Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon's board of directors - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/9/21429635/amazon-keith-alexander-board-of-directors-nsa-cyber-command <comment><USER2> > For those keeping score, not only does Amazon own the The Washington Post > and oversees the CIA's Commercial Cloud Enterprise, it now has on its > powerful board of directors the most visible figure from the NSA who > illegally spied on Americans for the better part of a decade.

This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now.

Man in a position to have reams of compromising intel on the current president hired by a man in an ongoing battle with the president.

<comment><USER3> This: This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now

At some point we need to just say it

some of the largest tech companies are basically NSA+CIA partners and we're well on our way to having

Big Tech completely integrated into NSA and CIA and DoD

<comment><USER4> The government created Silicon Valley: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo)

I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a customer and you _never_ hear their name.

<comment><USER5> Google bought Keyhole (now Google Maps) from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's VC firm [1] -- this was when Eric Schmidt was CEO.

Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year.

Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of location triangulation. This is a constantly updating map of every SSID in existance, including unique radio devices in a given location.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, now heads up the DoD's advisory board on new technology [3]

[1] [https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- goo...](https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- google-e836451a959e)

[2] [https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view- priva...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-privacy- lawsuit-settlement/index.html)

[3] [https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/go...](https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/google- executive-schmidt-to-head-new-dod-advisory-board/) ||| [https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio- Display...](https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio- Display/Article/1377390/dr-eric-schmidt/)

<comment><USER6> Regarding [2], the sensationalized, alarmist way the media reported this was not remotely accurate, nor would the conspiracy theory angle on this story make any practical sense.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, what's not practical about Google increasing their location accuracy for the benefit of both the consumer and the government?

<comment><USER8> The second link isn't about that, it's about Google stealing information from insecure WiFi using Street View vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here in Germany I used to work for a company that swore off Amazon and other US cloud vendors because of things like this: the relationships between them and the government are too tight. They didn't want German user data being compromised. It could have been FUD to do things on premises or what not but it seemed to make sense at the time and now with this...

<comment><USER10> Exactly. I'm constantly surprised how many companies carelessly upload all their internal documents to Google Docs, S3, Dropbox, GitHub, Slack et al. I'd suggest that anything that's not supposed to be public never be uploaded to such services, specially if you are not from the US. The way to go even for small tech companies is self hosting, except maybe for email, due to GMail marking your emails as spam from what I've heard.

<comment><USER11> My company self hosts everything. They're so bad at it. Something is always down and we waste so much time with our shorty tooling. We even had this amazing idea that we could implement our own version of GCP from scratch. The result is dismal, we dread using it because it's very unreliable, and it costs double or triple what GCP costs. We're not a small company, we have about 1k employees and our business is software.

<comment><USER12> Is there yet an open-source alternative to GCP? Can you buy bare metal and just have your own cloud?

<comment><USER13> OpenStack is probably the closest but it will not have everything GCP or AWS has

<comment><USER14> It's probably enough for most organizations, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I understand the general sentiment here, and don't disagree. But I think ultimately this is about dollars.

There is a LOT of money in the government defense sector. AWS is in an excellent position to capture a lot of that money, but their primary competitor in this space, Microsoft, has been preventing a complete domination and monopoly by Amazon.

With Alexander on the board, this will ultimately lead to different/better insights for how Amazon positions itself in this government sector. Alexander can bring a ton of value, just with his contacts and networking alone, let alone the insight into how security and data operations work in the intelligence community.

Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance. The government can't coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on the board or not; the rules are still the same. This is fundamentally about Amazon's desire to get in on the lucrative big dollar contracts that would otherwise end up going to traditional defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop.

<comment><USER16> > Ultimately, this isn't a step towards more government surveillance.

Architect of (illegal) government surveillance gets influential role in a major Internet company.

I do not expect him to strongly criticize Amazon's privacy violations or questionable data collection. I fully expect him to be supportive of Amazon initiatives that will make for an easier government surveillance (even if only for improving their chances at getting government contracts).

Of course the US government cannot coerce Amazon any more with Alexander on board. Yet having powerful, government surveillance supporting, well versed in building systems of government surveillance, individuals on the board will surely have a very different impact than having a privacy rights activists on the board.

<comment><USER17> Totally this. It's highly unlikely Alexander will encourage overtly illegal practices within Amazon, but he will have full knowledge of the "gray" areas ripe for exploitation, and will utilize them to the best of his abilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will we see a "Drop Amazon" site (and social media campaign) on the lines of "Drop Dropbox" [1] now? Or is Amazon too big and too entrenched that it's almost a lost cause? [2]

[1]: [https://www.drop-dropbox.com/](https://www.drop-dropbox.com/)

[2]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking- the-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-tech- giants.html)

<comment><USER19> Dropbox's founder said he would add end to end encryption as an option for the privacy geeks. Sadly, more than 13 years later, it still has not been implemented. Looks like it never will be.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889)

<comment><USER20> I think you can use duplicati for it [https://www.duplicati.com/](https://www.duplicati.com/)

<comment><USER19> Yes. I can also use Cryptomator, Boxcrpytor , 7zip but that's not the point.

They should atleast provide an option

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Snowden: It turns out "Hey Alexa" is short for "Hey Keith Alexander." Yes, the Keith Alexander personally responsible for the unlawful mass surveillance programs that caused a global scandal. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) host ~6% of all websites.

[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1303829551999602688)

</comment><comment><USER22> Counterpoint to a number of posts already on here regarding the bad for privacy angle. Maybe not a terrible idea to have a board member with significant experience understanding the threat nation states and other larger private hacking concerns pose to one of the United States' largest cloud providers?

I understand this is all too incestuous, but I also can't really say it's a bad move.

<comment><USER23> Keith Alexander is a well-known perjurer [1], he should be behind bars, not earning millions sitting on the board of directors of companies worth trillions. There's nothing "not bad" about this move, at least for our society seen as a whole.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa- re...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-reform-fire- officials-lied)

<comment><USER24> Why on earth would it be a good idea to reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised hearing?

<comment><USER25> > reveal highly classified information to the entire planet during a televised > hearing?

I mean he could just said that he cant't answer that question because its't highly classified and this hearing is televised to entire planet, instead of lying

<comment><USER24> Refusing to answer the question would be interpreted the same as saying "yes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How can an ostensibly consumer and business targeted company company allow someone so anti-consumer on the board? Why doesn't anyone have the balls to say "this guy shouldn't be on our board because if we have someone in cahoots with the spooks on our board people will buy less dragon dildos and .223 fuel filters and the sketchy SAAS providers will use less AWS for their crap because their customers will be worried about the spooks exfiltrating their data"

<comment><USER27> Who's buying dragon dildos on Amazon?

Well ... I just searched and it seems they are available there. I did not know that.

The real question is why is an ex-NSA agent working at a place that sells dragon dildos?

In all seriousness though, if Amazon can predict what consumers want, they will make more sales. An ex-NSA should have at least some experience in analyzing behavioral data and predicting what large numbers of people do.

<comment><USER28> No, no, no this is not about selling junk to people.

If you thought selling cheap junk to people was profitable, wait until you see what selling mass surveillance to the government pays. Everyone that said, it's an Orwell problem to have pervasive "assistant" devices was right. Look how many billions NSA poured into scanning and indexing everyone's mails and calls in Utah. Now you have OP and a few days ago Amazon PR objected calling Echo a "microphone": all these dumbasses paid for these things and now it's really here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418854)

We already know Eric Schmidt's Google is tight with the government, and look, they make home assistants also.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably- close...](https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close- relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/)

[https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it- seems/](https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Alexander has shown the ability to make false statements using carefully hedged words. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_B._Alexander#Statements_to_the_public_regarding_NSA_operations)

</comment><comment><USER30> After all the clamor about Huawei, arguing about effectively surrendering national telecom infrastructures to the PRC Army, here we are. Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, essential internet infrastructure and the Kindle dataset (useful for political profiling) to the US Intelligence.

So, are there sanctions on the table for the US? /s

<comment><USER31> > Surrendering essential logistical infrastructure, ...

When all that happened, you can bet it wasn't as publicly visible as Alexander joining their board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is this the same guy that lied to the crowd at defcon?

<comment><USER33> And to Congress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Keith Alexander was great. He was my goto example of how every PotUS puts scumbags (exclusively) in charge of IC and LEO agencies.

Every president betrays us here. Every damn one.

</comment><comment><USER35> All those countries that migrated their national data into AWS with assurances data was not within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus are slowly waking up to the fact that their data is in fact within arms length of the US Spying Apparatus.

</comment><comment><USER36> Whoever is running Amazon's PR is either really good and has determined this won't matter, or is really really incompetent. Based on how the PR for HQ2 in NYC went, I'm suspecting the latter.

<comment><USER37> Will it matter? The sheep (myself included) will still shop on Amazon.

<comment><USER36> Its not like they have no competition- if people end up trusting walmart more than amazon we could see a shift happen. And again - HQ2. That was a huge miscalculation that resulted in actual problems for them - they're not able to get everything they want.

<comment><USER26> Damn near every Amazon retailer who isn't drop shipping also has storefronts on other major eCommerce platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is a big "fuck you, we can do whatever we want" message to everyone using AWS who cares about customer privacy.

<comment><USER39> Cloud computing is not really where it's at when you care about privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Not installing any Alexa's in my new house. They suck anyway. Literally no practical use cases after 3 years other than being surveiled upon. Oh, and "what's the weather on the other side of this sheet of glass I'm standing looking through? " Lol

<comment><USER41> Lots of people use them to turn on lights or listen to music. Maybe not your workflow but IMO you sound a little silly strawmanning like that.

I don't own Alexas either, but it's obvious why 'normal folk' would like the convenience.

<comment><USER42> These use cases sound a bit like using a chainsaw to trim your beard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So have Amazon got an assurance from this "gentleman" that he has stopped committing crimes now?

Is his expertise for which he is being hired to help Amazon get away with committing crimes on a massive scale which he clearly has expertise?

Is it reasonable to assume that Amazon, pushing their "Amazon Microphone" are embracing criminal practise and believe criminal activity is ok?

</comment><comment><USER44> This kind of revolving door stuff has been going on for as long as there has been government and private industry. It's just as scary as ever, but no more.

The good news/bad news reality is Alexander is looking for a big payday after years in government service -- not assist the government is using Amazon for its own surveillance purposes, or assist Amazon in becoming better at surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER45> There's no former in NSA

</comment><comment><USER46> There is this joke in the series 'Person of Interest' where it's stated that Social Media was specifically invented for the purpose of data harvesting by the 'NSA'. I think it's the same for cloud computing.

</comment><comment><USER47> It is about money. High-level government employees used to retire and work for contractors that sold directly to the organizations the government retirees came from. That is called a _revolving door_ and occurred with both military and civilian employees. The practice of the _revolving door_ is recognized widely as unethical.

To avoid concerns about ethics, many high-level government employees retire and join either investment groups or boards of directors. This puts them once removed from the money chain, but still allows them to line their pockets by leveraging the power they accrued while working for the government.

</comment><comment><USER48> Less conspiratorial thought:

Amazon does business to secure pentagon/etc. information. It is useful to have someone on the board who thinks about nation-state level cyber threats in this context.

</comment><comment><USER49> Well, the ad was right after all...

</comment><comment><USER50> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_\(US_politics\))

Amazon likes government contracts. Amazon probably wants this guy on-board to help them get more contracts.

<comment><USER51> Well yeah. Government contracts have insane margins for virtually all private sector companies that can get their hands on them. I used to work at a manufacturing company that made car parts and military equipment. The military contracts had margins that were easily 2-3 times what the car parts made. And they required the same amount of labor, work, and time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Don't mention that microphone.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is normal for most companies, they love to add former Generals, politicians and other connected people to their board. It helps with foreign countries, government contracts, investigations in USA and all.

</comment><comment><USER54> Nice cushy free do-nothing job, I wonder what he did to deserve that :)

</comment><comment><USER55> Amazon does have devices listening in every home. Is the concern here that hiring Keith Alexander would make it easier for government to get people's conversation data?

<comment><USER56> > Amazon does have devices listening in every home.

No, they don't. It's a choice people make, and most aren't buying Kindle, Echo or other near useless spying device like that.

<comment><USER57> Not true, a simple Google search reveals [1 in 4 US adults have a smart speaker]([https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now- owns...](https://marketingland.com/roughly-1-in-4-u-s-adults-now-owns-a-smart- speaker-according-to-new-report-273994)). It _is_ a choice people make, and most don't care about privacy.

Not that it matters though - phones are [already a vector]([https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug- iphone/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/nsa-bug-iphone/)) for the government to listen to you. I'm not sure this news really changes anything - the government already works with large US companies to spy on people, and then makes sure they're not allowed to disclose it to the public.

Also, I think Kindle is a great product, and wouldn't consider it a useless spying device. Each to their own though.

<comment><USER58> Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every home", which is false in the majority of homes.

<comment><USER59> > Well, the majority still aren't buying. The initial assertion was "in every > home", which is false in the majority of homes.

Are we assuming that all the individuals who purchased the devices live completely alone? There are only 128 million households in the US. [0]

[0]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of- househo...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households- in-the-us)

<comment><USER60> You cannot imply this, the stats is about US adult, many adult may also have the same speaker in their household.

<comment><USER59> This is precisely the point I was trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Alexander is responsible for mass surveillance and will probably extend that to Amazons workers. Not really a boon for Amazons image.

</comment><comment><USER62> Oh damn. This shows again, that you can do crazy shady things and still get super high paying jobs later...

<comment><USER63> Reminds me of Operation Paperclip in the United States.

After WWII ended and in amidst a "space race" with Russia, German scientists and other high ranking officials were recruited and placed into well paid positions within the government - most notably NASA. Records of any war crimes they may have committed during WWII were wiped away/ignored.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I was already uncomfortable about using an Eero router and wifi and this just pushes it over the edge.

</comment><comment><USER65> Wow. I mean, at this point even Conspiracy Theorists are like, "Bro!"

</comment><comment><USER66> There will come a time when, as a society, we will have to ditch Amazon, and come up with alternatives to regular online retail.

I just hope technology and IT evolves so that online retail is decentralized.

<comment><USER67> I've moved most of my online shopping over to Walmart so I can support the little guy

<comment><USER68> For a brief moment a thought this was a joke, but at only ~$392 Billion market cap Walmart really is the little guy compared to amazon (1.64 Trillion)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Will they start to build proper consumer profiles now and stop recommending the same thing I've just bought over and over ?

</comment><comment><USER70> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426389)

<comment><USER71> Since most of that discussion is complaining about Zerohedge, maybe we'll merge the rest of the comments hither.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> WEIRD !

</comment><comment><USER73> Does this mean cloud companies are telecom companies?

</comment><comment><USER74> Is this the first fruit Jeff is eating from his personal stay in Washington?</comment>


Cross-Browser CSS Gradient - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/cross-browser-css-gradient/

<comment><USER2> It should also have a non-solid color fallback for browsers that do support image gradients as well. Something like:

      background-color: white;
      background-image: url(/public/images/sky_gradient_fallback.png);
      background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #fff, #e3f0f9);
      background: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#fff), to(#e3f0f9));}

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to say that is a nice looking drop down menu.</comment>


Here's Why Google Reader Really Got the Axe - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/

<comment><USER2> MONOLITH VIEW, Silicone Valley, Thursday (NTN) — We're in a new world of computing. You need "personal", "social" and "on the go". So "search" will "join the social" on Google Plus.

We know Search has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We're sad too. There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Plus^W^WSearch has declined, and as a company we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better — and more sociable — user experience.

It's been a long time since we've had this rate of change — it probably hasn't happened since the birth of social media in July 2011, with our superior social media platform, Google Plus. So today we're officially folding a number of other products into Google Plus:

* YouTube will become Google Plus Video. Your YouTube will be just the same, you'll just need a username you have government ID for. Don't worry — you can trust us with it.

* Google Maps API will become Google Plus Maps. You'll need to add your house, your workplace, your favourite retail experiences and your credit card number to your "circles", then you can look up any place you want. You can opt out to Apple Maps any time you like.

* Google Docs got absorbed by Google Drive, which will become Google SUM(). Imagine the "social" of your spreadsheets being rated by all your friends! Once again, users who opt out are free to revel in the joys of Office 365.

* Google Voice App for BlackBerry will be discontinued once we've found both remaining BlackBerry users and notified them.

* Orkut, of course, is being kept.

We know you'll be delighted with the Google Plus experience, with hundreds of millions of people every month delighted to be using Google Plus! Or products that require a profile on it. It's like Facebook without all the annoying people on it. Or any people. But the people on it love it with huge enthusiasm, just like the ones who loved Google Buzz before we shot that through the head too. Come onto Plus, or Vic will cry. You don't want to see Vic crying, do you? Asshole. You probably hurt puppies, too.

To ensure a smooth transition, we're providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternate web-searching solution. Good luck on that one. Because, and you know it in your heart, Google Plus as a search engine still sucks less than Bing.

[http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google- searc...](http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-search-now- part-of-google-plus/)

<comment><USER3> It's funny how some people can produce walls of text attacking Google at the drop of a hat.

If you've actually read that post you'd have noticed that the author is misrepresenting her assumptions as facts by repurposing out of context comments.

The person she was quoting wasn't even speaking about Reader nor was he granting her an interview (the author doesn't specify in what context did she hear all that) it was just another serving of the generic "news in the mobile era" spiel.

<comment><USER2> Obviously I'm a Facebook shill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites > throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of > news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of > the day."

This is precisely why Google Reader is a valuable tool. I subscribe to the belief that if an article is not worth reading 2 weeks later, it's not worth reading at all.

Facebook, Twitter, HN and Reddit require checking multiple times per day to make sure you don't miss good posts. Google Reader lets me review blog posts once a week, and prioritise reading by the source, not freshness of the content.

<comment><USER5> > _I subscribe to the belief that if an article is not worth reading 2 weeks > later, it's not worth reading at all._

I realized that I had been spending upwards of two hours a day reading non- programming articles (the liked of Wired, TechCrunch, ATD, etc.) and then also spending the evening wondering where all my time had gone.

I started shunning all those articles (I keep reading HN and programming articles in general because I think they're much more valuable to my future) and started spending two hours in the evening reading books (currently trudging through _The Brothers Karamazov_ ) instead. After two weeks, it feels like I'm giving my brain a nice chicken caesar salad instead of a Big Mac.

<comment><USER2> I concur. I've had no broadband at home for nearly a month (as a friend pointed out, OpenReach is, after 40 years, several renamings and a privatization, still basically the good old GPO, except a line takes a few weeks now instead of six months). Finally dredging through the unread mountain of books, and that's ebooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What utter trash. Who says that Google Reader was about news, anyway? I use RSS to follow websites so that I don't miss content from them, and don't have to keep checking them manually. The updates aren't all 'news' and don't have to be instant or even timely. It just lets me gather everything in one place so that I can read it when I want to.

<comment><USER3> The author seems to be attributing some general and unrelated comments to Google Reader - very irresponsible on her part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Google Now's approach is to leverage artificial intelligence techniques to learn your tastes and habits so it can deliver headline news you'll want to read, when you want to read it. "

Google, Facebook et. al spend so much energy using artificial intelligence to infer what we want, and yet when they have a service that actually allows us to tell them what we want, they shut it down.

We know what we want better than you, so just allow us to tell you what we want!

</comment><comment><USER8> How is Reader passive versus Twitter and G+? It's completely active because you have to sift through hundreds of items and you have to decide what's important and interesting enough to share. That's a lot of work by the user. Passive news consumption is not Reader, but Twitter-like services where "interesting" articles are pushed to you. Twitter also doesn't have an unread count, so you only see what's shared recently. You completelt miss out on articles shared a few tweets ago because who scrolls back that far?

<comment><USER9> If I could take rss feeds from the N web sites I like to get new from, and pipe/merge/filter that into a live twitter stream.

that would be kind of useful.

If I could share that with my cabal, and use the clicks or upvotes to optimize the stream, that would be nice.

hmm..

<comment><USER10> yahoo pipes can provide you with pipe/merge/filter. Twitter part might be more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No. Otherwise google would be axed currents too. Google isn't trying to make you abandon feeds, they're just trying to consolidate into fewer platforms, ones that give premium positioning to their own non-standard protocols. Their new notes and messaging apps reflect this. Currents is more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER12> This "all new all different" way of "actively consuming news" makes me very nervous. It really sounds like loosing too much control over content.

</comment><comment><USER13> So it was because they wanted people to move to Google+, like everybody has been saying since day 1.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have 4X the RSS subscribers to my Twitter subscribers, my programming blog handles both. RSS readers make consuming an article much faster than reading links from twitter.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there are two types of users in this case - "consumers" and "researchers". Social news are good for "consumers" with their usage pattern "Read-Like-Forget". They consume to feed their hunger and nothing more. "Researchers" carefully select trustful sources and follow them, they need a tool that allows to keep track and never miss important info. "Researcher" pattern is impossible in the "social" noisy flood of news.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought there would be some real information there when I saw the title and the web site. But what the heck is this

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe one day machine learning will be able to better source me content better than I can curate for myself - but it sure as shinola doesn't even come close now.

In the meantime I'll spend my time with those tools that allow me to more effectively entertain and inform myself. And right now I do that with feedly... following blogs and news sources and gradually adding new ones over time as I discover them.

No one has solved content discovery - and won't for a while yet. So I'll do it the old fashioned way. Read stuff I like, follow the links that people I trust post, and occasionally find some gold through google search myself.

P.S. FEEDLY is AWESOME!

</comment><comment><USER18> It really boils down to that the costs outweighed the benefits so they are shutting it down. I'm sure it's also about political power structure within the organization. Google+ is the current favorite group so if they feel like reader is competing with them they can successfully advocate to get it shutdown. I think the same thing is going on with chrome vs android. That's why there's no chrome store or extensions available in chrome for android.

It's just lame when corporate political decisions are presented in the guise of " people's usage habits are changing" or "it's technically difficult..."

</comment><comment><USER19> If google really wants me to move to google+, now, or current, where is the big shiny button that says 'load feeds into x'? Incompetence seems to be playing as big a role as strategy.

</comment><comment><USER20> What a bunch of bullshit. Wired republished that?

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought the article would be about ads not showing up on the RSS reader, that's a better reason to shut it down IMO.

<comment><USER22> Ads did show up in Google Reader, though I suspect the overlap of RSS users and ad blockers is high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> RSS peaked in 2006 and has been dying since. I suspect it was from the rise of social networks. Though not a replacement feature-wise, social networks have been competing for time and attention from users since day 1, and RSS readers lost. Google Reader was too late to a declining trend, and it was just a matter of time before it was going to get killed off anyway.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=rss#q=rss&cmpt=q](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=rss#q=rss&cmpt=q)

<comment><USER24> Using Google Trends to try to divine how "alive" something is is fruitless, as the graphs you get are displaying the percentage of all internet searches that that use that term. Since the internet is constantly growing and new terms are being added all the time, it is impossible to say whether a declining graph on google trends means that absolute number of searches are going down or up.

<comment><USER23> Net new search terms aren't being added at the rate you think. Try searching for highly generic terms such as "food" or "blue" and it's pretty much flat. While many new terms are being added, old terms are getting obsoleted almost as fast.

The point still stands: share of web interest in RSS has still been displaced by other ways of spending time. Whether it's social media, Netflix, or cat photos, RSS simply hasn't grown with the rest of the web.

<comment><USER24> This isn't even about new search terms. Consider:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=food#q=porn&cmpt=q](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=food#q=porn&cmpt=q)

(Also, who the hell would need to google for RSS?)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What to expect from the first coronavirus vaccines - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-vaccine-what-to-expect-ab575615-a294-4127-ace3-fb0be3468085.html <comment><USER2> "The end of this global pandemic almost certainly rests with a vaccine."

Lost me right there. "...might rest" is about the furthest I would go. It's entirely possible that, like most lethal viruses, it extracts its pound of flesh and goes away on its own, long before we have a vaccine for general (7 billion people) use. In fact, that is probably MORE likely than a vaccine for general use showing up before that happens.</comment>


Twitch to start selling video games this week - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/twitch-starts-selling-video-games-on-its-site-today/ <comment><USER2> Discord is going to be very hard to touch, even for Amazon. They should buy them as soon as possible. I know they bought Curse to try and break in, but it's just not going to be enough. Discord already has insane market-share in the community/VOIP area and there's not much even Amazon could do better that would get people to switch at this point. Really great software that consolidated people from IRC, Ventrilo, Mumble, TeamSpeak, etc.

<comment><USER3> Slightly off topic but regarding Discord being "hard to touch" I feel like I must be missing something.

My friends and I just switched from Mumble to Discord and I find Discord to be inferior in almost all regards.

Discord's browser client is cool and convenient. The separate text/voice channels (as opposed to Mumble's 1 text channel per voice channel) fits our typical use case very well (people playing different games in different voice channels but sharing links/images/unrelated messages in text).

How has discord become so (apparently) big so fast? Is it just marketing money and slick UI design pushing it beyond its means?

<comment><USER4> It's basically a generally passable VOIP client with a Slack built in, which AFAIK no other VOIP service has really done well (including Skype).

The barrier to entry being low, it being free, having mostly all the features people are looking for, and this persistent communication is basically all it is. Before this, gaming communities would often set up a forum (sometimes with a really shitty chat) just for persistent communications outside of games and VOIP, and this rolls all of that into one package that's really easy to use.

I had huge issues with Discord's quality when it was first being publicly used because I was on a latent/lossy connection at the time and it just repeatedly disconnected me and forced me to completely rejoin a Discord server over and over, which implied their engineers had no understanding that the internet is inherently unreliable. That seems to have been well remedied, so actually improving their software immediately puts it 10000 feet above Ventrilo, Teamspeak, Skype, etc from my perspective. I've watched these applications stagnate over the years and it's bothered me pretty deeply.

<comment><USER5> This was a long time ago - back in alpha stages of the product. We've since made some pretty big strides to being resilient to network drops, packet loss, network roaming, etc... I was actually one of the engineers who worked on these. We've tested the client under some pretty inclimate network conditions (30% packet loss - high latency - extreme roaming [meaning your IP address keeps changing] - either due to hopping between cell towers, wifi networks, or a dynamic pool of IP addresses). It's super awesome to know these little behind the scene changes are noticed!

<comment><USER6> Do you have plans to address the fundamental unreliability of your chat? It regularly messes up message delivery (failed delivery, delivery multiple times, delivery out of order) at the slightest sign of network instability or server trouble. It's the worst I've seen from any sort of chat application, ever.

<comment><USER5> Yeah - there are more plans to handle more robust message retry logic. But it's a pretty hard problem to handle. Duplicate message delivery has been fixed for a while though - although there are some rare cases where it can still happen. I don't think out of order delivery is possible as the messages are processed one at a time - but if you have a specific example I'd be more than happy to take a look.

<comment><USER7> Just FYI, I've had both out of order delivery and duplicate messages happen semi-recently. Duplicates are far more rare than they were, though.

<comment><USER5> on desktop, ios or android?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdotal evidence, of course, but nobody I know is using Curse, nor is it on our radar. TBF, this is probably due to a lack of interest in the group of certain games where the Curse client may already have a foothold, AND the fact that our group already has multiple established Discord instances (heavy use, most games) and a rented TeamSpeak server (for Arma 3 and the TFAR plugin for it, it does positional audio and dynamically handles per-user volume in each client to simulate radio channels and interference).

@jhgg - Can you speak on any plans to offer some sort of positional audio functionality in the Discord API? Perhaps you can use the existing game hooks available for the Mumble API's positional audio system? Being able to fully ditch TeamSpeak would be a big win for my group, and a disruptive move for you guys.

Additionally, I love just about everything about the Discord client, but I would like to see voice quality improve to the level of where I remember Mumble to be, though admittedly I haven't used that in a while, though remember it to be fantastic, barring network hiccups. I also have an issue, both on the desktop client and the Android one, where @notifications come in 'late', from minutes to hours. Furthermore on the desktop client, the notifications aren't always shown on screen, as a timer seems to be started before the pop-up is actually drawn, and something like the accompanying HDD activity during that timer lifetime can cause the timer to expire before the notification is drawn on screen.

<comment><USER9> For twitch communities, Curse is very much on the radar, and they can get very large. Curse has full integration of various features streamers use, such as giveaways. No longer do you need to setup a whole bunch of stuff yourself, you can interact with your community in an official capacity outside of just the stream.

Discord is a cool program, and I applaud them for how far they've come, but there are gaps in functionality that have been refused implementation because 'not enough votes'. Basic things, such as being able to change font sizes, or have two columns of guilds, or actually turn off the 'blocked messages' pop-up that comes in when somebody that you've blocked talks in a chat you're in. (Yes, that's a thing).

When someone has to download a mod for your program to experience it better, you're doing it wrong.

Discord still lacks features even Ventrillo had, such as text channels per voice channel. You can't just send stuff to each other, you've gotta form another group, or use a public text channel in the guild. Thats the kind of problem Discord was made to solve, yet refuses.

And, as you said, Its not near Mumble quality, and due to the convenience of the program everybody just uses open mic. I can't join a community VC without it sounding like I just joined a group Skype call. With mumble, you had to look through the options and setup your mic, and a lot more people chose PTT.

For anyone interested in fool-proof PTT, just re-bind your caps-lock key to F14 (Scroll Lock), or some other special key on your keyboard if you have extra keys.

Effectively, Discord is just used for text channels, because the very thing they advertise, VOIP, is worse than the software its supposed to be better than. Give me Mumble any day for voice, and Discord for chat.

<comment><USER10> > When someone has to download a mod for your program to experience it better, > you're doing it wrong.

I disagree. Your program being moddable and letting people customise their experience is a good thing. We're not talking about core features here, just customisation that varies from person to person.

<comment><USER9> >I disagree. Your program being moddable and letting people customise their experience is a good thing.

Thing is, Discord fiercly opposses modding. If they supported it, I'd leave out that part, but multiple devs have literally formed a culture of 'all mods are bad'. [https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/5vcar1/change_y...](https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/5vcar1/change_your_password_if_you_have_previously_used/)

"TL;DR: Don't use third-party addons if you don't want your account to get stolen."

This statement started a campaign of users going around saying modding software is 'compromised', and saying they have all the proof, when the reality was that someone downloaded an external plugin /for/ the addon, which you have to move into a specific directory and enable. Exactly like a program, except you can read .js source. Yet, Discord itself allows you to just send people executables and script files, no problem.

It wouldn't be as big of a problem if Discord atleast tried to cooperate and take a minute to ask what was going on. If they did, they'd realize that the author of the addon is working on a version that restricts and whitelists things that could exploit users. Perhaps if Discord used their cult of personality for good, it would be done already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Twitch Desktop specifically looks to be competing with Steam and Discord. Everybody wants to be the home of gamers, but somehow I doubt Twitch is going to break down Steam's chokehold on playing games (with Steam friends), but am only lightly skeptical that they can't put a dent into Discord's share of 'chat,' especially since Twitch and Discord share so many of the same principles, most notably strong anonymity features.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget, Twitch bought Curse, a company known for catering to gamers:

\- the longtime Curse Client, effectively an addon manager that started for World of Warcraft but now supports games like Rift, Skyrim, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program

\- CurseForge, the community site behind addon hosting and development

\- the recent "Curse Voice" VOIP and chat client that is a direct competitor to Discord, and which got subsumed with the mod manager into the "Curse App"

\- Gamepedia, a wiki host for video game wikis

Together with built-in streaming and _just enough_ social networking, Twitch Desktop combines the best of Curse and Twitch to create a gamer hub that has more value-add than Steam -- largely a storefront -- and is similar to the new Blizzard App (previously known as the Blizzard Launcher or the Battle.net Launcher).

Blizzard's offering streams to Facebook Live, integrates with Facebook login, has a barebones but recently enhanced VOIP chat, and is the competitor with the most direct feature parity -- but captive to a publisher, and outsources all streaming to a third party.

7 months ago when Facebook announced that they're building a gaming hub, I wrote [1] that I'm not opposed to _some_ social-ness in gaming, but real-name- based Facebook isn't the network most people want to conduct their gaming on.

Twitch is a gaming-focused YouTube and pseudonymous social network that can now offer a featureful, streaming, social, and chat application for download, and they're backed by a corporate parent that likes to sell you stuff. This is a pretty good match.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12313908#12314672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12313908#12314672)

<comment><USER11> Steam has so much value add beyond just its storefront, which is still the biggest in gaming. The community features are the most important - being able to see who's playing what and more importantly, being able to join their server, is not possible (yet) with Curse/Twitch. A lot of the Curse stuff is honestly little value, and if we're keeping track, implemented in Steam already. Curse Voice = Steam's in-game calls or calls over Steam Message; add- ons/forge = Steam Workshop.

I think that Twitch's streaming capabilities are going to be the question - are they enough of a differentiating factor to break people away from Steam and onto Twitch Desktop?

<comment><USER13> I probably buy fewer things through Steam than I do Humble Bundle, GoG, etc., but do all my gaming through Steam anyway just for all the other things it provides, even aside from social things like friends-lists and server joining.

To name a few: cloud saves, steam workshop, big picture, and steam controller.

Even if I dropped all the social features in favor of some other platform, I'd still be launching all my games through steam for those features alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Time for YouTube to partner-up with Steam and allow Steam affiliate links and/or buy buttons, before it's too late and all the major gaming streamers on YouTube move to Twitch?

Speaking of monetization models, YouTube is also leaving a lot of money on the table, or will soon enough, when it comes to podcasters that right now are forced to use subscription services such as Patreon to fund their channels. Why doesn't YouTube offer a more "built-in" alternative to that?

I'm not suggesting these because I want Google to be richer, but because I fear that one day Google will wake-up and realize that a lot of major YouTubers prefer doing anything _but_ using its text and pre-roll ads. It could then decide to ban all of those people who don't use those exact type of ads that YouTube offers. So I'd rather they start adopting alternative monetization models that make it easier for Youtubers to make money the way they want to.

<comment><USER11> Twitch has monthly 'subscriptions' for popular streamers (roughly 300-500+ concurrent viewers, from what I've heard), at $5/mo, and Twitch takes some portion of that. They are pretty good at monetizing.

<comment><USER15> Twitch takes $2.50 of that unless you are a big streamer (I don't know what the cutoff is), then they only take $1.50.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The games are available for download through the Twitch Desktop App

If it's not on Steam it's not on my machine. I'm not dealing with having to install more garbage apps

</comment><comment><USER17> On the one hand, it's great that there are more places to sell games and more ways for game developers to be paid. This can improve the ecosystem.

On the other hand, Twitch manufactures its cultural bonafides. As opposed to Valve, who makes great games, Twitch sponsors conferences, runs an elaborate developer relations team, and makes a lot of strategic investments in other games.

Authenticity matters a lot to gamers. Valve earned it. This affiliate advertising program would seem to undermine authenticity.

<comment><USER18> From a dev point of view, the multitude of platforms is making it incredibly cumbersome to deal with.

Assume you make a game in Unity that works well both in mobile and desktop. Now you need to publish on iOS, Google Play, Amazon App Store (Underground or not?), Steam, GoG, Twitch, and Facebook. You may want to make a WebGL demo version for web portal sites as well. Each Platform has their own contracts you have to read carefully and not break.

To complicate it even further -- your game may work best as a paid game on iOS, but ad-revenue based on Android, and Underground on Amazon. These all require exceptions and finagling in the codebase.

Lets add some more complexity! "Gamecenters" \-- Google Play integration, Amazon Gamecircle, iOS Game Center, Steam. Do you have Achievements? Steam has their own Achievements, as do all the platforms. Cloud save, Leaderboards? etc.

Now you make an update on your game..and have to export your game for all the various platforms and their special cases, and test them as well.

<comment><USER19> At least you can reuse most of the code thanks to unity support. For any other app, until very recently with react-native, you had to create separate code bases in totally disparate languages just to target the three major platforms (iOS, web, android). And let's not pretend react-native is a panacea; there's still plenty of work required for cross compatibility especially if you want to use cutting edge features.

Walled gardens and market fragmentation drastically increase the cost of app/game development. It's hard for small or single-person dev teams to produce properly multi platform apps. It's sad to think about how much engineering is wasted replicating identical features across platforms, just for the right to play in the walled gardens of our technological overlords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article doesn't mention it, but I guess this is related to Amazon's new Lumberyard game engine [1], a "free AAA game" that is deeply integrated with twitch. The Lumberyard FAQ explicitly says "Lumberyard is free, including source. We make money when you use other AWS services", presumably Amazon GameLift

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/](https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/)

<comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, what about it do you think is related?

<comment><USER22> twitch will be the platform amazon uses to promote it's lumberyard titles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this is a great idea, do they also buyback used games as well? Right now I think the best place to do that [https://www.bonavendi.com/s..](https://www.bonavendi.com/s..). because it does a price comparison for you on where to sell games for the most money. But if twitch took that over as well it would be crazy, they would have the best of everything in one place! Thanks for the update

</comment><comment><USER24> Especially on consoles, there are a lot of platform specific exclusive in-game items/missions/cosmetics/... and I'm wondering if this starts to become more common for the different PC release platforms as well.

Twitch Prime provides some exclusive in-game items and steam has had exclusive cosmetics in the past as well already, so while having multiple venues to purchase your PC games from is always good for the market, I'm wondering if we're going to end up in a console-like situation where the exclusive addons are setting apart the games on the individual platforms.

<comment><USER25> The freebies tend to be purely cosmetic, which I think is perfectly reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Given that it's owned by Amazon, I doubt it will be DRM-free. Or will it?

And is their Twitch client open source or not? Itch.io client[1] for example is.

1\. [https://github.com/itchio/itch](https://github.com/itchio/itch)

</comment><comment><USER27> What's that game called, "Don't Stop Moving?" That integrated Twitch streaming so awesomely? If this news means more of that, I'm all for it, I had a blast participating in that game.

<comment><USER28> You may want to check out Ultimate Chicken Horse, that's more in the same vein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not sure how they plan on competing against Steam. Unless there was a way to pull off OnLive somehow on Twitch. I fail to see the significance of this announcement.

<comment><USER30> Steam definitely has a stranglehold on digital game purchases, but if anyone can break this it is likely Amazon.

Most of the value Steam offers Amazon/Twitch will likely offer over time (shared servers/friend status etc...). The supply chain that Amazon offers for physical games though would be nearly impossible for Steam duplicate.

Additionally, the general customer service experience with Amazon is phenomenal. If this is brought to Twitch, that alone is an improvement over Steam's treatment of customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would be interested in seeing if streamers are going to see any type of affiliate profits from this since this is where all of the traffic is coming from.

<comment><USER31> From the article:

> The Partnered streamers who have opted into this new commerce program will > earn 5 percent for the sales from their channel, Twitch says. The game > publishers, meanwhile, earn 70 percent of revenue for the game sales.</comment></comment>


Companies Don't Always Need a Purpose Beyond Profit - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/05/companies-dont-always-need-a-purpose-beyond-profit <comment><USER2> I suppose that's true, but don't companies have a lot of purposes? I mean there's liability protection, aggregation of contracts, satisfying manager's and CxO's desire to exert power over their employees, and the company's own weird continuing existence.</comment>


Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/generation-atomic/for-the-first-time-world-learns-truth-about-risk-of-nuclear-6b7e97d435df <comment><USER2> Not sure I've seen a HN post before where so many people in the comments have clearly not read the article. Not even the summary of key points right at the top.

The piece is not anti-nuclear.

Also, risk is not binary. Finding out the true risk of something does not mean it's high risk and therefore negative. You can assess the risk of something and conclude that the risk is low and generally overblown, which is the point of the article.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'd love to read it, but I don't love the idea of logging in to Medium to do so.

<comment><USER4> > Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article?

I'm anti-Nuclear (On Earth), but would prefer most people read it before commenting on it. So, I archived it.

[http://archive.vn/OmALl](http://archive.vn/OmALl)

<comment><USER3> Thank you. A pretty good read, and honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title doesn't seem to match the article's contents. It concludes:

> If there was a meltdown tomorrow in the UK, France, US or elsewhere, it's > likely that our failure to adjust our thinking in light of the experiences > at Fukushima and Chernobyl would mean we evacuate too many people for too > long. People would die as a result.

Indeed, evacuate too many. The "learning about the risk of nuclear" we did "for the first time" is a study about the effects of the evacuation versus if they had stayed. In both nuclear disasters we ever had, the overreaction was apparently huge and it cost many thousands of lives in direct and indirect consequences. It might be a bit too soon to say, but in a way, the long-term repercussions of overreacting (expanding fossil fuel burning in favor of nuclear, the public reputation of nuclear) will likely be felt for generations. I'm not sure we'd ever have made 1.5°C, but now we definitely won't. (We have to still limit by how much we go over, of course, but it would have been great if we could avoid the tipping point.)

<comment><USER5> To be clear, the title used to match the article's and was a bit weird. +1 for changing it on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ah yes, decidedly pro-nuclear stance here.

The first obvious omissions that come to mind are:

1\. The evacuations took place while the meltdown was ongoing, evacuating was the sane choice given the available knowledge at the time.

2\. There is no data on how not evacuating would have affected the people, since that was not done, making that comparison with such certainty seems a bit overconfident.

Nuclear in general:

How about showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste, built and ready, before you operate any more nuclear reactors?

I'm not totally against the technology, but storing all the nuclear waste in metal cans on parking lots (yes, thats where a majority of nuclear waste resides) is not a valid solution.

The trend of externalizing cost to future generations is something that pisses me off to no end.

<comment><USER7> Waste was never really a problem and has been definitively solved. You bury it in a deep unmarked hole. [1]

Go ahead and keep arguing about whether or not nuclear is a good idea. Earth doesn't care. The water will be lapping at your feet soon. How's that for externalizing a cost to future generations?

I am, and will continue to be blown away that the world found out how to make rocks so spicy they can power our civilizations for thousands of years with no carbon 50+ years ago....... and decided to keep burning dead dinosaurs. Fuck big oil, fuck greenpeace, and fuck anyone who is STILL anti-nuclear energy.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)

<comment><USER8> > _Waste was never really a problem and has been definitively solved. You bury > it in a deep unmarked hole._

Yeah, too bad it doesn't work in practice.

<comment><USER9> How does it not?

<comment><USER8> [https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-town-didnt-want-to-be-a- rad...](https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-town-didnt-want-to-be-a-radioactive- waste-dump-th-1834789264)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear- environment-i...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-environment- idUSKBN18M2OP)

[https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...](https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/kentucky- towns-illegally-dumped-radioactive-waste/)

[https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2008-09-20-year- long...](https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2008-09-20-year-long-german- nuclear-leak-scandal-engulfs-country-and-disturbs-europe)

[https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-10-30/scotland- expos...](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-10-30/scotland-exposed- scandal-nuclear-leaks-plant/)

[https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/un-atomic-agency-probing- del...](https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/un-atomic-agency-probing-delhi- radioactive-waste-scandal-416832)

[https://apnews.com/ba820f02074247fc8486b63b7c87d6cb/russias-...](https://apnews.com/ba820f02074247fc8486b63b7c87d6cb/russias- nuclear-nightmare-flows-down-radioactive-river)

[https://www.upi.com/Energy-News/2008/09/08/Nuclear-waste- sca...](https://www.upi.com/Energy-News/2008/09/08/Nuclear-waste-scandal-in- Germany/41831220906136/)

[https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for- april-23...](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for- april-23-2018-1.4628764/nuclear-waste-disposal-in-canada-is-an-accident- waiting-to-happen-says-indigenous-leader-1.4629258)

[https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/02/oregons- response...](https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/02/oregons-response-to- illegal-radioactive-waste-dumping-is-a-joke.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta)

<comment><USER10> I think there needs to be real storage plans for radioactive water before terrestrial fission is a major power source but it is certainly telling that in 3 of those cases the radioactive waste was from fracking and not a reactor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a very one-sided article that focuses predominantly on health risks and points out that relocation might not have been warranted and seems to suggest that this shifts the calculus.

There's however not just health risk but also economic risk. There's different estimations of how much the entire Fukushima catastrophy cost but estimates range from dozens of billions of dollars to hundreds of billions[1]. And even if relocation hadn't been mandatory I'm not so sure regions that get the stigma of being radiated would survive anyhow and I can imagine a lot of voluntary exodus and as a result further economic and property damage.

Regardless of what particular number one picks, it was economically absolutely devastating.

[1]h[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the- radi...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive- rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/)

<comment><USER12> Those economic costs are tied to the health risks aren't they.

<comment><USER11> not necessarily. Dismantling a nuclear plant or in this case waste clearage itself is a gargantuan effort. Scrapping ordinary nuclear plants already costs billions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't fairly compare with the risks of say, oil. Look at Exxon for a good example of how costly (and seemingly never ending) the damage and cleanup can be. And what to make of the earthquakes caused by fracking?

I live in an area with multiple nuclear plants. We've never had an issue with them, although there was one false alarm. Even then, nobody seems to feel very unsafe about it around here. Property values are just as high as they always were.

We did have a natural gas plant blow up. So I'm not very convinced of the nuclear dangers by comparison. Especially since nuclear technology keeps getting better, safer, and more efficient. That can't be said for much of the fossil fuel industry.

<comment><USER14> Especially if you view the right metric.

[https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of- energy](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy)

The reason why nuclear is safe and a great option is energy density. You cannot really beat that with fossil fuels or renewables. We have to make nuclear safe in the sense that not even an earthquake can trigger an accident like Fukushima but we already made nuclear the safest source of energy based on the number of deaths per twh produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read the article, and looked at his bio. He is not a nuclear scientist nor a analytics professional. His previous articles are pro nuke, which is fine, but to take his words wholesale with no bibliography or links is asking too much for this reader.

Most of all, he quantifies stress and exhaustion as a primary cause of death for those evacuated. How did he figure that out?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I thought this article was decent in some respects, but the larger issue was that it completely ignored human nature when it comes to risk assessment. Does he honestly think it would have worked to tell those living near Fukushima, "Don't worry, on average you'll only lose about 3 weeks of life, so don't worry about it!" Of course, very few people are hit by the "average": most people have no I'll effects while others develop cancer and die soon. Taking a purely mathematical approach to risk assessment, and using that assessment alone to guide public policy, is unwise.

<comment><USER17> The analysis was related to both sides of the coin. I imagine the presentation would offer alternatives: stay and lose 3 weeks, evacuate and lose 4 weeks, so which one do you worry about more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just skimmed, but they seem to be comparing stress of evacuating vs health risk of staying. What about the stress of knowing you live on nuclear contaminated land. Surely that must be stresful enough to be comparable to the stress of evacuating?

<comment><USER19> I wonder how that compares to the stress of knowing that you live on land that's prone to earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people?

<comment><USER20> Generally I've found people learn to deal with common systemic risks but have issues with systemic risks they're not used to. Case in point:

I moved from St. Louis (Tornado Alley) to Seattle. There are really no earthquakes or volcanos in St. Louis (except from newmadrid which is a dooozy, but rare). I had trouble understanding earthquakes and they scare me a lot. But I was having a conversation with the Northwesties about Tornados. When I explained just how bad they could be, it terrified the Northwesties. There are no bad storms up here; lightning makes the news. To add to that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado) happened the next day. This terrified all of the northwesties. To me tornados are a part of life, and I'm more ok with them than earthquakes as you "get a warning", and you have a chance to move away from them (it's only a chance).

At the end of the day we all, except maybe Ray Kurzweil, have to deal with the ultimate risk of death. Many of us just ignore it for our whole lives as a way of coping. Others stare it in the face and logic it away, which is essentially the same thing. Why are we all not constantly panicked with the existence of death?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "As governments only have a limited amount of money to spend on all the services they provide, this means that there are not infinite funds to be spent responding to a nuclear accident; £1 spent on evacuating residents is £1 less that is spent on schools, hospitals and roads."

Which is of course completely flawed. Firstly it is in monetary terms, when there is a dynamic amount of money. Pulling the furlough pay rabbit out of the hat put the myth of a fixed amount of money to bed forever. Money is an endogenous concept designed to allow all the resources of a currency area to be engaged usefully.

Secondly even if you reassess it in the correct real resource terms, it assumes that there are no unemployed resources and that all current uses of resources are the most socially advantageous uses.

The one thing we have learned from the Covid crisis is exactly how few people we need working to maintain the population, and how much of what we call work is an activity that is somewhat less important than your average football match.

<comment><USER22> If the argument is completely flawed, then that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks. That doesn't seem right. We can't, for example, spend infinite amounts on making cars safer, because they would become unaffordable and more polluting (heavier) very quickly. We would end up with no cars. Ironically, this kind of is the path that nuclear is on: the things are made so safe that no one can afford them anymore. The opportunity cost of no nuclear is seldom brought into the argument.

<comment><USER21> "hen that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks."

There is. But there isn't an infinite amount of stuff. And since to spend you have to have something to buy the spending stops when the real resource runs out. That's the actual limit - until you use some sort of power dynamics to start moving physical resources from their current uses.

Hence the shortage of PPE at the start of the Covid crisis. All the money in the world; not enough masks to go around. There was "demand", but no "effective demand".

Money is essentially inductively connected to the real economy, not directly connected. As an analogy in electrical terms money is apparent power, and the stuff it buys is real power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article set off a number of red flags for me, and by the end I found it very hard to believe that this was done by a group of impartial researchers.

And sure enough, Phillip Thomas, the lead researcher for this study, comes from a 20+ year career with the chemical and nuclear industries. I would take everything in this article with a grain of salt.

[http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j- thomas/...](http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j- thomas/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I was also wondering like how the article says that relocating people near Chernobyl in such great extend isn't the right thing to do (taking the 9 months life expectancy limit in mind) but I am really confused here, because when I see movies or videos showing the Chernobyl accidents they show people feeling the burning sensation, vomiting, getting extremely sick and new babies being born with ill health, which is really scary. So if people don't re locate then they will constantly have this fear, right?

<comment><USER25> Well obviously the people closest definitely should leave. But they eventually cleared out far more area than just the nearest town of people that were given large exposures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The US Navy has trained thousands of 18-25 year old men and women to operate hundreds of reactors around the world safety for over 60 years. I was one of them. I have not been an operator for many years, but the latest reactor designs are amazingly safe and reliable. The world needs more safe, clean, cheap and reliable power. Nuclear power is one of the answers.

<comment><USER6> Did they teach you where the nuclear waste goes too?

<comment><USER27> The worst plausible answer couldn't possibly be worse than pumping it directly into the air we breathe, as we do with diesel and coal.

<comment><USER28> And leaving it in huge open air and waterside windblown heaps, in the case of the ash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is that old saw that generals fight the last war, and this article misses the modern risk of nuclear. With the development of cheap attack drones the risk of nuclear has increased over what is was. There is no effective way to completely protect against drones. Drones have already been used in an attack against a centralized energy facility.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_at...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack)

<comment><USER30> There was no increase of nuclear risk because of drones, and no need to increase the protection of the powerplants, for the very simple reason that there is nothing a drone can do against meters of reinforced concrete protecting the reactor. A drone big enough to do more than scratch the paint would be classified as a cruise missile, and that risk was understood since before the first nuclear powrplant was turned on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not sure what to make of this article. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest way of generating energy for both humankind and nature. Chernobyl was ancient and outdated, which caused issues. And Fukushima had to withstand an earthquake and tsunami. And even then the radiation only killed 1 person.

Even wind-turbines cause more damage by killing many, many birds. They aren't as reliable and they certainly cause a lot of noise pollution. And they aren't all that pretty, either.

The risk of nuclear is low to none, barring any unforeseen freak accidents.

Yes, if a tsunami hits the nuclear plant, it might break down. If a meteor hits it, it might break down.

By that logic we shouldn't build cities. After all, if a tsunami hits a city many people will die.

I wish politics around the world would just leave the decision-making up to smart people instead of vote-gatherers.

<comment><USER32> Wind turbines kill a negligible number of birds compared to other threats.

[https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green- scienc...](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind- turbine-kill-birds.htm)

It's not actually known definitively how many people Fukushima killed, but it is known definitively that the final economic costs wildly outweighed the "cheap" energy it produced.

[https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/12/1301/pdf](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/12/1301/pdf)

Nuclear is not clean. There is still no solution to nuclear waste, which makes it impossible to cost the TOC of nuclear.

And considering the number of accidents to date - and their economic cost - nuclear certainly isn't safe either. Is it really a good idea to create pools of extremely toxic heavy metal waste which is _also radioactive_?

It also isn't cheap. Renewables have been consistently undercut the cost of nuclear electricity, and that's without any significant push towards an improved smart grid, a combination of centralised and local distribution, and clean pumped storage facilities that would be possible with a Green New Deal.

As you say - these decisions should be left to smart people, and not to an industry which has consistently overpromised and underdelivered.

<comment><USER14> >> Nuclear is not clean. There is still no solution to nuclear waste, which makes it impossible to cost the TOC of nuclear.

Totally.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is- more-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more- radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/)

"According to U.S. NCRP reports, population exposure from 1000-MWe power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal power plants, 100 times as great as nuclear power plants (4.8 person-rem/year). The exposure from the complete nuclear fuel cycle from mining to waste disposal is 136 person- rem/year; the corresponding value for coal use from mining to waste disposal is "probably unknown".[24]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Coal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This appears to be really shoddy research and once again illustrates why a macro economic approach to this problem simply doesn't work and why public have stopped listening.

The researchers are trying to use a system level risk returns balance and using very high level average metrics like risk of reduction in lifespan. How about the distribution around the mean and how about the suffering of people who undergo cancer treatments and survive? Having seen a close relative battle cancer and the family suffering, i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and their families.

The other piece these macro economic approaches miss is that while a system level cost isn't much, for most people their property, their job and their neighbourhood social networks ARE the major assets they have in life and in the case of nuclear accidents, they lose everything. This fundamentally Behavioral Economics view of consequences is what drives the recent popular opposition to nuclear power and unless nuclear proponents start analyzing nuclear power through a Behavioral Economics lens, they're likely going to be ignored by the population. Comparing risk of death against statistical correlations with air pollution isn't going to cut it.

On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are passively safe with no risk of driving people away from their property and society before the industry will be taken seriously, otherwise the only interest will be in weapons research.

<comment><USER34> > On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis > of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are > passively safe with ...

Evidence is they figured that out in the 1980s. We haven't seen a bad meltdown from any plant built in the last 40 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Interesting how they call out the potential to use the J value to make public policy recommnedations but we've yet to really see them.

I for one, would love to see some analysis of the value of lockdowns across society, i particular the prioritization of the older and more susceptible healthwise, vs the young and economically vulnerable.

<comment><USER22> The team already did that.

[http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php](http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php)

<comment><USER35> Amazing, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> IIRC we were incredibly lucky that Chernobyl didn't turn into a much more severe global disaster. What happens in a worst-case scenario meltdown? I know we have a very pro-nuclear crowd here, so I am ready for an onslaught of information.

<comment><USER37> Hmm...Chernobyl pretty much was the worst case.

And, like Fukushima, the impact of the reaction was _much_ more severe than the impact of the radiation.

[I looked at The WHO reports that were published every decade. Each one downgraded the estimated impact from radiation dramatically, whereas the health impact of the evacuation became more and more apparent].

<comment><USER36> Didn't they have to sacrifice some guys to cover some melted core in concrete to prevent much worse spread of radiation from happening? Or are you saying that didn't matter?

<comment><USER37> a > b ⇏ b = 0

<comment><USER36> You'll have to elaborate on what a and b are

<comment><USER37> a: (negative) aggregate health effects of evacuation

b: (negative) aggregate health effects of radiation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is there also research available on applying this method to COVID-19 and the countermeasures?

<comment><USER22> You're in luck. The lead author or the nuclear J-value author also applied the method to COVID-19: [http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php](http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php)

<comment><USER38> Interesting. Unfortunately it appears the obvious choice, to try to keep the R0 value below 1, is the worst option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> ^Fthyroid

</comment><comment><USER40> Of course this is a pro-nuclear article. It is by "UK Nuclear Institute", run by UK nuclear industry. First published in their "Nuclear Future". Come on, did you really expect it to be objective?

</comment><comment><USER41> Many arguments for handling bad things often do not take into account the unintended consequences of that specific handling. This is one of them.

The lockdowns for Coronavirus is another. I don't know which way it actual falls (lockdowns still extended life expectancy or the reduced life expectancy) but I will be curious in a couple of years what the data will show us.

Some people are absolutely certain X will be the best way and either don't take into account the downsides or hand-wave away the concerns. I wish we could have actual debates to come to a solution instead of making it person or political ("YOU WANT TO KILL PEOPLE" vs "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT PEOPLE"). But tis life I s'pose.

<comment><USER42> This. Or, the unknowable lost opportunities that never materialized. How many relationships never formed, how many business never created, etc is unmeasurable but absolutely real and the impact from those lost opportunities will be felt in some way shape and form...

<comment><USER41> Great point. There is a lot of lost opportunities that is probably immeasurable.

I've always said there are tradeoffs to every solution. And we may not have all the information to even know how bad or good a tradeoff is.

No solution is perfect.</comment></comment></comment>


Current state of .NET – through not-so-rose-colored glasses - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/current-state-of-net-through-not-so-rose-colored-glasses/ <comment><USER3> I thought this was a really good and reasonable collection of thoughts. I was a .NET dev in a past life and left before many of the changes mentioned here. But it does seem that open source .NET has not quite taken off, and devs see some things differently than they used to (like text editors vs IDEs and functional programming vs OOP).

</comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't agree more with your sentiments. Since the release of dotnet core I've also playing around with golang and nodejs. I'm not leaving the ecosystem but I'm certainly hedging my bets - not because dotnet core will fail - <USER2> because I want to use the right tool for the right job.</comment>


The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation Is Different This Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk <comment><AUTHOR> I am not an expert in machine learning, but the way this video presents automation just feels wrong.

I see computer science and machine learning as something which can amplify the power of a human. Taking the example in the video, previously if 20 managers were required to oversee a job software makes it possible for 1 manager to oversee the job. The presentation in the video of software as something which learns our jobs and starts doing them just sounds like a mischaracterisation. It sounds as if machines will t6ake over the world.

While jobs are being lost due to technology, I would think its because a few very smart people are doing the jobs which required a lot of people.

I would like to hear HN's thoughts on this.

<comment><USER2> i don't know about machine learning our jobs, that sounds futuristic. but machine can be set up not to require 1 specific manager to oversee it. it can hire whomever it chooses. that means machine is in control of its workers. and not the other way around</comment></comment>


The Rise of the Four-Day Work Week? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_52/b4114085629738.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story <comment><USER2> I'm most productive working about 25 hours a week, from what I've discovered over the years.

Modern jobs aren't the sort of the old days, like hauling coal out of a mine where working 80 hours produces almost twice as much coal hauled up as a 40-hour workweek.

Anecdote and studies show that after a certain time well before 80 hours in a work week, most people's productivity falls drastically, even if they do not perceive this drop themselves. (Many of them perceive their productivity as being unimpaired, much as a drunk driver perceives their driving as being just fine.)

Bottom line: A shorter work week may improve many people's productivity. It would mine.</comment>


Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars?repost=veryyes

<comment><USER2> Fascinating, but I wondered what makes irregular Arab groups (such as ISIS) as well as non-Arab groups (such as the Kurds) relatively effective. For instance, are the "face" and trust issues between officers and their subordinates not present, or not relevant?

<comment><USER3> From the article:

> In contrast to the usual manner of European warfare which he terms "face to > face," Keegan depicts the early Arab armies in the Islamic era as masters of > evasion, delay, and indirection.12 Examining Arab warfare in this century > leads to the conclusion that Arabs remain more successful in insurgent, or > political warfare13—what T. E. Lawrence termed "winning wars without > battles."14 Even the much-lauded Egyptian crossing of the Suez in 1973 at > its core entailed a masterful deception plan. It may well be that these > seemingly permanent attributes result from a culture that engenders > subtlety, indirection, and dissimulation in personal relationships.

In other words, Arab guerrillas are effective but Arab armies are not. Which explains why Arab guerrillas (Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS) wield so much power in the region--there are no organized military forces that can effectively oppose them.

<comment><USER4> ISIS controls and actively governs large areas with large populations. It controls cities and employs tanks. It has invited muslims from the world over to move to its territory. None of these are guerilla tactics.

<comment><USER3> But they are no worse than the established governments of Iraq and Syria at running a regular army, while also employing guerrilla tactics.

Guerrilla warfare isn't enough, by itself, to win a protracted conflict. You need some regular forces too. I remember reading that very conclusion in Mao's "On Guerrilla Warfare", actually.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to convince my team that microservices are not a good idea to us? - <AUTHOR> Two months ago I've started to work on a startup as a developer. This startup has a SaaS product and ~3000 users. The code behind the product is not as good as it could be: There's some design flaws and a lot of depreciated dependencies…  hard to test, hard to maintain, etc. Despite that, fix all the flaws would require a lot less effort than recreate from scratch.
With that in mind the team have decided last year(before I've joined) that they are going to change from the monolithic architecture we have today to a microservice architecture.
At first sight I had no problem with that but in the last month I've done some research about microservices. Now I believe that microservice is a horrible idea in our case.
I'm not going into details of why I think microservices is a bad idea, this is not the point here. The point I need some guidance is: How should I approach this question?
I tried to start a discussion about it with some people of the team, then I discovery that there's a really strong confirmation bias in favor of microservices around there. Their arguments were just some common sense that I could easily refute. But just an informal talk with everyone had no result, just some more common sense.
I'm thinking about write a document with all my arguments and some facts to send it to the team. Would this be a good approach? I'm really new in the startup environment and I don't know how everyone else solve this kind of problem.
Any suggestion would be nice. Thanks.
PS: The team is just 4 developers + CTO. <comment><USER2> Instead of arguing against microservices, it would be better to ask the team to plan out solutions to the hard problems associated with microservices, namely the hard problems associated with distributed systems.

Things like:

* How will transactions across multiple services be handled, and as a followup, how will rollbacks happen when an error happens mid-transaction

* When all the data is distributed across multiple service DBs, how consistency be enforced? What happens when data is no longer consistent (e.g. data in one DB references data in another DB that is no longer there, or has been updated)?

* [basically, how will anything related to ACID be handled when you no longer have a single ACID DB?]

* How will errors be handled with various permutations of individual services being unavailable? If a single service going down brings down the site, has anything really been gained?

* How will distributed logging be done such that bugs can be tracked down in production. How will a given single request be tracked across services?

* How will automated tests be written when everything is now a network call instead of a function call? Mocking out all the things gets old fast and introduces its own set of problems relating to testing code that isn't the actual production code.

* How will API versioning be handled for each service, especially if different services are being built in silos by different developers?

If they have solutions for things like this, great! If not, perhaps they should before pushing forward.

<comment><USER3> I can't agree more with this approach. These are usually the things people selling micro services overlook. Also, I think in general questioning how to address the hard challenges with a given framework/architecture/infrastructure is the path that leads to more sustainable progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you pitch it directly to the team who have (most likely) done their own homework about moving to micro services, that it is not a good decision, even though your point could be valid, may not be well taken as it can subconsciously be interpreted as you being non-consensus driven/jumping to conclusions.

Why not: 1. Draft an email with a subject 'Second opinion on moving to micro services 2. Let the email body be a very succinct description that a. you have done some research, b. you respect the team's decision but c. would like their opinion on your research. Also seek a time for a 30 minute presentation and 30 minute feedback/discussion. Don't send your document with the email, keep that for your presentation. That way you will be seen in positive light, as a team member with his own opinions but also a team player.

Also, have you asked them what was the data from their research that made them take the decision to move to micro services?

</comment><comment><USER5> You don't. You've had your say. People listened and the consensus was to continue pursuing micro-services. That's pretty much how teams work as teams.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have a lot of equity? Do the other developers?

Most likely the developers want to learn about microservices.

It's honestly one of the main reasons people join startups - to work with cool new tech/approaches.

If they wanted to take the low risk approach they would work at a big company.

If this is the case expect nothing but friction.

</comment><comment> jon-wood I've made almost exactly this move from big ball of mud to micro services with a similar sized team.

Overall I think it was a net positive, but only because the velocity hit from working on the big legacy application is worse than the hit from working with smaller distributed services which all need managing. That's a very real overhead - you're now managing dependencies and deployment for n services rather than 1, and realistically the big application you're trying to move away from isn't going anywhere soon. We've got an API routing layer which purely exists to allow migrating individual endpoints to new services while allowing the legacy platform to continue serving everything else.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe it's not a bad idea in the long run. I would have a meeting with the team and talk about "stages":

1) Start to split out monolith in separate packages ("services")

2) Use RabbitMQ to "talk" between the services / Simply have one package that is the REST portion and reference the other packages inside of it (which aren't REST... just libraries, basically)

3) Patch up design flaws

4) Slowly move towards true microservices

Step 2 would be deploying everything as monolith but at least it's split up.

This gradual approach may just work for your team!

</comment><comment><USER8> Since you say it's just four developer, why not have a coffee with 2 team members, individually and talk to them about what you think, I see you know your stuff so I don't need to help you there? You dont have to convince all of them of you can convince a part of your team, you can standup. You can atleast have a brainstorming session with a few "educated" ones on your side.

</comment><comment><USER9> One option would be to delay the migration and instead persuade the team to fic the flaws and improve quality.

Put a list of objectives the team want from the product. Prove that you can achieve that without using microservices.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is the Target state you want to see(not how, what?)?

</comment><comment><USER11> Why don't you start with persuading one of the other developers to your side?</comment>


Republicans Want to Let ISPs Secretly Sell Your Data - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/privacy-opponents-are-using-a-sneaky-trick-to-help-isps-1792802155 <comment><USER2> This rule was published just a _week_ before the election and is yet even to go into effect. If this rule, as written, was important to install, why did the Obama administration wait _7+ years_ to implement it?</comment>


Best master clock in PTP 1588 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsmlabs.com/news/2015/09/18/socalledbestmasterclock.html <comment><AUTHOR> PTP 1588 was designed for simple controller networks, not enterprise networks. This note discusses some growing pains and solutions.</comment>