally, I buy a half of cow from a local farmer every year. The cow is raised in open fields that I have visited and feed an all grass diet. It comes out to $6.99 per pound.

Honestly, I don't do this to better then environment, that doesn't cross my mind in the least and probably never well, I do this because it provides better tasting meat and a better quality of life for the cow until the day of the slaughter house.

Meat is necessary to live a strong healthy life. Meat comes from an animal. Killing is necessary to eat meat. You can keep this processed food.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Javascript Mars Clock - <AUTHOR> http://jtauber.github.com/mars-clock/

<comment><USER2> Funny, I was just using those same sources to calculate sunrise and sunset for Curiosity.

I think the latitude for Curiosity is wrong on that Nasa site and in the data file for the downloadable clock they have. I think it should be negative, based on the other sources. I emailed the listed contact to ask.

EDIT- Before I found that site, I was working from an ancient clock written in QBasic, described here: [http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/spacelab/projects/marsclok/ma...](http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/spacelab/projects/marsclok/marsclok.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't use latitude yet for any calculations. The longitude is given in degrees E but the formula requires degrees W so I just subtract it from 360.

</comment></comment><comment> eric-hu Cool concept. A couple static numbers would put these times into more perspective:

\- Length of a Mars day: 24h 37m 22.663s [1] \- Sunrise/sunset at the Curiosity location (?)

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars></comment>


Why Microsoft needs to create another OS fast - <AUTHOR> http://madebywickd.com/why-microsoft-needs-to-create-another-os-fast/

<comment><USER2> Just a rant. Don't bother reading.</comment>


Migrating a 40TB SQL Server Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.tarynpivots.com/post/migrating-40tb-sql-server-database/ <comment><USER2> I think some of the posts here miss a little bit of the context as to why things like this happen in the first place. It's only in the last handful of years that a stack for logging has really become mainstream. Chances are a lot of these types of logging solutions predate that and used whatever persistence technology was readily available. Writing to files on web servers can be a pain, and these logs will have to be queried at some point, so storing it in a database is not a bad idea, especially when better options have only recently become available.

The problem is that relational SQL is bad for logs, but by the time it gets to the scale where it's problematic that there's too much volume in the logs to make anything "easy". Simultaneously there's a lot of business value in that log data that you don't want to lose.

Yes, SQL's a poor fit for logs, but it's a better fit then a lot of other things, including not logging at all. Better solutions exist, but they don't exist in a bubble, and there's a cost to integrating them and migrating to them. A lot of these comments seem to be judging a technology decision based solely on hindsight without realizing that there are legitimate reasons for logging to SQL.

<comment><USER3> I disagree with the premise of your statement. It's typical that a log will be accessed zero times. Collecting, aggregating, and indexing logs is usually a mistake made by people who aren't clear on the use case for the logs.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, the vast majority (95%+) of logs are never read by a human. Therefore, processing it is enormously wasteful. A good architecture will write once and not touch anything until it is needed.

I spent years working on system handling 50+PB/day of logs. No database or ELK can handle that, and even if it did it would be prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER5> Where did you work? CERN?

<comment><USER3> It's adorable when people think scientific computing has the same scale as a Google or Microsoft.

<comment><USER6> Sorry what was that?

[https://www.spie.org/news/photonics- focus/mayjun-2020/square...](https://www.spie.org/news/photonics- focus/mayjun-2020/square-kilometer-array-big-data?SSO=1)

<comment><USER3> Ignoring the fantasy b.s. in the second half of the article, the stuff at the top is exactly what I mean.

A mighty 400 GB/s: i.e. much less than the > 50 PB/day of logs the other person mentioned;

1600 hours of SD video per second: i.e. about 1-2 million concurrent HD streams, or much less than the amount actually served by YouTube.

IBM Summit "world's most powerful supercomputer": < 5000 nodes, i.e. much below the median cell size described in the 2015 Borg paper. Summit is a respectable computer but it would get lost in a corner of a FAANG datacenter.

<comment><USER7> CERN is a correct example. The LHC reportedly generates 1PB per second: [https://home.cern/news/news/computing/cern-data-centre- passe...](https://home.cern/news/news/computing/cern-data-centre- passes-200-petabyte-milestone)

<comment><USER3> If you define "generates" to mean "discards" then yes.

<comment><USER8> It still gets processed though and only all non-interesting events get discarded..

Otherwise the tape alone to store it on would exceed their total operating budget in a day, so they have to be a bit clever about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reads like the most Microsoft or most legacy-on-prem problem ever. Why on earth would you do this, and even then not take the opportunity to do it right while you are migrating anyway? Are you mad?

Well, that was my first reaction anyway. It seems to me that this is more of a 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail' to me; if you are a vendor shop (i.e. Microsoft-only) and you are a DBA and specifically just for MSSQL, then this is probably the best way you could come up with, based on the skills, experience and tools at hand. It does make me wonder if at any point someone thought to ask for help instead of keeping this going.

<comment><USER10> > Why on earth would you do this, and even then not take the opportunity to do > it right while you are migrating anyway?

Because as a database administrator, you often have to solve hosting problems without telling your developers to rewrite all their code.

<comment><USER11> Which speaks to much more dire organizational issues - that nobody can throw up a red flag and say "hold the eff up, we've reached a scale where this is broken and we need to address it."

<comment><USER12> I would say this is actually the norm... In most orgs the leadership is not highly technical and this is always a hard sell.

The best you can hope for after a "hold the eff up" rewrite is for everything to keep working the same "but it's more hardened/scalable/modular/blah blah", and the worst you can hope for is to screw up some critical business process while the kinks are worked out.

Also, there is rarely any incentive for anyone from Joe Developer all the way up to C level to even call for this in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found this article useful, mostly for people who don't have similar experience dealing with large databases. It gives so many reasons on why following this path is such a bad idea. Please people, stop writing custom scripts and then run them untested on the production db. If the company doesn't pay to give you enough disk space to take a proper backup to test just quit or buy it yourself. It will save you 11 months and many hours of sleep.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've done migrations of several databases with ~20TB of data before. Assuming you're data is immutable, A much easier approach than what they did is to restore a backup of the database onto a new machine. Since you don't have to worry about serving production traffic you can have the machine go full throttle on performing the migration. When the migration has finished you have to copy the new data that came in during the migration into the new database which isn't too bad.

When I've done this with 20TB DBs, it usually took several days to complete. That's much better than the 11 months mentioned in the blog post.

<comment><USER15> I'm late to the party, but he mentioned this in the article. The new server didn't have enough space to hold both the backup and the newly restored database, so that approach didn't work.

Quote: "We're a very lean shop when it comes to hardware, and this is by far our largest chunk of data we have to store, so there wasn't a place anywhere on the network to store a 33-38TB full backup temporarily, while it was being restored to a server."

As others have mentioned in the thread, a lot of the problems seem to have been solvable by just buying/attaching more storage, even if only temporarily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems concerning that they would be hanging onto traffic logs for that long. Seems like a massive PII / data breach liability.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, it's questionable why a company needs to save raw traffic logs for years.

<comment><USER18> You say that but people were pretty upset that Google couldn't confirm if anybody exploited the G+ security bug past the last two weeks that it was discovered.

<comment><USER19> +1 for them. Pretty cynical, I know. But imagine the request for legal discovery...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _" We realized that the original daily table structure wasn't ideal. If we > needed to query something over several days or months, it was terrible — > lots of UNION ALLs or loops to crawl through days or even months at a time > was slow."_

Seems to me rather storing traffic logs in an SQL database is a very bad idea, especially if you have 40TB of it. Anybody can explain why SQL database makes sense for large time series data? Why not just dump it into linear files?

<comment><USER10> > Anybody can explain why SQL database makes sense for large time series data?

Let's say, just to say, that you have effectively free licensing for Microsoft SQL Server (because you already own the licenses in question), and you have staff who know that platform well.

Sometimes it's easier to use the tools you already have rather than go acquire a new platform to achieve a goal.

As with anytime you choose a persistence layer, you're accumulating technical debt the instant you make the choice. Over time, if better persistence layers become available, you have to make a judgment call about when it makes sense to change the code, versus when it makes sense to do maintenance work on the persistence layer.

<comment><USER21> >and you have staff who know that platform well.

People often ignore how important this is, especially for a small team like Stack Overflow appears to have. A new platform requires training and/or a lack of productivity as employees learn the new system. It requires developer time to convert over any work designed to use the old system. It makes hiring more difficult because now you will either want someone with the knowledge of both your systems which greatly shrinks down your pool of potential hires or new employees will need to learn a new system on the job which increases the ramp time up for any hires. Maybe this doesn't fit the textbook definition of technical debt, but it is still a real and ongoing cost that comes with making a decision to switch tools.

<comment><USER22> Case in point, one of my favorite system architecture/design blog posts:

Providence: Failure Is Always An Option

[https://jasonpunyon.com/blog/2015/02/12/providence- failure-i...](https://jasonpunyon.com/blog/2015/02/12/providence-failure-is- always-an-option/)

Which has one of my favorite quotes about scope creep:

Kevin and I have essentially become allergic to big projects. We attempt to practice "What can get done by Friday?" driven development. Keeping things small precludes a whole class of errors like "We need a new datastore", 'cause that ain't gettin' done by Friday. It's hard to sink a week on something you weren't supposed to be working on when all you have is a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> According to their pricing page, a 50TB SSD from Nimbus costs $12,500. That would have been worth the expense in DBA time alone, right?

Edit: added the link. [https://nimbusdata.com/products/exadrive/pricing/](https://nimbusdata.com/products/exadrive/pricing/)

<comment><USER10> > That would have been worth the expense in DBA time alone, right?

You're assuming the DBA did nothing else during the project's timeline, and that's not likely the case. A lot of work in projects like this is just letting the batch job run while you keep an eye on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If they want to migrate to something else, they need to have a look at ClickHouse. When switching from Elasticsearch to ClickHouse 1.5 years ago, I reduced my storage needs by 20, gained SQL, performance, and a ton of analytics features.

In hindsight I would say that Elasticsearch is for full text queries, and if you are using it for something else (access logs) there is a good chance this is the wrong tool for the job.

</comment><comment><USER25> I worked on a system that generated around 500GB-1TB of log data monthly. An estimation done way before it was put in production said that it would generate less than 100GB/month, so the DB storage was sized accordingly (~6TB, half of which were used for other data). A change that came later in the project (on a different system) was disregarded, but it increased the application traffic by a factor of 5, and the space estimation was not updated. So it was an interesting surprise when the space started filling up way faster after the go live.

To make the issue even more interesting, the system was mission-critical at five nines and the log data was sensitive + had a legal requirement to be kept online for at least one year, for queries. So deletion was not an option and the migration had to be done online.

Fortunately the system used Oracle DB and the log table was partitioned by date. Unfortunately, a partition kept three months of data, so it could reach the full amount of free space on the DB. There was no easy way to add storage to that server, but we did have some space on another one, with lower speed (the prod DB was RAID10, the other one was RAID1)

In the end we had to create a new partition scheme, with monthly partitions stored in different tablespaces, create another table with the same structure and switch it with the online one (a couple of seconds of downtime), backup the database and restore it on the slow storage, then delete the old table structure and tablespaces/datafiles to free the space on production.

A procedure was created to detach the oldest partition from the production database and reattach it to the slower database (where we also implemented compression at a later stage). This meant that the query system needed changes to work with both databases, but at least the system was up.

The good thing was that in Oracle you can detach partitions and tablespaces and transport them to a different database without downtime. I don't know MS SQL enough, but I understand from the migration procedure that this is not possible there. I guess they did that manual daily partitioning by table, but they did not store each table in its own datafile, so it can be moved as a whole (maybe with downtime, but at least it would free the space faster).

</comment><comment><USER26> Bulk copy is about the fastest you could do in C# or PowerShell, but you would still be moving a ton of data back and forth over the wire between the DB server and the "jump" server running the script.

I would have tried a hybrid approach with the dynamic SQL one. Dynamic SQL sprocs like that don't seem to generate good query plans (at least not with a lot of prodding) in my experience, but if the dynamically generated SQL was done in the C# or PowerShell side rather than a sproc I feel the query analyzer would be less confused about individual queries coming out of the scripts.

The only other advice experience from a past life I have to offer is that I often saw better performance from T-SQL MERGE than T-SQL INSERT FROM. Dynamically generating MERGE statements from C# is not fun, but in that past experience it would give the best results for single-server data migrations like this. (Multi-server there's not much you can do beyond Bulk Copy.)

</comment><comment><USER27> This is all the reasons why logs must have a limited retention period (usually 1 to 3 months).

Then nobody has to waste 11 months of their life trying to retain and migrate TB of old logs that nobody needs, with no storage to do so and no backup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Storing web logs in a SQL database is a pretty bad plan.

<comment><USER28> Combined with _" The database was initially designed to have a single table for each day."_ Oy.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, if they do that they might as well shard databases and not have this problem in the first place (not that there aren't better tools)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So this is all interesting from a technical point of view but from a business point of view it makes no sense. The amount of time that you had a talented DB dev working on a project that could have been solved by spending ~25K on a new system seems silly. Bring the new system up and move the data over the network doing the conversion as part of the move. 100TB over a 10G network is ~22H theoretical transfer rate.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think 11 months is absolutely crazy, and the context for that is that I earn for living by selling my database migration software [1]. They could have used my software to copy up to 16 tables in parallel for a mere $3k. They could have copied a few hundred tables at a time, compare source and target to make sure everything is fine, then drop and compact. As more disk space frees up, they could have moved more and more data in one go. If the data needed to be transformed much, they could have wrote views to pull the data in a proper format and creating tables on the target with that data as they go. True, spinning drives would kill performance, but my tool is easily reaching 50MB/s on SSDs and spinning drives wouldn't add months. I mean, when you have off the shelf products doing what you need, spending so much time fighting with custom scripts is and odd choice. This is really not meant to advertise, I'm just baffled by how much effort was needed for this project.

[1] [https://www.spectralcore.com/fullconvert](https://www.spectralcore.com/fullconvert)

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow.

I really wana know if they even compress the log data in there database.

40 TB of logs in a postgresql, like that can't be efficient?

I would probably just have a scaling blob store and would store it away. That has to be much faster, simpler and cheaper.

<comment><USER33> They mentioned in the article that they are using SQL Servers clustered columnstore index. This is a poor name, as it's more than just an index. CCI in SQL Server is an on-disk storage format that is a highly compressed columnstore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I run a 30TB MySql server on EC2. We raid 0 multiple EBS volumes for space and iops.

It is completely unmanageable - I inherited it. We're moving data out, but slowly. This DB houses PII for tens of millions of users.

<comment><USER35> So you're paying roughly 72,000 per year? Or are you using SSDs?

<comment><USER34> gp2. master and multiple read slaves. we we pay millions per year for AWS and support.

<comment><USER35> Can I submit a proposal?

<comment><USER34> Sure

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > There were lots of reasons this needed to be done, one being tech debt. We > realized that the original daily table structure wasn't ideal. If we needed > to query something over several days or months, it was terrible — lots of > UNION ALLs or loops to crawl through days or even months at a time was slow.

Maybe i'm missing it, but there doesn't seem to be any discussion of the result. _How_ much faster was it after the change? Was it 11-months-worth-of- dev-time faster?

<comment><USER10> > Maybe i'm missing it, but there doesn't seem to be any discussion of the > result.

Sometimes you have to stop writing after 9,000 words. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm in the process of migrating a ~5.4TB time series database. This is also slow/painful. I wonder if there are any general-purpose/open source tools that could help with these sorts of tasks (I've had to roll my own job queue/ETL worker script infrastructure to manage this). In my case, it looks like the full migration will take around 10 calendar days assuming no issues come up.

<comment><USER27> The trick is to find a common baseline format, like CSV or JSON, then you can leverage the bazillion of existing tools.

The second trick is to split the data in manageable chunks (a day of logs for example), then you can transfer one unit at a time to the new system.

Dump a chunk on one side, load on the other side, verify it's good. It will still take a while but you have a good indication of progress and don't need to start all over if one chunk fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm baffled with the fact that they were toying with the production database in the production machine. That sounds incredibly dangerous

<comment><USER10> > I'm baffled with the fact that they were toying with the production database > in the production machine. That sounds incredibly dangerous

As Taryn stated repeatedly in the post, they simply didn't have enough infrastructure to have development spare copies of this. They didn't even have enough infrastructure to take a backup.

<comment><USER39> Which is obviously nuts. If your developers are ever spending months of their time to work around infrastructure limitations, that means you need more hardware. You could build a new server to handle this job easily for much less than the cost of this person's time.

<comment><USER40> Unfortunately, the exchange rate for converting slivers of dev time into hardware is... Unfavorable. And up until two days ago[0], Stack Overflow was running on fumes - shedding staff, perks, equipment to keep the ship afloat. I know of folks who spent months scrambling to get new servers before the old ones died, and... Didn't quite make it.

Given the situation, investing time into making do probably seemed like a much better bet than hoping for a windfall with which to buy equipment.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23976881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23976881)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm sitting in a hotel waiting for 22 TB of data to copy over, so I could not have read this piece with more interest. Moving data in these quantities is like pouring tar, and it's always great to hear war stories from people who have done it. It is always more painful than message board theory would suggest.

</comment><comment><USER42> Someone really needs to make an anomaly filter for logs so data storage becomes miniscule for the purpose of anomaly detection, one Jacky way would be to preload a compression dict with bad strings from the binary, another would be to use something like hyperminhash to spit out low similarity strings.

</comment><comment><USER43> I can't imagine why he'd use LINQPad when it's possible to get two SQL Servers to talk directly to each other. Just configure a linked server and write an INSERT statement pulling the data from the other server.

</comment><comment><USER44> Hah. My first thought was, 'what kind of idiot lets a file get to be 44TB... Then I realized who it was. Nice to see that even StackOverflow had an issue like this.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm surprised why the author didn't think of availability group earlier? maybe i miss sth from the post?

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder how effective it would move data using spark? Have anyone considered that!

</comment><comment><USER47> any reason why creating a table per day / month i stead of using one table partitioned by day / month?

</comment><comment><USER47> any reason for creating a table per day / month instead of a single table partitioned by day / month?</comment>


Across U.S. Companies, Tax Rates Vary Greatly - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/25/sunday-review/corporate-taxes.html

<comment><USER2> This is both an amazingly well-done infographic and full of fascinating information.</comment>


Autoscaling Tiered Cloud Storage in Anna [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/copyconstruct/library/blob/master/storage/coordination/Papers/anna2.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The new, improved Anna running on Kubernetes in AWS now outperforms ElastiCache and DynamoDB when it comes to _efficiency_ (last year it outperformed Redis in terms of pure perf)

See: [https://twitter.com/copyconstruct/status/1165423688847478784](https://twitter.com/copyconstruct/status/1165423688847478784)</comment>


Will Silicon Valley Run Out of Data Center Space? - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/08/12/a-data-center-shortage-for-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> Given the seismic hazards, it seems extremely foolish to build data centers anywhere in the Bay Area. I'm reminded of a funny exchange I had while contracting at SixApart, back when they still ran LiveJournal.

"Do you guys ever worry about what would happen in a major earthquake, since your stuff is hosted in San Francisco?"

"Oh, we have a colo in Oakland"</comment>


BBC iPlayer European Launch Disappoints Brits Abroad - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/28/bbc-iplayer-european-launch-disappoints-brits-abroad/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps they were wooed by appstore sales figures. The iPad is also locked down enough for those who want to have complete control over their IP.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seriously? iPad only? Show me a statistic that shows more people use the iPad to watch tv online than their computers.

<comment><USER4> Probably because a) it's easy to restrict access to Europe with the app store and b) it's easy to charge money using the app store. I guess BBC doesn't have their own system in place yet to do subscriptions etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's awkward anyway. The four BBC channels and some others are all available on cable here yet iPlayer can't be used because of geographical restrictions. Such nonsense.

<comment><USER6> My cable provider (Comcast) does not provide these channels, so the only way I can get BBC content is to listen to the radio versions online or tune in for an hour a day or so on BBC America (which really sucks).

I would love to just be able to stream BBC video all day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I understand the app store argument, the money waiting to be made from an international BBC iPlayer service equivalent to that offered in the UK, largely compensate the "hassle" of the web/desktop market.

The BBC Formula1 coverage is extraordinary, I would pay good money for it!

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds pretty nice. Together with an AppleTV and Airplay, it makes it really easy to watch BBC stuff on our TV, if only the AppleTV was available in the Netherlands..

</comment><comment><USER8> Why an iPad app? I live in the US, but always thought that iPlayer was a web app/site.

<comment><USER9> It is: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv>

I think this app is the first one that makes it possible to buy content when abroad, though.

From that link, I also get the impression that iPlayer still has a fairly nerdy image. The most viewed shows are a documentary about mathematics "the code" and a repeat of an episode of Sherlock; both beat an episode of Eastenders.</comment></comment>


Why we chose MobX over Redux for spectacle editor - <AUTHOR> http://formidable.com/blog/2016/06/02/why-we-chose-mobx-over-redux-for-spectacle-editor/ <comment><USER2> This site's fading-loading transition effect just sucks.

Reminds me of IE transitions. [http://www.simplehtmlguide.com/pagetransitions.php](http://www.simplehtmlguide.com/pagetransitions.php)</comment>