Building a Website with C++ - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sourcerer.io/building-a-website-with-c-db942c801aee <comment><USER2> Really? Escaping, people! This code isn't practical or useful; it's dangerous and sloppy.

        cout << "<body>\n";
        ...
        cout << getenv("QUERY_STRING");
        cout << "</body>\n";

FWIW I wrote an article about HTML escaping and shell here: [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/09/19.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/09/19.html)

Followup: [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/09/29.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/09/29.html)

Also if you want to use a native language for web sites (which I don't), Go is a better choice, as the standard library has html/template which protects you from naive injections:

[https://golang.org/pkg/html/template/](https://golang.org/pkg/html/template/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah... this example code is bad. Not to mention that CGI is slow, problematic, and chock full of potential security issues. At the very least, spawning a process per request is a DOS attack waiting to happen, even if the code were immaculate.

<comment><USER4> Classic CGI is not the best performing interface, yes. But there's a big difference in launching a complete interpreter for every request, and running a small purpose-built native program. And remember that people did manage the former 20 years ago, sites like Slashdot were running CGI Perl scripts back then.

I'm not sure about the "chock full of potential security issues". You have to be careful with trusting environment variables as the Bash guys learned, but I don't know what else there is that is specific to CGI.

<comment><USER5> Forking a process per request is expensive, interpreter or not.

Slashdot used apache mod_perl back then. It never forked a process per request.

<comment><USER4> Slashdot started in 1997, the first release of mod_perl was on 12.03.1998. They certainly used cgi at first, just check the url here: [https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191337/http://slashdot.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191337/http://slashdot.org:80/slashdot.cgi?mode=contrib) \- it says cgi right there.

Edit: Seems I was wrong about the date, it was actually 28-Jul-1997[1], nevertheless slashdot was only launched two months later, and as the link above witnesses didn't seem to have used it at first.

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/19971210053529/http://perl.apach...](https://web.archive.org/web/19971210053529/http://perl.apache.org:80/src/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I run [https://byuu.org](https://byuu.org) using C++. Not just for page generation, but also for the server itself. It's all a single package, so no CGI is involved. Although I do use nginx as an HTTP->HTTPS proxy because TLS is scary. It's handled being linked on the front page of a few major sites with no issues.

In my case, I just prefer coding in that language over PHP et al. It's on a $2.50/mo VPS and I can spawn a new instance in five minutes if need be. Every memory access (for strings, vectors, etc) go through containers with bounds checking. The server/webapp itself runs as its own unprivileged user. If the server crashes, it'll stay offline and give me a core dump, which should let me find and fix the bug in my library.

The code's open, too: [https://gitlab.com/higan/higan/blob/master/nall/http/server....](https://gitlab.com/higan/higan/blob/master/nall/http/server.hpp)

It's certainly not 100% perfect security, but what really is? Between Heartbleed, Meltdown, Spectre, weekly Wordpress exploits, etc ... I don't think the risk is particularly higher.

(aside: the forum runs on PHP on another VPS instance; separation of security concerns.)

<comment><USER7> Oh hey, you are still using Vultr? How have they been? I'm pretty sure I'm the one who suggested it some years ago on the forum and have wondered ever since if the at least then-unproven VPS company ended up being reliable. It looks like their prices have stayed competitive at least!

<comment><USER8> I'm using vultr now and I vastly prefer it over Linode (I've yet to fully try DO).

It's super simple UI to start an instance with a basic script (like update distro and developer tools etc). Lastly, you can pass in your pub keys and just ssh directly without doing it yourself the moment you log in for the first time.

All in all highly recommend it!

<comment><USER7> I will have to try Vultr again. My last experience was good, but regrettably I still use DO and AWS for everything.

Remarking on that, Digital Ocean is nothing special, but they have added some nice features in the past year or two. I like that their control panel supports multiple teams with permissions, I like that it has a nice tag-based firewall, the DNS service works fine, and it has an S3 clone called Spaces which is pretty handy. I believe they also announced recently that private networking would be isolated per-team instead of being the entire data center, another networking improvement that most low-end VPSes do not provide.

All in all, if you just need a low end VPS, I would say there's no fault in going with something like Vultr, but Digital Ocean adds a few extra features that might be more useful if you're developing a medium-complexity system. Of course though, at that point, you probably want to at least consider Google Cloud Platform, a reasonably cost-effective host with very rich features. (And AWS, but my feelings for AWS have shrunk in recent times after having better experiences with GCP consistently at my day job.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the early stages of a FaaS platform that uses CGI for the functions. As such, I have been collecting articles about general CGI development, and have them listed in my docs. If anyone is interested in writing large scale CGI apps (CGI is popping up a lot around here lately), these are some good resources: [https://bigcgi.com/docs](https://bigcgi.com/docs)

<comment><USER10> Isn't cgi slow ? Don't you need something like fast-cgi (which lambda does I think) ?

<comment><USER9> CGI is slow because of the spin up time for individual processes for each request. FastCGI is fast because they run as one long running process that handles multiple requests.

While plain CGI is a slower, the advantage is that you don't have long running and potentially idle processes for low traffic periods, and process isolation is a little security boost.

I chose to have a slightly slower startup time, which hopefully remain constant in a load balanced cluster, to gain the advantages above.

<comment><USER11> Also the spinup time is considerably larger problem for various interpreters and virtual machines than for native code binary.

I would even expect that you can write non-trivial CGI application whose startup time is smaller than the additional overhead from parsing of the FastCGI protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pion[0] is a fairly robust and well-written HTTP server implementation in C++. You can spin up a server very quickly and reverse proxy through Apache or Nginx. Microsoft has a cross-platform offering of some sort in the works using C++11, now I don't remember the name but I think Herb Sutter has a write-up in it from a couple years ago. It's definitely possible to write modern web applications in C++, I feel like the cgi route is pretty old school.

[0] [https://github.com/splunk/pion](https://github.com/splunk/pion)

<comment><USER13> > Microsoft has a cross-platform offering of some sort in the works using > C++11

Casablanca, but I'm not sure how active is the project nowadays.

<comment><USER14> It's called the C++ REST SDK ([https://github.com/Microsoft/cpprestsdk](https://github.com/Microsoft/cpprestsdk)) now and is fairly active. I've used it client-side and I've really enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wrote a c++/Qt web framework as a hobby.

[https://github.com/shi-yan/Swiftly](https://github.com/shi-yan/Swiftly)

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of the BCHS-Stack: BSD, C, httpd, SQLite.

[https://learnbchs.org/](https://learnbchs.org/)

I am still unsure if its satire or not.

</comment><comment><USER17> Using CGI is silly and slow, for all but the simplest, stateless servers. If one wishes to avoid the overhead of learning a new framework, at least FastCGI should be considered. A relevant (but dated) discussion about web frameworks in C++ can be found in [1].

I am personally a big fan of CROW [2] and have used it many times in the past.

[1] [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5362...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53624/can- c-be-used-as-a-server-side-web-development-language) [2] [https://github.com/ipkn/crow/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ipkn/crow/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER2> CGI isn't slow -- starting interpreters is slow. Starting Python or Ruby can easily be 1000x more expensive than starting a process in C, which takes MICROSECONDS, not hundreds of milliseconds.

See this 7 year old message by Richard Hipp (of sqlite):

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com- scm.o...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com- scm.org/msg02065.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3036124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3036124)

 _This server takes over a quarter million requests per day, 10GB of traffic /day, and it does so using less than 3% of of the CPU on a virtual machine that is a 1/20th slice of a real server._

<comment><USER18> People just throw around qualifier attacks these days without thinking about the reality of modern processing power and what is really overoptimization. Just because CGI is slow-er- does not make it slow. So many hours are wasted on overoptimization, myself guilty of it - simply because of OCD type tendencies. I hope when I am finally on my deathbed I am not picky about the color of the sheets...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was expecting something like Wt ([https://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt](https://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt))

<comment><USER20> I would suggest/recommend this as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you want to use something like that for web, then use [http://websocketd.com](http://websocketd.com). There's no need to generate html on the server, unless you really don't want to touch JS at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interested parties desiring production quality security and significanlty better performance than CGI, check out the C++11 library Restbed [https://github.com/corvusoft/restbed](https://github.com/corvusoft/restbed) Restbed replaces Apache, or put another way puts the web server inside your application, so your C++ app is its own server. It is easy to create REST APIs with executable as small as 100K, and that is all you need - no Apache or Nginx other web server needed. I have created a fairly sophisticated facial recognition REST API that host itself, only occupies 500K and can run circles around pretty much anything - while running on a $99 Intel Compute Stick. I've created web sites and servers and web APIs in a most of the fashionable web best practices, and I gotta say Restbed blows everything away.

<comment><USER23> Looks great but it's AGPL unless you buy a license.

<comment><USER22> Sometimes, software is worth paying for...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > In this article, I'll explain how you can use C++ to develop a website and > some concrete reasons why you might consider doing so.

I only saw one reason: performance. Did I miss some? Do people have other good use cases that justify paying the dev cost of using C++ for a web server? I'd guess with caching and a decent backend, it would be fairly hard to demonstrate a true need for performance that requires C++, but I'm sure there are a few demanding applications out there that need it.

Since a web page's throughput is usually network bottlenecked and not CPU bound, I'm curious (just for fun) what the max possible performance benefit of going C++ is, especially behind a CGI interface?

There's probably a small latency benefit at all times, and I'd guess there's a throughput benefit that is only visible if you're doing more than a few thousand requests per second..?

<comment><USER25> I doubt the performance of a c++ web site would be better than c#/java or some other compiled languages for most non-trivial web sites. Once things like jits come into play, and you see large projects (1million+ loc) the performance advantage of c++ often disappears or it becomes less performant for things like web sites. Most companies do not have the time nor ability to do all those optimizations that theoretically exist that would make c++ more performant.

This isn't even counting the dev time difference

<comment><USER26> > _c++ web site would be_

No "would" about it C++ web sites are real and have been around for a long time. I'm thinking of sites running on Windows using "ISAPI".

<comment><USER24> Is their performance demonstrably better than other sites? Parent wasn't saying that c++ sites don't exist, just speculating that it doesn't necessarily make the site clearly faster to browse. I'd speculate the same, but would appreciate if there's hard data around to educate me, I'm genuinely curious what the benefits of going c++ are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of this:

[https://m.imgur.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/INBvStO](https://m.imgur.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/INBvStO)

</comment><comment><USER20> Some other libraries I have seen for http protocol based applications:

[https://github.com/Qihoo360/evpp](https://github.com/Qihoo360/evpp) \- network library for developing high performance network services in TCP/UDP/HTTP protocols

[https://github.com/rep-movsd/see-phit](https://github.com/rep-movsd/see-phit) \- C++ HTML template engine that uses compile time HTML parsing

[https://github.com/boostorg/beast](https://github.com/boostorg/beast) \- HTTP and WebSocket built on Boost.Asio in C++11

[https://github.com/emweb/wt](https://github.com/emweb/wt) \- Wt, C++ Web Toolkit

<comment><USER28> Personally, I've used: [https://github.com/civetweb/civetweb](https://github.com/civetweb/civetweb)

(for implementing an RFC 3161 (crypto timestamp) service.

It's a fork of [https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose](https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose)

(The Civetweb fork exists due to Mongoose license switch from MIT to GPLv2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bevor I'd use C++ I'd take a hard look at Go, figure out whether I really need C++ performance, or whether Go is just good enough.

Go is rather performant and in contrast to C++ memory safe.

<comment><USER30> If you say that C++ is not memory safe you really don't know the modern C++. Of course you can use only `void *` everywhere... but you can also write your software in a totally different way. My C++ code has no pointers, just objects, which are automatically destroyed when I want to. The nice feature is that I know when the destructor is called, so the object will clear itself in a very nice way.

<comment><USER31> It's futile battle though to achieve both performance and safety in C++: as an example, safety requires avoiding moves, using reference counting, while achieving performance means avoiding copies and passing occasional references around, among other things. That's why advertising C++ solution as fast does not work well with "but C++ can be safe too!".

<comment><USER3> Moves can be safe, and copies can be dangerous.

C++ is a language that can be used like a sawed-off shotgun propped against a developer's foot, and with a hair trigger. Granted, it does not _have_ to be used this way, but it can be.

A good developer can be "safe by default" and can use profile-directed optimization to speed up areas that are performance critical. A great developer can build proofs that such performance improvements maintain safety guarantees. For the average developer, following modern C++ development practices creates code on par with other languages in terms of both safety and performance.

For most languages, a lot can be done in terms of optimization, profiling, and security. Even in higher-level languages, an FFI is available to rewrite critical portions of code in a lower level language for performance improvements. Careful attention to detail can provide critical performance improvements in any language without compromising on safety. Getting there requires model checking or formal methods, but that is also becoming more of a part of modern development practices.

<comment><USER32> The problem is that many developers don't care, they just want to do something that works and move on.

This is not specific to C++, but it is worse in C and C++ given the nature of these languages.

It also doesn't help that management even cares less about QA than those devs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's with all the weird spam at the bottom of these comments? Someone seriously loves rust.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cutelyst is a nice C++ web server with a much better api imho: [https://cutelyst.org/](https://cutelyst.org/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I wrote my blog site in C. Runs as CGI and works just as fast as other tech stacks, say PHP.

C has very low startup time compare to say Java. And process fork-exec isn't as heavy weight under Linux as in Windows.

<comment><USER32> Java can be C like when compiled into native code, OpenJDK isn't the only JVM around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can do this with libboost with this [https://github.com/ipkn/crow](https://github.com/ipkn/crow)

</comment><comment><USER37> > I know it sounds strange, and perhaps even an exercise in novel futility, > but it isn't.

Oh come on, C++ is a systems programming language and certainly can handle this, so "futility" seems over the top. Hell, you can write cgi handlers in assembly.

Around 94 I wrote Cygnus' web interface (and then cron job too) to our big system in sh. Sure, I wouldn't make the same choice today, but it's hardly absurd.

</comment><comment><USER38> Am I right in thinking the main reason not to do this is memory safety (as demonstrated by Cloudbleed)?

<comment><USER39> That's part of what I'd argue is the main argument against: not reinventing the wheel. The only argument for is experimenting. These are all toy examples. I'd argue that through CGI it won't even be more performant than opcode cached interpreted languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This brings me back... I was doing this exact sort of stuff at the turn of the century, although admittedly in C - not C++ - and using/linking to the Delphi CGI library.

CGI in 2018 seems a bit passé...

<comment><USER41> Actually, this new hip function-as-a-service thing feels a lot like CGI/inetd…

well, at least in terms of not keeping the server process up all the time, only when it's used.

To combine "only running when necessary" and "not restarting for every request when there's a lot of requests", I made a thing: [https://github.com/myfreeweb/soad](https://github.com/myfreeweb/soad) — little wrapper listens on a socket, spawns your server with the socket passed in, terminates the server when there were no new connections in a while, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER35> You can check inetd which does exactly that and comes preinstalled and pre activated with Linux installations. Or at lest it was common once upon a time. Don't know if it still is.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> UTF-8 handling is a big reason I prefer a language like Python 3 or Go over C++ for the web.

</comment><comment><USER43> Building parts of a web site backend in C++, maybe. Anything else with the current state of technology seems futile for a production environment.

</comment><comment><USER44> tl;dr: CGI.

</comment><comment><USER45> You can build a website with any language… I mean, sometimes it's nice to go back to the basics, but aren't there better packages and frameworks written in C++ to handle the job?

</comment><comment><USER46> Just use rust man :| why do you want to bring all your security vulnerabilities and undefined behaviors to web?

<comment><USER47> Why do people think the C++ of today is the same as the C++ of 1998? Today we have concepts such as RAII to clean up our objects when they go out of scope. We have references which are essentially safe pointers _to an extent_ (see dangling references). References have always existed, but people _insist_ on using raw pointers still. Finally, for those use cases where heap allocated memory is _absolutely necessary_ , we have smart pointers which clean up the memory they own when the smart pointer object goes out of scope (an application of RAII). Other unsafe practices carried over from C such as void * type erasure are being replaced with type-safe objects (see std::any for C++17, boost::any for pre-C++17).

<comment><USER48> There's still plenty of ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you are "not careful" with the modern C++ code you write. See for example [http://foonathan.net/blog/2017/03/22/string_view- temporary.h...](http://foonathan.net/blog/2017/03/22/string_view- temporary.html)

Modern C++ has a lot of great stuff to help, but the sense of safety you get when you use Rust is something else entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Its always interesting to see C++ but as someone else mentioned I expected to see Wt. If I want nearest to C++ speeds I rather go with D (using vibe.d) or Rust. C++ isn't my area of expertise though but those two other languages are years more approachable for me personally. Not saying I could never do C++ though. I know OkCupid is C++ using Wt iirc. I wish they'd give D a try or Rust to see how much more productive they become.

<comment><USER3> Why would you assume that D or Rust would be make developers more productive? If the developer already knows C++, then switching to D or Rust would make the developer significantly less productive over six months to a year, after which, the developer would likely be just as productive as he/she was when writing C++.

Languages are not panaceas. Rust and D are both hard languages, as is C++. Selecting one of these only makes sense if the application warrants it. Each have advantages and disadvantages. I don't really think any of them are suited to web development, but claiming that D or Rust would be a more productive web development language than C++ seems equally silly to seriously considering C++ as a web development language.

<comment><USER50> > Why would you assume that D or Rust would be make developers more > productive? If the developer already knows C++, then switching to D

Because D is very obviously C++ but better. Rust isn't, though. But D, down to the very name, has lots of things that appeal to C++ users. It has advanced metaprogramming, is multiparadigm, it compiles down to machine code, and has very similar syntax to C++.

D has had other influences, but it is written by C++ compiler writers who think they can do better than C++. I say this as someone raised on C++ and who is now trying D. It is a very natural progression to make, if you're inclined to try something new.

Furthermore, Vibe.d is kind of a burgeoning "killer app" for D. D's package manager, for example, was originally made for Vibe.d. This isn't the only way in which Vibe.d has influenced D development. Vibe.d is one of the most popular D libraries. It's the only D library I know that has its own published book,

[https://dlang.org/blog/2017/09/13/the-making-of-d-web- develo...](https://dlang.org/blog/2017/09/13/the-making-of-d-web-development/)</comment></comment></comment>


Matt Maroon: The Anti-Social Graph - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=356

<comment><USER2> There're only two questions that are important for trying to put a price on Facebook:

      1) How much are Facebook users worth to advertisers (brand and/or CPC) on average and in aggregate?

      2) How much is the data Facebook has (the social graph, demographic information) worth to third parties?

Matt's answer to both, based on his recent two articles, is "right now, not much relative to the internet heavyweights." That actually isn't controversial at all.

There's a lot of optimism about Facebook's future, however, that allows people to argue against Matt based on the "just wait until you see what they come up with" line of reasoning.

I'd be interested in hearing from both sides about this _future_ Facebook. As in, what facts, specifically, might change about the world that would make Facebook worth $15 billion, and how likely is it that those changes will come about?

<comment><USER3> Facebook's users aren't valuable to advertisers because they're "fragmented" (i.e., no common interests).

That's why the only ads you see on MySpace and Facebook are for dating sites and T-shirts.

The bigger money is in selling very specific advertising (for example, selling HD-TVs to fantasy football fanatics).

<comment><USER4> I just searched, and there are 15,321 groups with "fantasy football" in the title on Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think he makes a good point about the apps. There are literally thousands of apps and when I was involved in Facebook app development I saw _nothing_ that used the social graph for anything interesting.

I actually started a social news system inside Facebook (called Wildfire), the idea was that stories would only get voted up if people passed them from friend to friend. It went nowhere, perhaps that was my fault.

Has anyone seen a really cool Facebook application?

<comment><USER6> I haven't but I've had two ideas I thought were fairly interesting.

1\. Tomagochi app where your creature's features are representative of your friends friends. I.e. people with fewer friends will contribute more unique and interesting features to the creature and people with many friends contribute more material for making bigger creatures. This would motivate people to seek both ends of the spectrum.

2\. Trusted distributed computing. People would bid for users' cpu time, and users choose who they want. Bids can either be money or promise of payout from the job's results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
       "That's true, but it's even more fashionable (at least in tech circles) to say that Facebook is the next Google, or that Facebook is building the social graph which is worth a lot for some unknown reason and they'll monetize it later."

I submit the comments on this very thread, and this previous thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160408>) as countering data points. It's extremely fashionable to call Facebook a spammy, me-too, useless, overhyped social network that has jumped the shark.

At least in tech circles.

<comment><USER8> That was my point. Both are very fashionable because they're the only two extreme opinions on a very talked about topic.

I'm sure there are plenty of people with opinions in the middle, but moderates never speak out much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm always hesitant to bet against anything Buchheit says. But, I really don't get the appeal of Facebook (this is probably why I do systems management apps instead of social network thingies).

I do know, however, that many large companies have historically paid very large amounts of money to know as much about people as Facebook got people to volunteer to give them. There probably is significant value in this information. It's stupid to think that the #2 social network is worth 30 times the #1 social network, but it'd also be dumb to wholly discount the value of all of that data.

<comment><USER10> Maybe, but for all the hype over Facebook I find it ironic that Amazon probably has more valuable information via Wedding/Baby shower wishlist registeries than all of the social graph in Facebook is worth.

<comment><USER9> No one is arguing that Amazon isn't worth a very large fortune, and that a big part of their value is in the data that they have about customers and the reviews that customers have written for them for free. But that doesn't really alter Facebook's value (there have always been multiple sources of data about consumers...and yet it is still valuable data).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Matt, here's an example of money in the social graph: What movies have your friends and their friends put in their netflix queue? Friends of friends might have interests similar to yours, and you might end up renting a movie you might not otherwise have rented.

Friend-of-friend recommendations have a tremendous commercial potential, whether Facebook or FriendFeed have realized them or not. My example above is actually from FriendFeed:

[http://friendfeed.com/search?q=&service=netflix](http://friendfeed.com/search?q=&service=netflix)

Beware of using "If P then the Facebook guys aren't imaginative" as proof of not P. Also, don't use examples of the usefulness of the anti-social graph to negate the usefulness of the social graph.

<comment><USER8> But does this beat Netflix's recommendation service that uses data from all Netflix customers? I'd love to see someone explore that. I've read a lot on the Netflix prize and it leads me to guess it wouldn't, but I would love to find out if I'm incorrect.

<comment><USER12> It wouldn't necessarily even have to beat it -- you could use synergy.

For example: here are movies a bunch of your friends are watching, and here's how much we estimate you'll like each one. Or, to flip it around, out of all the movies we think you'll like, here are the ones that have the strongest buzz amongst people you know.

Anything that gets people excited about watching movies is good for Netflix, and should be something they can monetize.

You could do the same thing with YouTube videos, or with a music service. Instead of having people send you a bunch of annoying "Hey check this out" messages (by whatever messaging medium), you could look at a widget that shows the current favorites amongst your friends. Sure, a Netflix-style rating service may be more accurate, but a lot of people want to know what their friends recommend.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't Netflix already do this? I think you can already friend everyone there and see what they watched, how they rated it, what they put in their queue. Why would they pay Facebook for that?

Pretty sure YouTube and some music services have some of this sort of functionality too. Every site does these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More classic MM haterade fuelled ranting. keep swigging. (with credit to aston)

But I like the article a lot. Facebook now feels like the warm up to something greater. (and probably smaller)

The identity thing is no longer an advantage for them since they opened up beyond schools and coroporates. It is socially engineered toward real identities, but that's all.

<comment><USER6> That's the problem with getting greedy. They had a great thing going when the community was more closed, in fact that was their selling point for me. Opening up like this seems very short sighted, but I guess that's what you get with the flipper ethic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> New Onion headline? "Area man constantly bringing up how overhyped Facebook is"

</comment><comment><USER15> Good point about spam. Facebook turns your friends into spammers, which isn't helpful.

<comment><USER16> I don't really use Facebook so I may not really appreciate the problem, but I don't think you can call messages from people you actually know and sent specifically to you "spam", for any reasonable definition of spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Question to Matt: How much do you think your yc startup draftmix is worth?

How much would it be worth if it came preinstalled on every facebook users profile... with social aspects built in... and with the name brand of facebook behind it?

Facebook is worth a ton of money because people under 30 with money visit it several times a day... and its not like other sites like cnn or espn.com or whatever because there friends are on it and there is an emotional attachment to it.

</comment><comment> meat-eater facebook has become a useless spam machine. Doesn't work for me anymore.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have to agree with Matt on a lot of points here. As soon as I heard the phrase social graph, my BS buzzphrase filter peaked.

Never been on facebook and I wouldn't say they are worthless, but $15 bill valuation for a second place player doesn't make sense to me. Then again, a lot of other things don't either.

</comment><comment><USER19> MM is doing the wrong startup. He should be writing more and I bet he will have a decent size audience. Although i think he mostly likes to be on the opposite side just for the hell of it, i still like to read his post and sure knows how to defend his views by backing them with data. MM is sure making or writing "something people want": controversy.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I've been told that a lot lately. I kinda like keeping it as a hobby though. Not sure it would be as fun full time. I already took one hobby and made a living from it and it ruined that.

I don't set out to play devil's advocate. I just don't find it interesting to write about the things that I agree with everyone else on. I won't bother with an article on how the music industry should give up DRM, for example, because it wouldn't be anything thought provoking to anybody anymore. Hell, even the record companies seem to have figured that out by now.

And I don't have much perspective on programming. I couldn't write anything of use on the merits of RDBMSes vs. SimpleDB (though I appreciate some of the articles from people who can). But I feel like I have a pretty good perspective on people and how they use the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I couldn't agree more. Glad to see someone make the point clearly though, I wouldn't have wasted as much time on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty misanthropic. I enjoy using Facebook.

<comment><USER9> Matt didn't say you shouldn't enjoy using Facebook. He said that it's not worth 15 billion dollars, and that many of the things people suggest will make it worth 15 billion dollars are hogwash.</comment></comment>


Un érudit musulman a eu l'idée de l'évolution 1000 ans avant Darwin - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/afrique/monde-50742977 <comment><USER2> Autotranslation " _Muslim scholar got idea of evolution 1000 years before Darwin_ " [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fafrique%2Fmonde-50742977)

It's a nice article, and I found the Spanish and Portuguese version, but I can't find the English version? Does anyone know a trick to find it?

<comment><USER3> I tried searching for "Al-Jahiz" and didn't get any recent results. It's quite possible that there's no English version of the article, e.g. if they decided that the story wouldn't do well in the English-language market.

<comment><USER4> I checked the Wikipedia page on Al-Jahiz, which referenced a broken link to a similar article, which can still be accessed through the internet archive:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170331141638/http://muslimheri...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170331141638/http://muslimheritage.com/article/islamic- foreshadowing-evolution)</comment></comment></comment>


Spent a couple o' days setting up a hacker news clone. How to build a community? - <AUTHOR> http://www.iphonefever.com <comment><USER2> Looks like too narrow a focus to sustain a discussion community, but you could try approaching some people with strong opinions individually and then spending a modest amount of money on advertising to get attention. It's nto clear whether your focus is developers, consumers or who, or how it differs from any typical vBulletin of phpBB forum other than in terms of UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to make it consumer focus. Great points you've raised. Will see how I can best address those. Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of good information about community at CMX Hub: [http://cmxhub.com/](http://cmxhub.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: What happened in Italy with Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> Italy now has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths after China. This is worse than Iran.  So what happened here that is so bad compared to continental Europe. Or put it another way what didn't happen in Italy and is happening else where and hence Italy situation is so bad?<p>https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 <comment><USER2> Italy now has the highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world, if you believe that China didn't underreport deaths. They claim an impossible death rate, given that their hospitals are still accepting almost all serious patients. (This could change in a day or two.)

Their total cases numbers are probably bonkers, and have been from the very start. They were very unlucky with the early spread, with (I guess) lots of asymptomatic cases.

Other Western countries had more time to prepare, and had better knowledge about where the cases were spreading. This will change, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds)

The board of medical doctors has issued a therapeutic guideline that says not to ventilate over the age of 60, or better "to allocate ICU resources and personnel based on estimates life expectancy", as is an accepted ethical behaviour in cases of insufficient resources.

People 60 and older are sedated and practically euthanised if not enough ICU beds are available.

That's why you probably see other countries (namely UK and US) react differently.

Unfortunately it's difficult to asses the validity of the statistical reporting, even assuming good faith on the side of all parties, statistics protocols are easy to overlook/get-wrong in medical emergencies.

Use translated CC to hear it from this guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lnxGwptaQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lnxGwptaQc) We have entertainers put out PSA messages to educate the population to leave enough beds free to accept critical patients

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://left.it/2020/03/13/covid_19-open-letter-from- italy-t...](https://left.it/2020/03/13/covid_19-open-letter-from-italy-to-the- international-scientific-community/)</comment>


Google introduced new fraud measures (again) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/03/01/google_clickfraud_prevention_newsystems/ <comment><AUTHOR> What I want to know is why have they waited so long to hook up Adwords and Checkout. Instead of bidding on $x/click, someone who signed up for Checkout could instead sign up and bid on $x or y% per sale, effectively eliminating fraudulant clicks.

I guess the trouble with this is that you'd still be able to send a truckload of traffic at a competitor to decrease the Google cut per visitor. But it would totally eliminate people artifically increasing their Adsense clicks, and if they optimised for the Google income per Adsense view on a site by site basis, then the long tail would effectively be safe from people trying to decrease the rank of their competitors. Not to mention that the data from the long tail would give you an excellent idea of who is being hurt by artifical traffic (you could even use the data from the long tail to rank the main Google search ads which would eliminate the problem entirely, perhaps at the risk of a bit of inaccuracy).</comment>


Police Shut Down a 3k-Person Game of Hide-and-Seek at IKEA - <AUTHOR> https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/a28917427/ikea-hide-and-seek-glasgow-scotland/ <comment><USER3> "People are stopping everyone who 'looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek."

Deep down, everyone who walks into the great snaking corridors of IKEA is playing a game of hide and seek.

But what does a person who goes there to play the game on purpose look like? What are the tells? Are they wearing IKEA bedlinen?

I love the idea of a stop and search on that scale and basis. "Hide and seek, officer? I just came to buy a Prickig and a couple of Pysslingars."

<comment><USER4> [http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008)

<comment><USER5> That SCP was both completely unexpected and completely appropriate. Also a very interesting mix of creepy and hilarious.

I nearly lost it at the description of the humanoids SCP-3008-2.

Edit: Working my way through the journal entry - my goodness this stuff is straight-up made for its own movie or Netflix series!

<comment><USER6> Check out the containment series on youtube; the latest episode is based off that SCP.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM6GkERwEM0&list=PLEXIiC3q94...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM6GkERwEM0&list=PLEXIiC3q94eO992TlwBD98Zast0gret1r)

<comment><USER7> Link to the specific video based on SCP-3008: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq1lLCgk7E&list=PLEXIiC3q94...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcq1lLCgk7E&list=PLEXIiC3q94eO992TlwBD98Zast0gret1r&index=9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That sounds awesome, but how does a 3k game of hide & seek actually work? I mean, by home rules growing up, one person was "it" and had to find everyone. That would suck. One person would have to find 2999 others, and most of them would just be stuck stuck under an Espevar, waiting.

This is an important problem to solve. I call on the engineers of this site to find a solution to the hide & seek scaling problem. Let's get to work!

<comment><USER9> You might be interested in the hide-and-seek variant Sardines. One person hides, with a group of seekers. Seekers that find the one who hides have to hide with them, until one seeker is left. There is nothing like the feeling of looking around, encountering fewer and fewer other seekers, until you are alone with the knowledge that you just lost.

<comment><USER10> The first excellent episode of British TV series Inside No. 9 revolves around a game of Sardines. Wholeheartedly recommended, for pitch-perfect Brit dark humour

<comment><USER11> Just watched it now. Gosh that was weird and strangely captivating. Also, literally every single person spoke with their own uniquely wonderful accent and mannerism - odd thing to notice and comment on but it made it that much better. Looking forward to the rest of this series.

<comment><USER12> Whole series is totally amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worth remembering "IKEA Heights", a soap opera filmed covertly inside the IKEA store in Burbank, California 10 years ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/IKEAHeights/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/IKEAHeights/videos)

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

<comment><USER14> Whoa that's hilarious, it's got [1] Randall Park in it before he was famous!

Do you know some other series from that era? I recently discovered "GoodNeighborStuff" which has the same quality sketch comedy feel to it.

[1] [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1320827/](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1320827/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/user/GoodNeighborStuff](https://www.youtube.com/user/GoodNeighborStuff)

<comment><USER15> Take a look at Channel101.com, it seems like this show originally was screened there. The idea is people submit 5 minute tv pilots and only continue making them if the live channel101 audience votes to renew them for another episode.

Almost everything on channel101, even now, still feels like quality sketch comedy. Some of the best stuff though is Dan Harmon's original shows - <USER2> there are almost too many to watch [http://www.channel101.com/talent/108](http://www.channel101.com/talent/108)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The game continues, but the Police are now the seekers and stakes are raise: if you're found, you go to jail.

<comment><USER17> > and stakes are raise: if you're found, you go to jail

Go to jail? For what? What is the crime? I would say that at least in the US there would be no such thing for this type of activity. Can you imagine a prosecutor trying to make a case over this?

<comment><USER18> > What is the crime?

If you've been asked to leave, the crime would be trespassing.

<comment><USER19> > If you've been asked to leave, the crime would be trespassing.

If you are asked to leave, it would means that you were found, doesn't it?

> if you're found, you go to jail.

If you are found, you lose, you don't go to jail.

<comment><USER18> > If you are asked to leave, it would means that you were found, doesn't it?

Not necessarily. You could be asked to leave with an announcement over the PA system.

<comment><USER19> > Not necessarily. You could be asked to leave with an announcement over the > PA system.

Would that be valid legally though? Like how can you know it was targeting you? If they mentions everyone, that could works.

You will still not go to jail though and you can still try to avoid their sight (or else you'll be "found").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Towards the end of middle school, about one mile away, was a brand-new, two- story Barnes and Nobles. My friends and I - most of whom were waiting to be picked up in a couple hours by our still-working parents - would often go there to engage in relatively "large scale" hide-and-seek. It was a lot of fun. As it turned out, our future high school was even closer to the place. Shennanigans in the store became a daily thing, and we became the bane of that place's existience. The whole outside seating area became a camp site of sorts for teens waiting to go home. Police began to frequent the area, often nabbing underage cigarette smokers. For about one week, they had some kind of annoying sonic deterrent device installed that would only be audible to young people - complaints forced them to remove it. Years later and the plaza has full-time rent-a-cops to keep the droves of teens in check.

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel like they would have been better off officially sanctioning the event and making a big PR stunt out of it.

<comment><USER22> As the article mention, they used to allow it but had to ban it since 2015. No details as to why except for vague PR speak of safety, my guess is they can't get insurance coverage for the events, at least not at reasonable price.

<comment><USER23> People take things too far. They'll climb on things which shouldn't be climbed on. Some dork might hide in sealed fridge. They'll go back to the warehouse section and hide where forklifts are operating. Not to mention the general destruction of the floor models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Classic DOS attack by morons. You have that public place, business, physical service you want to block, so you send a massive number of morons (easily available on Facebook) to do dumb stuff in that site. Bang! Mission accomplished. For maximum damage a "Press reflection" variant exists: with the help of the press you make this kind of attack trendy so more morons can be focused on the target. Booom ! Nuclear blast!

</comment><comment><USER25> A 3000-person game of Hide-and-Seek in an IKEA is what happens when private businesses start to take over free culture, public places, and public events.

In the past, villages would play village football (or "mob football", or "Ba") against each other. The England-Scotland border was actually defined in part by the winner of an annual Ba game between Coldstream and Wark. The "Baa Green" south of the river went to the winner. Since Coldstream grew larger, it's pretty much permanently Scottish now.

But then the government banned the playing of football on the highways, and towns couldn't play against each other as easily any more. Spoilsports.

Every once in a while, The People of Eris get together and say, "We're going to do something silly and fun and surreal and wondrous and magical and thrilling!" And then The People of Greyface get together and say, "Stop that at once. Someone is going to get hurt, or laugh at the government, or something else equally awful. And that would be catastrophically disastrous. So, no fun for you. Off with you, now." It's an eternal struggle.

<comment><USER26> The Ba in Kirkwall is held every year still. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwall_Ba_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwall_Ba_game)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems someone figured out how to play hide-and-seek with thousands of people. Just let Ikea know you are coming and they will provide the seeker. The last one thrown out by security or the police before closing is the winner. Bragging rights go to the person who is found the next morning by staff sleeping in one of the beds.

</comment><comment><USER28> > "People are stopping everyone who 'looks like they are here for a game of > hide and seek,'"

What? How does one look like they are there for a game of hide and seek v a regular shopper?

<comment><USER29> Regular shoppers don't usually crouch behind things.

<comment><USER30> How am I supposed to know if furniture is good if I can't test its viability in games of hide and seek?

<comment><USER31> My takeaway from all of this is that if you have kids that are going to play hide-and-seek, you probably want something more durable than IKEA furniture.

I think IKEA realizes this as well.

<comment><USER30> It's 2019. Adults can play hide and seek too, you know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What exactly were the police planning to do if they found someone playing hide and seek? At most it seems like they could ask people to leave the store, and if they refuse charge them with trespassing - but those are civil matters.

<comment><USER33> I mean, it's a different legal system than I'm used to, but around here trespassing is criminal.

<comment><USER34> Generally you're not trespassing in a store until they ask you to leave, or you've been informed not to engage in certain activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This sounds funny but would quickly get tiresome and _intimidating_ for staff; glad they shut it down - really selfish of the event organisers and participants.

</comment><comment><USER36> How would this work? I could just hide in plain sight: act like I'm shopping.

Do you have to seek only people that look like they are hiding?

</comment><comment><USER37> This makes me curious how the upcoming raid on Area 51 will go.

<comment><USER28> Is this an actual thing?

I thought it was a joke, is it meant to be a joke but some people are going to turn up having it taken it seriously?

Not an American, but I feel that could go badly.

<comment> squeaky-clean It's not an actual thing beyond a big in-joke. If anyone does actually show up, it will be something like the pizzagate gunman situation, where they have mental issues. Area 51 is so isolated [0] that a raid by any average person is pretty much impossible, they'll be stopped miles away from the facility. It's a long gravel road just to reach the restricted roads. [1] If you type for directions from Crystal Springs to Area 51 into Google Maps it'll also show the gravel road (and the street-view person also changes into a UFO haha)

[0] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/37°14'52.9"N+115°48'00.6"W...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/37°14'52.9"N+115°48'00.6"email@example.com,-115.8179512,7166m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d37.24804!4d-115.800155)

[1] [https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g45991-d117062...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g45991-d117062-Reviews- Area_51-Rachel_Nevada.html)

<comment><USER38> The military compound won't be overrun, but local towns are bracing for an surge of idiots arriving the same day.

<comment><USER39> Idiots, it must be noted, who are expected to require food and lodging, provided at a reasonable price by the local towns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Ikea should stop 'banning' them and embracing these. They should build a ticket platform so you can only get into the game w/a ticket. You'd put an armband on signifying you're a 'player'. That way they could maybe limit it to a smaller number per game.. 3000 seems like a lot. Maybe 500 or less. How many of these people would shop while there are go to the cafeteria?

<comment><USER41> We were at Ikea today and I thought - they should have a "lazer" game where you try to get as many tags as possible. Players would be required to walk, you could only tag someone once and they could have tags on furniture [or only on furniture] that encouraged kids to "catch them all" ensuring the parents visited a particular room or item that Ikea wanted to sell.

Maybe ...

MVP would be just have some of the barcodes with a different colour background and give people barcode readers "capture 30 tags and get an icecream"; improves engagement, keeps kids interested in the "hunt"??

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When I was in high school, I would play a game called "fugitive"[0] with 100+ people from nearby schools. Essentially, it's a game of chase through a few miles of town. Everyone starts at the same line but runners get a head start. Runners who are tagged become chasers who carpool with drivers. Runners use any means necessary to get away, including hiding and deceiving, trespassing across properties, jumping fences and scaling houses.... It was a frenzy and madness and probably didn't last an hour overall. Athletes win the race and everyone else has a brilliant hilarious experience.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_(game)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_\(game\))

<comment><USER7> That sounds fun; I wished I could have played that.

For people who want to experience some of the same thrill, try watching FailRace's "Survive the Hunt" series on YouTube, in which he plays Grand Theft Auto V in a lobby with his fans. He is given a head-start to drive away from the group in his car, then he has to switch to a random vehicle and pretend to be one of the many AI cars. After a few minutes a swarm of 15 or so hunters comb the city looking for anyone out of place. The videos get more exciting when they see FailRace and he has to lose them, despite all of the hunters being in voice contact. It's not the ideal version of this kind of game, because FailRace only goes on foot when he has no other option, but it is still fun to watch.

The playlist is [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHw7hcztgbtslirPWPBL4...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHw7hcztgbtslirPWPBL4G_8r4XPlp_vr). That playlist isn't complete for some reason; search FailRace's other videos for "Survive the Hunt" to find the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How is a 3000-person game of hide-and-seek supposed to work? Hide-and-seek typically involves knowing who you're looking for, or at least knowing that anyone in a given area is in on the game.

<comment><USER44> I was wondering the exact same thing. Who hides and who seeks? I'm guessing that it's more like people go in small groups and do it within their own group but just with the size of the Ikea store being the fun factor. Or maybe they team up against another group of equal size to see which group can find each other faster?

<comment><USER45> Or maybe they wear some sort of tags in their clothing to identify them as hiders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> We used to do this on dates at the Denver, CO IKEA. No one ever even knew what we were doing.

</comment><comment><USER47> "The trend began in Belgium in 2014 and quickly gained popularity throughout the continent"... People have been do this in Ikea for much longer than that, I love it when "journalists" make up facts based on conveniently available evidence. In two months the New York Times will cite Belgium as the beginning of ever playing hide and seek in public.

</comment><comment><USER48> Ikea is the perfect place to play hide and seek. The stores are deliberately designed to be labyrinthine after all.

<comment><USER38> The stores have a single (long, windy) path illuminated with arrows, plus pockets for each product area

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hide-and-seek was always my favorite game to play with friends. Nothing can really beat the basal gratification and excitement in simulating a predator- prey situation. It is kind of neat that humans, after conquering hunting and being hunted, simulate this activity for risk-free thrill.

</comment><comment><USER50> This reminds me of the time my high school wrestling team had practice over winter break and we played hide and seek one day instead of practicing. There were about 30 of us (including coaches) and we had the whole school to ourselves. That was the best game of hide and seek.

</comment><comment><USER51> Joke's on them, it was 4,000.

</comment><comment><USER52> The first (public) web app was a tool for managing large games of Assassin, which we used for about a week and a half to run a class-wide game until someone complained to his parents and the school shut us down. We probably could have finished it out, but once people get scared and start dropping out of an in-progress game, it's hard to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER53> If I were Ikea I'd try turning into a paid event. Collect the money ahead of time ($5 per person?) and you're golden.

<comment><USER54> Yes, but that makes Ikea assume some responsibility. At the end of the day Ikea sells furniture, people playing a massive hide and seek game are not there to buy furniture.

<comment><USER53> They could use waiver forms, like any other place hosting moderately "dangerous" things (like trampolines, etc.).

That said, you could still allow people who came to actually buy furniture.

Though, I think it would require more preparation than just winging it.

<comment><USER55> Waivers aren't – just like anything else – perfect protection against (legal) liability. In the U.S. at least, _everything_ can be litigated and even just defending one's self can be expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Last time I wandered into an IKEA I wished there was a real escape rope item, like from the Pokemon games, to escape quickly.

</comment><comment><USER57> "The police are stopping everyone who 'looks like they are here for a game of hide and seek.'"

Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is the same Ikea that has a "Jesus in the woodgrain" on a toilet door. (If you Google it you'll see stories popping up every couple of years as someone "discovers" it again.)

</comment><comment><USER59> It seems like an interesting business opportunity to open a Hide and Seek venue, maybe in conjunction with a theme park or something of that nature. If it is that popular. Shrug.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm just kind of shocked they could fit 3000 people inside an IKEA and still be able to play hide and seek. I know they're big, but damn that's impressive.

</comment><comment><USER46> Headline continues......turns out, they were all just people lost because of the horribly-placed yellow arrows misdirecting them through the store.

</comment><comment><USER61> _Five police officers were called to the Braehead branch and remained at the store until the evening._

Ok... the title sounds way more alarming

<comment><USER62> Five police officers stopped 3000 hide-and-seekers

In a previous life they used to be Spartans

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> So they got the police to play as well? /s

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder if this was organized by an underground boxing club.

</comment><comment><USER65> Reminds me of the "Infinite IKEA" SCP entry.

</comment><comment><USER66> And.... now it's going world wide.

</comment><comment><USER67> Headline two days later: "It was actually a 3001 person game of hide and seek! They found Janet in the Sektion."

</comment><comment><USER68> are we just posting corporate guerrilla marketing now?

</comment><comment><USER69> Next thing you know the police will be arresting people running lemonade stands!

</comment><comment><USER43> It's nice to know that Glasgow has eliminated crime to the point that this was the most useful thing the police could possibly be doing.

<comment><USER70> it is "broken windows" policy in action - you don't stop hide and seek in IKEA today, you end up with people shooting up heroin and engaging in various adult activities there tomorrow.

Anyway, how do you efficiently stop a good game? You spoil it (cue Dr.Evil laugh). In this case use NN to analyze video feeds to identify a hiding person and deploy a Roomba (i feel like our civilization is on the precipice of the epoch where "deploy a Roomba" will be the answer to almost any situation) to the vicinity of the hiding person where the Roomba will loudly announce presence of the hiding person.

<comment><USER71> IKEA - the gateway drug?</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Geeks: A field guide to your tech staff. - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20071201/understanding-geeks_Printer_Friendly.html <comment><USER2> I don't know if this was accidental or not, but thanks for linking to the printer friendly version... Gets away from a lot of the blinding ads...

Good article...</comment>


WebGL X-Wing - <AUTHOR> http://oos.moxiecode.com/js_webgl/xwing/index.html

<comment><USER2> If the intent is to make me pay attention to WebGL, it just may have succeeded.

If, on the other hand, the intent is to prove that I suck at video games, then it's a resounding success.

<comment><USER3> My 3 year old thought it was cute every time I crashed, so it was also a resounding success at amusing him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All these webgl demos cause my late 2008 macbook to grind to an absolute halt in a way that no other program seems to manage. You can almost hear the thing whimpering. Even the stuff like the volume control buttons on the keyboard stopped responding, and they normally take priority over everything else (handled by the kernel perhaps?)

<comment><USER5> Late 2008 MacBook? You have an Intel GMA GPU, expect strange, inconsistent, or simply useless performance in 3D rendering. It's probable the browser makers have paid little attention to performance on such chips.

<comment><USER4> The thing is that chipset can play half life 2 just about alright.

<comment><USER5> The Source engine is much more mature and much better optimized than what's in WebGL implementations right now. Valve and other game makers have strong incentive to make their games run as well as possible on a wide variety of hardware. The WebGL implementations just haven't had the same kind of investment in time and expertise.

<comment><USER6> Writing a game engine is quite different to writing a set of bindings (which is basically all WebGL is). There isn't much scope for optimization so I wouldn't hold out hope for WebGL apps running much faster in future browsers.

<comment><USER5> Hm, sorry, I was under the impression the WebGL implementations were being done rather differently than they apparently are. I hadn't thought the calls were getting passed through directly due to security concerns.

Chrome, at least, appears to be a straight binding with extensive validation... That... kinda makes my nervous.

<comment><USER7> I think your nervousness is well founded, and that's why Microsoft won't implement WebGL [1], but Chrome's developers seem to think they can make things secure [2].

[1]: [http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2011/06/16/webgl- cons...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2011/06/16/webgl-considered- harmful.aspx)

[2] : [http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and- microsoft-...](http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft- bullshit/)

<comment><USER5> I don't think nervousness about a particular implementation approach is a reason not to implement WebGL, just a reason not to do it in what I gather is Chrome's way.

On the other hand, Chrome's strategy might just be getting explained poorly. My nervousness comes partly because the way it's described sounds like a filtering strategy. If it's more like a whitelisting strategy, it could be considerably less scary, and more in line with what I was kind of expecting from browser vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Terrible graphics problems on my i945-Board (using Chrome on Win 7/64bit). I can see the fighter, but almost nothing else.

<comment><USER9> Works fine (though somewhat slow, maybe 15 fps) on Intel graphics under linux for me. I gotta say I'm getting to like this new era where even GPU drivers work better in linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tried on a Mac Air in both Chrome 14 / FF 8 and all you see is a giant blue haze with a white outline of the X-Wing.

<comment><USER11> I am having a similar problem with a current-gen Air in Safari 5.1 w/ WebGL enabled. I just get a half of the screen (by diagonal) of green dots, and some other stuff that I think is the X-Wing. (then I die)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because this doesn't capture the mouse it's really hard when you have to go to the top of the screen (menu bar) or bottom (taskbar). Without full screen mouse capture. WebGL will be nothing more than a toy when it comes to any kind of serious game.

<comment><USER13> Chrome just added an API for this in their dev builds, for Native Client at least. [http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/10/dev- channel...](http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/10/dev-channel- update_18.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't play it. I've played too many FPS and Flight Simulators in my time. The controls need to be inverted so i can fly it like a real plane. Too bad.

<comment><USER15> I also had this problem. Whenever I'd need to respond quickly, I'd try to use inverted controls, then crash.. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hint: Google disables some drivers by default, although by simply navigating to chrome://gpu/ I was able to kick-start WebGL on my Mac.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just like beggars canyon back home

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you ever get to the point where you shoot into the vents?

</comment><comment><USER19> These posts remind me of the "put a bird on it" sketch. All you need to do is "put a 'web' on it" and suddenly it's amazing.

Color me unconvinced, but we're looking at graphics that are roughly on par with what we saw desktops games in 1999: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R2nCrsDHeA>

I realize that this is just a small tech demo, but even still -- GL is only part of the equation. The kind of platform optimizations that are eeked out in the game industry are substantial and extend well beyond just the GPU.

The interest in web (flash) games was largely driven by the difficulty of distributing casual native games -- and that's quickly becoming a solved problem.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't say it's "amazing", but it's definitely "upvoteable" for two reasons:

1\. I don't have to install it. This means I can satisfy my desire for instant gratification and quickly go back and upvote it.

2\. I support open standards. I'll upvote it just for the fact that it's implemented in WebGL and not some proprietary bullshit, and I'll continue to do this until all the proprietary bullshit is long dead and gone.

<comment><USER21> The fanaticism surrounding your second point is very popular on the internet and is quite interesting to think about. What exactly is the problem? I don't have a hard answer, but let's objectively compare the advantages against a standard, closed-source mid 90's commercial PC game.

Longevity: x86 is in no danger of disappearing, and even if it was, popular open-source x86 emulators and virtual machines exist, with better performance and compatibility than a lot of WebGL implementations.

Proprietary platform: x86 has a very long history and is approximately perfectly documented. On the other hand, every browser implements WebGL slightly differently.

Can't see the source: Javascript can be minified and obfuscated to the point of incoherence. On the x86 side, i feel that this would be better addressed by improving assembly education: Everything is open source if you have a disassembler.

Software Freedoms: It's inherently more free, in the RMS sense, to have the content locally on your own computer than it is to stream it from somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> memories of zaxxon! the environment's a bit too dark to see clearly, but nicely done.

<comment><USER23> yes, the game would be a lot more fun if i could actually see the obstacles.

<comment><USER24> the cannons do a pretty good job of illuminating the channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> captain-asshat F11 Friends.

Edit: Highscore 43,906

<comment><USER5> Fullscreen doesn't help when you have multiple monitors, hot corners, and windowshade functionalities. The lack of mouse acceleration adjustment is also a problem on large screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really cool!

The display jiggles a little bit. About twice a second the camera shakes a little—I think maybe the roll of the camera changes?

I'd like the option to invert the up / down keyboard buttons—I kept going up when I meant to go down, and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know it's churlish of me, but the game being emulated is "star wars" not "x-wing".

Pretty impressive, though. Now, if Adobe could produce a webgl to flash 11 converter, it might be possible to actually do something like this commercially.

</comment><comment><USER27> lol, I wonder how many other people will hit ctrl-left and end up switching spaces.

</comment><comment><USER28> Impressive and fun. Dying to reverse the up and down on the arrow keys though!

</comment><comment><USER29> I melted my computer for that?

</comment><comment><USER30> Weirdly, for me, doesn't work on Chrome 14, but does work in Firefox 6.

</comment><comment><USER31> Shame so many webgl apps refuse to run properly on the 2011 13" mbp.

<comment><USER32> Odd, works fine on a 2010 13" MBA (in Chrome).

Though that fan does kick up quite a bit...

<comment><USER5> Your 2010 MBA has an nvidia 320M chip. Pedro's 2011-era 13" MacBook Pro (there is no 2011 MacBook) has an Intel chip. The 320M isn't a particularly great GPU, but I expect much better performance and compatibility out of it than the Intel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> loved it! Smooth....

</comment><comment><USER34> Pretty sweet ;)

</comment><comment><USER35> Very addicting...

</comment><comment><USER36> cant see shit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Relying on absolute cursor position out to the very edges/corners of the window is a bad idea, it's too easy to go outside and lose control while trying to get to the extreme positions necessary.

<comment><USER37> Absolutely, for this reason it's much better to use the keyboard.

<comment><USER5> Keyboard control for something like this is way too slow. I can't react in time, especially with the field of view partially obstructed by the fighter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love it. And all these people with MacBooks are really wishing they had something better. Haha.</comment>


PostgreSQL 10 Beta 1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/release-10.html <comment><USER2> PostgreSQL 10 Beta 1 was released on May 18, 2017, see [https://www.postgresql.org/](https://www.postgresql.org/)

Here is the discussion about the release from a month ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14367311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14367311) (166 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone give me an ELI5 on why PostgreSQL is better than MySQL?

I've had to update some software than used it for some reason (there were just a handful of records, it was a super-small app) and compared to MySQL I only found that I couldn't easily find a good GUI tool to look at the database (I use Sequel Pro for MySQL, which is absolutely great). I found Postico and I was never able to export the whole DB.

(I'm not saying PostgreSQL isn't better, I just have no idea why).

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming from context that you mean MySQL when you wrote "SQL"

First of all Postgres isn't better than MySQL, but it does a few things better.

PostgreSQL is more compliant with the SQL standard if that is important to you. MySQL has, at least in the past, done certain unexpected non-standard things that could cause silent turncations and data type changes that could lead to data loss.

PostgreSQL is ACID compliant out of the box, whereas MySQL requires the use a of specific data store to get ACID compliance.

PostgreSQL and MySQL offer different replication options. Which one is best is dependent on your needs

Performance wise they're about the same in aggregate, but differ quite a bit in specific cases. Very simply you can probably say that PostgreSQL is faster for complex queries over large complex data, while MySQL is faster for simpler queries over more homogeneous data, but YMMV big time.

PostgreSQL supports more 'exotic' data types like key-value HSTOREs and indexed JSON data. It also makes it a lot easier to create your own custom data types and indexes if you want to.

And related to the above PostgreSQL with PostGIS gives you world class support for storing and querying geometric and geographic data, far beyond what MySQL can offer.

<comment><USER5> > PostgreSQL is ACID compliant out of the box, whereas MySQL requires the use > a of specific data store to get ACID compliance

I'd rephrase that: MySQL is ACID compliant out of the box; it requires the use of a specific data store to avoid ACID compliance. InnoDB is the default, not MyISAM. Other than that I mostly agree.</comment></comment></comment>


How do Mac guys try new software now?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.webjives.org/how-do-mac-guys-try-new-software-now

<comment><USER2> The Mac store does not preclude developers from distributing they product independent of the mac store. While I do think it is strange that demos and trials are unavailable via the app store, they are still available from the developers own distribution channel.

<comment><USER3> You can do free light versions, and non-free pro versions, and that sort of thing.

Autodesk SketchBook Express is free, SketchBook Pro is $30 or thereabouts.</comment></comment>


Sugru, the magical glue/sealer/rubber-coating - <AUTHOR> http://sugru.com/about/

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if they used Amazon fulfillment for this. Their product is small in size, can be marked up without too much pain, and is desired by people in the US... so it seems like the perfect use case. I will probably forget about this since it's preorder and I don't really need it for anything... but if it was on Amazon, I would have already one-clicked it. FWIW.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its been the better part of a year and you still can't just buy the stuff. Its always preorder, wait, see if they ship it on time. By now they should have some idea of the month to month demand for the stuff. It feels suspiciously like they're still in that fearful "collect preorders until we have enough to make a batch without risk and then order it" phase. If they're going to make the stuff, _make_ it already dammit.

</comment><comment><USER4> They had a booth at the Bay Area MakerFaire 2010. I played with it and bought me a small sample (expensive). IMO its pretty useful. Think of it as sticky putty that turns into a hardish rubber in a few hours. Doesn't melt or come apart easily.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff: read previous discussons:

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/sugru>

</comment><comment><USER6> So, it's two-part silicone caulk?

<comment><USER7> I have an unused sample pack, and it's definitely not two-part. I think it's just air-activated.</comment></comment>


Real-time browser market share from chartbeat - <AUTHOR> http://percentoftheinternet.com/

<comment><USER2> You can also check out <http://chartbeat.com/labs/totaltotal/> for a more complete view of the numbers (I'd recommend zooming out a bit).

If anyone has questions or anything, feel free to ask.

<comment><USER2> Also for anyone who cares, the source is available on Github: <https://github.com/chartbeat/percentoftheinternet>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some improvements:

\- show the percentages on the main page under the browser icon

\- on the browser page show a breakdown by version</comment>


Stance by China to Limit Google Is Risk by Beijing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/world/asia/24china.html?ref=global-home

<comment><USER2> The only thing scarier than the censorship and reasons for it (i.e. human rights issues, corruption, etc...), is how powerful China would be if they ever straightened up.

<comment><USER3> Not to make your high horse uncomfortable, but consider:

\- In the US there are millions of so-called "illegals" who can't call the police if assaulted or abused for fear of deportation. This is a major human rights issue... if it happened in another country we'd call it apartheid.

\- In the US there is extensive corruption. Consider Rod Blagojevich's blunder but realize that one doesn't do that sort of thing unless it's part of the status quo.

\- The treatment of prison inmates in the US is atrocious. Being incarcerated is a near guarantee of regular rape and assault at the hands of other inmates. Guards do not stop this behavior. This is worse than any gulag.

edit: I love the US but I think it's fair to point out some of is flaws. I'm shocked that this comment gets modded down, are there a lot of Pat Buchanan acolytes on HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Puh-lease! Considering that the US Government has tried to shut down WikiLeaks and that Google censors some content (such as, for example, a depiction of two 17.5 year olds having sex), I think it's far more useful to look at China as being a bit more inclined to censor but not really much different than the US.

After all, the US Government censors information about the Kennedy assassination for no good reason... it's utterly hypocritical for any Amnerican to criticize the Chinese government without first criticizing the US government for censoring the Kennedy stuff and for trying to shut down WikiLeaks.

edit: I can't believe how many social conservatives appear to be downvoting this. Do you really have a problem with 17.5 year olds having consensual sex?

<comment><USER4> Complete and total nonsense. While the US Government has severe issues it is not by any stretch equivalent to the Chinese Government in its repression of human rights and freedoms and censorship of the Internet.

<comment><USER3> Censorship is censorship. It's either bad or it's not. If Google truly cares about the issue of censorship it should act consistently, not just try to find an area in which opposition to censorship is unanimous among people in the US and make a big stink about how bold it is being.

This is a business decision. Try posting a video of a naked 17.5 year old person on youtube and see how long it takes before it is taken down. Try posting a video slide show of sensitive wikileaks docs and see how long the video stays up.

Your argument also falls apart in terms of the humanitarian argument. Search increases freedom and thus is helpful to humanitarian goals. If Google makes a decision that results in less search, the decision results in less freedom.

Similarly, if you are running late to an event and you drive 100 MPH on the highway and you get pulled over for speeding, you might actually get there later than if you'd just driven the speed limit. If you want to optimize within the law you don't speed. Google is doing the equivalent of going 100 MPH and then blaming the cop.

<comment><USER5>
        The Sophisticate:  "The world isn't black and white.  No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray.  Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."
        The Zetet:  "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade.  You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view..."
          -- Marc Stiegler, David's Sling

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/>

<comment><USER3> I love this quote. I think most people apply the Sophisticate's error to China by supposing that since both the US and China are different shades of gray, they may then decide arbitrarily to critique China... similarly:

 _We saw it manifested in yesterday's post - the one who believed that odds of two to the power of seven hundred and fifty millon to one, against, meant "there was still a chance". All probabilities, to him, were simply "uncertain" and that meant he was licensed to ignore them if he pleased._

If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones.

<comment><USER5> _If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones._

You are however "licensed" to focus more on China, on the grounds that their abuses are orders of magnitude worse.

<comment><USER3> I challenge that assertion here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Steve Jobs Movie - <AUTHOR> http://www.jordhy.com/the-new-steve-jobs-movie

<comment><USER2> Why is it that myth has more importance to a tribe than reality?</comment>


Apple Mac Mini - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/ <comment><USER2> I seriously do not understand how can it ship with a 500GB 5400rpm drive by default. This gives such poor experience to the user that Apple should have opted for all-ssd approach two generations ago. Very disappointed by that.

<comment><USER3> Maybe a lot of people are using these as media machines? That requires a lot of space, and not much speed.

<comment><USER4> Then why not the current p/GB sweet spot, a 3TB disk?

<comment><USER5> There are no 2.5" 3TB drives, and even if one existed, it would be 12.5mm (or more), which may be too thick for Mac mini (standard 2.5" drive thickness is 9.5mm).

<comment><USER6> But there are 2TB 9.5mm drives, which would still be far better than a 500GB.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178627)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So correct me if I'm wrong, but they appear to have done the same thing with the Mac Mini to achieve the lower price point as they did with the iMac earlier this year, by introducing a 1.4Ghz i5 model? I don't recall the base Mac Mini being as weak before...

<comment><USER8> Wow, that's quite the downgrade. What's the logic here? To save energy to keep it fanless? Or is this cost-cutting?

<comment><USER9> I would imagine being energy efficient and cheap is their main goal. This is the kind of computer people will leave on, plugged into their TV.

<comment><USER10> Ding ding ding. My TV and home media and general server needs are powered by a Mid-2010 Mac Mini 4,1 with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, which is most certainly less than half the horsepower of this new model [1], and it works great. This would only be an improvement for this or any other use.

[1] Hey, I was right: [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2238&cmp[]=14...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp\[\]=2238&cmp\[\]=1483)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been waiting for about a year for this refresh and fully expected to buy one today, but after looking at the combination of price, default HDD, processors, and very weak integrated graphics, I just can't justify buying this. Compared to the relationship between the 2012 Mini and the 2012 computing ecosystem, the 2014 Mini is really not that impressive.

<comment><USER12> I don't really understand Apple's current obsession with fitting their machines with low-end GFX. I get that it increases battery life, but let me make the choice between high-end GFX/poor battery life & low-end GFX/great battery life (at least as an option).

A top end Macbook Pro retina really should be capable of sporting a top end 8x series Nvidia as a minimum. In fact a 9x nVidia refresh with 40% the current battery would probably make me drop the cash for another one (I only bought a new Macbook about 3 months ago). I want "this" physical hardware, but with a nice GPU so I can demo things like the Rift DK2 on the road without hulking around another PC laptop just for "those moments". The current Macbook Pro just isn't cut out for modern day 3D like a cheap(ish) MSI stealth Pro is...Trust me Apple... I'll find a power outlet if I need it.

As an aside, it's still the best laptop I've ever owned.

<comment><USER13> My last two (current and previous) MacBook Pros have been 17". The last one had a dedicated Nvidia GPU, this one has intel + Radeon GPU.

In both machines, I've had faults in with the discrete GPU. Both times required logic board replacements twice. (that's four replacement logic boards across two laptops).

I can absolutely understand why Apple is moving as much as possible of their line to using integrated Intel graphics solutions - they're 'good enough' for the vast majority of people, and have followed Intel's recent energy efficiency work, so not only do they drain the battery slower they produce less heat, and from what I've seen are much less likely to have catastrophic failures than discrete graphics.

If you want discrete graphics, buy a high end machine. If you don't have that requirement, why pay for the extra hardware that is more likely to cause a fault than be of use?

<comment><USER14> Anecdotal +1. Many of my Apple product failures have been discrete GPU related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not a bad price until you see it costs $300 to go from 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM.

Do these have user-upgradeable RAM? I can buy RAM a lot cheaper than that.

<comment><USER16> It looks like the physical design is the same as the late 2012, which on mine has a screw top "bottom" (until moments ago I had it upside down...always thinking that screen top was the top) that reveals a couple of so-dimm ports.

I am extremely surprised they didn't go Broadwell given that Intel is just starting to put those out in volume.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, Broadwell would also allow passive or almost silent operation. The new NUCs in Q1/15 look more promising than this.

<comment><USER18> I have a fanless Haswell NUC from Logic Supply[0] that I use for a MythTV frontend that I really love. Boots super fast off the 32G SSD, and the HD-4400 GPU (with VAAPI) handles with aplomb every kind of video I've thrown at it.

[0]: [http://www.logicsupply.com/computers/processor/intel- core/co...](http://www.logicsupply.com/computers/processor/intel-core/core- ml300/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> BTO option is now a dual core i7 (3Ghz), vs previous model's BTO option of a quad core i7 (2.3Ghz).

I wonder what the performance difference is between the two.

<comment><USER20> which is totally insane.

Yes, let's alienate the group of people who build 3rd party software and want a reasonably priced headless mac, and user upgradeable memory/HDD. Idiots.

$100+ billion in cash or marketable securities and total spite for the dev/performance market. Just blind arrogance at this point - 'we don't need to offer this option anymore'

<comment><USER21> Apple has never been shy that "developer" Macs are the MacPros. The fact that you can get a reasonable developer experience on a Mac Mini or an iMac the last few years has been coincidental.

<comment><USER22> Let me put it this way. If I do a pkgsrc bulk build, what do I build it on?

Previously there was the XServe platform that I could have in a rack along my other infrastructure. They ditched that. The old MacPro's you could install in a rack, though they were massively overpriced for what it was a purely CPU- bound job. Now the new MacPro's are not rackable any more.

Mac Mini's were never great, but they were cheap enough you could buy a few and small enough that you could put _somewhere_ , although it sucked.

<comment><USER21> Again, you're missing the point. Mac's are built for workstation style development. The distributed, shared infrastructure that's en vogue today isn't a factor if you're building iOS & OSX apps. And, if you dedicate the time and infrastructure, you can build those up to stronger processes with Xcode and it's distcc.

<comment><USER22> And where does the software that powers the workstations come from? Out of thin air? Where do you compile it? I am not talking about iOS and OS X bundles, I am talking about fundamental Unix system software (which pkgsrc provides). And what if you do continuous integration? Where do you run that?

Lately I've been playing with a setup that builds a cross-clang on FreeBSD to cross-compile OS X software using the libraries inside the XCode sdks. The setup itself is working reasonably well, but most autoconf scripts don't work well with cross-compilers, so it's not workable for pkgsrc right now (though it is workable for my own C software). Unfortunately, this would not help with integration testing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The $699 model + the SSD upgrade sums up to a whooping $899.

I like the form-faktor and all, but really, with 900 bucks i am sticking to my custom ITX builds

<comment><USER24> Do you know of any good ITX hackintosh howto writeups? I might go that route too as I want small form factor and OSX, but do not want to pay an apple tax (even if their case is way prettier).

<comment><USER25> tonymacx86.com is a decent enough community. I've built 10+ machines using the site-promoted build tutorials (with some modifications) for myself and friends. The forums are hit or miss in terms of helpful information, though.

<comment><USER25> Replying to emocakes below, post is dead.

I was unaware of the theft, could you go into more detail? I read OSx86 sometimes but could never get chameleon installed on my own. The tonymac software was the easiest for to install. That's my fault for being lazy. This is disappointing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a credible answer for our new default developer machine, now that it has 2 Thunderbolt ports, but it doesn't seem cheap enough. We want dual 27" 2560 x 1440 displays, 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB fusion drive. This is for Rails development, so we're not taxing the CPU or GPU, although we do run parallel_rspec and parallel_cucumber, so more cores are helpful.

The 27" iMac is $2199 + $399 for this Monoprice monitor w/ DisplayPort <[http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=113&cp_id=11307&cs_id=...](http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=113&cp_id=11307&cs_id=1130703&p_id=10489&seq=1&format=2>), for a total of $2598. This has a 3.2GHz i5 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1GB GDDR5.

The new Mac Mini with 3 GHz i7, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB fusion drive, keyboard and trackpad is $1537 + 2 x $399 for the monitors = $2335.

I'm not convinced saving $263 is worth going from 4 cores to 2, and presumably a worse graphics card.

<comment><USER27> You don't tax the CPU, but you want to pay an extra $200 for a build-to-order option to bump the CPU by 0.2 GHz?

How about getting the mid-tier 2.6 GHz Mac mini, with 16 GB RAM, 1 TB Fusion Drive, keyboard, and trackpad for $1,237? Then you'll be saving an additional $300, for a total of $563 in savings.

If you want to save a little more, don't buy additional memory from Apple, buy it from Crucial or another vendor instead. You'll pay less than $200 for 16 GB of RAM (which is what Apple charges to bump from 8 GB to 16 GB), plus you'll have the 8 GB of RAM that is pre-installed in the machine, which you can sell, if you want.

<comment><USER28> All true, except the 2014 Mini has the RAM soldered down. Buy it with the memory you think you'll need.

<comment><USER27> Ah, you're right. I saw that the enclosure was the same (or at least nearly the same) as the old Mac mini and assumed you could replace the RAM yourself, but I was wrong. That's a shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No quad-core models?

</comment><comment><USER30> Despite the HDMI port and 2xThunderbolt ports, still maxes out at two monitors rather than three... guess Iris Pro would have been required for triple-head support.

</comment><comment><USER31> Any idea if the harddisk is user upgradeable?

<comment><USER32> Since the design seems to have stayed the same as the previous generation: Yes, but you have to take the entire thing apart to get to the drive, and the parts are laptop parts so they're kind of finicky. iFixit is your friend.

The RAM, on the other hand, is extremely easy to change out.

<comment><USER33> Unfortunately, the RAM on the new models is soldered on. Someone above said the drive is soldered, too, but I can't confirm that.

<comment><USER32> You are correct, that news trickled out after I wrote my comment :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Has the mini server gone away? I don't see it mentioned.

<comment><USER35> The server features are available on the app store now (IIRC it's $20).

The model with two distinct disks looks gone now, though.

<comment><USER36> Bugger I hope not

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hi folks. I am not a hardware nerd at heart. It appears this 'iris' GPU will not be able to do 4k display. Does anyone confirm?

<comment><USER38> It better be able to do 5K, since the Thunderbolt will inevitably be upgraded to the same screen the new Retina iMac comes with...

<comment><USER39> It won't because the bandwidth of TB2 cannot transfer the amount of data needed for a 5K display. The new Retina iMacs can get away with it because it can interface with the graphics output directly.

<comment><USER2> Hmmmm my math can be wrong but I don't think you are correct:

5120x2880 = 14745600 pixels

14745600pixels x 3 colours, 1 byte each = 44236800 bytes

44236800/1024/1024 = 42.19MB each frame

42.19MB per frame x 60 frames a second = 2531.25MB.

TB2 has a bandwidth of 20Gbps = 2560MB/s

So yeah, theoretically TB2 has enough bandwidth. But it's a very tight fit.

<comment><USER40> I don't know the actual answer, but it may be that the display actually expects 32bpp, in which case it would be over the limit by a considerable amount.

<comment><USER41> The above calculation was for 32bpp:

3 colors * 1 byte * (8 bits/byte) = 32 bits

<comment><USER2> I am sorry,but no it wasn't. 3*8 is 24 not 32. But in any case I don't think the display requires 32 bits, alpha is not necessary.

<comment><USER40> Thanks for the clarification. fwiw, I knew that alpha wasn't necessary, but vaguely remembered that DisplayPort might support displays that expected the entire 32 bit word to be sent. Looking at the specs, I don't see that. But it does show that DisplayPort supports 16 bits per component, or 48bpp.

FYI, Wikipedia's section on DisplayPort lists the resolution of 5120x2880 x 24bpp @ 60Hz as requiring 22.18 Gb/sec of bandwidth, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Specifications](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Specifications)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So they got rid of the 2 1TB drive option? Essentially the maximum internal storage on the Mini has been cut in half?

</comment><comment><USER43> Now I wish I hadn't bought a new Mac mini 6 months ago. But I really needed one then. In any case, I applaud the switch to ULV processors (like those found in ultrabooks or the MacBook Air). Anyone know if this generation of Mac mini has a fan in it? I have a serious fanless fetish.

</comment><comment><USER44> A disappointing update, but would still consider it to replace my mid 2010 Core2Duo mini if the Thunderbolt ports supported Multistream Transport (MST) so I could daisychain 3 x Dell U2415 19x12 displays.

</comment><comment><USER45> Mac Minis have been great entertainment boxes for me!

Hook them up to a LCD TV, use a wireless mouse and enjoy tons of free content on Hulu, YouTube, Justin.TV substitutes and others!

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm slightly bummed that I can't get SSD on their starting model, and have to force myself to a fusion drive if I want to do better than hard drive.

<comment><USER47> It is fairly easy to swap out the sata HDD with a sata SSD, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Did I miss something, or does maxing out the CPU and the RAM on the mid-level model get you the same specs as a maxed-out high-end model for $200 cheaper?

<comment><USER49> You're missing the Fusion drive, which is standard on the high-end and $200 extra on the mid-level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Good choice for a home server

</comment><comment><USER51> i just bought a mac mini a few months ago. wish i would have waited...

<comment><USER52> its been well overdue for an upgrade, if you had asked on forums everyone would have suggested you wait.

<comment> k-mcgrady But they would have been saying that for around the last 12 months now. An update was long overdue. Guessing upgrade cycles of Apple's less cared for products (i.e. not iPhone/iPad) is getting difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> whoever comes to hacker news and upvotes all and any minor apple launches should be ashamed.

<comment><USER54> The clue is in the word 'news'. Relax.</comment></comment>


Vorlon.JS - <AUTHOR> http://www.vorlonjs.com/

<comment><USER2> Very useful indeed.

One obvious question - is it possible to sync DOM changes across the connected devices?</comment>