Tell HN: Adblocker doesn't block YouTube ads anymore - <AUTHOR> Are you having the same experience? I'm on firefox <comment><USER2> Yes and no. I was suspecting something was up with YouTube ads because I'm getting this error "An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: ...)" with the extension Improve YouTube!.

When I disable it the error disappears. Also when I reload the page while it's on, I can then watch the videos. But that's really annoying. Usually the video page with the error will refresh automatically after a while, so I suspect the error refers to the actual ad and not the main video. And after the YouTube has determined that the ad has played (or thinks I have watched it) for long enough the main video gets loaded automatically which of course does not cause an error since it's not blocked.

Interestingly when I disable the Improve YouTube! extension ads are being blocked normally. I use uBlock Origin and Gostery as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to get that error, but starting today I simply get the ads.

<comment><USER2> I have to stand corrected, even after disabling that extension I get the error. But no ads so far.

I'm sure the ad-blockers will be able to bypass it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> YouTube is increasingly loading its ads from its contents server. I'm using a PiHole and it's quite of a challenge to block the ads. There is quite of a discussion on PiHole discourse about this, and people are adding some obscure domain names to the block list. It's not always working but sometimes they do, and curiosity, sometimes YouTube only fails to load the sound of the ad!

</comment><comment><USER4> I do not have any issume using Firefox and unlock origin

</comment><comment><USER5> Only running ublock origin and i got the same error as @emsign posted up above. refreshing the page made the video start playing

</comment><comment><USER6> I am using Opera GX with built-in privacy protection and no additional extensions (well, I do use Youtube Subscription Manager but that does nothing for Ad blocking). So far its effectively working for YouTube ads.

</comment><comment><USER7> Youtube just doesn't work for me 90% of the time. Guessing its my addons but when it does work I never see ads.

</comment><comment><USER8> What ad blocker?

</comment><comment><USER9> YouTube premium is cheap and content created get paid. From an ethical standpoint we shouldn't be using blockers.

<comment><USER10> We should. Ads are an invasion of privacy, a security risk, and an attempt at manipulating you. The very purpose of ads is to convince you to do something you wouldn't do on your own. I don't need ads to badger me into thinking my life sucks and I'm a loser and the inky way to fix this is to buy whatever the ad is selling. This is the fundamental purpose of an ad. I reject this and I'll keep blocking ads, thank you.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about where you are, but here in Canadastan we get loads of PSAs besides the ads. I like PSAs, they're pro-social. Ads can all die. Except for the brilliant ones like that 8 minute Prada ad from Wes Anderson.</comment></comment></comment>


Hate Amazon? Try Living Without It - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/opinion/sunday/hate-amazon-try-living-without-it.html <comment><USER2> I haven't used amazon for a while (and haven't had prime in years) and a couple months ago, after reading some posts about amazon I decided to see what my life would have been like if I had used amazon exclusively for all my non- grocery shopping.

Rules: I only buy it if it's Prime eligible, otherwise it's skipped. If I bought something because it's on sale, I take the lowest price amazon ever offered for that item (with prime). Otherwise, I take the price of the item on the same day.

Results: [https://i.imgur.com/kDeM2pM.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/kDeM2pM.jpg) I saved about $330 by not having a prime membership and buying stuff only from prime eligible stores. However I spent at most 27 more days waiting for items (in reality a lot of these shipping times overlapped).

So the takeaway is that amazon made things easier and faster but not cheaper. I know a lot of people still think amazon is the cheapest place to get things but that hasn't been true for a while.

<comment><USER3> Savings because other stores didn't charge tax and Amazon did shouldn't count, because that'll change soon as the Supreme Court overturned Quill earlier this year

<comment><USER4> Money leaving my layman bank account today looks all the same regardless if it's colored product, shipping, or tax. When the Supreme Court's decision becomes the global ecommerce status quo, a reassessment of value will clearly be in order. Until then...

<comment><USER3> I'm saying it'll be applied to all major US sellers relatively soon

<comment><USER4> I understood and wasn't contesting the implication. I was merely objecting to the notion that a favorable purchasing decision made by a consumer today by today's rules "shouldn't count" because a legal decision that will normalize ecommerce but has yet to be acted upon at scale (as perceived by consumers) is imminent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cancelling my prime was one of the best thing I did for my future self. I really didn't need half of the crap I ordered from Amazon. It's mostly overpriced, poorly refurbished or low quality junk that I could get for half the price directly from aliexpress.

But more importantly, without 1 day delivery on tap it makes you think harder whether you really need to waste your money on yet more junk or if you can live without it. Unsurprisingly, you don't really need it most of the time.

And if you're not buying from Amazon, you're not complicit in the company abysmal treatment of its employees, or total disregard for intellectual property laws (fake items are everywhere on amazon)

<comment><USER6> Its hard when the 3 bookstores you used to go to close down over the course of 5 years

<comment><USER7> You might be well served by a local library.

<comment><USER8> That was good advice when public libraries were less used. But these days (at least in the American cities I frequent), they are massively popular.

Which means if you reserve a new release, be prepared to wait. Even with 17 copies of a particular newish book, the wait for it from my local library system is in excess of eight months.

Wait eight months, or drop $11.95 at Amazon? Easy choice.

<comment> ui-explorer12 >> Which means if you reserve a new release, be prepared to wait.

Except we wait 2 or 3 years for the damn thing to be written; a little delayed gratification until your hold comes up is such a minor, first-world problem.

Popular public libraries are most definitely better than the alternative. They can justify better funding and bigger budgets, improve physical facilities and move into new service areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a very American sort of story. The long hours, the lousy paychecks, the lack of universal healthcare, the reliance on fast food. It's possible to not live like that, but America doesn't want to.

<comment><USER10> The majority of Americans want to, but in America the popularity of a policy is not a strong indicator of whether it will be made into law.

<comment><USER11> It's not even a weak indicator: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on- poli...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on- politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups- and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Amazon Prime helps alleviate the pressures of a sped-up economy. I don't use > it just because I'm lazy and love to stream "Transparent." I use it (and > other timesaving apps like Seamless and Uber) because I'm overworked and > one-click ordering spares me time.

That's modern slavery for you: you give away your most precious, limited resource - your time. In return you get the illusion of wealth, in the form of money, only you have to spend it all just to stay afloat until the next payday.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty much off topic, but the opening paragraph of this article highlights what I think is a little-known benefit of Prime membership. The author notes that "sharing an Amazon Prime account with loved ones is surprisingly intimate" but it doesn't have to be if you use Amazon Household:

"Sharing benefits through Amazon Household requires both adults to link their accounts in an Amazon Household and agree to share payment methods. Each adult keeps their personal account while sharing those benefits at no additional cost."[1]

It's limited to two adults (plus teens), so not a solution for all cases.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200444180)

<comment><USER14> They seem to offer this in most markets, but puzzlingly not Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These anecdotes really just mean Amazon is in the same position as Walmart and Amtrak - serving the underclass, not as a deliberate specialty - but because it's the lowest common denominator and they've fallen through the cracks everywhere else.

Just because OP themselves cannot fathom checking other (more appropriate) vendors first or doing independent product research, does not mean that it's impossible. If I had family members addicted to Amazon in this way, I'd be worried about them being blatantly ripped off from Amazon's dark patterns, or being harmed from co-mingled counterfeit goods. Somehow Amazon has built a business around people just accepting these pitfalls, and I still can't understand how. That sunk cost of "Prime" must be a hell of a drug.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wasn't long ago that most of Australia was super hyped to see amazon come here and then it did open and it was the same price as everything else that we already had here. I wonder if a higher minimum wage here meant they weren't able to cut the prices lower than everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't want to take the spot away from the topic of the article, but what horrified me the most is the appalling conditions of end-of-life care of the health system in the US. If there is one reason I'm glad I was born in a EU country is that I can escape that madness when the time comes.

</comment><comment><USER18> I gave up my prime membership at the last renewal about four months ago and haven't been to the site much since.

Granted, I was in Portugal at the time which doesn't get great shipping apparently? Not that I was going to order anything, I had trouble enough getting my luggage back as it was!

That being said, I'd been pretty turned off by the articles about their workforce at their warehouses, and also this recent development with their headquarters initiative.

In my opinion NYC should have come up with a package to present to Amazon and then turned around and used it to benefit small businesses. Why we're throwing money at one of the world's largest corporations by revenue is quite beyond me, especially for a city like NYC which could use that money for their subways and already is incredibly vibrant economically.

I enjoy going to the stores, chatting with people, touching products, and trying things on. It's mild exercise, it's social, it's something to do, so for me it's pleasant, and I'll pay a premium if I have to because of that.

The one thing I do like about Amazon is that I've heard it's more energy efficient for products to be sold that way as opposed to in individual brick and mortar stores which need heat and electricity.

Finally, I really enjoy putzing around on AWS and feel less conflicted about using that (especially since my personal use is all on the free tier) since their engineers and tech teams are well compensated (although I've heard and have no idea if this is true, worked hard).

All that being said, if I was in any of the articles situations or lived in a less dense locale shopping wise, I'm sure I'd use it or similar services. It is certainly true that there is a ton better variety online for a lot of items.

</comment><comment><USER19> I just quit my Prime Membership - wow, I had to click so many confirmation buttons, it was funny. At least 3-5 times click ok, really ok, are you sure it wasn't a mistake? It just too expensive with little value anymore.

I also started shopping books at Barnes & Noble primarily, although it is less convenient, I feel better to keep supporting alternatives.

<comment><USER20> Bad news: you aren't done. You've hardly started. You're going to have to keep clicking no to reinstating Prime, if you use Amazon at all. You'll be confirming this again and again before Amazon will let you do anything on the site, for days or weeks, or more. Dark pattern after dark pattern. Market power creates endless abuse.

<comment><USER21> It's easier to create a new account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I haven't had full Amazon for long (Australia) so I won't be giving it up just yet. It's a godsend when you're mobility impaired and can't get to all the brick and mortar stores. At the moment they're not running a full Marketplace and they're definitely not pricing as aggressively as they could in Australia.

</comment><comment><USER23> Uh, okay, done. Amazon is a pretty crappy place to shop unless you buy into the lock-in and let them control you. Prices are high and shipping take a long time. eBay is much better.

<comment><USER8> I cancelled my eBay account because I was tired of getting ripped off by sellers.

At Amazon, I might get a co-mingled knock-off. But at least I'll get _something_ , and not six weeks of shipping excuses followed by radio silence.

<comment><USER23> Sorry to hear that. In general I find eBay's rating system for buyers/sellers much more reliable than Amazon's. But of course I don't always shop at eBay. Going to the sites of individual companies that sell the product I want saves a lot of money too. And there's generally better support.

I can do this because unlike Amazon eBay doesn't pressure me with incentives and sunk costs to only shop there.

<comment><USER21>
      eBay's rating system for buyers/sellers

There is no meaningful rating system for _buyers_ anymore given that you can't leave any buyer negative or even neutral feedback... even if they never pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I live very well without Amazon, what am I missing? Granted, I live in a dense European capital where there's a grocery store open every day till mid-night located 200 meters away from my building's entrance and I do prefer to buy my books directly from a book-store, but even when I used to live a little farther away from a grocery store I was still not purchasing anything from Amazon or Amazon-like websites.

<comment><USER25> Wait...A grocery store open until midnight in Europe?

What sorcery is this?

<comment><USER24> It's Eastern Europe, actually, and yeah, we kind of love it and I must admit I miss stores being open post 6PM whenever I visit European cities located more to the West.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No problem we have Alza.cz

</comment><comment><USER27> haven't ordered anything from Amazon since 2013, and I wouldn't work in a company that utilizes AWS in any kind of way.

<comment><USER8> _I wouldn 't work in a company that utilizes AWS in any kind of way._

How would you know? Any company of any size is going to use AWS directly or indirectly. The HR people won't know that some contracted vendor uses it for their API.

<comment><USER28> Wishful thinking here...</comment></comment></comment>


Setting up a ROCKPro64 (powerful single-card computer) - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2019/05/14/setting-up-a-rockpro64-powerful-single-card-computer/ <comment><USER2> This "the modern way to run applications on Linux is with docker" b.s needs to stop.</comment>


Show HN: A proof-of-concept FoundationDB based network block device backend - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dividuum/fdb-nbd <comment><USER2> Awesome. I actually think that there is a lot of potential for using block storage over FDB to bring extreme fault tolerance to legacy applications without rearchitecting them. Because block devices are unshared (and you can use FDB to ensure that robustly) conventional OS caching works well, and you can get relatively normal performance. Of course FDB storage engine is currently not very well optimized for this use case, but since FDB is scalable you can "just use more"

I wrote more about this on the FDB forums: [https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/block-storage-full- fault-t...](https://forums.foundationdb.org/t/block-storage-full-fault- tolerance-for-legacy-applications/182)

<comment><USER3> Would this provide additional benefits over Ceph, which does no-single-point- of-failure networked block storage and is already a production-ready system?

It wouldn't get you the locking you want (multiple attempts to boot the VM end in mutual exclusion at the block storage layer), I believe, but I think that's probably better done with an etcd or something if you want that.

<comment><USER2> Unless you have serious simulation or model checking tools, your ad hoc combination of etcd and ceph will almost certainly be buggy. I'm not 100% positive it is even possible in the asynchronous model. And when you decide you want, say, regional or rack aware fault tolerance, you have _three_ more distributed systems (ceph, etcd, and your combination) to make meet that goal. When you restore a backup of the contents of ceph, what do you do with the lock state in etcd? Do you know what happens when (say) etcd runs out of memory? If you wanted to ship an on premise version of your solution, can you teach your customers to admin all these systems? FDB's mission is to get under _all_ of your state storage so that you only need _one_ system to do all this operational stuff correctly. A block device is _most_ useful for people who are trying to eliminate the last bits of state _not_ in FDB from their infrastructure.

Another huge payoff is the new "satellite" replication mode coming (I'm told) with FDB 6.0, which will give you "the best of both worlds" of synchronous and asynchronous replication across regions. A block device will let your legacy systems usually fail over across regions automatically without losing a single write.

<comment><USER4> RBD (Ceph block devices) supports exclusive locking. The RBD kernel client has support for that since kernel 4.9. Older kernels can use rbd-nbd to use the user space implementation of RBD.

Async replication is also available with rbd-mirror.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool! Here is my java version that I wrote back in the day. Recently updated to 5.1.

[https://github.com/spullara/nbd](https://github.com/spullara/nbd)

<comment><USER6> How do you handle resilience? if FDB is multi-node, do you run a copy on each node? If so, how is failure detected / client traffic redirected, and what protects against concurrent access from multiple clients to the same volume?

<comment><USER5> See [https://www.foundationdb.org](https://www.foundationdb.org) for information on FDB but in short it is a distributed database that is auto- scaling, auto-healing, auto-sharding and ACID. You do need a minimum of 3 nodes to get those properties. When you connect to a volume it is protected by a lock that ensures only a single client.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the reply. Don't know if you will see this, but I was also interested in how the NBD client fails over to an alternate node if the one it's connected to fails.

Regarding locking, is there a distributed lock manager? What prevents two NBD clients connecting to the same volume via two different nodes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could someone explain why/how NBD is better than just using a linux host as an iscsi target? Googling NBD vs iSCSI shows old articles with no real solid conclusion.

<comment><USER8> It's not really "better" or "worse".

NBD is an extremely simple protocol. Read range, write range, delete range, sync -- that's it. If you want to implement an NBD server from scratch, you can totally do so in an afternoon. I have done this and use it in production: [https://github.com/sandstorm- io/blackrock/blob/master/src/bl...](https://github.com/sandstorm- io/blackrock/blob/master/src/blackrock/nbd-bridge.c++)

iSCSI is comparatively far more complex. It's a TCP-based adaption of the SCSI protocol, which has existed for decades as a way to talk to hard drives. As I understand it, you can pass arbitrary SCSI commands over iSCSI; see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_command) iSCSI is enterprise-y and has a bigger ecosystem. You can netboot a diskless machine into Windows over iSCSI (I do this: [http://kentonsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/12/lan-party- house-...](http://kentonsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/12/lan-party-house- technical-design-and.html)).

Personally I like NBD a lot better because the simplicity means you can build new, cool things with it. But there are others who would say that NBD is a toy compared to iSCSI.

<comment><USER9> Did you encounter any problems with NBD caching when it acknowledges the write to the application but doesn't pass it to your "backend" therefore leaving no room for error handling if that backend goes away?

<comment><USER8> NBD provides a virtual block device, so all the normal filesystem caching the kernel does above a hard drive applies to NBD as well. This is good: this is what makes it so fast.

Just because `write()` returned successfully does _not_ mean that the data has been written to disk (whether you're using NBD or otherwise). The application needs to call `fsync()` to force writes to disk and get confirmation of success. An `fsync()` will send all pending NBD_CMD_WRITEs followed by NBD_CMD_FLUSH and will only return success when all of these have completed successfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes the use of FoundationDB special in this case?

<comment><USER11> I think the biggest feature is that you get (up to) linearizable consistency while still being FAST, meaning you can rest assured that any writes are actually permanent, even if a server or two fails (assuming your replication factor is set appropriately).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could you mount this on multiple machines and do simultaneous reads and writes?

<comment><AUTHOR> By default no: It's a block device, so it has no idea what the file system on top is doing. Mounting the same file system in rw mode twice would result in instant corruption unless the file system is built for that. I'm not sure such a file system exists.

What would work is mounting the same file system read only from multiple machines.

<comment><USER12> I ask because it would be nice to run a traditional database this way for HA. I suppose nearly as good is being able to instantly mount and unmount across multiple machines if you could also use FoundationDB to fence writes to the device if the old writer comes back as a zombie.

<comment><USER5> You can definitely do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> does the zlib compression in python make it faster or slower?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I actually didn't test that at all. I mostly added that as I saw a few mostly empty blocks written and compression lowered the total space usage a bit.

<comment><USER14> You might give lz4 a try as well. ZFS uses it as a compression option, and the overhead is quite small (especially compared to zlib).

<comment><USER2> A sophisticated approach to block compression would be to build a dictionary using something like zstandard's "training mode" and a random sample of data blocks, store it (versioned) in FDB as well and reference the dictionary version from compressed blocks. That would get better compression with the relatively small blocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very cute.

For a production system, you do not want an NBD device backed by Python code on the same machine. That way lies nasty memory allocation deadlocks.

<comment><USER16> Why would this be a bad thing? The Python code would be loaded from a traditional volume.

<comment><USER15> Suppose you've filled up most of your memory and that some of that memory contains data that you've written to an NBD-backed device but that hasn't been flushed out yet. The kernel may try to free memory by writing out some of that dirty data. If it were a real _remote_ NBD-backed device, all kinds of fancy logic in the kernel would kick in to get the data written to the network without problems. Because it's actually local, that logic won't do much. Instead, the kernel will successfully deliver the write requests to the Python interpreter's socket. Now the Python script will have to do its own writeback logic while the system is still potentially out of memory. At the very least, this will involve calls to the FoundationDB client library. Since the script is in Python, it's extremley likely that it will also try to allocate some memory to store temporary objects used by the Python code. If that allocation ends up asking the kernel for more memory, then you either deadlock (memory reclaim is waiting for Python, which is in turn waiting for memory) or you trigger an OOM condition. If the latter happens and the Python interpreter gets killed, then you lose data.</comment></comment></comment>


Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge - <AUTHOR> http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110405/exlusive-larry-page-mulls-google-reorg/ <comment><USER2> I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum.

I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy.

What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.

<comment> wh-uws Whomever figures out how build a company with the technical prowess and product aptitude of Google

 _and have a comparative level of custom service_

will have created something truly great

<comment><USER3> They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to solve their customer service problem.

Maybe it would _have_ to be clever for them to want to bother with it.

<comment><USER4> Here's an approach.

Suppose that Google picked 4-10 different startup-sized groups and anointed them as "customer support organizations". The companies could provide customer support for Google applications to the public (and could charge the public as much or as little as they wished for the service).

For it to work, Google would have to be willing to be more open with these support companies (hence the anointing of a few). The companies could provide care and hand-holding for customers, but eventually some percentage would need to result in actual bug reports and actual technical troubleshooting that could only be done by Google. Today, no one can offer this service because there's no way to open a support ticket with Google -- they're too closed. If they would open up slightly, even for just a hand-picked few, then this might be a way for Google to offer excellent customer service without doing it themselves. The customer support organizations would compete with each other on customer service and would also compete with each other on how easy-to- work-with they are for Google engineers: perhaps Google should even charge them varying amounts depending on how well they do this ($10 for a well- researched bug report; $150 for a poorly researched one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this is handled.

I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.

<comment><USER6> Actually AFAIK Microsoft is organized in business units (Windows, XBox, etc.)

<comment><USER7> Right, but even the Windows unit itself is probably at least 7 or 8 layers deep, due to the sheer number of people working on it. With such a massive product, I'm amazed they release it as often as they do, let alone at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

<comment><USER9> "It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful."

Out of curiosity, what do you think Amazon is driven by, fundamentally? I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

<comment><USER10> Customers.

[Edit: I worked at Amazon Web Services until recently. Now work at Google. Concern for customers drives everything that happens at Amazon, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.]

<comment><USER7> I'm interested to hear how that professed dedication to customers squares with the experiences of sites like reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx)

<comment><USER11> This was addressed well by someone from Netflix but I can't find the link. Basically he said that Reddit weren't so much the victim of AWS rather than the victim of not understanding the product enough and not spending enough to buy the right instances and thus ensure their constant performance. The guy from Netflix justified this by the way that the different sized instances are split across their respective hosts and, surprise surprise, if you buy the bigger instances you get more of each machine host and less threat of someone taking you out.

<comment><USER7> If that were true, you'd think that would be the first thing they were told when they started complaining about crashes a year ago. Certainly, you'd think by the time they had talked to the CIO, _somebody_ would have said, "you guys need to buy bigger instances". We know money isn't a problem for reddit anymore, and all current and former employees have said the problems with EBS just aren't something they can fix by throwing money at.

I would suggest the guy from netflix simply doesn't know enough about reddit's particulars to offer an informed opinion. Either that, or he knows better than everyone at reddit, every support person at amazon, and even the _CIO_ of amazzon how best to solve reddit's problems.

I strongly suspect the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone who works at Google chime in with what the organizational temperature is like at Google? Does this whole 'party time's over for the managers' thing we're hearing about have any real weight to it?

<comment><USER13> I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.

<comment><USER14> agreed, especially in light of the stories we just heard about technical skills being valued less in managers there. I think this is someone just coming up with a nice narrative.

<comment><USER13> To add an unrelated reply to a crowded discussion: I think that what we've seen from Googler manager skillset article in the Times is that Google has had to learn basic managerial attributes organically since that's the Google way -- from this outsider's perspective, it almost sounded like if they didn't invent it, it's hard-to-impossible to adopt given the startup culture.

I think that this board in particular has given Facebook a lot of praise; by this, I mean that there's a fascination/silent cheering for their engineering- driven culture. But I think that we're seeing a transition by Google from a startup (Facebook) to a real company (Microsoft); as much as a "management" layer is derided, a lot of Google's projects seem to have little business value; while they may eventually become valuable, it seems like their strategy has been to shy away from placing limits and directing units towards hard business goals (profitability).

But I'd argue that the rise of "business" being more important than passion- projects (which is what we implicitly view Google as) has been very visible, just ignored. Android's device manufacturers producing under anti- fragmentation clauses comes to mind as a sterling example of a unit posing to follow Google's motto but in reality has them running in the opposite direction (e.g. away from openness).

So, to round back: sure, anything could happen in regard to managers; but Google's in the middle of growing pains, and those pains I believe will end in an increased managerial presence/layer rather than ignored outright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's also similar to how Berkshire Hathaway is run; and how Christensen advocates nurturing disruptive businesses - smaller units can get excited about smaller sales that are a rounding error to Big Google (new markets start small); independent units are free to customize their business model and how they do things to what fits the opportunity (instead of fitting in with the parent's model and processes - which has compelling economies, but only early).

e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting, monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ever since "management" and the dedicated "manager" were invented, we have been told, increasingly in recent decades, that they, rather than talents in other roles, are the key to business success. With the increasing importance and accelerating pace of innovations in our time, it's time to test if to what degree such doctrine would still hold true. Good job Larry. That's some risk worth taking.

<comment><USER17> Its a way of making sure the power stays with the powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company).

It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?

It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it being a dedicated managerial position.

<comment><USER19> One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

<comment><USER8> Sounds familiar. As a USMC fire team leader, my job was mostly to protect my Marines from all the shit that rolls downhill. It's generally a very difficult job to do well, because of the way the explicit incentives are set up, but somewhat easier for me as I was basically apolitical and had no career plans in the Corps.

<comment><USER20> Blog.

Please?

<comment><USER8> I keep a blog about miscellaneous stuff at <http://blog.byjoemoon.com> (plug) but I don't think that's what you mean.

I got out in 2006, and I had already stopped writing by the time I made team leader, but I did keep a blog for some of the time I was in, and I collected it (the interesting stuff) at <http://www.servicerecordbook.com>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The reality of a large corporation like Google is nowhere near as simple an engineer-vs-manager dichotomy as many of the comments on this thread would make it. Products need to be developed, but they need to be supported and sold too. Which of these functions is most important depends on your world view and your tolerance for angels-on-a-pinhead debate, but it's undoubted that each of them are crucial.

An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non- technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.

</comment><comment><USER22> Seems to work pretty well for Honda. They innovate and everyone still copies their designs and products, but they also have great financial results magically with innovative products. <http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html> [2006]

I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup culture/meritocracy.

Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.

<comment><USER15> BTW: I understand that Honda used to be very innovative in disruptive ways, creating entirely new categories of products (e.g. they invented the off-road recreational motorbike) but, like Sony, have instead only made sustaining innovations to existing product categories for the last two or three decades. Are my facts right? (I'm going by Christensen).

[I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This may finally lead to outright combat between the ChromeOS and Android groups.

Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS, whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different.

Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company with the free cash flow of Google could build two _operating systems_ intended for mobile devices and take that kind of approach.

I'll get my popcorn.

<comment><USER24> This doesn't seem all that different from the way car companies run multiple makes. Chevy vs Saturn. Philosophies are totally different (or at least they were) but the market is the same. This way the company does well whichever approach wins out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is such a good move! It gives Google the nimbleness, hunger, and guerilla mentality of a start-up in new areas it wants to explore through these small mostly-autonomous teams, while simultaneously allowing it to defend the already captured beachheads (search, gmail etc.) - all funded by the deep, deep, Google pockets.

In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees' projects of choice you'd get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you'd hit jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the 20% project.

Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers – this is straight from the defensive playbook - 'engineers can execute with minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will sell for sure'. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my customers what they wanted they'd say a faster horse'), or if you are the market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and when to play defense.

</comment><comment><USER26> GOOG is 3% down today (while market overall is about the same). I personally like Larry's change, but average investor seems to be skeptical.

<comment><USER27> The average investor went to the same school as the MBAs whose power may be diminished if this is true.

Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything; that management is a context-free science that should be left to professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be suspicious.

<comment><USER28> Yea, I know:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742>

In fact, I know this is only one of the horrible things that MBA courses at least used to teach.

<comment><USER27> You have a better memory than I do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No, I don't think this will solve anything.

The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects.

First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products.

Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects.

Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big.

Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope this doesn't create a Microsoft like situation where its very difficult for departments to work together.

<comment><USER31> Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one _right_ way, and this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in handling the allocated power.

A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.

<comment><USER32> > A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to > infighting with Windows 7.

Care to elaborate on that?

edit: after 5 seconds of googling:

[http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lee...](http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lees.blamed.for.kins.early.demise/)

[http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death- of...](http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of-the-kin/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This brings to a head the interesting situation of the modern tech company. Unlike companies in almost all other industries, the average developer at Google (and a lot of other companies) needs to be much smarter to do the job than the manager.

So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation" model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those normally filling these roles.

This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking a shot at it.

</comment><comment><USER34> So here's a question for potential HN entrepreneurs:

If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up, spinning off subdivisions as separate companies?

And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?

<comment><USER27> In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually- supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox.

Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure why people assume that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office. There were 11 separate businesses within Microsoft that brought in a billion dollars or more in revenue last year: [http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-d...](http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion- dollar_businesses_and_what_they_say_about_the_company.html)

<comment><USER27> I was talking about profit, not revenue. Here's what I'm talking about:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft- op...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating- income-by-division-2010-2)

<comment><USER36> Actually, I don't think you understand Microsoft's business model. "Server and Tools" may only generate a modest profit of only a billion dollars per quarter, but it is the foundation of all those Windows sales. The real core of the company is not the end-user stuff, it's .net, Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server.

If you're actually trying to arguing that MSN/Live/Bing has been an endless waste of money, then of course I'd agree.

<comment><USER27> I admit that S&T was an oversight on my part in my OP. But MSN/Bing/Live, various attempts at tablets, phones and all sorts of other doodads and geegaws have been money sinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't think they should be letting Managers or Engineers run things. I think they need to have... I'm not sure of the title... lets call them Vision Carriers. In the video game industry we call these people Creative Directors.

These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the people who will use it.

They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.

<comment><USER38> At Google we call them product managers.

(Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this discussion should be predicated on this fact!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm really interested in seeing how companies grow; I hadn't realized quite how large of a role non-engineers played in Google's structure.

Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER40> It's yet to be determined whether that is the right direction or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love when companies move back to their purer roots. I don't know where this puts Google's progress as a company over the next few years, but it definitely means we won't be seeing the innovation slowdown that Microsoft experienced after their years of explosion. As long as our tech superstars arn't just turning into company gobbling monsters, but rather are constantly iterating, innovating, and developing their product line like a company should.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm beginning to worry about Google. Companies don't make these types of changes when everything is going great.

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems to fit the playbook at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445> a teensy bit, but not the one at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198>.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if part of this is the result of growing competition from the engineer-driven Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER42> There is a big difference between a manager and a leader. A manager takes the credit for things that go well and looks for people to blame when they don't. A leader understands that they are only successful if their team succeeds. A manager worries about how the team might screw things up. A leader thinks about how the team can exceed their goals. A manager tries to consolidate their power and protect their turf at all costs. A leader knows that the team follows them out of a sense of mutual respect and understands that if they can no longer effectively lead the team than it may be time to step aside. Leaders are not just found at the top of an organization.

</comment><comment><USER45> Like I've stated before, this would be the perfect time for Microsoft to take Gundotra back and make him CEO. They desperately need the same type of change at the executive level.

</comment><comment><USER46> I mistakenly thought Larry Wall was the new Google CEO. It seemed a little odd at first, but then I thought it was very cool. Now it doesn't seem quite as interesting.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if this change will result in Google focusing and releasing more hard core technology products or more social products.

</comment><comment><USER48> _Certainly, Rosenberg has been crucial to Google's success, so his exit has come as a shock to pretty much everyone to whom I've spoken.

That said, its timing seems quite convenient, particularly in relationship to what looks very much like a significant reorg that is currently underway at Google, said sources familiar with the situation.

Note first that Rosenberg's replacement wasn't immediately named and it's not clear whether Page even feels one is needed._

Maybe Rosenburg helped Google do great things. Maybe I'm about to over- simplify. But weren't the things that made Google a true powerhouse created long before guys like this were hired -- back when the company was more engineer-driven?

It seems to me that Larry Page's frustration has been growing as he watched MBAs take credit for the success the engineers had created years before. If that's the case then I wish him success in changing the company's structure.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this is a great direction for Google, but it certainly is not a direction most other companies with equivalent growth can pursue. I think one of the unique aspects of Google, is the type of engineer they pursue.

</comment><comment><USER50> FTA:

      That jibes well with Page's push to whittle down Google's
      manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its
      start-up spirit.

I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial term like dogfooding?

<comment><USER51> Google doesn't need more engineering, it needs better product vision.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are most software eng. internships not offered to non-students? - <AUTHOR> With students, it's recommended to take an internship before going into their first full-time job for a career. But such a path is less probable for a non-student. Ironically, the self-taught person is expected to apply to jobs with a portfolio which is a greater leap to take, without internships as a stepping stone. A portfolio can be a display of skill. But internships help build a connection to a company that would recognize them as a known quantity.<p>No other professional field comes close to computer science in being able to start learning and applying skills for free without a traditional learning institution. Yet, landing internships without being in school is way more difficult. Implying you can't learn what CS schools have for yourself for free. University is great for a lot of people, but you might not need it. I do find more value in most internships, though. So why not make them open to anyone so long as they pass non-arbitrary requirements that don't involve formal schooling? <comment><USER2> In the US, internships have very specific laws around who is eligible for them, especially for unpaid internships[1]. This has been coupled with a large number of allegations about unpaid internships being abused for free labor and much more scrutiny from DA offices and other government orgs. There are state laws that are applicable as well. There either is or was a requirement that the internship be counted toward class credits.

[1] [https://www.symplicity.com/employers/campus- recruiting/resou...](https://www.symplicity.com/employers/campus- recruiting/resources/the-employer-guide-to-understanding-internship-laws)

<comment><USER3> tech internships pay well more than the average American salary.

[https://www.levels.fyi/internships/](https://www.levels.fyi/internships/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because the world runs on merit, credibility, and risk reduction.

A student at a university has the credibility to be successful at the internship and potentially turn into a full-time hire. The university in essence has raised the bar of the candidates available to an employer by filtering them through their acceptance criteria. If you got into a really good school, you must have worked hard, had good grades, etc. The school has done the first step of the vetting process for the employer.

In addition, a formal education can be easily verified, and also reduces the overhead and risk for the employer having to train those employees.

If you're self-taught, and you can sell yourself as having the same skills and understanding of the field, then it should not be hard to get an internship. Unfortunately, the burden is on you to portray and sell yourself on your self- taught skills, rather than relying on the merit/prestige of a university and their acceptance process.

You also have to consider the population size of applicants. For every job/internship a self-taught person is applying, there's probably an order of magnitude more people with a formal education in that field. Statistically speaking, the employer is more likely to select a person with a formal education based on population size.

</comment><comment><USER5> And what about those students who didn't take internships while going to school because they don't like alternating between work and school?</comment>


The Infection That's Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opinion/coronavirus-testing-pneumonia.html <comment><USER2> Summary: Covid19 victim blood CO2 levels are normal, so people don't feel breathless, even though their oxygen levels have dropped alarmingly. Detecting low O2 levels is a sign to get to hospital, and writer posits that this helped some infected doctors he dealt with, and maybe Boris.

" But when Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don't feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And by the time they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays). Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 percent to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent."

"A vast majority of Covid pneumonia patients I met had remarkably low oxygen saturations at triage — seemingly incompatible with life — but they were using their cellphones as we put them on monitors. Although breathing fast, they had relatively minimal apparent distress, despite dangerously low oxygen levels and terrible pneumonia on chest X-rays."

"Even patients without respiratory complaints had Covid pneumonia. The patient stabbed in the shoulder, whom we X-rayed because we worried he had a collapsed lung, actually had Covid pneumonia. In patients on whom we did CT scans because they were injured in falls, we coincidentally found Covid pneumonia. Elderly patients who had passed out for unknown reasons and a number of diabetic patients were found to have it. And here is what really surprised us: These patients did not report any sensation of breathing problems"

</comment><comment><USER3> I found this to be a very interesting read and I just bought two pulse oximeters (one for me, one for parents).

<comment><USER4> As this is a respiratory illness, I bought one 5 weeks ago. I assumed the worst (complete overwhelming of medical system, with home self-care) and hoped for the best. Although I have obstructive sleep apnea and terrible circulation (often require blood draw from my hands), my waking SpO2 ranges 91 to 99 percent.

[https://amzn.com/B06Y2FFQB9](https://amzn.com/B06Y2FFQB9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mirror: [http://archive.is/5O1if](http://archive.is/5O1if)</comment>


Easy way to convert html to markdown with python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gaojiuli/tomd <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>


The Apollo 11 Journey in Photographs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-apollo-11-journey-in-photographs/260125/

<comment><USER2> There is a wonderful HD video showing the first 30 seconds of launch from a high speed camera, taking 8 minutes. It is incredible the details just for that part of the mission. <http://vimeo.com/4366695>

I recall reading somewhere that the walls of the lunar lander were so thin that if you stabbed them with a pencil it would go right through.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a quote of one of them saying that they were scared that if they dropped a screwdriver it would go right through the floor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I highly recommend the book 'Full Moon' compiled by photographer Michael Light. He's gone through the archives and reproduced many of the old medium format photographs taken by the astronauts on the Apollo Missions. I find the shots from the astronauts on board the craft at least as fascinating as the moon landscapes, seeing them up there strapped into technology (apparent from design, typography, etc) that's so clearly from an era that from today's POV looks so archaic. It really gives an appreciation for how badass those guys were, trapped in a little glass and metal bubble way out in the middle of nowhere, so far from any kind of life support.

<http://www.michaellight.net/workFullMoon.html>

<comment><USER5> > so clearly from an era that from today's POV looks so archaic

I managed to get maybe 45 minutes at the Smithsonian on a quick visit to DC 15+ years ago. Being able to go right up next to the actual capsules that some of the early astronauts had used and seeing the rivets didn't always exactly line up, or bundles of cables tied together with bits of string... It all looked a bit rickety.

Those guys had giant balls to be strapped in to those rockets and hope for the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a dig but just a note: every human being in all of these photographs is white. Even the parade picture at the end is, from what I can gather, all white. Makes you think about the real exclusion happening then, and how much progress we've made today, where its almost unsettling to see pictures of major events with political figures containing all whites, and where the president we have today apparently wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near these events.

<comment><USER7> Gil Scott-heron (of "the Revolution will not be Televised") wrote a beat poem on that very topic:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I cannot recommend "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin highly enough. It's an incredible read. Go find it and read it.

The HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon, largely based on that book is also quite excellent. Go find it and watch it. -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(TV_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_\(TV_miniseries\))

If you're still looking for more material after that, I'd go read "Failure is Not an Option" by Gene Kranz.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chaikin's book is excellent. Two books on Apollo that I'd recommend:

1\. How Apollo Flew to the Moon, by W David Woods. Don't be put off by the cheesy cover, this book goes into a lot of technical detail and does a pretty good job of explaining things.

2\. Digital Apollo by David A. Mindell. A detailed look at the use of digital technology in Apollo, particularly for guidance. Lots of chewy technical detail.

These books would definitely appeal to many HN readers with an interest in spaceflight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel mission control crew are under-represented in all the pictures. Without taking any glory from astronauts as they were men on the front, mission control were the brains of this mission. I guess History channel had wonderful documentary on role of mission control and how they were organized. Engineering management at it finest with the inspiration leaders throughout the ranks.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is unusual how many people still believe in this hoax. Dudes, this never happened. Only the Soviet robots did really something on the Moon. Check the regolite story, check the Stormwind icebreaker mission story. No, you do not want to see the truth, you just like to please yourself with that warm and fuzzy feeling of being proud.

<comment><USER11> Fascinating. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions:

* How did they fake the video of the astronauts on the Moon? Please be careful to pay attention to explaining the arc of the dust they kick up.

* How did they fake the open-loop back on the recordings where the delay exactly matches the orbit of the Moon, and in an apparently unanticipated analysis 40 years later it was possible to deduce from the recordings alone the date of the recording?

Thanks.

<comment><USER10> For the second one - there was an agreement with the USSR government about the Moon, so 'Luna-10' station could be used for that, or the earlier robot. With regard to the 1st one, I should check the available fx tech of that time. How shall you explain the founding of the intact Apollo housing (supposed to be burned) in the Atlantic ocean? Check this photo. <http://www.warandpeace.ru/ru/reports/view/70866/> \- illustration 17.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't mean to go all Carl Sagan on everyone, but these photos are such a great reminder of how stunning of a universe we have left to explore. And while I know the money doesn't exist in exploration funding to really push the space frontier yet, I really hope I eventually see the day where it becomes a priority again.</comment>


The Little Go Book - <AUTHOR> http://openmymind.net/The-Little-Go-Book/

<comment><AUTHOR> The book was written by Karl Seguin, author of Scaling Viki, The Little Redis Book, The Little MongoDB Book, Foundations of Programming

Github source: [https://github.com/karlseguin/the-little-go- book](https://github.com/karlseguin/the-little-go-book)</comment>


Question: What Sites Do You Pay For? - <AUTHOR>

A simple open question: what web services do you pay for online?
My answers are: - Flickr: I have a pro account… $24.95/year. - eBay: I have sold items on eBay, thus I pay them listing fees and a % of final sale. This has only been a couple dollars over many years of eBay usage. - Akismet: This is the anti-comment-spam service from Automattic. Based on my level of usage, I don't have to pay for it, but I do anyway. I'll likely stop paying for it now that I have switched to Disqus. I believe it was $5/month. - Dreamhost: They host my blog, in addition to a number of sites and email accounts I manage in a consulting gig for a little income on the side. It costs about $10/month. - NetFlix: I consider this a web service because the majority of my NetFlix consumption comes through their new online streaming offerings. Cost is $13.99/month. - Skype: I don't have a Skype Pro account, but I do pay for SkypeOut minutes. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than getting a landline. I spend about $3/month in SkypeOut calls.
What about you? <comment><USER2> Skype to phone girlfriend. My own servers. If a friend launches a paid service, I'll usually try it out. Used to do usenet.

For non-tangibles, I usually only pay when I'm getting a personal service through the internet.

Being persistently broke though, I'm probably a bad datapoint.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://whitehouse.gov>. I think we're all are being invoiced $80,000 for the last eight years or so. /political-snipe aside, I pay for online web hosting, netflix and little else.

</comment><comment><USER4> eBay listing fees. Web hosting service. I've been a paying user of photo.net in the past, but don't use the site much any more.

</comment><comment><USER5> I pay for paypal fee. itune, web hosting.</comment>


Pokemon Go and Digital Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikadosoftware.com/articles/PokemonGoAndPrivacy <comment><AUTHOR> Needs a rewrite ... Too tired. But it's amazing how much this app touches all the important points for the future</comment>


LinkedIn Is Now At 85 Million Members, Adding A Member A Second - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/17/linkedin/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is it just me or does anyone else have a hard time finding contacts on Linkedin? The email contact importer works well for gmail, but my corporate contacts are completely a hunt and peck process.

<comment><USER2> The 'People You May Know' feature seems to work really well, try that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And still no one knows what to do on there.</comment>


Ask HN: Do people get a business license for their evening projects in the US? - <AUTHOR>

So back where I am from (not US) if your business has two or fewer employees and makes under a certain threshold then you don't need a business licence at all, and instead can just file any profit you make as "income." It does of course not grant you any legal immunity like a limited company would but it is a great way for a very small business to start out.
I was just reading the thread about people's side businesses that make sometimes a couple of hundred to several thousand dollars a year. And while I want to try a few ideas I have, after looking at the fees my state/city/etc charge it could easily cost several hundred all the way up to $500 just for me alone to legally make any kind of profit.
Plus the complexity of the entire process is extremely high. They're clearly using the same process if you're self-employed, a small business, or even a medium sized enterprise. It may take me weeks to get it all done (and still might make large mistakes).
So do people that make little apps that cost 99c or websites that just generate tens of dollars in ad revenue REALLY go through all of this? Seems like it will take ten years just to break even financially.
PS - Just to be clear, I absolutely would like to pay tax. I just want to pay tax as if it was my personal income, rather than file personal AND businesses taxes. <comment><USER2> Sure, you can be a "sole proprietor", and just report your business income as personal income. I'm not aware of any limits on how much you can make and do this, though most people probably switch over to some sort of LLC or corporate structure if they're making more than a trivial amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask a local CPA. They'll know what's required where you live. My state doesn't require any kind of license or filing from sole proprietors, nor does the federal government. Income from the business is reported on your personal tax return. In other words, there's no startup cost in terms of money or paperwork here, or in many other places. Once I decided to form a separate business entity, an LLC, I had 3 pages to fill out and $150 in fees to pay: a 2-page certificate of organization with the state, and a 1-page business license application from the township. Each form took a couple minutes to fill out: all they asked was the business name, office address, and list of organizers/officers. I'm rather curious what city you're in that it would take weeks to organize a small business.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did get a business license from my town, but mostly because I wanted a bank account with the company name on it, and this was the easiest way to get a business or DBA bank account.</comment>


In Defense of XML - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/07/02/InDefenseOfXML.aspx

<comment><USER2> I simply don't buy this argument.

Who cares if there's a wealth of experience out there regarding XML? When you're designing software, if your primary goal is making it easy on your developers, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

There is one situation, and one situation only, where XML is the right tool for the job. That situation is where a computer must produce and/or consume a file that must be read and/or written by a human. That's it. The only time. So, XHTML, ja. SOAP, nein. If a computer is consuming data another computer has produced, why would you want to encode that data in something so hard to parse, and so potentially ambiguous as XML? It's lunacy.

<comment><USER3> I have to disagree. I think that XML is better used for machine-consumable processes rather than human-edited ones. The wealth of tools available mitigate the need to roll your own data format and help ensure that your output will be usable by anyone with a (ubiquitous) XML parser. If your data will be used by an arbitrary 3rd party there are a lot of advantages to using XML.

Optimizing for ease of development is _certainly_ a good goal too. Ease of development equates directly to lowered maintenance costs and redevelopment of poor code. In my business at least the maintenance costs far outweigh the initial expenditures when evaluating different technologies.

EDIT: I agree that SOAP is abominable. But that's due to its overall architecture rather than its use of XML.

<comment><USER4>
      I think that XML is better used for machine-consumable
      processes rather than human-edited ones. The wealth of tools
      available mitigate the need to roll your own data format
      and help ensure that your output will be usable by anyone
      with a (ubiquitous) XML parser.

That's a false dichotomy. The choice is not between XML and yet another home- rolled data format, but between XML and every other data format currently in existence. When compared against JSON, YAML, or s-exps XML always seems wrong for machine->machine communication.</comment></comment></comment>


Darkstar: A Xerox Star Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://engblg.livingcomputers.org/index.php/2019/01/19/introducing-darkstar-a-xerox-star-emulator/ <comment><USER2> The Living Computer Museum is one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. Computers from as far back as the 60's mainframes kept in working order, and freely usable by the public (though you do have to reserve time on the mainframes iirc). The first time I went there I spent hours programming on a paper terminal, which was just beyond cool to a kid who grew up in the 90s. If you're ever in the Seattle area, definitely don't miss this place.

<comment><USER3> I really need to head over there. Just found out about it recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the creators of the Star user interface, here's a contemporaneous account of their work, published in BYTE magazine in 1982:

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91ca/5fd33d2eb7c7b87f96ae59...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91ca/5fd33d2eb7c7b87f96ae59bacb2f46a69afb.pdf)

by Dr. David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, and Bill Verplank; Xerox Corporation, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304 and Eric Harslem; Xerox Corporation, El Segundo, CA 90245

About the Authors

These five Xerox employees have worked on the Star user interface project for the past five years. Their academic backgrounds are in computer science and psychology.

"We have learned from Star the importance of formulating the fundamental concepts (the user's conceptual model) before software is written, rather than tacking on a user interface afterward. Xerox devoted about thirty work-years to the design of the Star user interface. It was designed before the functionality of the system was fully decided. It was even designed before the computer hardware was built. In fact, before we even began designing the model, we developed a methodology by which we would do the design."

</comment><comment><USER5> Some music to go with that page: [http://datassette.net/businessfunk/](http://datassette.net/businessfunk/)

upd: and some more: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=zZt64_XOflk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zZt64_XOflk)

<comment><USER5> Also, the name actually refers to the John Carpenter & Dan O'Bannon film! A rather curious early movie for them, considering that O'Bannon went right on to writing "Alien." Recommended for nerds, I don't even know how to otherwise define the audience. The bomb is cool.

<comment><USER6> Actually?

He does mention the movie (though it is fairly far down the page).

And I'll throw out another recommendation to watch it as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What an amazing gift to the world. Have literally been waiting for 35 years for something like this. Always wanted to get my hands on an Alto. Thank you so much

<comment><USER8> Yes, this is pretty cool. Amazing to think you can simulate the hardware in regular code on today's machines to virtualize not just the os but the entire machine from... (it can't be that long ago, can it, 2019-1985, wow!) 35 years ago. I was going to say 20 years ago :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found it ironic that the emulator is written in C#/.NET, which shares some design ideas with Mesa and its linage, namely Mesa/Cedar and Modula-3.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of Modula-3 lineage, you can get Oberon from the Mac App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's wonderful that people have put in so much effort to keep this history alive.

Kudos

</comment><comment><USER11> I worked at Xerox from 1995-2017 and had the opportunity to tour their archived hardware more than once. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to see an Alto or Star actually running. But I did get a chance to use GlobalView, their implementation of ViewPoint for Sun workstations. Performance wasn't great (and even worse on Windows machines) but it was still pretty amazing what you could do.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did anybody have any luck getting Viewpoint to boot under Mono on Linux? Followed the instructions (set clock back to nov 1990, etc.) and loaded the Viewpoint image and after diagnostics it just flashes MP codes 7 and 323 over and over again.

Interlisp booted and worked, though.

EDIT: was able to get the Viewpoint image to boot by selecting 'Alternate Boot' "Rigid"

</comment><comment><USER13> How does one actually build this thing (on Windows or Unix)? This might be a simple thing but I have no idea what I'm doing.

<comment><USER14> On Linux you need mono, nuget and msbuild. I used a recent versions from [https://www.mono-project.com/](https://www.mono-project.com/)

Then you should be able to do:

        git clone https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar.git
        cd Darkstark
        nuget restore
        msbuild

This should produce a Darkstar.exe below D/bin, which you can execute using "mono Darkstar.exe".

On Windows, if you have Visual Studio, then you can just open D.sln and build the project.

<comment><USER13> Awesome! Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how hard it would be to overcome the licensing issue mentioned.

<comment><USER9> It's an emulator, and you can try to capture the internal that attempt to check the time limit or check the activation. Knowing when and how that happens, you could hack the code and make it work.

Unfortunately, depending on where you live, it may be illegal to do so or even run software that was changed in that way.

It'd take some research to check who owns the relevant rights, so even finding out who we should ask permission from is tricky.

I tried that with Cyncom Systems' Mantis (a 4GL I first met in the 80's on IBM mainframes), but, it turns out, their versions that can run on MVS 3.8j under Hercules are still supported and cost a lot of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Screenshots are beautiful! Really nice design I think.</comment>


Audio Sharing with Your Friends? - <AUTHOR> What do you guys think of audio first communication platform. > sharing the audio without worrying about how you look > audio first platform<p>beta users?
hmu <comment> core-questions What kind of audio? Streaming, podcasts, something that's a Soundcloud competitor?</comment>


Missing Detroit: My Dad and the Disease of Blight - <AUTHOR> http://beltmag.com/missing-detroit-my-dad-and-the-disease-of-blight/ <comment><AUTHOR> Guess I am lucky the neighborhood I grew up in Detroit hasn't changed much, couple of houses burned and weren't replaced. The elementary school that I attended is still functioning and I am told it is one of the best in the city.

It is still pretty much functioning though I am still amazed everytime I return at how narrow the streets, built for the Model T, happen to be.

However further downtown the neighborhood where my dad, grandfather and great grandfather lived is pretty much gone - just vaporized and it's all happened in the last 10-15 years. Almost a third of the city is either vacant lots or will soon be.

</comment><comment><USER2> Photos of the progression - from riches to blight to restoration.

[http://www.detroitnews.com/picture- gallery/news/local/michig...](http://www.detroitnews.com/picture- gallery/news/local/michigan-history/2015/11/27/detroits-brush-park-then-and- now/76450980/)</comment>


Visual 6502 in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html <comment><USER2> I recently wrote a "remix" of visual6502 (just for fun), with C (and a bit of C++), compiled to WASM to see whether the rendering performance of the chip visualization can be improved while still running in browsers, and also to improve the "UX" a bit:

[https://floooh.github.io/visual6502remix/](https://floooh.github.io/visual6502remix/)

Check Help -> About for a list of dependencies used in that project (lots of good stuff in there), the two most important being the original data sets from visual6502, and a C re-implementation of the transistor-level simulation, called perfect6502 [https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502](https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502))

<comment><USER3> Does yours have a clock speed readout? Can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER2> No display for that, I was mostly interested in the single-stepping capability for investigating the chip behaviour and validating against my CPU emulators.

But when clicking the "play" button it's throttled to one half-cycle per 60 Hz display frame (requestanimationframe) so "usually" it should run at 30 Hz.

I haven't checked how fast the WASM version would run unthrottled compared against a natively compiled version of perfect6502, but performance should be somewhat close (much closer than to the JS version anyway).

As far as I have seen, the C rewrite in perfect6502 uses a handful compact arrays for the simulation state, unlike the Javascript version which seems to be more like a huge graph of linked nodes, where each node is a JS object, so the C version should be a lot more cache-friendly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This page was confusing to me until I followed the Github project page and saw this "Transistor level 6502 Hardware Simulation in Javascript". Why this same sentence couldn't be anywhere on the demo page though, is a mystery.

</comment><comment><USER5> A bit offtopic, but I'm constantly annoyed by applications using 'x' and 'z' for related operations like zoom in and out in this case.

The reason is, German keyboards use the QWERTZ layout and as you can tell from the name, the 'z' key is in the upper row, right in the middle.

Maybe use 'w' and 's' instead? That's the default in first-person-type games. Actually, never mind, that doesn't work for the French who have AZERTY...

<comment><USER6> Since mouse dragging works fine, I expected the scroll wheel to control zooming. In fact, that was the first thing I tried before reading the instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When this came out in 2010/11 (not sure when I first heard about it) it blew my mind.

However, I was really, really hoping that we'd have a version for the Z80 by now.

<comment><USER2> Here you go :)

[http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert-z80.html](http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert-z80.html)

But AFAIK nobody really knows yet whether it works in all situations, because not all of the "trap transistors" had been found yet which the Zilog designers put in to make reverse engineering harder.

...maybe it would have been better to decap one of the "unlicensed clones" of the Z80, like the East German U880, because that definitely had the trap transistors fixed ;) The U880 had some minor differences in the undocumented behaviour too though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some previous related threads: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=visual6502.org%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER9> Really cool, I remember seeing it over 8 years ago from here too ! :D

[http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html](http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html)

a nice throwback for sure!

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108557))

</comment><comment> drew-y Is there any information on the program the simulator runs by default? I couldn't find anything in the user guide or the FAQs.

<comment><USER10> Here's the source code (or at least comments about the assembled op codes) to the example program: [https://github.com/trebonian/visual6502/blob/master/testprog...](https://github.com/trebonian/visual6502/blob/master/testprogram.js)

It looks like that subroutine they call at $0010 has a special hook that writes to the console whenever they write to memory address $0f.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Visual 6502 is a godsend for emulation. For a brief time I dabbled in emulating the 6502 and every question that couldn't be answered by the manual was answered by this.

Couldn't live without it <3

</comment><comment><USER12> Any chance to compile some benchmarks (spec int) for this and see how well it compare to the original silicon?

<comment><USER2> You can actually check on the webpage when the simulation is running: on my machine it shows around 17 Hz, so it's about 60000x slower than a 1 MHz 6502.

For comparison, the C reimplementation of the transistor level simulation, running unthrottled and without visualization (I think that's the main performance killer) is about 150x slower on a modern CPU (according to the readme here: [https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502](https://github.com/mist64/perfect6502))

<comment><USER13> Is that 150x slower based on single core?

<comment><USER2> Yes, but IMHO spreading the simulation over multiple threads would be quite a challenge. As far as I understood, the simulation essentially starts with an initial state of high/low nodes/paths, and then for each node, switches each connected node throughout the node-graph accordingly, until the entire chip simulation "settles down", and then moves on to the next node.

Maybe this linear algorithm can be converted to some sort of parallel "cellular automata", which would then probably be a much better fit for GPUs than CPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is just completely crazy, thank you for posting.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of all those MineCraft computers lol. <3</comment>


Analysis of Nate Silver's Analysis of Oklahoma Student Poll Pollster Fraud  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.smellthedata.com/2009/09/analysis-of-pollster-fraud-and-oklahoma.html Using machine learning to take a closer look at a couple of the models Nate presents and arguments he makes.  A bit of a surprising conclusion. <comment><USER2> If you must do both statistics and interpretation, be absolutely certain to keep the roles separate.

 _or_

If you have nothing else to go by, put the most trust in the statistician who, at the end of the day, admits they don't know how to interpret their results.</comment>


Ask HN: C++ for Rubyists/Minimalists - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to pick up C++ as a skill and do some systems programming, but there's a lot of information out there on C++ and a lot of it is contradictory. What I'm trying to discern is what are the best features of the language to use if you like minimal, non-complicated programs. In other words, if you could remove the "bad" parts of the language you wish nobody would ever use and only leave the "good" parts, what are those "good" parts?<p>I'm fully prepared to accept that there are no non-complicated parts of C++, but I had to ask. <comment><USER3> For some guidelines take a look at

[https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC...](https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md)

If you want to look up some information about the C++ library, look at [http://en.cppreference.com/w/](http://en.cppreference.com/w/)

Here is my advice if you are learning C++ for the first time.

1\. Use the latest released version of either GCC, Clang (preferrable) or Visual C++ if you want the best IDE

2\. Do NOT start off with pointers. Doing so will only confuse and frustrate you.

3\. Use std::string and std::vector. Learn about the std::algorithm. Learn about lambdas

4\. Learn about RAII, constructors, and destructors. Focus on invariants - <USER2> you set them up and how you maintain them.

5\. Learn about exceptions and exception safety

6\. Learn about references and polymorphism

7\. Learn about dynamic memory and std::unique_ptr

8\. Learn about copy/move construction and assignment

9\. Learn about std::shared_ptr

10\. Implement your own version of std::vector. You will learn about memory management and pointers by implementing the iterators.

11\. Learn about std::list and std::forward_list

12\. Implement your versions of both. You will learn a lot about pointers.

13\. Analyze the exception safety of your implemented versions of std::vector, std::list, and std::forward_list. Make sure you do not leak memory or end up in an invalid state.

This should get you acquainted with the basics. Now here is how to test yourself in various areas to see how comfortable you are.

Templates: Implement std::tuple

Memory management: Learn about memory allocation strategies and implement in an allocator that you can use with std::vector or std::list

Unions: Implement std::string small-string optimization

Atomics/memory model: Implement an atomic shared_ptr, where multiple threads can access the same shared_ptr atomically</comment>


Ubuntu Touch Ported To Galaxy S3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/02/ubuntu-touch-ported-to-galaxy-s3/ <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, the "Ubuntu Touch" bit is just a generic set of ARM- binaries running on top of a standard Android Linux-kernel without the traditional Android GUI, user-land and bits which the _user_ normally interacts with. HAL, drivers and all that which interacts with the actual hardware still comes from the Android-base.

This means that most devices which already has a open-source Android- implementation (like AOSP or Cyanogenmod) can easily have the Android user- land ripped out and Ubuntu thrown in on top instead. Right now that is a _shitload_ of devices.

As far as that makes Ubuntu its "own" OS or not might be a interesting discussion (1), but it's definitely a pragmatic solution and has clearly paid off with regard to getting a product to market.

(1) The same discussion can clearly be had for Android vs Linux. (2)

(2) Which in retrospect gives us the interesting case of a standard Linux (Ubuntu touch) built on top of a non-standard Linux (Android) to emulate a standard Linux (Ubuntu) in the first place. Turtles all the way down :)

<comment><USER3> How is Android kernel not a standard Linux ?

Ubuntu and Android simply share the Linux kernel. I don't see any preposterous about it.

<comment><USER4> I suppose he meant Android is not what Stallman would call GNU/Linux (and could actually be called Android/Linux if you will). See <http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#linuxsyswithoutgnu>

<comment><USER5> And Ubuntu is? Last I checked Stallman hated Ubuntu, and told everyone to stop using it.

<comment><USER6> It's still the GNU userland on top of the Linux kernel, whether he likes it or not.

<comment><USER7> This is the one thing I don't understand about the GNU/Linux thing. Doesn't calling it GNU/Linux imply that it is derived from the GNU/FSF philosophy? To me it would make sense if another term can be coined to refer to systems that have a GNU base, yet go against GNU's goals, yet still credit the GNU project for its contributions. (I hope I'm not re-igniting the bad parts of the GNU/Linux debate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Describing the S3 as an 'aged' phone seems a bit extreme given its successor is not released yet! But its good to see that Ubuntu Touch runs on a good selection of devices. I'm excited to try it out.

<comment><USER9> Reading the Android forums, I see users refer to phones barely 6 months old as being out of date and year old phones as antiques. I find that puzzling as they're most likely not doing anything that requires the latest device out there (they're not modding/developing, just end users that want latest shiny toy). If their phone isn't getting OS updates, then it at least has some weight, but I've seen users calling Nexus phones that as well.

I guess it's a hobby for some to trade in phones every few months. I'd rather have a top of the line PC than play Angry Birds with a 500ms faster load time with the next phone iteration.

Also, where are the source links on this blog? I have some gripes about most of the Android blogs for their reporting style, but this one can't even provide a link to where the mentioned ROMs are. For anyone that is interested, you can find the Verizon Galaxy S3 Ubuntu ROM here[1]. No working radios for phone calls or data and not worth using past trying it for the sake of testing. I don't recall seeing anything for any other S3 variants though, but any of the North American ones should have minimal changes at the most.

[1] [http://rootzwiki.com/topic/39299-romwip-ubuntu-touch- on-d2vz...](http://rootzwiki.com/topic/39299-romwip-ubuntu-touch-on-d2vzw-dev- previewphantom-022213/)

<comment><USER10> > I find that puzzling as they're most likely not doing anything that requires > the latest device

> I'd rather have a top of the line PC

It's a status symbol, so just _having_ it is the end goal. But on one will see it if it stays at home. A phone is much easier to carry around and flash to your friends.

<comment><USER11> > > _I'd rather have a top of the line PC_

> _It's a status symbol, so just having it is the end goal. But on one will > see it if it stays at home. A phone is much easier to carry around and flash > to your friends._

Images of people carrying giant gamer PCs around on their shoulders like boomboxes... oO;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pft. S3.

Nexus One is an 'aged' phone.

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2164616>

</comment><comment><USER13> Too bad my shit phone hasn't had CM ported to it, so I can't try it out.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's best to get one of the more "open" devices if you want support from the community for a long time, and it helps if it's higher end, too, but even if it's low-end it should at least be a popular one.

For example, Galaxy Ace and LG Optimus One were very popular, and they're getting even the latest version of Android for them with CM. And last I checked JB was very fast on them. I also have JB on my own HTC Legend, which was also one of the most locked down phones ever. I went through a lot of trouble, and even had it "bricked" (not final) while trying to unlock it. But now I run a JB CM10 rom on it pretty well.</comment></comment>


Some perspective on a destroyed career - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-perspective-on-destroyed-career.html

<comment><USER2> > I've never learned Perl, but I've never learned how to run the deep fryer at > a McDonalds either.

I think it is much less important which language you use, than what you create with it. Otherwise you have a shed full of brilliant tools that have never been used.

I've noticed that the people who actually create things tend to be less dogmatic about languages.

<comment><USER3> There is a parallel to this in music called Gear Acquisition Syndrome; when you crave new gear in hopes of stoking inspiration or improving your sound, even when this is a dubious proposition at best.

People with too much GAS tend to be much like language weenies. They will go to absurd lengths to defend the "pure/fat/warm/etc. sound" of their favorites, an ultimately pointless endeavor considering that after a certain minimum of instrument quality, playstyle and post processing effects will both have far more impact.

<comment><USER4> I think this is closely related to ones identity and many people bring some artifact very close to their hart just to be get a feeling of belonging.

To talk a little about myself, I'm a die hard libertarian, and I've spent countless hours being quietly angry about all the collectivists out there that wants to ruin our planet. Recently I've noticed though, that this rock-solid conviction of the superiority of a libertarian society isn't really productive for me in my relationships with others, and made it harder for me to intellectually appreciate good ideas from people who doesn't share my view.

I think the reason for this rigidity in my beliefs was that in my late teens, I felt as if I didn't belong anywhere, and getting an ideology to die for gave me a (false) sense of belonging.

I can't speak for this Lisp guy or the musicians but I can only assume that we perhaps share some similarities.

<comment><USER5> I placed the artifact close to my hart. It looked at me with a puzzled expression, then shook its antlers side to side before bowing its head once again to chew on the blades of grass. I felt a sense of belonging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a little writeup on some ex-googlers including Ron Garret:

<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-184506.html>

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill A "destroyed career" after he made a tidy living at NASA, joined Google and got paid well, and is now doing VC?

I wish my career were similarly "destroyed".

</comment><comment><USER7> I am confused - his "productivity" is being able to churn out academic papers of quality - but I am not sure what that has to do with a programming language (are the papers about some concrete application?).

<comment><USER8> Yes, take a look at the list: [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cis?q=erann+gat+or+e+gat&sub...](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cis?q=erann+gat+or+e+gat&submit=Search+Citations&cs=1)

He implemented something at NASA, then wrote a paper about it.

(And oddly enough, I just realized he got his PhD from the same department I'm in.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are very different meanings about 'knowing a language'. Some people think that they know some language while actually they were just memorized several hundred of common sentences. Other people claims that they know some language, because they can read with permanent use of a dictionary, other think that they are good, while they did not bother to learn correct pronunciation, and so on.

I think it is very hard to know more than two languages well, especially such different like western and eastern ones.

I have a dream, for example, to learn Japanese language, because I'm an anime fan, but I'm also realizing that this is almost impossible for me. Even my very weak English took several years of learning, because learning means practice, and this process is very slow. And if language is really difficult, like the Sanskrit it is impossible for sure.

So, when someone claims that he know some language, I assume that he should have at least 5 years of continuous practice, or it is just an empty claim.

<comment><USER10> It definitely does not take that long to become conversationally fluent, especially for related languages (english/spanish/italian/french, etc). In a few months of daily, hardcore practice with western languages, you can become definitely conversationally fluent (speaking and understanding w/out any problems). With eastern languages it might take longer---but it doesn't take as long as you think if you are sufficiently motivated.

I speak italian, portuguese, spanish, and english, and will be studying hindi later this year

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, if I get this right, the post on a "destroyed career" was pure fiction? Marketing to push a point of view?

It seems a bit dishonest to me.</comment>