Alberto Santos-Dumont - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont <comment><USER2> I looked at the Wikipedia article for the Wright flyer in 1903, to contrast and compare:

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer)

What's interesting is that the Wright brothers couldn't reproduce the flight:

"The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again. [...]After a single statement to the press in January 1904 and a failed public demonstration in May, the Wright Brothers did not publicize their efforts, and other aviators who were working on the problem of flight (notably Alberto Santos-Dumont) were thought by the press to have preceded them by many years."

They did however develop the Flyer II in 1904, and their Flyer III in 1905 flew a "39-minute, 24-mile (39 km) nonstop circling flight on October 5." Arguably, controlled directional flight is a much more important feature.

But most interesting is this part of the story:

"The issue of control was correctly seen as critical by the Wrights, and they acquired a wide American patent intended to give them ownership of basic aerodynamic control, despite the brothers' (and others in pioneer aviation circles) likely complete lack of knowledge of the 1868 British patent regarding roll control for aircraft. This was fought in both American and European courts. European designers, however, were little affected by the litigation and continued their own development. The legal fight in the U.S., however, had a crushing effect on the nascent American aircraft industry, and by the time of World War I, the U.S. had no suitable military aircraft and had to purchase French and British models."

</comment><comment><USER3>
        Santos-Dumont was so enthusiastic about
        aviation that he made the drawings of the
        Demoiselle available free of charge,
        thinking that aviation would lead
        to a new prosperous era for mankind.

I've always admired his open-sourcing of the Demoiselle, when disease and a failing business model lead him to retire. The drawings were published in (or through) magazines worldwide, including Popular Mechanics, and were very influential for a period of time. The airplane models were versioned (No. 19, 20...) and apparently there were even "plugins" popping up everywhere, so Demoiselle enthusiasts could upgrade their aircraft to taste.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20091026211607/http://www.geociti...](http://web.archive.org/web/20091026211607/http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/9260/demoisel.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> My friend Felipe is currently finishing up a PhD dissertation that features this guy (the overarching topic is the impact of aviation technology on modern Brazil). Here's an article he wrote specifically about Santos-Dumont:

[http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/the-aviators- heart](http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/the-aviators-heart)

Edit: it's a long article so here are a few highlights:

"His countenance appeared on cigar boxes and dinner plates. Toy replicas of his airships moved off the shelves at a brisk pace. Even bakers joined in, selling airship-shaped cakes with the colors of the Brazilian flag. Fashionable boutiques sold clothing and accessories inspired by his meticulous and impeccable style. Louis Cartier, a friend of his, even made a special wristwatch to use during flight, so he would not have to pull out his pocket watch while handling the controls. In fact, Santos-Dumont was responsible for making the wristwatch a fashionable accessory among men...

His showmanship and desire to share the feeling of flight led him to be part of many "firsts" in aviation history. In 1903, Aida de Acosta, a wealthy Cuban-American woman of nineteen years was visiting Paris, where she met Santos-Dumont. Fascinated with flying machines, she expressed her desire to pilot the airship herself. Surprisingly, he agreed—and after a few lessons, allowed her to fly it around Paris while he followed her on a bicycle shouting instructions from below (airship no. 9 only had a 3 horsepower engine and could barely conquer a light breeze). This made Acosta the first woman in history to fly a powered aircraft of any sort, some six months before the Wright Brothers first took flight in the United States."

<comment><USER5> Regarding the wristwatch, not _quite_ true, but almost (I'm nitpicking, really - I recently spent some time looking into this).

The wristwatch became popular with men shortly before as they were given to soldiers at the very end of 1800s. Previously seen as an accessory only for women, the use of watches in war (as it wasn't practical to pull out a pocket watch) made them eventually become fashionable.

That said, the watch produced for Santos-Dumont by Cartier _did_ become the first widely available watch for men, and is still on sale today, in a more modern form: [http://www.cartier.co.uk/collections/watches/mens- watches/sa...](http://www.cartier.co.uk/collections/watches/mens- watches/santos-de-cartier)

<comment><USER4> Wow, I had no idea it was still being sold! Thanks for this, that's interesting. Also, good to know what an ideal gift for my friend would be if I ever hit it rich.

That claim about wristwatches not being popular among men until Santos-Dumont surprised me when I originally read it - it seems like attaching an 18th century style pocket watch to a band would've been something that became trendy earlier. Know any good articles on the topic of pre 20th century watches?

<comment><USER5> That really would make a fantastic gift for your friend, although you're right - they are rather expensive :-)

> That claim about wristwatches not being popular...

Agreed, it certainly seems obvious. I suspect at the time there may have been some advances that allowed smaller wrist watches, and that's what allowed them to take off - however that's just a guess. Women's watches at the time were quite large and elaborate, covered in jewels and such.

There's quite a good NYTimes article you might like, though it doesn't go into much detail about Santos-Dumont: [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/fashion/wrist- watches-f...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/fashion/wrist-watches-from- battlefield-to-fashion-accessory.html)

There's also a bit more information on the Cartier Santos watch, including its modern variants, here: [http://monochrome-watches.com/history-of-the-pilot- watch-par...](http://monochrome-watches.com/history-of-the-pilot-watch-part-i- cartier-santos-1904)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just wish that our airport called Santos-Dumont here in Rio had a replica of the 14-bis or the Demoiselle in it...

Also, the fact that many americans are completely unaware of him and sometimes hostile when I tell his story makes me a bit mad... His one of the reasons I am pretty proud of being Brazilian and I believe a more positive role model than most that are around on TV these days.

<comment><USER7> I agree that Santos Dumont is great and a wonderful role model but the way this story is (was?) taught in school in Brazil is misleading. I never even heard of the Wright brothers until I went to live abroad as an adult and was caught completely by surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a fantastic bio of him and a good overview of the beginnings of aviation, read Wings of Madness, by Paul Hoffman [0]. A really fun read not only with technical details but also a lot about the personalities of the people of the time.

It must have been a blast to see Santos-Dumont "parking" his dirigible in Paris when he went to restaurants and cafés.

BTW if you ever go to Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil, you can visit his summer home. There's also a replica of the 14-bis in the city.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Wings-Madness-Alberto-Santos-Dumont- In...](http://www.amazon.com/Wings-Madness-Alberto-Santos-Dumont- Invention/dp/B000FVHJ94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431564055&sr=8-1&keywords=wings+of+madness)

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_firsts_in_aviation)

> First dogfight: Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader fired pistol shots at each > other while airborne around November/December 1913 ...

Weirdly amusing.

And now for some poetry: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Ader](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Ader)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been to his home in a town called Petrópolis in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The town is up the mountains in the outskirts of Rio and used to be a summer getaway for the Portuguese royal family.

[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=casa+santos+dumont+em+pet...](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=casa+santos+dumont+em+petr%C3%B3polis+rj&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1168&bih=632&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=rdRWVY-1BqPxmAXgr4H4DQ&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&dpr=2)

</comment><comment><USER11> > On 23 October 1906 he flew this to make the first powered heavier-than-air > flight in Europe

Traian Vuia did it in March, same year: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traian_Vuia#Flying_experiments](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traian_Vuia#Flying_experiments)

</comment><comment><USER12> He is dead and still gets 30+ points in HN. Sugoi.</comment>


NASA Experiments with On-Demand, Electric Personal Air Vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://www.govtech.com/fs/NASA-Experiments-with-On-Demand-Electric-Personal-Air-Vehicles.html <comment><USER2> I'm upvoting this mostly because of the image in the article showing a rendering of the "Puffin," a one-person electric airplane that looks like it was imagined in the 1920's, along with flying cars. It wouldn't look out of place in Fritz Lang's classic scifi movie, "Metropolis."

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right on the trend :) unfortunately doesn't look very comfortable for more than 10 minutes trip. I am working on a similar concept but you go comfortably sited like a regular small aircraft.

You can see a video of the Puffin here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc66-uEkEBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc66-uEkEBk)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Agency vs. internal recruiters? - <AUTHOR> In your hiring experience, which have you preferred - outside agence or internal recruiter- and why?  I appreciate it. <comment><USER2> Outside agency, with true domain expertise.

Typically found the best work on an mixed upfront fee, with a success-fee incentive arrangement due upon completing the hiring process.

Agency guys eat what they kill, they hustle. Internal guys (often HR Flunkies) lack business acumen and drive for results.

</comment><comment><USER3> It helps to try to understand the recruiters business model. How is this person getting paid and what are their motivation to continue the relationship with you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Internal - always, they have much more 'skin' in the game, and i've found typically have more motivation than some outside firm.</comment>


Show HN: Log Stuff, from the command line or anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://logstuff.statvoo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Follow up over here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11408983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11408983)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A simple way of logging errors and request/response data from servers/application when you don't have a database and want to see results immediately.

</comment><comment><USER2> I had this exact same idea but using API keys and socket.io

jQuery is old :p

Nice job!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you use it, I'll improve it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is really neat!</comment>


Terraform - <AUTHOR> http://www.hashicorp.com/blog/terraform.html <comment><USER2> How does this compare with Nixops or Disnix?

It sounds like it would be possible to plug nix-based provisioning into Terraform, and use it to manage the high-level cluster structure.

Edit: downvotes? whatever for?

<comment><USER3> I don't see the point of downvotes here... I have several production deployments of NixOS, and can't imagine using any other OS / package manager (supplemental utilities are fine, of course).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some read-worth links:

Homepage - [http://www.terraform.io/](http://www.terraform.io/)

Introduction - [http://www.terraform.io/intro/index.html](http://www.terraform.io/intro/index.html)

Documentation - [http://www.terraform.io/docs/index.html](http://www.terraform.io/docs/index.html)

Sourcecode - [https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform)

-

Seems usable and I'm excited to try it out. I like the idea of "execution plans" and the declerative way of setting up the architecture.

<comment><USER5> If any terraform folks are watching this, I have a little feedback on the home page. When I first got there, it wasn't apparent that I could scroll, and I thought I had to sit through the flashy animation before I could see anything. Was a little bit off-putting.

<comment><USER6> Also the skew/unskew on the #demo and #feature seems to cause font to render poorly on some browsers/OS combinations. Works fine in Firefox in Ubuntu. Chrome in Windows 7 is the worst with Chrome in Ubuntu being marginally better but still not rendering correctly. IE11 seemed to work fine in Windows 7.

[http://imgur.com/a/Wz87U](http://imgur.com/a/Wz87U)

Top image is fixed and bottom image is what I get when I first visit the site.

What is weird is that as soon as I remove the skew on the first feature bar (feature-auto) it clears up everything below it (all of the text within skewed elements looks weird). But if you re-enable the skew it distorts again. Also if remove the skew from the 2nd feature it will fix everything below it but not the stuff above and so on for the 3rd or the #demo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the main strengths of something like cloudformation, is that we can use libraries in languages we're comfortable with to build a programmable DSL.

A great tool, at least for Python, that exposes this is: [https://github.com/cloudtools/troposphere](https://github.com/cloudtools/troposphere).

This gives me the full power of python, so I can build abstractions, use inheritance and encapsulation to specialize certain things.

We've done a lot of work to automate our infrastructure provisioning, but I'm interested in the abstraction layer Terraform provides -- especially for multiple providers.

How can we bridge the gap that is left by Terraform from having a fully complete programming language to define infrastructure (which has downsides but in my opinion, more upsides)?

<comment><USER8> Terraform fully supports JSON as an input format as a 1st class citizen: [http://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html](http://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html)

You can use that to write higher level wrappers to generate the JSON, and was indeed one of the intentions.

<comment><USER7> Sweet, thanks Mitchell. I'm always impressed at the level of polish your products have. I'll take this for a spin and I'll report back any results. Is there a mailing list or just #hashicorp on Freenode?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use HashiCorp tools and I recommend them wherever I go. The reason I do that is because the tools are built with very specific use cases and are grounded in actual practices and backed by solid theory. None of their tools are something that was hacked up over the weekend. Looking forward to Terraform taking over the provisioning/deployment landscape.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just stumbled across this project with the same name, and at least some of the same goals: [https://github.com/UrbanCode/terraform](https://github.com/UrbanCode/terraform)

<comment><USER11> Bummer, Terraform is also the engine that powers Harp & the Harp Platform. It doesn't appear this was very well researched before choosing a name. Confusion seem inevitable.

[https://github.com/sintaxi/terraform](https://github.com/sintaxi/terraform) [https://github.com/sintaxi/harp](https://github.com/sintaxi/harp)

Looks like an interesting project though.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell How does it handle failures? I.e in the first example it creates a server and then creates a dns record. What if the dns record creation fails? Does it roll back everything (i.e destroy the server)? I'd probably want a system that automatically retried x times before rolling back for some situations. In other situations I'd probably want it to not roll back or only roll back some of the tasks. How flexible is it?

<comment><USER12> Terraform saves partial state as it creates resources for these exact scenarios.

In your example, Terraform would create and save the ID of the server to state before going along to create the DNS record. If the DNS record failed to create for some external reason, the next `terraform apply` you ran would simply refresh the server and go on to create the DNS record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Salt Cloud provides most of these features. If this kind of thing interests you, you should check it out: [http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/cloud/](http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/cloud/)

<comment><USER14> Does it really provide most of the features? All I can find in it's documentation is using salt to creating and destroying instances and volumes on various cloud providers. That just scratches the surface of what Terraform does.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it really does. Saltstack (with Salt Cloud) does cloud orchestration, configuration management, provisioning, works with containers, works with cloud providers

<comment><USER14> Provisioning and configuration management seem out of scope for Terraform, it calls other tools to perform them. What I was wondering is if Saltstack's infrastructure management capabilities were comparable to Terraform's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty awesome. My question is how well does this integrate with and already setup infrastructure? Or would I have to recreate the system to get going with Terraform?

<comment><USER8> This is a really important question and I'm glad you brought it up.

We're actively working on a way to bring existing infrastructure under Terraform management without having to recreate it from scratch. The process will actually be really easy (but is vaporware at the moment): Terraform only needs the TYPE of a resource and ID of that resource. From there, it can "refresh" the rest of the metadata in.

Our idea is that you'll be able to say "I have an `aws_instance`, it's ID is `i-1234567`, and it satisfies the 'foo' resource" and it'll attach it.

Point being: we're thinking about this, and it is an important aspect of Terraform.

Another point is that you don't need to convert 100% of your infrastructure to Terraform to extract value from it. You can start by putting only specific services under management, and grow from there.

<comment><USER16> Hi, I think declarative resource management like this is the definitive future (or present as of now).

I was wondering what happens when you increase the amount of nodes of a particular instance? I assume a new machine is started. But what happens if you remove the entire resource altogether, does it terminate the whole cluster? Similarly how does a scaling in a node work? And how would it affect dependencies?

How does this consolidate with elasticity of a particular cluster. I.e. if an amazon load balancing group destroys an instance or takes one up, do I simply refresh and it would detect that this new instance is part of the defined cluster in terraform?

Awesome work on this tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I cannot wait to dive into this. We (rsync.net) will absolutely make our storage a usable component in terraform.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have been developing a tool that is almost the same called 'ozone.io'.. It leverages CMT tools such as puppet, ansible, chef. Not by writing plugins, but rather have users write or extend scripts called 'runners' that install and execute the CMT tool per node. You can checkout a prototype chef-solo runner at [https://github.com/ozone-io/runner-chef-solo](https://github.com/ozone- io/runner-chef-solo).

Parallel deployment of multiple clusters is also covered. It too is handled by a directed acyclic graph based on dependencies on other clusters. I am on my own and I am writing it for my thesis which will come out pretty soon.

It is created as an engine that expects cluster state. A sample input file can be seen here which is the only state you need to launch something. [https://gist.github.com/wernerb/35a06e08a4d4e6cb02aa](https://gist.github.com/wernerb/35a06e08a4d4e6cb02aa)

The whole thing works declaratively, so it converges your infrastructure to the desired state. By increasing the nodes for 'smallweb' it will undergo the steps defined in the cluster lifecycle. It will then also update the configuration of the nginx load balancer.

As you can see each cluster is pinned to a provider/instanceprofile, and one of the things I am adding are affinity rules so the cluster deploys to multiple locations/providers.

It is not ready to be opensourced but if any wants to see, contribute or see more I can give view access.

What do you think?

<comment><USER14> What type of resources does your tool manage? It actually doesn't sound that similar to what Terraform's providers manage, e.g. [http://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/index.html](http://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/index.html)

<comment><USER16> Actually, I've been reading and I might have jumped the gun.. Its programmer panic, sorry. You are right, it looks like a different type of system. I actually support all the providers Jclouds provides: Openstack Nova, rackspace, EC2, AWS-ec2.. more.

Whats more ozone does not store any state, rather it stores it in a zookeeper/etcd cluster so you are in control of your meta-data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does this compare to Ansible? It appears to be operate in the same space/level.

<comment><USER19> Ansible author here! Hi Mitchell and crew! Our users are great fans of Vagrant and Packer, so +1 for those.

From a cursory overview, it looks like Terraform is basically LIKE a CloudFormation type abstraction. Ansible contains declarative models for lots of cloud providers as well, but does not attempt to abstract out the different clouds. We generally view wanting to show things in their natural state (figuring you will know you want to use feature X or Y, and want the knobs/buttons exposed).

But yes, we have similar features for saying "X instances of this should be running now", make it so, all that don't require use of CloudFormation.

For people that like Terraforms flavor though, I can see users using these tools together. They could declare a cloud using either ansible or terraform, and then use ansible for the final configuration and application deployment, plus full lifecycle management.

I know things like Packer like to walk people down a more imagey road, but you can also use config tools to describe the recipes that build your images, and that would include Ansible, Puppet, Chef, or even (if you so wished) bash.

I'm not a fan of bash though :)

I'm happy to see more efforts to make cloud provisioning accessible though, and like the idea that this would allow more easy migration between some cloud providers. Ansible has a lot of the same declarative thingies, but will probably appeal more to people who aren't looking for the DSL.

[http://docs.ansible.com/list_of_cloud_modules.html](http://docs.ansible.com/list_of_cloud_modules.html)

It doesn't look like Terraform is attempting to be a provisioner itself, so it wouldn't do the things that Ansible or other config/app deploy tools do once you have a running instance, but does some of the things various config tools do to help you GET a running instance.

One of the things shown in the Ansible examples are how to do a cloud deploy in one hop, i.e. request resources and also configure the stack all the way to the end, from one button press, and can also be used to orchestrate the rolling updates of those machines, working with the cloud load balancers and so on, throughout their entire life cycle -- all using just the one tool.

As for where the future of this tool is, I obviously can't speculate, nor should I. But I do welcome more attempts to simplify beasts like the AWS EC2 API space, because I think we both agree nobody wants to really keep all of that in their head at all times.

<comment><USER20> The best thing about this is even though Ansible and Terraform seem to do some similar things (Ansible, of course, has a few other tricks up its sleeve, but just comparing the tools in terms of infrastructure orchestration...), there's plenty of room in this space for multiple solutions.

Just like Chef and Puppet seem to have leapt off from a solid platform started by cfengine et all, and made 'configuration as code' a thing, Ansible, Salt cloud, and Terraform seem to be kicking off the 'infrastructure as code' movement (and are adapting to many different workflows—Docker, Chef, Puppet, etc. play nicely in this sandbox).

Too many places rely on band-aids, shell scripts, and manual process for infrastructure, mostly because tools like Ansible and Terraform haven't existed until recently (or today, in Terraform's case).

<comment><USER21> +1 for too many places rely on band aids. The frustrating thing is that there's no need now. These tools are adoptable by almost anyone and if you use them you shine a giant spotlight into the previously dimly lit area of your system configurations. You get documentation, testability and version control of your infra. It's extremely liberating.

One of the most valuable things has turned out to be the ability to refactor infra as a project evolves. Some task that would have required a few hands and a project manager now becomes a few edits.

I lead a CFEngine team and It never fails to amaze people when I demo end to end life cycle management "that used to take 3 guys 2 days" etc.

P.s. I use ansible at home though: [https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home- network](https://github.com/CraigJPerry/home-network)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a way to encrypt variables and provide a password to decrypt when executing a plan, so that I can commit my API keys, passwords, etc to source control without fear? I'm thinking something similar to Ansible and its 'vault' concept for variables (sure Chef, Puppet, etc have something similar).

<comment><USER8> There isn't at the moment, but it is definitely something we need to think through. We didn't want to ship anything broken though (illusion of security), so we deferred this feature until we can think it through more carefully.

<comment><USER20> One implementation you might want to take a look at/learn from is Ansible's Vault: [http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_vault.html](http://docs.ansible.com/playbooks_vault.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> On the page about integration with Consul [1], I read "Terraform can update the application's configuration directly by setting the ELB address into Consul." The questiomn is whether I can do somewhat other way around, i.e. set get information from Consul and point ELB to it, somewhat like Synapse or SmartStack... Or may be I don't need service discovery tool for this yet and can just use TF without Consul, simply configure the components of the infrastracture and the ELB? The point is just to simplify the first step and avoid adding logic to support Consul lookups in the apps... What's the easiest way here?

[1]: [http://www.terraform.io/intro/examples/consul.html](http://www.terraform.io/intro/examples/consul.html)

<comment><USER23> Ok, I think I'll just try interacting with Consul via DNS, didn't know it's a thing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The ~ before the Droplet means that Terraform will update the resource in- > place, instead of destroying or recreating. Terraform is the first tool to > have this feature of the tools which can be considered similar to Terraform

While not multi-platform, AWS's Cloud Formation does just this, it takes as its input a stateless JSON description of a set of AWS resources and their dependencies. Given a change in the desired state, it will do its best to update resources rather than creating them from scratch when possible.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but CloudFormation doesn't have Terraform's concept of an "execution plan"[1], which tells you what Terraform will do, before it does it. It is very easy with CloudFormation (especially as they get larger and more complex) to run into cases where CloudFormation unexpectedly destroys and recreates a resource, something that would never happen in Terraform because you would see it before it happened in the plan.

There are more comparisons to CF here: [http://www.terraform.io/intro/vs/cloudformation.html](http://www.terraform.io/intro/vs/cloudformation.html)

[1]: [http://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/plan.html](http://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/plan.html)

<comment><USER14> Agreed, having to dig through the AWS documentation to see what whether updating a particular value requires replacing the resource it applies to is tedious and error prone.

Another things that excites me about separating the plan from the execution is that I can periodically run `terraform plan` to check for configuration drift without risking making a change. I've been bitten by the following:

1) Someone creates an ASG with the desired number of instances set to 1 via CloudFormation 2) Later, they increase the desired number of instances, e.g. to 5, via the EC2 console or API rather than CloudFormation 3) I come along and apply an update to the stack via CloudFormation. This resets their ASG to 1 instance, terminating the other 4.

If anyone from AWS is reading this, please steal this feature for CloudFormation!

<comment><USER25> The solution is not to specify desired capacity in CFN at all. It used to be a mandatory parameter, but hasn't been for a while now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks like Terraform is launching with decent coverage of AWS resources. Thinking of my own usage, the main ones missing are ElastiCache and CloudWatch. I'm not sure how you can setup a useful autoscaling group without the latter.

EDIT: There's an issue tracking adding more at [https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/28](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/28)

<comment><USER26> Looks like you can't pass EC2 user-data to a launch config either, which is frustrating (I'm sure that'll be rapidly fixed, though):

[http://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/launch_config.h...](http://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/launch_config.html)

[https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/9b0ba70537a440b3...](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/9b0ba70537a440b3991557abcbba4768649f957d/builtin/providers/aws/resource_aws_launch_configuration.go#L191)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> tl;dr: Terraform is modular virtual infrastructure automation. [I would say it's an orchestration tool, but that usually implies datacenter-wide resources, and this just seems to apply to cloud service providers]

 _" [..] Terraform combines resources from multiple services providers: we created a DigitalOcean Droplet and then used the IP address of that droplet to add a DNS record to DNSimple. This sort of infrastructure composition from code is new and extremely powerful."_

Well, "new" in the sense of "we created another thing to automate infrastructure deployment and configuration". I have worked with various amalgamated solutions that do this for the past 12 years. Of course they mention that in the software comparison section, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this isn't new by a long shot.

 _" Terraform has a feature that is critical for safely iterating infrastructure: execution plans. Execution plans show you what changes Terraform plans on making to your infrastructure. [..] As a result, you know exactly what Terraform will do to your infrastructure to reach your desired state, and you can feel confident that Terraform won't surprise you in unexpected ways."_

So it's declarative, and it has a dry-run mode.

The thing that really bugs me is the idea that you should be creating "code" to do rote tasks such as changing resources or deploying things. You know what the single most problematic thing about infrastructure changes is? Human error. It's a simple fact of user interface design that humans are less likely to fuck up a point-and-click interface than a command line program that you have to feed a hand-edited config to. And automated config generation can arguably be _more_ error-prone.

Automation/orchestration should not simply make things happen automatically. It should make things work more reliably, and require less expertise to do so. To be frank, any code monkey with a few weeks of free time to kill can create a tool that does exactly what this one does, and that's why there are _dozens of them_ that all do the same thing, yet we always need a new one.... because they all stink at actually making things work better.

This comic isn't just funny, it's a truism: [https://xkcd.com/1319/](https://xkcd.com/1319/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Off-topic: it is interesting to me how different companies seem to dominate a space for a few years, and then recede. It's a common pattern. I can remember in 2009 when it seemed like RightScale www.rightscale.com was the dominant force creating tools to take advantage of AWS, but nowadays I never hear of them, never see anything interesting come from them. All the interesting stuff is happening elsewhere.

<comment><USER29> I think it's easy for dominant players to sit back and let revenue stream in when there's no much in the way of real competition, which can lead to devs leaving for greener pastures (where green is either more interesting or pays better because dev is de-prioritized at the current company). Then some real competition shows up and the company is woefully unprepared. I think it's an important lesson, just because your competition doesn't _appear_ to be forcing you to innovate and expand, doesn't mean there isn't someone silently lurking ready to upend your world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thanks everyone at Hashicorp! This tool looks awesome. I wish it had been around years ago so I might have a nice version-controlled set of configuration files instead of a bunch of wiki articles and post-it notes ;)

I have a quick question I didn't see covered in the docs. Is there a best practise way to organise Terraform configuration files? Specifically when using it to manage different environments (e.g. staging, prod, qa). I'm thinking of some sort of folder structure like this:

      /
        production/
          web.tf
        staging/
          web.tf
        qa/
          web.tf
          test-servers.tf

So, `terraform apply production` would then plan and apply changes for production servers, `terraform apply staging` the same for staging, etc.

Would be interested to know if you have any thoughts on this, or if there's some sort of paradigm you folks are using internally.

<comment><USER8> We should've included a roadmap, but Terraform 0.2 will introduce first-class modules and a [basic] package manager. We'll also address environments then.

<comment><USER31> Can we please have a non-sucky package manager so I can finally tell developers to do the right thing instead of begging me for Docker?

<comment><USER32> I'm pretty sure by package manager, he means to install Terraform modules.

Docker still fits for your problem, so does Packer. Honestly, it's super nice to not have to worry about any external resources failing, where you only have 1 thing pulled in to deploy any type of application, and that would be the image.

<comment><USER31> The same is also true of packages, if you're packaging correctly and work in a sane environment. It's also a lot easier for devops to manage, because they then only have to apply access control, logging, resource management, and other integration requirements to the main OS image, instead of to every Docker image produced for deployment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Feels like a big meta tool!

It reads like you can use any provisioning software, use any server provider supported, use any DNS provider supported, you just need to write a bunch of configuration.

I _think_ I like this, but it sounds complex :D

</comment><comment><USER34> Offtopic but i guess you, hashicorp guys, would like to know; there is a typo on the geometric animation. It says "Build, Combine, and Launch Infrastucture_", should be Infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would this be a good fit or are there any plans to include providers for hypervisors (VMWare, Virtualbox, Xen etc.. ) Or even containers (i.e, Docker)?

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know if an API is planned? If I want to manage infrastructure from code I would love Terraform to be an option.

As a (predominantly) Node.js developer, I'd probably use pkgcloud for this sort of thing. Terraform supports a great range of providers and has some more advanced features, so I'd love to play with it as an alternative to pkgcloud.

<comment><USER37> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This would be great for us. Various parts of our stack are spread around so many different platforms, and this could really take the grunt work out of that. Not to mention removing the need of dealing with fifteen various shoddy interfaces. Heck, AWS isn't even consistent with itself (just check out OpsWorks vs Route53).

</comment><comment><USER39> Considering Packer is written in Go, can you shed some light on this platform, what languages did you decide to use?

<comment><USER40> According to their Github repo it's written in Go: [https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How would you compare Terraform to something like Razor? I think it might be a good one to add to your "vs Other Software" section:

[http://puppetlabs.com/solutions/next-generation- provisioning](http://puppetlabs.com/solutions/next-generation-provisioning)

<comment><USER23> Razor is for private cloud, the biggest problems it solves are bare-metal provisioning as well as OS-specific mass-install tools. One of use-case for Razor: pop-in a new server into the rack, get provision ESXi with Razor and then provision a number of CentOS and Debian VMs without having to care how different is Kickstart from Preseed. It's a great too, but it's mostly for private cloud and Teraform is for public cloud and is therefore at a higher level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I can't keep their pace! Another amazing tool from Mitchell and his crew. Hashicorp well on its way to become a DevOps juggernaut...

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks like a great tool. I was going to use CloudFormation to setup a new VPC in AWS, but I will give this a shot instead.

</comment><comment><USER44> What is the licensing on the source code?

<comment><USER45> It's under Mozilla Public License, version 2.0.

[https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/master/LICENSE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Based solely on the name and the logo, I was really hoping this was going to be an awesome game :P

</comment><comment><USER47> Does Terraform have any service failure related features, ie if an instances fails?

</comment><comment><USER48> Computer science – Better living through ever higher stacks of abstraction!

</comment><comment><USER49> FWIW, I find the purple and blue here a bit painful to read:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ki0m7967x5tvn6/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ki0m7967x5tvn6/Screenshot%202014-07-28%2015.01.34.png)

<comment><USER50> I don't have any issues with the colors, but I find the slight blurriness (aliasing?) to be a bit painful to read.That said, I love the design of the site otherwise.

On another note, Terraform appears to be great. I cannot wait to try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> My one gripe is the font choice on your homepage. Makes it very annoying to read.

</comment><comment><USER52> Mitchell, do you even sleep? Every time I see one of your tools, I feel like I need to pay you a hefty sum to teach me how to start coding productively, cuz Hashicorp output seems ferocious. Keep up the good work.

<comment><USER8> Everyone at HashiCorp plays a key role in developing these tools. I couldn't do it by myself.

<comment><USER52> Well this will seem silly, but my bad. After looking at all your tools, I never looked at the HashiCorp site. I had no idea it was not a one man shop. I saw your last name and the branding on the project pages and I made a judgement a few years back. Should I have check my facts.

Regardless, your software kicks ass. Thanks to you, and your team. Keep on trucking.

<comment><USER53> I don't think it seems silly... VentureBeat [1] seems to think the same thing:

        Mitchell Hashimoto, the guy who created the popular
        Vagrant tool for setting up development environments, has
        gone and built another useful tool for developers working
        on public-cloud platforms.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/28/terraform- hashicorp/](http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/28/terraform-hashicorp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Terraform" \- seriously? Making world a better place through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility?

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a devops tool named Terraform, nothing to do with terraforming.

<comment><USER56> It's the new thing. Pick a noun or verb that's only marginally-related (or sometimes not even remotely related) to your product and take ownership of it.

Like Aerospike, or Uber.

<comment><USER57> At least Uber connotes that it's better than the competition. I was shocked to find out the other day about a CSS framework called Inuit. The mascot is a little inuit guy in a parka. Terraform seems much better in comparison.

<comment><USER58> You were _shocked, shocked_ that someone would want to add a little bit of whimsy to an otherwise mundane thing as a CSS framework?

<comment><USER57> No, I was shocked they would appropriate a minority culture's name and caricature for their unrelated tech thingy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Strava releases activity heat map. Excellent for locating military bases - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/957317886112124928 <comment><USER2> And school running tracks, very very cool. And how it's made if anyone cares: [https://medium.com/strava-engineering/the-global-heatmap- now...](https://medium.com/strava-engineering/the-global-heatmap- now-6x-hotter-23fc01d301de?source=linkShare-320f834983d7-1517124595)</comment>


Ask HN: Who's hiring remote workers? (February 2011 edition) - <AUTHOR>

Just like the "Who's hiring?" thread, but for remote/telecommuting positions only. <comment><USER2> Here is the other thread about remote workers.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2161368>

By the way, it's 2011 now. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, was looking but couldn't find that one. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Is your mayor in Comcast's pocket? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/comcast-time-warner-american-mayors/

<comment><USER2> My mayor is on this list.

I am fuming, and just sent a fairly restrained letter to his office. I'm actually incredibly impressed by how civil I was, considering Comcast is involved.

<comment><USER3> I was pretty shocked anybody in Silicon Valley was on that list. It seems career suicide.</comment></comment>


Tim Cook to repatriate money - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/apple-chief-executive-expects-ireland-to-appeal-eu-tax-ruling-1472720654-lMyQjAxMTE2NDA4MTEwODEwWj <comment><USER3> Am I getting this right? Apple pays 1% or less on corporate profits in the EU. An EU court decides that this is bullshit and shouldn't be that way. Tim Cook complains that they made everything up and that the below 1% tax rate is reasonable and completely legal.

Meanwhile Apple's $200 billion are sitting in Europe far away from the 35% tax rate in the US. Tim Cook says that 35% is too high to pay and says that something like 25% would be reasonable. If the US doesn't change its corporate tax rate to something lower, they won't get a single dollar from Apple.

Here's the thing I don't get, how is 25% in the US acceptable but more than 1% in Europe is considered wrong? 25% of the $200 billion would be $50 billion which is way higher than the $13 billion fine...

Am I comparing Apples to Oranges here? Or is Apple simply unwilling to pay any corporate taxes outside the US?

<comment><USER4> Well Europe is changing the rules retroactively, while the US is clear about taking their share upon repatriation.

<comment><USER5> This has been discussed multiple times in several thread, and no, Europe (i.e. the EU) is not changing any rules retroactively. You're welcome to point out the specific rule they have changed if you feel that I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "An Apple spokeswoman said that Mr. Cook was referring to his optimism that the U.S. will change its tax code next year, and that his comments didn't represent any change to Apple's position on the question."

Not quite the same meaning as the headline.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any reason why I should have any sympathy? From my basic understanding, these companies engineer their structures and finances in weird and wonderful ways to reduce their tax bill. Fair enough, they have the global reach and luxury of doing so and some aspects legitimately occur in other tax jurisdictions.

However I have no sympathy for their complaints that it is too expensive to repatriate the money. It seems unfair to expect the law should change because you made the decision to accumulate money outside of the country to avoid paying taxes that would otherwise be due. I might be naive expecting parity but just like everyone else corporations should pay their way.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Apple and other international companies have a real point. If they sell stuff in Portugal, for example, the pay taxes on the item to Portugal plus make some profit. If they then transfer the profit to the US, the US would like to tax the company a _second_ time.

It's kind of questionable that transferring properly earned and taxed funds from another country into the US makes the US suddenly want to tax the funds.

This also has consequences. If the best place for Apple to invest some of its money is the US, but the tax makes it less profitable, Apple may choose to invest that money in a different country instead. So the tax code _encourages_ US countries to invest overseas profits into overseas investments.

<comment><AUTHOR> They can claim a tax deduction of all the taxes paid globally on their U.S tax returns.

<comment><USER9> "They can claim a tax deduction of all the taxes paid globally on their U.S tax returns."

No - I don't believe this is true in the sense you mean it.

Effectively for corp. taxes - US companies are indeed 'double taxed'.

This means US companies are incented to leave zillions overseas and not bring it back to America.

The US tax code basically ignores the fact that the rest of the world exists. Most countries tax codes have to deal with the fact there is such a thing as 'international markets'.

The terrible thing is - there is any easy fix. Any President could pull it off I think.

If the US got rid of double taxation, and reduced the corporate tax rate - <USER2> think most business leaders would accept the closing of all the crazy loopholes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure about this? I am pretty sure you can claim the tax paid to other countries on your taxes. Can a CFO here chime in?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taxes are not someone else's problem, independent from your own. It's not like someone else's rent or salary.

If someone else doesn't pay their taxes, either you make up for it by paying more or government services are cut.

</comment><comment><USER11> "right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year"

seems like he's dangling the money in front of the US gov's nose. perhaps the US gov will help apple avoid this huge bill from EU.

<comment><USER12> He gave a testimony to Congress 3 years ago in which he complained about the tax rate. I hardly think this signal will do anything, well all know the one candidate that publicly called for lower corporate taxes and Cook didn't fundraiser for that guy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The USA is alone in the world with it's odd repatriation laws.

If a company pays x% tax somewhere overseas - they still have to pay full amount of corporate tax when repatriating - meaning US companies are 'double taxed'.

I.E. They pay 30% in Russia, then another 35% in the US.

That's crazy.

In most countries, you pay tax in the jurisdiction overseas - and then a 1-4% 'repatriation' fee bringing it home. This is more rational.

The US also has crazy high corporate taxes - some of the highest in the world - added to this a crazy bunch of odd loopholes.

The US tax system needs to be cleaned up here:

A) Small repatriation tax, and don't double tax foreign sales.

B) Reduce corporate taxes to make them more competitive with international standards.

C) Get rid of the loopholes and actually make corps pay the tax.

Obviously - the EU needs to clean up it's act as well.

Sane, rational taxation would have solved the repatriation problem - and the EU/Ireland tax avoidance problems a long time ago.

Unlike healthcare or some other unwieldy subject - this one is easy. Everyone knows what needs to be done. Nobody seems to be willing to do it.

<comment><USER13> Does anyone have insight into why this is? The US seems uniquely aggressive in the way it pursues its citizens' and corporations' international earnings.

Why is the US the only country that does this? Is it just greedy? Does it feel more entitled to taxing those things than other countries? Is there a historical or cultural reason it ended up this way?

<comment><USER9> I think it's because the laws were made a long, long time ago when internationalism didn't really exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> misleading title - there's no certainty of repatriation happening in the article.

<comment><USER15> @dang, or whoever's still in the office - can you change the title here to match that of the actual article? Thanks!

("Tim Cook Says Apple Could Send Cash Back to U.S. Next Year")

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apple is actually arguing that all of it's value is created in the United States, and so Only U.S. should collect the taxes. But it won't send them to Treasury yet as it is hoping the Govt would lower the tax rate next year.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well I guess Tim Cook is looking forward to Trump's 15% corporate tax next year...

<comment><USER16> Therefore voting for him?

Well, maybe Scott Adams can stop declaring himself a Clinton supporter for his safety ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Who is Scott Adams? And how did he enter this argument? Sorry I am trying to understand your comment.

<comment><USER16> Author of the fairly well known Dilbert comic. The dilbert.com page has a link to his blog.

I was referring to this:

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement- for...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for- president-of-the-united-states)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How do I get rid of flagged tag on this submission? Does anyone know why it's flagged?

</comment><comment><USER17> Dumb move by the EU.

<comment><USER18> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER8> I don't know what the parent comment had in mind, but here's why I think it's a dumb move: the EU just announced to the world that they can override the decisions of the member countries retroactively and at will.

If you want to invest in something in an EU country, you might calculate the taxes due on your investment before deciding if the investment is suitably profitable. With this decision, you now have an unexpected new risk factor to take into account: the EU bureaucracy may retroactively change your tax rate. That means uncertainty of payout, therefore the investment has a lower payout, therefore you are less likely to invest in an EU country.

<comment><USER19> It wasn't "just now". The rule against privileging single companies is a rule of the Treaty of Rome. Which was first signed in 1957. And by Ireland in 1973. Also the recovery of unlawful state aid is nothing new but established practice.

A better way of minimizing your risk factor would be hiring tax lawyers who know the rules of the EU Single Market. Which makes Cook's comments so baffling: Apple should have known that there is a possibility of a crackdown.

<comment><USER17> How exactly does a law predate the institution?

<comment><USER19> European Economic Community → European Communities → European Union.

Maybe this timeline helps: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties_of_the_European_Union...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties_of_the_European_Union#Ratified_treaties)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ideas Are Like Sperm - <AUTHOR> http://danielodio.com/ideas-are-like-sperm

<comment><USER2> Hey, every sperm is sacred.

<comment><AUTHOR> And so it goes with ideas.</comment></comment>


PyBay – 1st Annual Bay Area Python Conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.pybay.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm not the submitter but I am helping organize the conference.

I help organize SF Python Meetup and we've talked about trying to run a mini- con for several years. We've finally gotten brave enough to try it this year.

The CFP is open ([http://www.pybay.com/#!call-for- proposals/sonxv](http://www.pybay.com/#!call-for-proposals/sonxv)) and we're still looking for good talks...

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats SF Python!</comment>


Bokehlicious Selfies - <AUTHOR> http://rahulrav.com/blog/bokehlicious.html <comment><USER3> This is really cool, but it isn't bokeh, it's just blur.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. I don't see anything here that couldn't be done in Photoshop with a bit of masking work.

Here's an example [1] of how bokeh really looks, using a high quality fast lens on a decent camera. We've got a long way to go.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Josefina...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Josefina_with_Bokeh.jpg)

<comment><USER5> So it's a "find bright spots, bloom them into circles or hexagons or some such, then make 2-4 offset less opaque circle clones and overlay them offset by position"?

<comment><USER4> There's a bit more to it than that. Look near the edges of the frame vs the middle. Also note that the effect is not binary. It's dependent on depth as well as angle. One of the reasons the example from the original article looks so unrealistic is that the flowers are not at a great depth so they really shouldn't be blurry unless the subject is also out of focus.

Additionally: finding true bright spots (vs regular objects that happen to be white) is difficult with a typical low dynamic range photograph. You'd have a much easier time with an HDR photo. It still wouldn't give you any depth or angle information though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To make the Gaussian blur look better, it needs to be applied to linear lightness, not to gamma-encoded colors, as it is done here. In reality, the blur is induced by the lens, on linear lightness, and only gamma-encoded afterwards.

The effect being that blurred colors mix wrongly, as you can see where the red from the flower mixes with the green. The transition looks wrong, and not how a lens would render it.

<comment><USER7> Shallow depth of field blur is not a Gaussian blur though. Attempts at faking shallow depth of field with that filter will not result with true bokeh.

<comment><USER8> True, but Gaussian or not, convolutional filtering should be performed in linear light space!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a quick proof of concept of an idea. This won't work for every use- case but it worked surprisingly well for a use-case I had in mind. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER9> So, is the ML part just the segmentation, correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. That is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r I just discovered that Zoom teleconferencing software has the ability to detect the background and replace it with an arbitrary video in real time. I have no idea how they do it, but it's as impressive as heck.

<comment><USER10> Having just used it, it feels like a few factors:

\- a background scene is usually static. if a pixel matches its historical average (i e. not changing) then it's probably background.

\- if a pixel color matches its neighbors, it's probably the same as them. i noticed my black shirt tripped it up on occasion, but was all-or-nothing.

\- people are blobs, not diffuse, so try to segment large regions.

<comment><USER11> Yes, it did not work for me sitting with a laptop on a swing chair. It actually works better with clear static features in the background, but it seams to be a bit more (cnn?) because it seams to isolate paintings on the wall for me as well. Wish there was more open source easy to use camera stream manipulation. Skype also has background blurring.

<comment><USER12> My work is using Meets, and I second this desire to edit my camera stream. I didn't find anything even cheap to do it.

<comment><USER13> A green screen should make it pretty straightforward?

<comment> mark-r Yes, that would make it trivial. But Zoom gives you the option of using a green screen or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice if there was some more information about where the mask comes from. We want a segmentation map for people, so this technique basically takes the layer activation map for the "person" class - which is id 0 in COCO - <USER2> you can threshold that to get foreground/background. If you changed the mask index, this would respond to other object types (so as written this code will only work for humans).

\--

By the way, Google does some absolutely nuts stuff with this on the Pixel 3 and 4 - they actually calculate a stereo depth map using the two autofocus sites in _individual pixels_. Essentially some modern CMOS sensors use a technology called dual pixel autofocus (DPAF), by measuring the response from two photodiodes in the same pixel, you adjust focus until each pixel has the same intensity (more or less). If the camera is out of focus, the two photodiodes will have different intensities.

However what this gives you is two separate images with an extremely small (but detectable) parallax which can be used to give coarse 3D reconstruction, and you can segment foreground and background. It's nice because you get a strong physical prior, rather than having to worry about using a convnet to identify fore/background regions. (They of course apply a convnet anyway to refine the result).

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/learning-to-predict- depth-...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/learning-to-predict-depth-on- pixel-3.html)

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/12/improvements-to- portrait-m...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/12/improvements-to-portrait- mode-on-google.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a simple Gaussian kernel multiplied with a triangular mask.

You can do better by playing with intensities of pixel values as suggested in the article I linked.

<comment><USER14> I meant about where this line comes from:

        mask = masks[0][0]

Presumably 0 is the class ID? For someone new to ML or object detection, it might not be obvious why you take the first channel here.

Also recent related reading: [https://bartwronski.com/2020/03/15/using-jax- numpy-and-optim...](https://bartwronski.com/2020/03/15/using-jax-numpy-and- optimization-techniques-to-improve-separable-image-filters/)

HN Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22590360&ref=hvper.com&...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22590360&ref=hvper.com&utm_source=hvper.com&utm_medium=website)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome! Computational photography is fascinating. A while back, I wrote some OpenGL shaders to do the same thing, and got stuck when I wanted variable bokeh based on scene depth. This is easy when you have the depth map (say, in a renderer). I recall reading about how Apple achieved this using stereo disparity mapping, which is great if you have the hardware. I hadn't considered a neural net approach like yours for auto-generating a depth map, although I now that I look into it, Facebook recently published research on just that!

[https://ai.facebook.com/blog/-powered-by-ai-turning- any-2d-p...](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/-powered-by-ai-turning-any-2d-photo- into-3d-using-convolutional-neural-nets/)

</comment><comment><USER15> One problem with bokeh is that it disappears when you scale the image down. Perhaps this technique can help solve that (but I suppose there would be better ways to do this).

Anyway, the entire technique is also very easy to do manually with Photoshop.

<comment><USER16> I don't have much experience with Photoshop. Would it be possible to record some sort of macro in it to automatically transform any image?

If not, this approach seems to have merit

<comment><USER17> Yes, Photoshop supports pretty customizable recorded and custom actions. Can also process multiple files in bulk/batch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One step further would be to incorporate the blurring, masking, and combining operations into the network itself, so you can leverage the GPU to do the whole computation in one fell swoop.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ain't no lens that would blur the front brim of her hat and her face is clear like that. Disregarding the nature of the optics you are emulating ruins the value of the effect

</comment><comment><USER20> OT: I can't understand why this website _want_ to looks like a mobile web __and__ hides scrolling bar. I'm on desktop and it irritates me a bit.

<comment><USER21> Might be that it's a mobile first theme that's more like mobile only – styling for the phone and not making any changes for desktop.

<comment><USER22> What's odd is that I can't interact with it at all on my iPad. I scroll down, hit a media object of some kind, and that's the end of it. Blank space, no scroll indication, can't seem to scroll back up to the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think I'm missing the part of my brain that lets me understand why bokeh selfies are even a thing. If you're going to remove your surroundings from the picture, why even bother taking a new picture?

</comment><comment><USER24> His original photo looks way nicer compared to the processed one.

</comment><comment><USER25> Page is broken with no scrollbar.

</comment><comment><USER26> if we're using deep learning anyways, might as well use a u-net (ie. pix2pix) to add the bokeh directly - this would require pair training data but would probably look a lot better visually.

</comment><comment><USER27> website has no scrollbar??

<comment><USER28> Only works if you scroll while hovering over the "content" part of the website in the center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow this looks ugly :D. But still nice work. It's just that the girl is totally over-processed and the "bokeh", well I hate to break it to you, but this isn't bokeh, its called "blur".

This is bokeh: [https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/JgrDuxQPCAvgd5VzqiKN5a-650...](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/JgrDuxQPCAvgd5VzqiKN5a-650-80.jpg.webp)

And bokeh is 3 dimensional and surrounds the focus area, increasing with distance: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottcartwrightphotography/145...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottcartwrightphotography/14511003253/)

I suggest to brush up a bit on photo skills, although I agree that the instragram and iPhone culture can shift your perception of "bokehlicious" quite a bit.

I don't want to make you feel bad, so I also tell you that Apple's "bokeh" in portrait mode looks disgusting, doesn't make any sense and breaks the image in a lot of trivial cases... and they spent a lot more money & effort on it than you :).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. My goal here was to get something that look like bokeh if you squinted at it.

I just wanted to see how far I could take this idea.

<comment><USER22> FYI, the web page seems entirely unusable on my iPad Pro. It goes blank at the first example, and without a scroll indicator I have no idea what's going on.

I was able to scroll to the bottom footer, but I can't scroll back to the top, so there's literally nothing but a blank page now except for the footer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Let me fix that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"The Happiest Man In The World" - Matthieu Ricard On The Habits Of Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/matthieu-ricard-on-the-habits-of-happiness

<comment><USER2> I liked it very much</comment>


Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged. - <AUTHOR> http://shazow.posterous.com/find-yourself-covered-in-slime-youre-being-mu <comment><USER2> I have heard of this specific scam happening in Buenos Aires as well. It's a particularly nasty one.

It's unfortunate, but I would say that on my world trip about 50-60% of English-speaking locals in non-English-speaking countries were trying to get my money somehow. I feel bad for the ones who weren't, because I had to treat them with such suspicion.

But, the rule is, if somebody doesn't have anything better to do than talk to you, they're probably after your money. I never stop walking if someone starts talking to me on the street, until I have an idea of their intentions.

Actually, this gives me an idea for a blog post on the lines I've been fed in this process.

<comment><USER3> > But, the rule is, if somebody doesn't have anything better to do than talk > to you, they're probably after your money.

I have some experiences in Turkey. Outside the tourist spots, people talking to you are generally not after your money.

<comment><USER4> I think it holds true for major US cities (though usually you're just being panhandled instead of conned). The exception to this is generally people asking for directions This seems much more common if you're on a bike, which if you think about it is pretty clever. I wonder if there is a tourism book out there somewhere that advises you to ask bikers for directions over other people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Grrr...I hate to be this person, but why, oh why, is this on Hacker News? This isn't a "hack" or anything new...they've been doing this to tourists for as long as there have been tourists.

<comment><USER6> From the post, I'm assuming one of the victims is limedaring who just a week ago launched her site <http://www.weddinginvitelove.com/>, which was covered in this item with almost 500 points: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227770>

<comment> gender-bias you're right, that reminds me to sign up for that sex change operation. With the +400 vagina modifier, I should be able to stay at the top of hackernews all day. amirite? This is aimed squarely at the reparation voters btw. Tech is a meritocracy with exception to half the population. And I'm not even sexist, just kinda peeved at the hypocritical double standard. Women have it hard in startups. BULLSHIT. Everyone has it hard in startups. Women get all the attention in an attention economy, which is worth more than money.

<comment><USER7> >I'm not even sexist

... and yet in reply to a completely neutral comment proposing that the article might be relevant because one of the two people in it was just featured in a very highly rated article last week, you create a one-off account and go on a full paragraph gender rant ...

Edit: I agree with the top poster, I was expecting more in-depth analysis when I hit the link. But voting up a follow-up story to someone who was just highly featured in the community is not exactly an inexplicable response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple of years ago, a couple of prescription drug addicts stole some lawn tools and GPSes from our unfortunately unlocked garage. The local police (we live in a relatively affluent suburb) ended up coordinating with other local police departments and eventually caught the thieves. The police office I worked with thought that these same two guys were likely responsible for over a hundred similar property crimes. One is now in prison, and I'm not sure about the other guy. Unfortunately, my specific loss was not one for which they were prosecuted. Otherwise, I think I could make a claim against the 37 cents/hour (or whatever) those guys are paid in prison.

I'm told that the 80/20 rule applies to petty crime -- a handful of semi-pro thieves are responsible for a majority of the thefts. Given this, it seems that catching a few people who steal laptops, bikes, purses, etc. would actually have a significant impact on local crime levels. A problem with my particular case is that the thieves had already gotten rid of most of the stuff they had stolen, so proving in court that they had committed the crime would have been difficult. How viable of a start-up idea it would be to create "bait" laptops? The company would offer a turnkey service to law enforcement agencies. A special laptop would be provided to the police. It would appear normal at first glance but would record audio (and video?) and transmit GPS locations via a cellular connection. The police would place this laptop in an unlocked vehicle and leave. When the laptop moved, they would be notified via services provided by the start-up. From there, the police could either apprehend the thieves quickly or wait to see where they took the laptop (to get probable cause for a search warrant?). The back-end system would then produce court-ready evidence for the prosecution -- printable maps of activity, times, etc. Perhaps audio/video snippets ready to be played in court?

I did some quick Googling and could not find such a service. I wonder how one goes about selling to law enforcement agencies? Would they be able to make a purchase without 17 visits from a sales rep? Is this even a viable product? Thinking about my own community, I would love to hear about my police department working to reduce random crimes like these. There have been a couple of murders since we moved here a few years ago, but those have both been committed by family members of the victim. My greatest local crime risk is petty property theft.

<comment><USER9> This service is well known in car theft investigations except the cameras are supplemented with the ability to remotely cut the engine. Follow the car until it's safe to storm it. Boom goes the dynamite. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_car>

<comment><USER8> I've watched a few episodes of the "Bait Car" show on cable and should have mentioned it above. The Wikipedia article suggests that my proposed scheme would not constitute entrapment. I wonder how much time would pass, on average, before a criminal would take a laptop from an unlocked vehicle in a "nice" part of town?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You don't necessarily need to get travel insurance -- lots of homeowners/renters insurance covers thefts even abroad. I got robbed of my MBP and Kindle in the train station at the Madrid airport in October and the loss was covered. Probably worth checking into when buying insurance in the first place if you're a traveler.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ever wonder why you read stories in the foreign press about France, Germany, Italy or some other European country deporting its Roma (Gypsy) population? Well, now you understand why they do it. And before anyone says, "He never said they were Gyspies," he's from the U.S., doesn't speak Italian and obviously isn't savvy enough to pick them out, at least when they aren't trying to be noticed. Gypsies do stuff like this to tourists through out Europe. They are a menace, and resist any attempt to assimilate them into modern society, preferring to live in their camps and beg, cheat, and steal to sustain themselves. Yes, downvote away, but it is true, as any European can and will attest.

<comment><USER12> While I'm sure that Roma, Sinti, etc carry out a disproportionately large number of these crimes, the way they are viewed and treated in Europe is just ridiculous. It's just straight up racism and the deportations sound like pure politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's not a mugging. I think you mean robbed:

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mugged> to assault or menace, especially with the intention of robbery.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rob> to take something from (someone) by unlawful force or threat of violence; steal from.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/burglarize> to break into and steal from: Thieves burglarized the warehouse.

<comment><USER14> I think he doesn't mean robbed. Robbery is theft with the use or threat of violence. Yes, I know that the dictionary mumbles something half-hearted about it being the same as theft.

<comment><USER13> Find yourself covered in slime? You're being thefted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just wanted to post that it was pretty stupid of me to travel without travel insurance — I've been so wary of insurance scams, I don't know why it didn't occur to me that this might happen. I was thinking that travel insurance wouldn't be a benefit because I wasn't likely to get sick or hurt, which was really, really silly reasoning now.

That said, thank goodness we were in Rome for three weeks — I have a new passport book (the US Embassy is awesome), and a friend shipped me a spare laptop and phone for the remainder of our trip. We started out with a really bad event made worse by poor decisions, but at least (3 weeks later) things are going well now.

</comment><comment><USER16> But I thought pickpocketing was a lost art, according to the Salon article we were discussing earlier?

Perhaps a lost art in the old school sense of a mark, a pocket quietly picked, and no one being the wiser, but the run down of events and parties involved sounds identical to the pickpocketing scenario Salon laid out. Just with a more elaborate distraction than bumping into your shoulder.

<comment><USER4> The Salon article specifically mentions that mainly just a lost art in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I was in Rome, a couple of youths tried the old trap-the-target-in-the- ticket-barriers trick on a friend of mine. Luckily another guy I was with realised what was happening, shouted "watched out" and the two guys scarpered after giving us a cheeky shrug.

<comment><USER18> Care to elaborate on this trick? Google doesn't seem to find anything.

<comment><USER19> I believe the trick involves preventing a revolving-door turnstile from turning:

[http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=...](http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6849264)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This sucks. The part I can't stand is that these seem to be ongoing, easily trackable/predictable crimes. I wonder if travelers would contribute to a kickstarter project to post a few people at a smaller but high-risk train station and see if it's the same small group of bandits operating repeatedly and assist the police in identifying them so they can be aprehended. Do one case study first and hopefully learn some lessons that could be applied more broadly.

<comment><USER15> Sounds great, except the impression I got from the police was that they didn't care — we were stupid tourists (well, yeah, but still). They were literally around the corner, but no police at the station (1pm on a weekday) and they gave us the paperwork to fill out for the police report but never actually looked me in the eye. I really don't think they'd care enough to actually stop the crime, unless it started targeting locals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting corollary: If you see someone covered in slime, do not point it out, and especially do not offer to help; you might be mistaken for a thief.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do Americans usually travel without travel insurance?

<comment><USER23> The silly ones do

<comment><USER22> Okay. Same as every other country then. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cargo pants with buttoned or zipped pockets, bag locks, and never letting go of your bags will go a long way in preventing theft while traveling. Also, the ol' money belt may make your butt sweat, but it's _the_ place for passports, cash cache, and backup credit cards.</comment>


Project Quay - <AUTHOR> https://www.projectquay.io <comment><USER2> any additional feature than [https://goharbor.io/](https://goharbor.io/) ?</comment>


Time Running Out for Beloved Mechanical Horse-Race Game in Vegas - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-sigma-derby <comment><USER2> > Stevens and company eventually tracked down a machine in "either in northern > Nevada or northern California," although he no longer recalls the specifics.

They removed one of these from Montbleu Casino in Stateline, NV / Lake Tahoe a couple of years ago for a remodel. Everyone I knew was really upset about it... Even if you weren't playing, it was a blast to grab a drink and stand around cheering folks on. There was never any word what was happening to it, many people hoped it would come back just in a different part of the casino. Unfortunately it never did. I wonder if this is its new home?

<comment><USER3> I was once at the poker tables nearby and a group came in at 1:00 in the morning dressed head to toe in derby viewing apparel. They proceeded to play the mechanical horses and it was absolutely hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Stevens and his team are determined to keep those hooves pounding for as long as is physically possible."_

Gee, and I thought he was trying to sell it... =)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbfmkna8Yh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbfmkna8Yh4)

<comment><USER5> Curious to see whose price was closer to the mark, I just found one listed for $27.5K asking, so the $80K ask seems like a way to get free publicity for the casino without having to sell it, or _appear_ to sell it, which would defeat the purpose.

<comment><USER4> You'd have to think between this show and Storage Wars that they've run out of interesting things to put on TV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The second floor of The D is a magical place. It is also the location of the first Bitcoin ATM in Las Vegas if I recall correctly.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoin atm has to have the worst odds in the entire place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why don't they just make a modern version that emulates the function?

<comment><USER9> They have, but I don't think they can resist trying to sex it up. Part of the charm of the old machines is their simplicity.

<comment><USER8> I guess this is what I don't get the most about the future that was, we can't just do things anymore. We have to "sex it up."

Could we easily make horses race around a track, sure an arduino and a 3d printer will do it, but we need to add flashing lights and lcd screens that display bullshit.

<comment><USER10> Amen. One of my favourite movies is Labyrinth [1]. From 1986, the entire movie is live action with puppets and practical effects. Plus David Bowie, of course.

I could imagine one day somebody might try to remake this movie. They'd shoot it entirely in front of a green screen. The music would be compressed and auto-tuned to oblivion. I'd see it and sigh at the death of another little piece of my faith in humanity.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't the casino in Montreal have one of these?</comment>


Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/interview/hubrif <comment><USER2> For the large majority of Africans, Internet = Social media + YouTube because telcos have hugely subsidized access to social media at the expense of expensive data rate for everything else. So building anything outside of this wall, is a herculean task.

Also when he says African, I'm sure he meant Nigerian. Building an African product would require millions of dollars to even get it off the ground. Fragmentation of culture, language and even payment systems means you have a lot more work to do than a Westerner pursuing a similar project.

This project didn't really even kick off, I'm sure. With a curation of under 100 films, no one is really going to pay for it.

The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube and promote his channel on both Youtube and Facebook. That way, with the release of any new content, you have an active subscriber base you may count on because there is no way to charge for this really. And there is nothing wrong with earning from YT ads till you figure your business model out.

If you choose a subscription model for your African video streaming site, you either charge too low, which still makes losses or too high which matches the likes of Netflix and even above irokotv.com, which is arguably the largest video streaming site on the continent.

Building an true African startup is hard.

<comment><USER3> > The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube

And being demonetized by DMCA strikes from random companies?

Youtube is hardly a suitable solution in the long term.

<comment><USER4> Hi. This is Tobi Cofounder of Hubrif. Well, you have a point but honestly, we think building the platform at the earliest stage using the already solid foundation of YouTube would have been a better business sense. This is because we would have saved a ton of our cash on other avenues as to how to grow the platform most especially marketing, instead, we spent all those money on independent cloud storage for the contents.

In the long run, you are right by saying it wasn't a suitable solution but in the short run, it would have worked out fine for us while we figure out our long term strategy. Considering the fact that this was the exact same strategy Irokotv used to become who they are now. They started with a YouTube channel and after gaining enough loyal subscriber base, they then built an independent platform today they are what they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary: Hosting videos is expensive. Especially when there is no revenue. The founder is Nigerian and I'm assuming the initial market was Nigeria where most people still prefer cash, face to face payment to credit/debit card payments. The fact that the largest eCommerce site in the country still has pay on delivery speaks volumes.

As said in the article, if they'd used Youtube as their host for videos, cost would have dropped dramatically and they could have survived for much longer, even become profitable with just sidebar ads.

If the founder is reading this, I recommend, trying again but this time, as a community and curation service for short films. Experiment with membership fees as a social network for film makers. And copy the Jiji model for prominent placement of videos on the site.

Business is a marathon, a survival game until you figure out income.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't Flipkart still have pay on delivery too?

<comment><USER7> I think anything in Japan has pay on delivery as well.

<comment><USER8> In Poland pay on delivery is still insanely popular and every single delivery company offers it as a payment method. Even international conglomerates like DHL/DPD/UPS will happily accept payment on delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being a non-technical founder seems like a huge disadvantage. You literally are unable to develop and maintain your product without paying other people or giving out equity. The number one most important thing with a fledgling startup is self-sufficiency. You need to be willing to do it all: development, marketing, sales, etc.

Maybe I'm being harsh, but the founder didn't really seem to bring any tangible skills to the table besides his "revolutionary" idea.

I live in Tanzania and integrating with mobile payment networks is absolutely critical. If there was one thing you needed to succeed in this business in Africa is integration with Mpesa, Airtel Money, Tigo Money, Zantel Money, etc. Without this integration, your business is dead in the water. His line about how they could never figure it out is borderline ridiculous. Imagine if Amazon never figured out how to charge credit cards: that is the magnitude of the problem he decided not to solve.

<comment><USER4> Hi! Thank you for your comment. first of all, well it's easy to say I didn't bring any tangible skill to the table because I wasn't a developer. lol. Considering the fact that I was performing the all-suficiency role aside being the developer obviously. My number 1 job was to get contents which is technically the most important drive of the platform. I remember my CTO agreed to join me and work for free only if I could get him 100 premium short films in 2 weeks. You can imagine the level of convincing I had to do to fellow filmmakers to give a simmingly unknown video platform their precious contents for free! I met the target and 12 days and like they say, the rest is history.. lol

I was also the marketing guy, making pitches and going for startup competitions, exhibitions, film festivals and every other thing you can think of for us to grow. When I had spent all my savings, I had to convince an investor to fund a startup that didn't have the desired traction and making zero profit. I was a desperate young entrepreneur.. Alas, it was a bad decision eventually but it was a life saver at that time.

About the mobile payment integration angle. Am sure you will understand how difficult it is to partner with a telco without the required numbers they want to see. Mobile money is popular in eastern Africa but not in the west where most of our customers were and a few from USA. our best bet was carrier billing but like I mentioned earlier, you don't just contact a telco and ask for partnership! I know a few friends whose startups are very successful and it had taken them almost a year to get a meeting with the right person in the telco company!!!

we eventually found fortumo but we closed shop before we could implement. It's really easy for you to criticize but you have no idea how hard it was for us to run a startup with less than 0.1 percent chance of survival for 2 years. lol.

Thanks for the comment again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A good friend of mine was in this entrepreneur's situation, where his technical cofounder had their own consulting firm which specialized in building out infrastructure for payment processors, and his only client was my friend's fledgling startup. Was it really worth X% of his company to validate someone else's technology and ideas? Was everyone's incentives actually aligned? My friend had a clear vision to build something to solve a specific problem, but he was ironically cursed to have an expert technologist whose vision was a system so generic that it could later be used to solve everyone's problem.

One more than one occasion I have had to emphatically explain to a non-tech founder that their "tech guy" has to be 100% in the company. I ask them to name me one successful technology company where there were no technical cofounders. There's a reason consultants are consultants and CTOs are CTOs.

In the end, scarcity of time and capital will prevail, so everyone being 100% committed is absolutely essential. In these situations the business cofounder is left with nothing, while the technical cofounder is still a couple lines of code closer to where he wants to go.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmmh, I though Jason Njoku's irokoTV was doing really well? Isn't it the same concept?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Njoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Njoku)

I guess they target Africans in the diaspora, who have much more disposable income.

It is very tough to succeed targeting Africans in Africa without first focusing on a specific country.

By the way, I see this phenomenon a lot with African restaurants in the US. If you are targeting, say just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will fail 100%.

They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental-- complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!

The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" chicken in China!

<comment><USER12> > By the way, I see this phenomenon a lot with African restaurants in the US. > If you are targeting, say just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will > fail 100%.

> They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental-- > complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!

> The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to > appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or > create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" > chicken in China!

is Ethiopian cuisine special here? I see 100% Ethiopian restaurants on the west coast, and they seem successful, without having to go the 'fusion' route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Too bad I never even heard of this.

I'd pay $10-15/month for a service which had world/indie/fringe cinema all in one place.

edit: the closest i've found, is Kanopy[0]. which is free with a library card. (with NYPL, i get 10 titles/month).

[0]: [https://www.kanopy.com/](https://www.kanopy.com/)

<comment><USER14> The Criterion Channel streaming service launches today. This will make all of their library available again, after FilmStruck got shut down by the AT&T/Time Warner purchase.

[https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse](https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse)

Launch lineup and initial rollout plan here:

[https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre- code-...](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-code- hollywood-in-tucson)

<comment><USER15> Cool! I can watch Akira Kurosawa movies online again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't seem this really even got off the ground, and I think the author hadn't even gotten to the hard bits yet.

One of the bigger problems with trying to organize "african" content is the diversity. There's no central language, and among the content that's available, less than 20% will have subtitles, even for the production's native language.. and that's being generous.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is the title of this post uptalking? ([https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman- logic/201010...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman- logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic)) Or is there a legitimate question as to if money was lost? Doesn't seem so from the article.

I suppose there's always just the typo possibility as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> A similar startup called Afrostream was in YC years ago ([https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it- easy...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it-easy-to-find- and-watch-african-and-african-american-movies/)) looks like they shut down as well.

<comment><USER19> That's too bad. Looks like they had some emphasis on African ex-pat communities. Wonder why the focus wasn't more on Africa itself?

<comment><USER20> Africa's a tough one to crack: slow internet speeds, old android hardware, infrequent app updates, etc. On the flipside, one of the fastest growing markets (if not the fastest) in the next century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No shocker that this couldn't be monetized. It is really hard to make money in the film business - even doing full length movies. Distribution is hard. And short films aren't super popular with audiences.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's called YouTube for any market with GDP per capita below 10,000 USD

</comment><comment><USER23> his other service [https://www.festivilia.com/](https://www.festivilia.com/) is interesting.

I had no idea so many film festivals exist.

</comment><comment><USER24> The main challenge in building an African Netflix is not technology, it's having critical mass in terms of video content, as well as having at least a couple anchor series that cannot be seen absolutely anywhere else. Netflix has Stranger Things, Marvel series such as Daredevil that creates a lot of social media noise. Once customers watch those, then they discover the smaller series and get hooked on Netflix.

<comment><USER5> The continent is still mostly cash based. Trust is low for online purchases. Do not worry about content. It's being created on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for free - they monetize via ads and sponsorship deals.

There's just one success story for Nigeria iroko.ng - this however targets foreign based Africans who are used to paying online and for whom - per movie is nothing.

According to what I hear, Iroko is highly selective and only allows quality movies on its site. Because of this, some producers upped their quality level and sold exclusively via the site. They recently branched into original content - 2 years ago.

<comment><USER25> > The continent is still mostly cash based.

Have you heard of MPESA ?

<comment><USER5> Keyword is mostly. According to Google, M-Pesa is in 7 African countries - Kenya, Tanzania, Lesotho, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique & Egypt.

I don't know about the other countries but I lived in Ghana for about 5 years and I can assure you M-PESA's a shadow there. Vodafone and MTN are the kings of Mobile money in Ghana.

But even in Ghana, cash is still the undisputed champion. The growth of mobile money there has slowed down dramatically because of registration requirements and operator fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 10k, so...a couple weeks of a single professional engineer?

<comment><USER8> Don't forget that not everyone lives in the US. 10k USD would get you a professional developer for about 3 months in Poland and more depending on how far East you're willing to go. Hell, I'm a professional developer in the UK and 10k USD is my salary for about 2 months(pre-tax).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Title doesn't make sense ending in a question mark.

How I imagine it in my head: Person A: "What should we call this submission to HN?"

Person B: "I'm not sure. How I lost $10k building an African Netflix?"

Person A: Great! Let me copy that verbatim, including your question mark out of context.

<comment><USER28> I hate it too, but it could be like:

"How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"

<comment><USER29> It could be, but, to be grammatical, it would have to be "You want to know how I lost …?" or "How did I lose …?"</comment></comment></comment>


Tocilizumab working in Italy to improve Coronavirus outcomes - <AUTHOR> https://www.corriere.it/video-articoli/2020/03/09/dopo-cina-anche-italia-test-un-farmaco-casi-gravi-ecco-risultati/9405aebc-622a-11ea-9897-5c6f48cf812d.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> After China also in Italy the test with a drug for severe cases: here are the results The ongoing experience in Naples. «The health of the patient suffering from covid 19, who arrived in critical condition, intubated and treated with the new drug therapy is recovering. Maybe we extubate him because his conditions have improved a lot ».</comment>


Madison Startup Incubator 94 Labs Launches 14 New Startups - Beta Invites - <AUTHOR> http://happyemergency.tumblr.com/post/9576740016/madison-startup-incubator-94-labs-launches-14-new

<comment><USER2> Of all those companies I think I worry more for Zoomshift than any of the others. Having worked in the restaurant business through middle and high school and part of college, every owner has slightly different rules around trading shifts, scheduling, etc.

Maybe they have a crazy customizable rules engine that owners can easily configure their own rules - that would be a killer feature. Without that I'm not sure they can break into many small-to-medium sized restaurants.

The other killer feature they could implement (if they don't already have it) is branding customized for each restaurant chain and/or owner. If your local restaurant that has 8 locations could get a customized version of Zoomshift for a reasonable monthly charge, had customizable rules and incredible support - that would be a no-brainer for most restaurant owners.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I hadn't checked them out before, they were part of the previous cohort, but it looks decent. Although without seeing a real user procession it's difficult to say, their site explains it more as a collection of features.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also mentioned, not a new Madison startup but a newly famous one: murfie.com

</comment><comment><USER3> i only see 4 here, where are the other 10 ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Listed on 94labs page, which I linked to. I only wanted to highlight my favorites, the most interesting.</comment></comment>


Color blindness simulation in Firefox 70 - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1564999 <comment><AUTHOR> Firefox 70 is currently available in the beta and developer edition channels.

This feature requires WebRender to be enabled, according to the release notes:

[https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/70.0beta/releasenotes](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/70.0beta/releasenotes)

WebRender is automatically enabled for certain browser configurations:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where)

Anyone without these configurations can force WebRender on by setting gfx.webrender.all to "true" in about:config.</comment>