Google, It Wasn't Broke - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/21/google-it-wasnt-broke/ <comment><USER2> Huh, I think it's a brilliant idea. Every site (including here) using a voting system nowadays. And from data collection point of view it will possibly help google enhance its results. And unlike techcrunch author, I didn't find it annoying or complicated at all.. It's funny how people's perceptions are..

</comment><comment><USER3> Feels like New Coke to me.

They're already using click-based metrics to tweak PageRank. I don't see how one additional data point will radically improve anything.

Worse, in stealing features it shows they're out of ideas for their core product even while it doesn't need them.

New Coke.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google already has the terrible burden of moderating _YOUTUBE COMMENTS_. What made them think it would be a good idea to set up a peanut gallery for _every unique URL_?

<comment><USER5> This was my immediate thought. Going half way from search to youtube comments is a drastic step down/back.

Even in his screenshot you can see he gave the up arrow to everybody who gave him a compliment, without regard to merit, and he down-arrowed the only comment that was more than "uh yay blog!".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before clicking I thought they mean Gmail.

<comment><USER7> You're not liking the new looks either? When I signed in, I thought: Where did my email go?

I have become quite accustomed to glancing at the UI to figure out what's going on with my email. I was supremely confused for a minute.

<comment><USER8> You can always revert back to the old theme, though I have to admit, their default theme was a bit caustic to the eyes.

On second thought, maybe it's like that to encourage people to look for where they can change the themes.

<comment><USER9> The whitespace is still different. I'm amazed at how used to the UI I got -- I'm finding it quite disconcerting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As I understood it, the search results that you change are only local to you. Other people don't really see them.

Because of that, I think Google can encourage the behavior where people are sending links relevant to themselves up to the their front page in an honest way. If they click things up that have no relevance to themselves, they only screw up their own searches.

So if you have millions of people sending things relevant to themselves up the list, Google is basically gathering data about what the human 'gold standard' for a particular search query is (augmented by machine sorting first).

In information retrieval, one of the hard things is to know whether you've done a better job of returning search results or not, since a gold standard dataset is hard to come by and time consuming to produce.

Here, I think Google is simply using a mechanism where they're aligning people's self-interest to create accurate data they can use to compare their search algorithm tweaks.

All in all, a good thing. Even better if you can 'merge' search results from others that you trust..say your friends. I wouldn't mind merging my search results with _why's. More complexity that way, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> This whole system relies on something that hasn't been demonstrated on the internet; human honesty - I see every web page owner leaving the comments of greatness for their sites; and every competitor doing the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a startup founder, I see this as a bit worrisome. What if you got a digg bury brigade to start clicking on the 'Remove' button or posting nasty comments about your brand.

We'll be keeping a close eye on this.

<comment><USER12> "Re-ranked search results, however, are only seen by the signed-in user and do not affect other people's results."

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/154310/google_adds_customizat...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/154310/google_adds_customization_feature_to_internet_search.html)

Nasty comments, well, that one does share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So is everyone seeing this now?

</comment><comment><USER13> Soon there will be another post on TC saying "this is teh awesomest thing evar!!!11!!".

</comment><comment><USER14> are they saying google is a perfect product such that innovation and progress are no longer necessary?

google obviously doesn't want to get leapfrogged in "technology" in the one area that is its proven moneymaker. it's going to continue to roll out "new" features to stay ahead (and stay relevant).

did techcrunch cry this much when google rolled out the autocomplete searchsuggest thing?</comment>


Palantir S-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm <comment><USER2> The intro (letter from the CEO) is interesting, distancing themselves from Silicon Valley:

 _" The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.

Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector's values and commitments.

From the start, we have repeatedly turned down opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data. Other technology companies, including some of the largest in the world, have built their entire businesses on doing just that.

Software projects with our nation's defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace. For many consumer internet companies, our thoughts and inclinations, behaviors and browsing habits, are the product for sale. The slogans and marketing of many of the Valley's largest technology firms attempt to obscure this simple fact."_

<comment><USER3> Isn't their entire business based on collecting, mining, and selling data to government intelligence agencies?

<comment><USER4> It's not. They don't have any data of their own. They offer a data integration platform and then a slate of apps on top of that platform for institutions to perform analysis on their own data. They do make a few plugins that mine social media and other "open" sources but have to do a funny ownership dance so it's the institution that is breaching the TOS rather than them.

<comment><USER3> > a funny ownership dance

Oh well ok then, they don't do any data collection or mining, they just sell the tools to empower three-letter agencies to do it more effectively. Conscience is clear then!

<comment><USER5> Genuinely curious: at what point is it "okay" to create data analysis tools that might be used by 3-letter agencies?

I imagine that before Palantir came around, the analysts at these agencies did what most other analysts anywhere do and used Excel to create sophisticated pivot tables when working on {insert defense operation}.

Where does it stop being okay? To the extent that it even matters, Palantir appears to at least _own up_ to the fact that they are used by governments.

<comment><USER6> It stops being okay when the analysis tools are built specially for the 3 letter agencies instead of for another socially useful purpose.

<comment><USER5> Per this S-1 filing, Palantir appears to be used by the private sector as well.

> socially useful purpose

Who decides what's "socially useful"?

<comment><USER7> Their early investors were the CIA. I know the point you're trying to make but Palantir isn't really in the gray when they have been basically a branch of the spy agencies since the beginning

<comment><USER5> Sure, but their current operations appear to be more diversified than that -> [https://www.palantir.com/solutions/](https://www.palantir.com/solutions/).

Even per their S-1, their market sizing shows "Commercial" to be a substantial proportion of their aspirations:

> Commercial. Our estimate of the TAM in the commercial sector is $56 billion.

> Government. We estimate the TAM in the government sector, including > government agencies in the United States, its allies, and in other countries > abroad whose values align with liberal democracies, is $63 billion.

<comment><USER7> Well sure they point to a theoretical market that's big but it isn't where their revenue comes from now

> The company's top three customers — which aren't disclosed — together > represented 28% of the company's revenue for 2019. Its top twenty customers > represented 67% of total revenues, with each one of those customers > averaging $24.8 million in revenue.

They admit they count every single government sub-agency as a different customer (their example is NIH and the CDC would count separately despite the same parent organization) so the top 25 is basically just governments. There is incredible revenue concentration there.

<comment><USER8> FYI mrgordon.....

Metropolis got deprecated (read renamed) Foundry because they kept screwing up their sales and decided a rebrand would be more effective on their commercial side.

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences- between-...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-differences-between-the- Palantir-Metropolis-and-Gotham-platforms)

per someone who runs tech on the commercial side,

Foundry started as our attempt to create scalable process and rigor around data integration. There's a longer story to tell here, but the short version is that we started out with off-the-shelf orchestration systems for running jobs on a schedule (think Jenkins and Rundeck — things that were more robust than cron). At some level, that worked, and we had to figure out how to scale it, leading to a combination of HDFS, Rundeck/Jenkins, a git repo, and a common language for mutating data.

<comment><USER7> Great info

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These financials are awful for a software business. Gross margin of 67%, even with pilot costs lumped into Sales&Marketing. If you add these pilot costs to COR, you'd get better numbers manufacturing furniture.

\-- 2019 Financials ('000s)

Revenue: 742,555

Cost of Revenue: 242,373

Gross Profit: 500,182

Sales and Marketing: 450,120

\-- Sales and Marketing includes pilot costs

"Sales and marketing costs primarily include salaries, stock-based compensation expense, and benefits for personnel involved in executing on pilots and performing other brand building activities, as well as third-party cloud hosting services for our pilots, marketing and sales event-related costs, and allocated overhead. The Company generally charges all such costs to sales and marketing expense in the period incurred."

<comment><USER10> > These financials are awful for a software business.

That's cuz they're not. They are a hybrid services business that also sells "cloud computing". The are very comparable to Cloudera - they have a proprietary analytics platform that they then customize specifically for the workload. They then charge an implementation fees, on-going "maintenance", and a subscription fee for the "software" (which is basically a highly customized single tenant).

> Gross margin of 67%

Which is still better than IBM or any professional services firm could ever achieve from the government.

> If you add these pilot costs to COR, you'd get better numbers manufacturing > furniture.

If you added S&M costs to revenue attributed to a multi-year subscription fee, you'd be called an idiot. Hence why they are probably not in there (could be wrong...we don't know for sure).

I do not like Palantir in the slightest, but this assessment is kinda off.

<comment><USER11> Their private valuation is more SaaS like, though. Revenue of 724 million, last private valuation of 20 billion, which is a 26x revenue multiplier.

IBM, on the other hand, has a 2x revenue multiplier.

Maybe this isn't the best metric to use, and Palantir does have better margins, but I just can't see these numbers being worth their current valuation as a services business.

<comment><USER10> > Maybe this isn't the best metric to use

You're right. Discounted Cash Flow is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It will be interesting to see how many of these IPOing company employees move this year and next to avoid CA capital gains tax. (Asana, Airbnb, Doordash, Lemonade are others).

California taxes capital gains at 13%, and 9 states have none (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming). As an employee, you could save $130,000 on your $1 million dollar gain.

That pays for an awesome rental house in Seattle or the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. It will be a lot more tempting since you can just ride out covid for a year or so and keep working remotely like you are now. You can time this to your liking since the trigger is you selling the stock, so you can move in 2021 and sell in 2022. Realistically having 1 successful IPO is very lucky, maximizing the return makes a lot of sense.

And I think this is much a much sharper decision than for public company employees. You will have been accumulating stock for 4-10 years and it's been completely illiquid. You get this big hammer of a tax bill when you sell, and it's very tempting to optimize it. This is always happened a little but in covid times, it seems like it will be 10x of the usual. Expect a lot of complaints from Seattle and Austin :-).

<comment><USER13> > It will be interesting to see how many of these IPOing company employees > move this year and next to _attempt to_ avoid CA capital gains tax.

(added _attempt to_ )

If you worked in California while you were earning that stock / options, they'll come after you for the taxes.

California knows. They know that people want to try and have tried to dodge these taxes. They will find you and get their pound of flesh.

<comment><USER7> If your stock options were exercised, you now are a shareholder and you pay taxes in the state of residence at the time of sale. If you don't live in California (for real) then they aren't going to be able to tax you on the sale.

RSUs with a double trigger on IPO will still be taxed on vesting as if you were in CA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to compare palantir's risk factor on open source vs pivotals[1]. Palantir takes a defensive posture saying basically that their ability to not contribute to open source without running afoul their licenses is important:

 _Our platforms contain "open source" software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business._

Where as pivotal says that being an active part of a vibrant open source community is crucial:

 _If open-source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, or our own internal programmers do not continue to use, contribute to and enhance the open-source technologies that we rely on, the market appeal of our offering may be reduced, which could harm our reputation, diminish our brand and result in decreased revenue._

Like this makes sense, palantir is a closed source first kinda company and obviously a different value to its customers than pivotal. Kinda interesting to see that manifestation in the risk factors though.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1574135/000104746918...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1574135/000104746918002061/a2234898zs-1.htm)

<comment><USER15> Here is Palantir's Github presence, with almost 200 open-source projects: [https://github.com/palantir](https://github.com/palantir)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The CEO's salary is nothing to sneeze at:

\- $2.2M in salary ($225k base + "stipend" \+ "parental benefit" \+ "salary adjustment")

\- Bonus of $21k (?)

\- $2.5M in stock

\- $11.3M in options

\- $25k in "other compensation)

All total $16M.

The COO got $26M.

This is all "compensation paid for the year ended Dec 31, 2019".

<comment><USER17> Ooh, can every employee with kids get a "parental benefit"? That seems like a good policy.

<comment><USER16> It does say "in accordance with our standard parental benefits policy", but I have no idea if that's standard for executives or standard for every employee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like they're trying to capitalize on the COVID bump. Only 250 customers? They're at the mercy of probably 5 of them.

<comment><USER19> From a TechCrunch piece[0] a few days ago based on leaked financials:

> The company's top three customers — which aren't disclosed — together > represented 28% of the company's revenue for 2019. Its top twenty customers > represented 67% of total revenues, with each one of those customers > averaging $24.8 million in revenue.

[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/21/leaked- palantir-s-1-shows-...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/21/leaked- palantir-s-1-shows-company-has-125-customers-after-17-years/)

<comment><USER20> This probably assumes customers as the DoD as one single entity, when in fact they probably have dozens of individual contracts from different sub departments and with different timelines. Which makes it very different from the typical SaaS where the top costumer can just unsubscribe.

<comment><USER19> They count them each separately.

> Palantir notes that customers from different parts of the same government > department or company are considered separately (Palantir's example is that > the CDC and NIH are both part of the Department of Health and Human > Services, but would be billed separately and are thus considered separate > customers for the purpose of its calculation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone explain how the voting structure works?

There's a "class F" of shares which are held only by Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Peter Thiel, with each owning 1/3\. Class F has "voting power representing up to approximately 49.999999%".

Does that mean that basically Karp, Cohen, and Thiel have full voting control?

<comment><USER22> Yes. They're pretty explicit about this:

> So long as our Founders [...] meet a minimum ownership threshold on the > applicable record date for a vote of the stockholders[...], these Founders > will effectively control all matters submitted to a vote of the stockholders > for the foreseeable future. This could delay, defer, or prevent a change of > control, merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our > assets that our other stockholders support. Conversely, this concentrated > control could allow our Founders to consummate a transaction that our other > stockholders do not support.

<comment><USER21> Thanks! I know many companies get away with it, but I still find it odd for shareholders to not have any control. They'll own it but have no say in how the company is run.

<comment><USER23> Most investors are passive anyway. If you don't like how the company is run you can push down the price by selling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> OT but: If this wave of (interesting to HN) IPO filings continue, someone ought to create something to make these documents a bit more readable.

Some snazzy CSS selectors + js magic + pdf.js something something perhaps? Because SEC doesn't provide nice PDF's, right? I haven't found anything at least.

<comment><USER25> Tbh entire S-1 file should be a json document with some defined schema (or XML if you are into retro computing)

<comment> nv-vn I know for earnings reports the SEC uploads XBRL documents to EDGAR. Weird that they don't do the same for S-1s.

<comment><USER24> Apparently that's voluntary for IPO S-1s [0]:

> Financial statements in XBRL also are required as exhibits to Securities Act > registration statements that contain financial statements, such as Form S-1 > (except registration statements filed in connection with an initial public > offering).

And by the looks of the search result pages for Apple [1] and Palantir [2], it looks like they haven't filed it that way (the "Interactive Data" label is missing):

[0]: [https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2018/33-10514.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2018/33-10514.pdf) [1]: [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0) [2]: [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001321655&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think they will be a good investment. The way the wind is blowing, people will demand a more "hands-off" approach to day to day policing. We will still demand safety in our schools, streets, and public spaces. It can be sold in such a way that we are "saving lives" by using tax revenues to stop putting so many cops on the streets and instead using surveillance tech and automation to bring people to justice.

I'm not saying I want this. But in my eyes it is the inevitable next step to prevent law enforcement events that end in death while still being able to stop criminal activity sometimes before it happens.

Tech eats the world and old methods of policing are ripe for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER27> Slightly OT, but I'd love to have a "tweakable" mutual fund. I'd love to cut out companies like Palantir and Facebook and sectors like O&G from my primarily index-based portfolio. Without being stuck with other people's decisions (and high ER) in an ESG fund or managing a whole bunch of individual stocks.

I suppose there must be a reason why we don't.

<comment><USER28> Complexity. Indexes are easy to manage.

You could short them to the same weighted percentage that they exist in the index but that's of course not completely simple and you have to pay fees for the shorted stock. If O&G had a convenient ETF (I don't know if there is or not, I imagine there is), you could short that rather than individual companies.

Shorting Facebook would be... interesting for your returns.

<comment><USER29> People want ESG, but turns out they want returns too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My employer was a customer of theirs for a few years. Horrible service, our support pushed down in favor of their government contracts, etc. Grapevine says that they do some pretty shady stuff for the gov as well.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can someone please tell me how this makes Palantir look bad so I can go virtue signal to my coworkers about how much they're failing?

</comment><comment> etc-hosts I enjoyed listening to [https://player.fm/series/this-machine-kills/ep-5-the- palanti...](https://player.fm/series/this-machine-kills/ep-5-the-palantir- reformation)

</comment><comment><USER32> Definitely seems like these companies are trying to cash in before the coming crash.

<comment><USER33> 2022: "Taking Palantir private for $420 a share. Funding secured."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Class F stock has a variable number of votes? Is that a standard way to keep control amongst the founders?

<comment><USER11> No, it's pretty novel. The big 3 perpetually have 49.9% voting rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> With all these companies going public it is obvious they are planning for a crash after the election

<comment><USER36> This shouldn't have been downvoted and here is why: there is a mad dash for liquidity by corporations who expect to have cash problems Q42020 through ??. You're seeing it in S1's, credit-line drawdowns and bond issuance.

An infrastructure bill _was_ badly needed in Q2/Q3 to have impact in time. As it stands now it will hit too late and another round of USGOB aid will be needed by companies small and large. This will happen regardless the extent of fall and winter quarantine needs.

The inability of Congress and the White House to put politics aside is going to cost American workers and companies dearly. It will not have been worth the political gains either side expects.

There was never a time in this Country's history that bipartisanship was this needed, at least since WWII. The failure defies words because even in less critical times names like Baker, Johnson, Dole, Rayburn, O'Neill, Rostenkowski and others - some corrupt - put self-interest aside briefly to conduct the country's business.

We are to blame by the way. The HN community is comprised of many bright, successful and/or wise folks from all political spectrums. We're either caught in the partisanship, or we're silent and checked out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They are a tech consulting company masquerading as a startup. The platforms don't exactly work without a shit ton of Forward Deployed Engineers trying desperately to make their platforms work with their client's tech systems.

</comment><comment><USER37> "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires."

Wait, what did they do or know about organizing society ?

</comment><comment><USER38> Holy cow. They lost a net of $579M last year.

<comment><USER19> What's truly incredible is how much is spent on Sales/Marketing. It's not like they're marketing to millions of small businesses or hundreds of millions of consumers.

They have 125 customers. Even assuming everey single one of them came online last year, we're looking at millions of dollars each?

That's a lot of…bribes? Idk even know what could cost that much.

<comment><USER39> I read about some company recently (unsure whether it was Palantir - in fact Improbable is ringing more of a bell) that they put a huge amount of engineering effort into proofs-of-concept for many potential customers. Effectively half-solving every potential customer's problems could plausibly consume such a huge budget and could plausibly be labelled "sales and marketing".

<comment><USER40> The company I work at follows that queue. Engineering might not build anything custom for new clients, since it's a software platform product, but Sales Engineers invest heavily into building turn-key solutions to their clients' problems using our platform. I just finished a project allowing our own sales people to duplicate their efforts into the actual system once the customer is converted and they estimated that simple copy operation would save them 500 hours a quarter. That's a ton of investment for a company of my employer's size. If we're talking about a company like Plantir, whose primary engineering workforce is, "Implementations Consultants", then that absolutely makes sense. Especially since those are government contracts, which can attach strings to the proposal requiring proof the bidder is capable of doing what they promise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not a lawyer. What % of the body of text for a S-1 is standardized and copy pasted from a template? Just curious.

<comment><USER9> Similar structure usually, here's a few others by Wilson Sonsini:

\- Palantir: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm)

\- Cloudflare: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519222176/d735023ds1.htm)

\- Zoom: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/000119312519099813/d642624ds1a.htm)

<comment><USER41> The statements on never having paid and not intending to pay dividends is definitely a copy-paste :) I find the links in the summary to be valuable to check: letter from founders, use of proceeds, executive compensation, and summary with revenue&profit numbers. The CureVac S-1 [1] had lots of interesting details on the unique technology, methods, approach and early results, etc.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1809122/000110465920...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1809122/000110465920086354/tm2016252-11_f1.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The important thing to realize is that they're a services company, not a software company. A services company that has lots of people who use software to deliver (somewhat) useful conclusions from data.

I don't think they'll ever be "stamping out software" with its associated margins like a SaaS or traditional software company.

</comment><comment><USER43> This might be a stupid question, but how long does it take to write an S-1 prospectus, and how many people are generally involved? They are always so long and with tiny font!

<comment> nv-vn I'd guess that a lot of the delay comes from auditing and then getting someone at the SEC to actually read your filing before publishing it. In terms of how many people are involved, this might help give you an idea: "We have engaged Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC ("Morgan Stanley"), Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Allen & Company LLC, RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Jefferies LLC, HSBC Securities (USA), Inc., SG Americas Securities, LLC, CIBC World Markets Corp., Scotia Capital (USA) Inc., and MUFG Securities Americas Inc. as our financial advisors."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't remember _ever_ seeing this many S-1 listings on HN. Are they just a new thing? Did I miss them before? Is there something large happening in the market?

EDIT:

\- If this first ddg result is to be believed there are 20% more IPOs than last year [https://stockanalysis.com/ipos/2020-list/](https://stockanalysis.com/ipos/2020-list/)

\- There's actually a thread on this, so perhaps downvote this and read/comment/speculate there [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265456)

<comment><USER45> I've seen a theory that companies are trying to get IPO'd now, in anticipation of a weaker market in the future.

I think this theory tends to be based on the idea that the current state of the stock market does not reflect reality for many businesses (and the economy as a whole), nor their future prospects, and that a correction is imminent.

Obviously this is speculation, but it's interesting because someone probably does know - there's probably some overlap in the advisory banks for these IPOs, and they must have some idea of the thinking of the executive teams of these companies.

<comment><USER46> My thoughts exactly. I wonder if businesses are looking for or needing funding, and the stock market is the one place that looks fine.</comment></comment></comment>


Jony Ive Designs One-of-a-Kind Red Mac Pro for Charity Auction - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/25/jony-ive-designs-one-of-a-kind-red-mac-pro-for-product-red-charity-auction/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the items being auctioned for (RED) in a month. Jony Ive and Marc Newson have had a hand in designing them. Here is a list of (almost) all of the items: [http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2013/null-n09014.html](http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2013/null-n09014.html)

Other items include a pair of Apple solid rose gold earpods, a (RED) Steinway & Sons grand piano, a solid aluminium desk, a Leica camera, an authentic Stormtrooper helmet, and a thermal window for a space shuttle.

</comment><comment><USER3> There wasn't really much to 'design', was there? You take an existing product and color it in red or shall I say (RED). It's awesome there can be money raised for charity this way, but PLEASE let's not call this 'designed' really...

<comment><USER4> Ive designed the Mac Pro didn't he...

<comment><USER3> He did for sure. Well or at least his team did. But changing it's color to red (like ALL Product (RED)) can't really be called 'designed' in my opinion. Or else I'll just take a standard orange pencil, make it red, call it new design. Boom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Red is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

Apple has >$100 billion cash sitting overseas, unable to return to the USA to be distributed as dividends unless they can successfully lobby for a tax holiday.

If the board of directors and executive leadership of Apple truly wanted to help poor people in Africa, they could simply call a shareholders's meeting to vote on a proposal to donate, as an example, on an ongoing basis 1% of offshore (ex-USA) net profit after tax to a recognised pan-African charity.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a great cause but did it really take two people collaborating to come up with the design/idea of painting something red for a charity called.. RED?

<comment><USER7> I think someone posted this[1] here yesterday, but from the description:

>Electrical current is run through aluminum in an acid bath, causing oxygen molecules to bond to aluminum producing a thin, uniform layer of aluminum oxide (basically: aluminum rust). Because this surface layer is porous, dye can be used to add nearly any color to the aluminum part before the surface is sealed.

While they may talk about Jony Ive taking part in the design in order to convey additional prestige to the product, it could be more involved than just painting a regular Mac Pro. Isn't this how they color the iPod nano? Anyway, it is conceivable that they did at least oversee the addition of color, and that there was a small potential for needing someone with special expertise.

[1] [http://atomicdelights.com/blog/how-apple-makes-the-mac- pro](http://atomicdelights.com/blog/how-apple-makes-the-mac-pro)

<comment><USER8> Aluminum oxide isn't really like rust, it is actually quite hard. This property is one of the things that makes aluminum so useful, as the surface oxidizes, it gains a very good protective coating. Rubies and Sapphires are essentially aluminum oxide.

I know I'm being pedantic, but rust carries a strong connotation of degradation.

<comment><USER7> Yes, unlike with iron, the process does not continue and the result is harder and more durable than the original, but, my point was that the surface probably is not just painted over, but has dye incorporated in the surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has got to be a joke.

</comment><comment><USER10> Frankly, it is a rather ugly product. The headline made me salivate but I ended up disappointed! Don't get me wrong, the cause is a noble one and I say kudos for that.

</comment><comment><USER11> It is "Selected and customised" by Johnny Ive and Marc Newson. I would heavily emphasize on "customised".

The headline from MacRumors and many others are inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER12> in my opinion, if you want to help africans, go to africa and spend money in local economies.

<comment><USER13> How will buying street food in Africa get Africans to use condoms and how does it help to find cures for HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria? Because that's where the proceeds of product(RED) go to.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Fund_to_Fight_AIDS,_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Fund_to_Fight_AIDS,_Tuberculosis_and_Malaria)

<comment><USER12> ultimately, as a consumer (hah) you have to decide for yourself where you think the money is better spent.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Red](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Red)</comment></comment></comment>


Scientist Loses Award After Acceptance Presentation Full of Racy Photos - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/scientist-loses-distinguished-award-after-acceptance-pr-1827627780/ <comment><AUTHOR> > I did not choose the photos my female students chose the photos and helped > me set up the talk... Henry Mushinsky apparently has some kind of vendetta > for me. He had no right to enter into my slide presentation and try to > destroy me, if he thought he had the right to censure my slides why didn't > he just delete them.

It is kind of odd that the photos were censored by someone else but were still considered inappropriate after being censored.

</comment><comment><USER2> Do we think private behavior of scientists impact the quality of their work, or do we just want to punish them to make them comform to society norms? Like even if you break the Enigma in WW2.

Morality is back to levels not seen since Victorianism.

<comment><USER3> The private behavior of scientists may negatively effect the quality of other scientists' work.

That said, I kind of do suspect that there will at some point be a "Footloose" situation except with dancing banned by people of the far left instead of a conservative preacher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can only find a re-hash/copy-pasta of the story on google and the slides are nowhere to be seen.

Isn't it reasonable to expect from journalists to try and get the pertinent thing of this story rather than repeating a "they said/ he said" story ?

Either the guy is a creep or they massively overreacted , or somewhere in the middle, but how are we to make an informed opinion of we can't see the actual thing ?

<comment><USER5> [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/turtle- res...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/turtle-researcher- women-photos-presentation-richard-vogt-a8450726.html)

<comment><USER5> Some actual slides - [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5955327/Turtle- resea...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5955327/Turtle-researchers- award-rescinded-photos-scantily-clad-female-students.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm guessing he showed a picture or two of his students all posing in the field with a couple turtles, smiling with their find.

And, of course, prudish harridans must have gotten mad at him showing girls in swimsuits and thrown a tantrum.</comment>


ARCA's revolutionary aerospike engine completed and ready for testing (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/arc-aerospike-linear-engine-complete/51431/ <comment><AUTHOR> Good video description of this type of engine here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4zFefh5T-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4zFefh5T-8)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It does seem though that now that stages can be landed and re-used, there may be little point in a SSTO system, since it just means carrying unnecessary weight, with no additional re-use benefit.</comment>


Yelp CEO Accuses Google of Manipulating Search Results - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/761641120430292992 <comment><USER2> Maybe they could pay the good people at Google to help improve Yelp's rankings.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just came to say, FUCK YELP. They are a piece of shit extortion company.

</comment><comment><USER4> They should start a new search engine.

</comment><comment><USER5> donald trump supporters now yelp. It wouldnt be too hard to believe google stooping to hooli level stuff, but how could you even prove it?</comment>


Tools I can't live without – CLI edition - <AUTHOR> http://afterdesign.net/2016/03/20/tools-i-cant-live-without-cli-edition.html <comment><USER2> It would be nice if the title included the word osX.

<comment><USER3> Most (if not all) of the tools cited are available on other Unices.</comment></comment>


Click here to submit your browser/platform/country to Google - <AUTHOR> http://goo.gl/faBw

<comment><USER2> click through statistics.

The same is done most other shorteners. I guess your point is that google is getting too much of information monopoly so using their shortener is worst than using, say tiny.cc.

Btw isn't google already tracking stats of clicks on the search results?

<http://xkcd.com/792/>

Anyone writing an anonymizing resolver for goo.gl (like a browser add-on or a jump site)?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And here to see what everyone submitted: <http://goo.gl/info/faBw></comment>


How Quaternions encode rotations: derivation and sample code - <AUTHOR> http://loopspace.mathforge.org/HowDidIDoThat/Codea/Quaternions/ <comment><USER2> Anyone interested in such topics should check out geometric algebra, a.k.a. Clifford algebra. Start with [http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/OerstedMedalLecture.pdf](http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/OerstedMedalLecture.pdf)

Matrices and trigonometry are in my opinion a pedagogically, conceptually, and practically poor way of understanding and using quaternions; furthermore, cross products (and the associated confusion about a right hand rule and polar vs. axial vectors and so on, not to mention a total failure to generalize to higher dimensions) need to vanish from the earth.

More generally, this is a topic that should be explained first using pictures, ideally interactive ones. The algebraic manipulations to formally prove what the pictures explain visually should just fill in the bookkeeping details.

Finally, perhaps the most important reason geometric (Clifford) algebras should be used for pedagogy, even if you plan to write code which only uses quaternions per se, is that they make the "sandwich" multiplication of versors as operators on vectors completely obvious as composition of reflections.

<comment><USER3> Say what you want about geometric algebra, if it has a least one merit, it's that it makes rotations in 3D space and their link with quaternions very simple to understand.

Also check out my implementation in Perl 6:

[https://github.com/grondilu/clifford](https://github.com/grondilu/clifford)

With it, quaternions become:

        use Clifford;

        constant I = @e[1]*@e[2];
        constant J = @e[2]*@e[3];
        constant K = @e[1]*@e[3];

        say I² == J² == K² == I*J*K == -1;

<comment><USER4> The subalgebra of 3D Clifford using the scalar and the 2-blades represents quaternions.

The subalgebra using the pseudoscalar and the 1-blades can _also_ represent quaternions.

You have to be careful using other people's implementations, because certain operations are anticommutative, so sign conventions and operand ordering matters a lot more. For instance, choosing whether K is defined as e3 * e1 rather than e1 * e3 depends on whether your base vectors square to 1 or -1.

Geometric Algebra is cool. It lets you say things like "the intersection of two spheres that don't touch is a circle with negative radius." You can't even represent a circle with negative radius in regular geometry.

<comment><USER3> > You have to be careful using other people's implementations, because certain > operations are anticommutative, so sign conventions and operand ordering > matters a lot more. For instance, choosing whether K is defined as e3 * e1 > rather than e1 * e3 depends on whether your base vectors square to 1 or -1.

Sure. For my implementation I thought a lot about how to deal with signatures and stuff. It's technically easy but making it simple and elegant is not obvious. I first thought about defining a @signature array, but then it occurred to me that it's much simpler to create two infinite spaces : one euclidean and one anti-euclidean. Later I've learned that Hestenes and others have considered this as well, they called it the _mother of all geometric algebras_ , or _universal geometric algebra_ [1]. Conveniently, Perl 6 deals with infinite lists very well, so it was very appropriate.

So in my implementation, @e[$i]² is +1 for all $i. If you want vectors with negative squares, use the @ē basis.

With geometric algebra, there are indeed several ways to represent quaternions. In fact there are several ways to represent complex numbers as well. I don't think it's a pitfall. As long as notations are clear and simple, it should be fine, I think.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_geometric_algebra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_geometric_algebra)

<comment><USER4> No, not a pitfall. it is more like a small pothole in the road: the problem is easily avoided if you already know that it exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone who hasn't been exposed to this problem before, like me, there are countless applications for this sort of mathematical operations in game development.

Back a few years ago a friend and I were attempting to write a game engine. We hit many road blocks but what often killed us was fixing gimble lock. This isn't an issue for many things like FPSs or side scroller but when you get into the realm that we wanted to tackle (first person space flight) it becomes a challenge.

Quaternions, from my position as the ultimate laymen, take up the slack that Euler coordinates/angles have. The issue comes from rotating an object. Once the object is upside down, it's coordinate system stops working as you would expect. If you are head-to-floor upside down then your up relative to the world is down. When applying rotations that are based on shifts in pitch, yaw, and roll it is difficult to have correct behavior.

If instead of this, you implement quaternion rotations for all objects, this entire class of headache melts away. The problem is finding a good explanation of how this works or even yet how to implement it. It's what's stopped me dead in my tracks many times as the implementations often available still have many bugs (when in Space Engineers if you rotate your cursor a circle quickly you'll slowly rotate your character, this is a common bug in many implementations I've found)

I'm definitely going to read through all of this when I get back from uni today.

PS: Mathematicians/dark arts practicers, if I'm incorrect about anything I've said here please let me know and point me to where I can learn more

<comment><USER6> How familiar are you with the complex plane?

It helped me a lot to be explained quaternions starting from the complex plane. More specifically, by constructively inspecting their properties. There's a great interactive article that gets the pedagogy of teaching such a complex concept (pun definitely intended). Unfortunately, I can't seem to dig it up.

I recall the author's blog using all kinds of CSS and/or WebGL trickery to make 3d backgrounds – anyone know which blog I'm referring to?

<comment><USER7> Steven Wittens:

[https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to- glory/](https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to-glory/)

[https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to-glory- pt2/](https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to-glory-pt2/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems a very good and in-depth. I recently had to learn a bit of this stuff and coming from very basic math Quats are a bit of funny concept at first. This video does an amazing job at explaining what they are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mXL751ko0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mXL751ko0w) and the pro/cons over euler angles. The whole channel has some pretty good resources for anyone looking for a "soft approach" at math.

</comment><comment><USER9> Quaternions are much easier to grasp once you are familiar with basic Lie group theory, in particular the adjoint representation of the group over its Lie algebra.

Then the link with rotations becomes obvious and it gets very easy to transport geometric operations from the unit sphere to the rotation group (spherical linear interpolation, averaging, etc...)

<comment><USER10> Unless I'm missing something, this feels like trying to understand a less complicated thing by first understanding a more complicated thing?

<comment><USER9> Sometimes this is the math way ;)

More seriously, Lie group theory puts the light exactly on the shared structure between quaternions and rotations (both are smooth groups related in some way) and ignore the secondary details, so you spend time understanding what matters.

It may be more abstract, but you get more from your efforts in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I haven't thought about it before but once you start thinking of complex numbers as "numbers that want to turn" (every unit complex number is isomorphic to a rotation on R^2), the concept of quaternions analoguously representing rotations in R^3 becomes pretty intuitive even if you don't quite grok the details.

<comment><USER12> Hmm, but I would think that a quaternion represents a rotation in R^4 (for which I lack intuition).

<comment><USER13> ===== EDIT: this is mostly wrong - see jblow's reply. Sorry for misleading you into thinking I know what I'm talking about :D =====

I think of it like this: a complex number represents a rotation in a plane. You need two "coordinates" to do that. 2d has one plane, but 3d has two planes - think about how an anti-air cannon rotates left-right and up-down. So, if we've got two rotations to represent, you must need two complex numbers - that's four "coordinates", or one quaternion.

<comment><USER9> > but 3d has two planes

Why not 3 planes?

<comment><USER13> Okay, my wording wasn't the best here. 3d doesn't "have" 2 planes. But, for some reason, you can look in any direction in 3d by turning in two planes. Test it yourself: turning your head left-right is rotation in one plane, turning it up-down is rotation in the other plane. here's my shot at illustrating this: [https://goo.gl/photos/Cxt7KPbos5o2QnkD9](https://goo.gl/photos/Cxt7KPbos5o2QnkD9)

to be completely honest, I'm not sure if this intuition is correct. But it seems to make sense

<comment><USER14> It's correct that you can look in any direction with only two planes, but that's not enough; you need to be able to control your orientation around that final axis. You need 3 planes for that (3 "rotational degrees of freedom"). The idea that a quaternion is somehow two complex numbers is wrong.

<comment><USER9> I think you can do that using two rotation axis only (cf. proper Euler angles).

And quaternions _are_ made of two complex numbers.

edit: typo.

<comment><USER15> _> And quaternions are made of two complex numbers._

I don't pretend to grok quaternions (I only use them), but I'm fairly sure a quaternion consists of three imaginary numbers plus a real number.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the way they play together can also be expressed by the means of two complex numbers (which makes 4 real numbers in total).

<comment><USER14> This is not true. You can't factor a quaternion into two complex numbers. Please don't spread misinformation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice, lots of detailed explanation!

For people interested, to use them in a C/C++ context, feel free to have a look at my Quaternion-Library.

[https://github.com/MauriceGit/Quaternion_Library](https://github.com/MauriceGit/Quaternion_Library)

<comment><USER17> This looks like C. Why do you call it "C/C++"? It could just as well be C/ObjC, right?

<comment><USER18> C and C++ share the same memory model and can be called quite easily form each other with the use of an 'extern "C"'.

It's a common practice to write libraries in C for flexibility, (many languages can ingest C) and use the 'extern "C"' for use in C++ code.

You can also write a thin C++ class wrapper for a more native object oriented interface.

<comment><USER17> But all of this is true for ObjC too. How come people write C/C++ to describe pure C code but not C/ObjC? C is as much of a subset of ObjC as it is a subset of C++.

It's funny people don't do this as much with other languages. For example, nobody describes pure Javascript as "js/html" even though you can have lots of js inside HTML code.

<comment><USER18> Its an interesting point.

C is actually part of of the C++ standard. Within the ISO C++11 standard there is the C99 standard with some adjustments and exclusions. The integration is quite tight. So one can say C/C++ with some clarity.

Library writers often go thorough a lot of work to write extensive object oriented interfaces around C libraries. And they intend that the user use the C++ version not just import the C version in there C++ code. So in that case it is a necessity to use C/C++ because there are two separate interfaces.

In the general case I would guess that 'most' C programmers write some C++ and vise versa. So you have a very large overlap of C/C++ programmers. Objective C on the other hand is probably a significantly smaller group and is simply not big enough for C/C++ communities to think to much about.

<comment><USER17> > _In the general case I would guess that 'most' C programmers write some C++ > and vise versa._

That's not what I've seen. People usually either write C++ exclusively or C exclusively and hate the other language (probably more C writers that hate C++ than C++ writers that hate C).

Some people write very C-accented C++, with mallocs and frees instead of news and deletes and so forth (these are usually people who prefer C over C++ but are writing C++ for whatever reason). I guess those people could be said to be writing "C/C++". But in general I think people overestimate how close the two language communities are. What I have seen is that people like one language and deride the other.

<comment><USER18> There are some people that probably get to worked up about it especially on the internet as you said. But in a professional environment where you have deadlines and a budget you don't have the luxury to be a language purist. You have to use libraries and choose from whats available and whats the best choice often that means mixing C and C++. I'm not saying that people necessarily like to code in C if they prefer C++ or the other way around but they will often have to. And so have some competency weather they like it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Evans and Sutherland graphics rendering pipeline has been doing this for almost two generations. Dr. Sutherland's clipping divider depends on it. [https://www.google.com/patents/US3639736](https://www.google.com/patents/US3639736)

</comment><comment><USER20> Numberphile did a good simple explanation of quaternions: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BR8tK- LuB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BR8tK-LuB0)

</comment><comment><USER21> You will eventually regret any use of Euler angles. - John Carmack

<comment><USER22> I would agree if it said "most" instead of "any". Euler angles are useful. Just be very careful with them. Convert to quaternion as soon as possible and convert back to euler as late as possible when needed.

However, you will never entirely avoid them because they are just too practical. Under careful constraints, they make code interfaces simpler.

This is especially important if you are to expose that code to a multidisciplinary team. There is no way you're going to teach an artist how quaternions work just so they can rotate their stuff around the up axis, when simple yaw-pitch angles cover 99% of their use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So much js on that page that it took almost a minute to finish loading, and then my phone's browser froze.

<comment><USER24> He's using MathJax to display equations. There are a lot of equations.

[https://www.mathjax.org/](https://www.mathjax.org/)</comment></comment>


Google's Chrome Web Store under fire for shoddy service and cryptic policies - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/25/chrome_web_store_issues/ <comment><USER2> I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion here as I'll attempt to defend Google, but they have recently added a bug bounty program for extensions that violate user privacy:

[https://security.googleblog.com/2019/08/expanding-bug- bounti...](https://security.googleblog.com/2019/08/expanding-bug-bounties-on- google-play.html)

I recently received a nice bounty for reporting a VPN extension, with nasty privacy violation, using this program. I understand that El Reg will get their clickbait here, but the situation isn't nearly as bad as described.</comment>


Cultural Imperialism, Technology, and OLPC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ianbicking.org/2009/01/14/cultural-imperialism-technology-and-olpc/

<comment><USER2> Ahh, cultural imperialism. I have a cultural studies degree and am not unfamiliar with the term. Want a sentence guaranteed to start a riot with anyone who cites it approvingly?

"The discourse of 'cultural imperialism' is a device by which Western academics reify the continued material subjugation of the Other to flatter their own epistemologies."

(That isn't meaningless twaddle, incidentally -- it is a serious critique phrased in academic English common to such critiques. The lay version is "Rich white academic liberals use poor people as human subjects in a petting zoo to provide the authenticity they think their own culture lacks, all the while blind to the fact that their own culture is in fact rich-white-academic- liberal and it depends on having a poor-people-petting-zoo.")

<comment><USER3> It confuses me that anyone can believe that liberalism or technological advance are not universally desirable. I am similarly confused (though interested) by the "prime directive" approach that academics often advocate in dealing with undeveloped cultures.

<comment><USER2> _It confuses me that anyone can believe that liberalism or technological advance are not universally desirable._

You want a quick sampling of various theories? (I should point out that I don't believe everything I've read, if it wasn't totally obvious from my first comment.)

Liberalism is a myth that the West uses when it needs a convenient excuse for a war and/or resource exploitation.

Cultural diversity is groovy. (Sometimes phrased as: cultural diversity, like ecological diversity, is imperative to the physical survival of the human race.) Introduction of "foreign" technology inevitably results in culture loss.

Technological advance sometimes results in taking the old evil things and making us much, much better at them. See: ultrasounds in China, radios in Rwanda, railroads in the United States, civil engineering in Iraq, the cotton gin in the American South, etc etc

On balance, I think most technological progress is a great thing. I might not be quite a booster if I had been kidnapped by a rival tribe to be sold across the ocean into slavery because some American inventor had figured out how to make cotton farming scale. And I don't think I would be that persuaded to change my mind just because a lot of people were finally able to purchase cotton shirts due to the deal.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

Fortunately, in collaboration liberalism and technological advance avoid some of the pitfalls you talk about.

I agree that liberalism isn't practiced widely enough or honestly enough, but this isn't a fault with liberalism.

The cultural diversity argument is weak. From a pragmatic viewpoint, if this diversity was imperative to survival then it would itself survive the influence of other culture. Secondly, culture can and is incorporated (albeit selectively although this may be a good thing) into rapidly developing cultures. If cultural homogeneity means we lose cannibalism, ritual and religious mutilation and millions of children dying to smoke inhalation each year then I can live with that. I think the good and distinct components of undeveloped cultures will be embraced by developed cultures and cherished by the developing cultures themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> dudes, it's a dog-eat-dog world. The strong are supposed to subsume the weak.

If you don't like it, I suggest you change Human Nature. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER5> Always has been, always will be:

"For of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a law of their nature wherever they can rule, they will"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melian_dialogue>

<comment><USER6> Nice quote

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On that subject, an absolutely must-read book is "Hard To Be God" (by Strugatsky; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God> ), an absolutely brilliant meditation on the whole Prime Directive issue (basic thesis: it's harder to bring in positive influence than it seems, thus the title)</comment>


Plain Exchange Has Been Rejected by the Apple App Store - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/plain-exchange-team/plain-exchange-has-been-rejected-by-the-apple-app-store-49cd6b9df50b#.x4ddsadjj <comment><USER2> so, if Uber and airbnb are facilitation in-person illegal transportation and illegal house sharing, shouldn't they be banned as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly. thanks for your comment bobinator</comment></comment>


MIG: Mozilla's platform for real-time digital forensics and incident response - <AUTHOR> http://mig.mozilla.org/

<comment><USER2> I really like MIG's small footprint. It looks really simple to deploy on a large number of datacenter systems and end user laptops.

</comment><comment><USER3> At a glance, seems similar to Facebook's [https://osquery.io/](https://osquery.io/)

<comment><USER4> Likewise, similar to GRR Rapid Response - [https://github.com/google/grr](https://github.com/google/grr)

<comment><USER5> its more similar to GRR than osquery. osquery doesnt let you control agents remotely out of the box

also, mig is in go thus easy to deploy and to run on any platform

osquery supports sql like queries on tables

grr and osquery supports remote execs as root, mig doesnt</comment></comment></comment>


Why Fiber Is Vastly Superior to Cable and 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g <comment><USER2> The article is correct that fiber connections can provide a higher bitrate than cable and 5G, but it fails to explain why that makes it a better social or economic proposition.

My 200Mb/s DOCSIS cable connection is well below the theoretical maximum, and is good enough for streaming 8K video, downloading a Linux distro in seconds, downloading a game in a few minutes, etc. The social effect of having this, versus 0.1Mb/s connectivity I had before is huge, but greater bandwidth would not greatly change my experience.

If the aim is to improve the lives of as many people as possible, it takes more to justify a more expensive project, than just: it will be faster.

My primary concern as a politician would be which solution can be affordable and adequate for the largest number of people who do not currently have something adequate.

<comment><USER3> Every order of magnitude change in _upload_ speed has spawned a whole host of new applications to take advantage of it.

Upload is the key--not download.

<comment><USER4> Most people do not create content that is worthy of any high amount of upload bandwidth. Why would you think that upload speed is so important?

<comment><USER3> Because every bump in upload speed created some new application.

email, online services, graphical online services, the web, limewire etc., bittorrent etc.

It's not about what everybody can create. It's about what a _select few_ can create.

The goal is to give the same tools to the person in the middle of nowhere as if they were the most connected person on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps the title should be "Why policymakers should support fiber over cable and 5G". This is about public policy, it's not a technical discussion.

</comment><comment><USER6> If it's a decision between wired or wireless, wired is always better. Period.

Luckily I have FIOS but my parents are stuck on really crappy DSL or mediocre cable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is there no mention of the initial cost to lay down fiber? I expect that would be quite significant compared to wireless links and I am not even thinking of the costs that might be associated with maintenance of the fibers once it is laid down and operational.

<comment><USER8> The dirty secret of 5G is that they have to run fiber to every street corner anyway just to backhaul the very-short-range base stations.

For a marginal additional cost, you can run it down the street to every house, and consumers aren't forced into a artificial-scarcity "purchase by the gigabyte" scheme run by wireless carriers.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but with 5G, I now have high speed internet on your block too, and so does everyone else.

<comment><USER10> Except that my devices don't have 5G or fiber ports. I have WIFI and Ethernet ports.

<comment><USER11> The fiber line goes to your house then gets converted to Ethernet via a modem; just like cable does now. In fact when i had FIOS, the fiber was converted to coax before it came into may apartment, then went to the modem and cable box. So from a user perspective, it wasn't any different than cable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not about speed, it's about reliability. We have a backup 5G connection for an office in central London, when it rains heavily it just goes down.

Cable/Fibre does not have this problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is such a superficial and terrible article, its like if you gave an intern an outline and they could only use wikipedia to complete it.

While I appreciate what they're trying to do, this comes off as ridiculous to those of us who actually have built or build parts of the internet.

The TLDR of this article is "With current technology you can move more bits with light and electrons than you can with RF", which is likely to stay true for the forseeable future.

What they left out is that most fiber service providers use PON, which doesn't give you the top end of what your physical fiber can do.

Here's a handy article about it: [https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s- difference-between/w...](https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s-difference- between/what-s-difference-between-epon-and-gpon-optical-fiber-networks)

<comment><USER14> The article was co-written by EFF's senior legislative counsel. It's intended to be a position paper to influence policy, not a technical deep dive.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and it shows they don't understand the technology.

This is almost as bad as "the internet is a series of tubes" to a network engineer...

<comment><USER15> How do they not understand the technology? They clearly compared the theoretical max to each technology as options for last mile connectivity.

If you have last mile fiber into your home, then you're capable if receiving 10Tbps. Yes a PON setup won't actually provide that, but they never state that someone would offer those speeds, only the theoretical last mile capacity.

The point of the article is to counter lobbyist claims that we don't need fibre investment because cable and 5g are fast enough. This article points out that even in their best case that is not true.

<comment><USER13> They don't understand how PON works, think of it like FDDI or even DOCSIS; You'd never be capable of receiving 10Tbps due to fiber topology... The 10Tbps number requires DWDM anyways, its like saying a Kia is a Lamborghini.

The Cable/Wireless carriers will use this misdetermination to undermine what these guys are saying so in the end its unhelpful.

They'd have a much better time pointing out that existing cableco's have mismanaged their DOCSIS networks and that Comcast is considered the WORST company in this country (even worse than Monsanto) because of how poorly they manage their networks. There's also so little adoption for "Wireless to the Home" that its pointless to consider that a reasonable option.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I really understand your alternative. It's not like in practical terms, providers will achieve the theoretical max of RF or cable either. What are you suggesting instead?

<comment><USER13> What I'm saying is they're talking out of their behinds, which will ultimately hurt us all.

<comment><USER17> You clearly know about this, but your comments are not very substantive. It might be more valuable to explain what the article is getting wrong. Many HN readers are fairly technical and interested in stuff like this.

<comment><USER13> Based on the downvoting, I'm unconvinced they're actually interested in this :)

I can tell you this -> Any time anything network/internet infrastructure gets posted here on HN, its a mess. My friends in NANOG have stopped bothering.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When Simple Wins: Power of 2 Load Balancing - <AUTHOR> https://fly.io/articles/simple-wins-power-of-2-load-balancing/ <comment><USER2> The method is called "Power of Two _Random Choices_ " ([http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/handbook20...](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/postscripts/handbook2001.pdf)). And the two-choices paradigm is widely applicable beyond load balancing. In particular, it applies to hash table design (e.g. cuckoo hashing) and cache eviction schemes ([https://danluu.com/2choices- eviction/](https://danluu.com/2choices-eviction/)).

<comment><USER3> You're right, I updated the title. Got a little too clever with the whole "power" thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not an expert in this field, but an engineer of vimeo went into detail, why this approach did not work for them. [1]

Problem with consistent hashing:

      However, consistent hashing comes with its own problem: uneven distribution of requests.
      Because of its mathematical properties, consistent hashing only balances loads about as
      well as choosing a random server for each request, when the distribution of requests is
      equal. But if some content is much more popular than others (as usual for the internet),
      it can be worse than that.

Problem with Power of 2 Load Balancing:

      Why wasn't there a way to say "use consistent hashing, but please don't overload any
      servers"? As early as August 2015, I had tried to come up with an algorithm based on
      the power of two random choices that would do just that, but a bit of  simulation said
      that it didn't work. Too many requests were sent to non-ideal servers to be worthwhile.

Instead, he used something called _Consistent Hashing with Bounded Loads_.

[1] [https://medium.com/vimeo-engineering-blog/improving-load- bal...](https://medium.com/vimeo-engineering-blog/improving-load-balancing- with-a-new-consistent-hashing-algorithm-9f1bd75709ed)

<comment><USER5> They are different algorithm for different purpose.

Consistent hashing is used to always attach a request to the same host. It's the opposite of load balancing.

Load balancing algorithms (least connection, business, etc...) are used to distribute requests across servers as well as possible to maximize performances.

<comment><USER6> Usually both properties are desirable .. up to a point.

You want to minimize load on all servers, but you also want to pack things up efficiently (so minimize operational costs), but of course you want the benefits of caching, so you want requests from a sessions to land on the same node/server/box.

Basically a multi-dimensional optimization problem. Completely solvable with constraints. Let the business people decide what's more important, latency or throughput or low cost of operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The simplest load balancing I've done is modulo the user ID by the number of servers then point at that server.

This solves caching too since you are only ever receiving and caching user data on a single server. No cache communication required. You can enforce it on the server side for security as well.

Doesn't require a load balance server - just an extra line of code.

Keep it simple.

<comment><USER2> What happens when the number of servers changes? The cache hit rate would likely drop to zero until it warms up again, which is a good way to accidentally overload your systems.

Load balancing based on consistent hashing is the better way to implement this.

<comment><USER8> Consistent hashing is a bit cleaner way to do it, but pretty much the same result as modulo-ing the user id against number of servers. At least as I understand it, you consistently hash something (a user id, a request URL, etc) into N buckets, where N is the number of servers, so changing N re-shuffles all of the buckets anyway.

Short of something like cassandra's ring topology, how would you use consistent hashing add new servers and assign them requests?

<comment><USER2> You are missing a crucial piece here to have consistent hashing: you also need hash the names of the servers. With consistent hashing you hash both the names of the requests and of the servers, then you assign the request to the server with closest hash (under the modulus). With this scheme, you only need to remap 1/n of the keys (where n is the number of servers).

<comment><USER9> You're kind of right. You can also use something like jump consistent hash [0] which only requires you to have a consistent ordering of the hosts where you're sending the information. We (Facebook) use something similar for our caches. It requires a linear array of hosts but you've already got that if you're load balancing.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2294](https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2294)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Regarding the math section, could someone please describe it like you were talking to a 5 year old?

1) Θ( log n = log / log n )

2) Θ(log log n)

<comment><USER2> There is a proof shown in this handout: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~sinclair/cs271/n15.pdf](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~sinclair/cs271/n15.pdf)

It's hard to understand _why_ this technique works so well without digging deep in the math. Roughly speaking, if you throw n balls in n bins at random, the maximum of number balls in any bins will grow surprisingly quickly (because of the birthday paradox). However, if we allow ourselves to choose between two random bins instead of one, and put the ball in the one with the fewest balls in it, the maximum number of balls in any bins grow much more slowly (i.e., O(ln ln n)). Hence, having that one extra random choice allows us to get surprisingly close to the optimal approach of comparing all bins (which would give us O(1)), without doing all that work.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the explanation! Much clearer and I get the concept. In the case of load balancing, we'd need a ton of servers (1000s?) for this to pay off vs just comparing all, right? Cache updating aside, most of the overhead would be in reading the load numbers in. Comparing a thousand numbers has to be quick in comparison, no?

<comment><USER3> The problem with load balancing is herd behavior. Stats for load are usually at least a little stale, because it's a distributed system where you can't afford to wait for consistency. When there are traffic spikes a whole herd of new connections will go to the least loaded server for a window of time where the cached "load" number is out of date. Picking two at random helps keep from a bunch of connections racing to one server, even when you're only running 3-4 of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Power of 2 Random Choices" ... has nothing to do with the "Power of 2" directly.

I like 2Choice because it is not dependent on hash function design & is temporal, but I have a positive aversion to the 2^n hash distributions when it comes to data, specifically for distributed systems which need to flex up/down [1].

[1] - [http://notmysock.org/blog/hacks/1440](http://notmysock.org/blog/hacks/1440)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've seen a paper doing the same thing directly at the network layer using IPv6 extension headers: [http://www.thomasclausen.net/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/2017...](http://www.thomasclausen.net/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/2017-ICDCS-SRLB-The-Power-of-Choices-in-Load- Balancing-with-Segment-Routing.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can someone expand on the maths that the OP elided? What is the thing that comes out to O(log n / log log n)?</comment>


Show HN: Showgoers – Watch Netflix with friends remotely - <AUTHOR> http://showgoers.tv/ <comment><USER3> Cool stuff -- at AltspaceVR we support the same concept with Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, etc, but as avatars within a virtual space (ideally in VR.) You can hang out while watching netflix with voice chat, body tracking, etc. This was a big challenge for us to get working well, so I can sympathize with the authors :)

[http://altvr.com](http://altvr.com)

Just install our browser plugin, go to a netflix vid, hit "watch in AltspaceVR", and you'll have a virtual space dedicated for that netflix movie.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/altspacevr/ijjkiof...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/altspacevr/ijjkiofdllfjjpociicclnleonjknagc)

<comment><USER4> I feel like I'm the only one who is annoyed when people plug their products in someone else's post. I understand you're just trying to increase your userbase, but it just seems disrespectful.

<comment><USER3> I see where you're coming from but we're not really competing. If we were competing I agree it'd be pretty lame. We're a totally different experience for a similar use case. If the OP requests in the thread to do so I'll remove the comment but I also thought it might result in a back in forth on the tricks for doing this, which is actually pretty tough.

<comment><USER5> 1) The problem is that your comment offered nothing extra. All it was was a plug. The other people who plug usually provide some interesting information.

2) If you claim your product isn't the same, then why bring it up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Netflix app on the Xbox 360 used to do this. And you and your friends could put on your headsets and watch the same thing on Netflix while chatting.

<comment><USER7> I was pretty disappointed when they ditched that feature, my friends and I used it pretty extensively as we were all attending different colleges, but still loved to play games and chat online. It was buggy for sure, especially when you added in disparities in lag (which was very common back then).

IIRC Microsoft maintained this functionality however and not Netflix, which is probably why it was eventually discontinued and as far as I can tell Netflix has expressed no interest in making their own similar feature.

<comment><USER8> This and the top 100 game show thing are some of my best memories from using the xbox 360

<comment><USER9> Agreed Top 100 was a great live mass(ive?) multiplayer gameshow. I hope to see something similar to it again some day.

<comment><USER10> How was that played? I'm having trouble googling it.

<comment><USER11> Try googling by it's name of "1 vs 100". The game played out where one person was randomly chosen as the main contestant who answered trivia questions. If they failed a question they were booted.

The kicker to the game was, 100 other randomly selected players were playing against you answering the same questions. If they got it wrong, and the contestant got it right they were eliminated and the contestant continued.

The goal of the main contestant was to outlast the 100 players, and the more they outlasted the better prizes (usually MS Points) they won. The goal of the 100 was to outlast the main contestant to also win prizes (usually less than the main).

All other players watching the game could participate for fun and play along for no reward. It was actually pretty fun and the events all happened live with an announcer and everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The far less polished solution I came up with for syncing viewing with my friends: [https://github.com/wcummings/vlc-irc- rc](https://github.com/wcummings/vlc-irc-rc)

<comment><USER13> Ha, my long distance relationship survived with a good old fashioned "3, 2, 1, go!" :)

<comment><USER14> /think better delay pressing start by the latency amount ;]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the tradition of declaring something new as "X for Y", I declare this is "Cytube for Netflix". Or it will be, when you add chat functionality.

It's a really neat idea, and it's basically second-best to watching a video in the same room as someone else. It's really fun to watch shows with other people, have discussions about the show, and share the experience.

References (I didn't make these):

[https://github.com/calzoneman/sync/wiki/CyTube-3.0-User- Guid...](https://github.com/calzoneman/sync/wiki/CyTube-3.0-User-Guide)

[https://Cytu.be](https://Cytu.be)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's like Cytube. My use case was that I'm in a long-distance relationship and we both are huge movie buffs. YouTube just simply doesn't have the content that we want. Netflix does but it doesn't allow embeds so it took a bit more trickery :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of when my wife and first started dating long distance - <USER2> screen sharing movies was our jam

<comment><AUTHOR> Though I originally made it for me and my SO, it was surprising how many people have told me that they also have done the whole netflix, skype and "3, 2, 1, go" combo. Its interesting to think about things we could make that would better allow shared experience or emotional intimacy with people over distance.

<comment><USER17> This is pretty much exactly what myself and fiancee did - though for us, the '3, 2, 1, go' became part of the tradition, and we took it in turns to make up 'alternative countdowns' for programmes. Interesting the way that technical limitations can also translate to shared experiences.

Of course, the biggest issue was that netflix offerings in the US were very different to those in the UK, so we'd spend about an hour where one of us tried to find dubiously legal ways to watch a programme the other could watch fine on netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently made a similar desktop app to watch movies with my gf. It has only video sync and text based chat.

Check the screenshot: [http://i.pics.rs/64I0n](http://i.pics.rs/64I0n)

Maybe I will open source it when it's done. Btw I used Qt and libVLC.

<comment><USER19> PLEASE open source this! I will use it and might even help you finish it.

<comment><USER18> To be honest, it's pretty bad, you can't imagine. Everything is in one single C++ file (+ the main.cpp), the chat is a webkit widget (it was the easiest and fastest solution), there is no error checking or anything so it can crash any time, etc etc...

Actually, this is my first C++ project, I don't even know C++ (only a bit C from high school).

<comment><USER19> let me refactor it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As I said over on /r/netflix, great app, and the implementation is hands down better than rabb.it's RTC method.

Did you start after Netflix switched to HTML5 video? I'm curious how you might've dealt with the old flash player- I basically gave up on any actual control of Netflix in my side project because it was too black-boxy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the HTML5 was key. It's way easier to listen to player events without really interacting with Netflix-specific stuff. I probably would have given up if I was doing it with silverlight. Actually, this is why this is only a chrome extension because Netflix uses silverlight in Firefox.

<comment><USER20> Wow right it was Silverlight... I think I raged so hard I blocked that out of my memory.

Not that the flash on Hulu or Amazon are any better. I did have some luck with YouTube's old player and injecting their js->flash API, but still, HTML5 was a damn relief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm in a long distance relationship and have been working on a project to do just this! I've been thinking about open-sourcing it.

I have video chat, a synced shared web browser, and support for Netflix & Hulu.

If anyone is interested: [https://www.distanceflix.com](https://www.distanceflix.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting stuff! I enjoy watching movies with friends at the cinema hall together and discuss about the movies soon after. Recently when I made a decision to move abroad, I was wondering if there was a feature that would give us a similar experience of watching a movie together.

I was thinking of using Skype screen-sharing with friends, where one user plays the movie and acts as the movie-host taking control of the pause/play, seeking controls and others watching the movie on Skype via the host's screen. Doing this provides us with the option of chatting real-time about the movie too - like how we'd do when seated next to each other in the cinema hall. The issue with this is that it would take up a lot of bandwidth to stream a movie and then share it with others simultaneously.

This - Showgoers - claims to solve many of these issues, so I'd definitely give it a try. One main downside is that Netflix still isn't available for users in my home-country India. And with limited movie-collections on Netflix and the other on-demand video services, I'd almost-never again be able to get the experience of watching a 'newly-released' movie at the cinema hall with a bunch of close friends.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does this do something like rebroadcasting the stream, or does it merely sync your place on a show using their own Netflix account?

<comment><USER24> I'd assume it just syncs the place. Otherwise, there would be a whole legal component to this that would likely result in a swift shutdown.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, there's another product that does that and somehow gets away with it. They actually open netflix on a virtual machine and use a ton of hacks to make it look like its you controlling it. The performance is horrible though because there is two hops.

[https://rabb.it/](https://rabb.it/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The concept seems very similar to Rabbit: [http://rabb.it](http://rabb.it)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've messed with rabbit before. I wasn't a fan because in their implementation actually open netflix on a virtual machine GUI and use browser tricks to try to make it seem like you're just controlling the computer like its your desktop. The performance is horrible though because there is two hops, from netflix to their servers, and their servers to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had a web app to do this a few years ago (2011?) For thematic music video content at [http://80smtv.com/#80smtv](http://80smtv.com/#80smtv) (still up but a ghost town).

Here's the source ([https://github.com/kristopolous/emptyv](https://github.com/kristopolous/emptyv)) ... most of it was written during the 3 or so weeks that it had lots of traffic, coming from all places, Poland.

I worked hard on the anarchistic anonymous vj feature as a social experiment. It was interesting but not traction building.

One day I'll build something that can sustain traffic. One day...

</comment><comment><USER27> There's another solution called [https://rabb.it/](https://rabb.it/), but it also has HBO, Hulu and a bunch of other stuff, seems like a better alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> My girlfriend and I tried using rabbit but we weren't happy with the performance. Their implementation is actually to open netflix on a virtual machine GUI and use browser tricks to try to make it seem like you're just controlling the computer like its your desktop. The performance tends to be bad because there is two hops, from netflix to their servers, and their servers to you.

<comment><USER28> Also used it with my girlfriend. Didn't cause any problems, sitting on different continents (EU, US).

The only problems I experienced were with the sound slider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What happens when one client stops to buffer?

</comment><comment><USER30> Add support for [http://www.google.com/cast/](http://www.google.com/cast/) and I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds a good idea, social TV in general sounds good, but think I just would find it annoying. "What, another toilet break!".

Zeebox/Beamly also had/have some good social features but I think they even struggled for people to actually use it. After the initial curiosity people just want to veg in front of the box. I think. [http://beamly.com](http://beamly.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> For plex users, if your friends can access your plex server, this is trivial.

One of you starts watching a movie, the others start watching the same movie and it asks them "would you like to resume from X". Just say Yes and you're all watching the movie in sync.

I love that you can do this with Netflix now though, this seems like one if those features that could have (was?) In the original release.

<comment><USER33> Does that keep them in sync if someone pauses, jumps back, seeks, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This would be a lot cooler if it weren't necessarily a chrome extension and was rather a native app for windows and mac...and it'd be even better if it had video chat included along with a embedded chat client. Something along the lines of [http://distanceflix.com](http://distanceflix.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> Heh, I had the same idea for a while, but using HTML5 and streaming it to friends directly via P2P. But I was too lazy to implement it and afraid of getting into troubles with the MAFIAA.

Just using netflix is definitly suitable for the masses too :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Great idea. I used to always just count down so we could start Netflix at the same point, and then sync up after a bit by pausing and restarting occasionally, this is a very elegant solution!

</comment><comment><USER37> We used to watch TV with my grandma over the phone.

Instead of commercial breaks they could have intermissions like old movie theaters allowing people to smoke and chat.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is there anything like this for VLC or some other desktop video app?

<comment><USER39> Used this one way back [http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Syncplay+interfa...](http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Syncplay+interface+module+for+VLC?content=159160)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> you should also check out Let's Gaze. [https://letsgaze.com/#/](https://letsgaze.com/#/)

it works for YouTube and local files.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this OSS? If not, are there any plans to add Plex to it?

<comment><USER42> Plex already does this. If you go to now playing it will let you start playing where someone else on your server is at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> just add webrtc voice chat to complete the experience

</comment><comment><USER44> Very cool. Thanks for sharing :D

</comment><comment><USER45> Love it! You should OSS this!

</comment><comment><USER46> This is Nice, Will use.

</comment><comment><USER47> If only Netflix was avaliable in Poland...

</comment><comment><USER48> _pops champagne cork_

DRM loses again! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3EMvZrFR4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3EMvZrFR4)</comment>